Hello?

Wow, four months since my last post!! Hopefully somebody out there is still reading this blog :-)

It's been a really busy four months!! We found a lovely house, spent two weeks bidding on it against three other bidders, got it and waited three long months till we could move in!!

It is SO fantastic to be home owners again. Whilst renting while we lived in Sydney and for our first 20 months or so back in Ireland gave us a lot of freedom regarding where we lived, we had totally gotten sick of being tenants, not having the freedom to make changes we'd like to our homes and not having the security and certainty of living in a home we own ourselves.

We LOVE the house we have bought! It's right in the area we wanted to buy, straight across the road from our favourite park and has a lovely big green out the front where the boys now spend so much time playing with other kids and getting lots of fresh air :-)

The house was already in nice decorative condition mostly, warm white walls, oak floors, a bright sunroom at the back and a really sunny, nicely landscaped back garden. So it was ready for us to move straight into. It has a lovely fireplace, large window in the living room overlooking the green and the beautiful mature trees of the park across and the much hoped for 4 bedrooms, downstairs toilet, ensuite and good sized family bedroom. There are changes we want to make, the kitchen is a dated oak style and despite the kitchen/dining room being a really good size there are not that many cupboards (by my standards anyway, I have so much kitchen stuff as you may be aware) so the plan, hopefully in the next couple of years, is to extend across the full width of the house at the back and open it up to make a really big kitchen/dining/living space at the back with a nice long kitchen and island for me to be a happy mammy in :-)

That's not happening immediately though so for now we are doing little mini-projects such as adding shelves to a blank wall in the kitchen, jazzing up the hallway, decorating the boys' room and possibly painting the kitchen cupboards and putting in new tiles as a "for now" makeover.

Also, two days after moving in, we threw our first house party to celebrate our youngest son's first holy communion, 25 family members, heaps of food, a cute dessert table for the kids and a really great day, not sure how we did it with all the chaos of moving, but we did (with a LOT of help from our parents, they were amazing)!!

Also, since my last post I have also finally clicked with Instagram! I joined a couple of times before but didn't really take to it but now I am loving using it as a little scrapbook of stuff we get up to, I am keeping my account private so I have the freedom to upload photos of the boys, refer to them by name and share what we're up to without worrying about strangers being able to see them, but here is a little of what we have been up to over the last few months, home decor, fun with the boys, enjoying the weather warming up etc...

Enjoying the great outdoors, lots of hikes, drives and enjoying the parks and mountains nearby :-)

Various little projects and homemaking fun finding new spots for our favourite things :-)

Some vintage buys and new additions to my Le Creuset collection (more on that in another post).

 Enjoying the gorgeous view out our front window!

The dessert table at D's Communion party, it was a big hit!

My flower addiction is a lot more economical these days thanks to Aldi!

And finally, how gorgeous is this Eiffel Tower my youngest drew for me? Definitely deserving of a frame :-)