Beauties!

All my lovely Le Creuset cast iron casseroles together in one photo :-) Using these gorgeous pieces of cookware makes me so happy! I have built this collection up over the last 5 years so, many of the pieces are vintage, found at flea markets, carboot sales or on eBay, others are brand new, given as birthday gifts or bought in sales. I love every single one of them and hopefully when we renovate our kitchen I'll have space to display them nicely. I must do some more photoshoots, I have a really nice collection of pots, gratin dishes and Le Creuset stoneware to share too!! If you would like to see more more posts featuring my Le Creuset collection please click here.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!!! I can't believe it's 2017 already!!! 2016 was a busy year, with buying our house, settling in, lots of family events and active little rascals.

It was mostly a good year but sadly in September we found out that my father in law's cancer had returned. After a couple of very hard months, with up and downs, he passed away at the end of October. It's been a very sad time, everyone misses him terribly and he was mad about all the grandkids. I am so glad we moved back to Ireland when we did and our kids had the last 2 and a half years to know him properly and spend time with him. I can't imagine how awful it would have been if we'd still been living in Sydney at this time.

I have many new years resolutions, the usual ones, fitness, be less of a potty mouth, get more organised and re-ignite my blog.

We had a lovely Christmas, it was very important for all my husband's side of the family to be together at this time so we had everyone to our house for Christmas day and everyone stayed over. The boys were delighted having everyone there, 15 of us in total!! It was pretty relaxed as everyone brought an element of the meal.

I wanted the house to look extra festive this year so pretty much every corner of our living and dining areas were twinkling or glowing...

Even the wine was feeling festive :-)

I made my usual Christmas treats, traditional Christmas cake, pudding and extra special rocky road. My Christmas cake always has that special lopsided quality that you just don't get with a shop-bought cake ;-)

We alternate between a traditional red and gold or very colourful tree every year. This year was a traditional year, I love having our tree packed with decorations, a mixture of handmade, vintage and new. My favourites are the ones the boys make and the collection of ornaments my Dad gave a me a few years ago that have been hanging on our family tree since I was a child.

As always we left out some treats for Santa and his reindeer on Christmas Eve. S in particular is hugely excited when he sees the leftover crumbs on Christmas morning :-)

I love seeng their little faces light up on Christmas morning as they see their stockings have been filled and they open their presents and see if Santa brought what they asked for (he always does, no matter how much mischief they've gotten up to all year ;-)

On Boxing Day we went to stay with my parents and younger sister and my Dad made the most delicious roast pork dinner, we had a lovely evening playing board games, watching tv, drinking wine and chatting, the boys were delighted with the presents they got and we all stayed over. My superstar dad made a lovely breakfast the next morning and we stayed for lunch then headed back home. We had a lovely time, my husband took the full 2 weeks of school holidays off work so we were able to take lots of outings, hiking, swimming, eating out, sleepovers with cousins.  I hope 2017 is a happy and peaceful year for everyone xxx

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 :-)