Renovations – Part 4

So we are nearly to the end of the renovations to the inside of our house.  We’ve been living in the house since just before Christmas and I’m really loving living here. It is so peaceful and quiet.  The kids have so much room to run around and explore.  The chooks are loving the extra room too!

The girls have started their new school and after a rocky start for our oldest it seems to be working out.  We’ve been volunteering for lots of community events to get involved and meet new people.  The community feel in this suburb is so different to where we were living before.  It is awesome.

We have started on the outside over the past few weeks.  New native plants for the garden, a huge “man cave” for the husband and won’t be too much longer until the 25,000L water tank arrives.  It will be plumbed into the house and used on our toilets and washing machine.  Later in the year the plan is to put in greywater as well from the house out onto our fruit trees.  So exciting!

We have received our first electricity bill since having the solar panels and it was $106 which is awesome!  We are using 6 units a day too which for a family of 4 is pretty good I think.

It will be interesting to see what our household bills end up being after a year of living here.  With no gas (we had the bottled gas removed as soon as handover happened), solar panels, solar hot water, water tank, grey water system and a spectic tank system which was already here when we moved I think we have done a good job of ensuring that our future bills will be as low as we can possible get them and we will hopefully use a lot less of the natural resources than we did in our old house.

Anyway, here are a few more update photos for you!  I might put some posts together over the next few weeks of what we did room by room with more details.

Renovations – Part 3

We had our first sleep over in the house last weekend.  It is so quiet there! It was lovely but it really did feel like we were camping. Actually, we are probably more organised when we go camping than when we slept over at the house!

Anyway here are a few more photos for you. Hope you are all ready for Christmas…not long until the big man visits! xx

Ensuite bathroom tiles

Kitchen

Looking across the family area from the back door to the kitchen

Bedroom…just got the skirting boards and blinds to go. New fans installed so we don’t need to use aircon, ecolour paint on the walls and new wool carpet

In their “playroom” playing with playdoh that Ruby got for her birthday. They happily played for about 5 hours while my Mum and I did a huge site cleanup!

First sleep over

Renovations – Part 2

So we are still in full-on house renovation mode at the moment. You can see part one of the renovation here.  Much to my delight we are finally coming to the end of the “demolishing” phase and moving on to the “making it look good again” phase.

We have had a wall built, rendered and plastered. We have fixed up the ceiling where the pantry was. We have cleaned the concrete floors and we have had an electrician come and do a bit of wiring ready for the kitchen to go in.  We are trying to do as much of it as we can but for some things you do need to hire the professionals!  To keep it as eco as we can be (both within our time constraints and also budget) we are hiring people that live locally so that the travel is cut down and also to support the people in our new-to-us community.

New wall closing up the space between the kitchen/family and lounge room

New wall from the lounge room side which has been plastered.

My Dad has been an absolute warrior and has painted all the bedrooms (walls and ceilings) with the paint we bought from ecolour. The paint is great and we are super happy with it. Especially since it is zero VOC and an Australian company! Yeehah!

Ruby doing some painting

Painting for Ruby was “the best day ever!”

Freshly painted master bedroom

Just today the tiler has been and has levelled and concreted the bathroom floors ready for the tiles and he has started the tiling in the laundry. Mr Natural Newborn will be sealing and waterproofing the bathrooms tomorrow and then the bathrooms will be tiled over the next few days after that. Can’t wait to see what they look like!  I chose tiles with rectified edges so that the gaps between the tiles are smaller.  Smaller gaps = less grout = less cleaning!  Win!

Tiled laundry floor

Mr Natural Newborn started putting the kitchen together on the weekend.  We had to go with a flat pack kitchen because we didn’t have time for a cabinet maker to build us one and we also didn’t have the finances!  To save some dollars we are going to put it together ourselves.

Start of the kitchen

Hope you are all getting organised for Christmas.  I’ve started my online shopping with a big purchase from Spiral Garden.  I love that shop!

Renovations

So, it has been a bit quiet on the blog, website, facebook etc lately. But I certainly haven’t been sitting around enjoying the peace and quiet!!! We have been renovating our new house.

At the end of October we sold our house and got the keys to our new house in Roleystone (in the hills outside of Perth WA). Mr Natural Newborn, the kids and I have all moved into my parents house and are currently living in 2 bedrooms (it is amazing how you can live with so little!) while we do the renovation.

I thought you might be interested in seeing what we’ve been up to lately.

Front of our new house with the awesome tree rope swing that the kids love

The kitchen

Family room

Chook Pen

Our future vegie patch and fruit orchard

We have a 2,000 sqm block so plenty of room for the kids to play, Mr TNN can have his vegie patch and grow fruit trees and get a “man cave” and 25,000L water tank.  The chook pen was a bit over grown and the chook house had a hole in the roof so we all got in there and tidied it up and Mr TNN put some left-over colourbond sheets he had from our old house onto the chook house roof so the hole was covered up.  They are very happy in their new home!

The first thing we did was replace the gas hot water system with a solar hot water system and had the bottled gas removed.  We didn’t want to have to keep replacing the bottles as it can be quite expensive and if the sun will heat our water for free why pay for it!  We also had a 2kw solar electricity system installed as well.

Then the demolishing began!  Pretty much everything has come out.  Probably not the most eco-friendly decision but we have tried to give away/sell as much as we could and lots of it will be reused by ourselves.  The kitchen will be used as cupboards in Mr TNN’s new shed.  The bath will go into the garden to be a part of the aquaponics that he wants to set up.  The appliances were all put onto Gumtree.  But unfortunately the old tiles and some of the walls had to go into a skip bin.

The end of day 1

Kids bathroom

And after a weekend of diamond grinding the floors this is where we currently are with the renovation.  Can’t believe that we only started this 3 weeks ago!  Mr Natural Newborn has been very busy (he is doing this while still working as well).

Kitchen, pantry and half walls removed. Looking across the family room towards the kitchen.

I’ll be painting ceilings tomorrow.  We’ve chosen to use ecolour paint which is an Australian company that manufactures climate friendly, carbon neutral, ZERO VOC paint which uses recycled refined waste engine oil to make their water based paints.  The oil acts as a preservative in the paint.

And see that pile of skirting boards in the above photo…that’s my job!  I have to sand and repaint them all.  Lucky me!!!

So the destruction has pretty much finished now and we are about to put it all back together again.  I’ll put up another blog post in a couple of weeks with the updates.  You can also follow me on facebook and instagram for regular photo updates.

We’re Moving (and taking a short break)!

We are moving to a new house which we will also be renovating.  So, from the end of October until a date yet to be decided(!) we will be closing down the store.

We are going to be moving and living at my parents while we renovate our new house (it is a bit rundown) so trying to get orders out would be a logistical nightmare!

I’m so excited about our new house.  We have a much bigger block (2000m2) with plenty of room for a huge vegie patch, fruit orchard, water tanks and it already has a huge chook pen.  There will be plenty of room for the kids to play and run around and even room for a man cave for Mr Natural Newborn!

Keep an eye on the blog for our eco-renovation photos and also on Facebook.

Kalbarri WA

It’s the last day of our holiday to Kalbarri which is north of Perth on the Western Australia coast.  It has been so relaxing and the kids have had a blast.  I really don’t want to go home.

We have come away with 3 other families.  There are 8 adults and 10 kids in total which makes for some very chaotic BBQ dinners!  The kids range from 4-8 years in age and they all get along really well.

Boat trip on the Murchison River

Ruby fishing in the Murchison River

Nature’s Window at the Kalbarri Gorges

Kalbarri Gorges

Wildflowers

Pot Alley

Family

Eagle Gorge

Natural Bridge

Wildflowers

Checking out rock pools at Red Bluff Beach

We have managed to have time to chill out and relax and also managed to get out and see the gorges, Murchison River, the sea cliffs, be a part of a kids fishing competition on the beach, had fish and chips on the beach, went swimming, to the skate park and lots of other family adventures.

I love school holidays 🙂

Holidays!

We’re on holidays at the moment north of Western Australia at Kalbarri. The kids have never been up this far north before so it has been great for them to experience another part of our beautiful state.

Any orders received between now and 6 October won’t be posted until Monday 8 October.

Keep an eye on Facebook for lots of photos!

Yoga Zoo

A few years ago I decided to send Emma to kids yoga to help her with her anxiety and now both girls regularly go to school holiday programs at Yoga Zoo with Michelle.

They recently went to her Happy Heart Warrior Workshop which involved an hour of yoga with Michelle and then an hour of drama with Nichola.

The kids had the BEST time.  Ruby even declared it to be “better than kindy”!  That is pretty high praise I tell ya!

While they were off doing yoga and drama I took a little walk around A Place Just To Be which is where it was held.  This little gemstone of a place is in East Fremantle and is so gorgeous.  There were about a dozen little nooks to sit in and relax.  I settled on a little limestone room and read my Miranda Kerr book.  It was the perfect spot to read her book.

Michelle has another workshop coming up on 30 June which is a Parent and Child Workshop at Beacon Yoga Centre.  Unfortunately we can’t go but I can highly recommend attending.  You will love it!

Anyone for some tableware made from milk bottles?

Would you believe it if I told you that these bowls are made from recycled milk bottles?  They are.  Groovy huh!

They are made in the USA from recycled milk jugs and other recycling items that are flattened and sorted.  They carefully sort and select the appropriate containers, grind them up into flakes, which are thoroughly cleaned, dried and colour sorted. Then the little flakes are melted and made into pellets for shipping to Re-play’s molder. He mixes the recycled pellets with a batch of colourant pellets, and then magically molds each Re-Play item.

But the green cred doesn’t stop there!  They have a smaller carbon footprint because recycling saves energy, water, resources and landfill space, and reduces pollution.  They are BPA free, phthalate free and PVC free. And HDPE plastic is one of the easiest plastics to recycle, and it can be recycled again and again.

The Re-Play line of tableware will last, it’s rugged and durable and it’s also affordable.  Re-Play is top rack dishwasher safe but should not be used in the microwave.

The tableware range includes no-spill sippy cups, bowls, divided plates with deep walls to help little kids learn to use utensils and a fork and spoon pack.

The kids will love the bright colours, parents will love the fact that they are a safe choice for your kids and the planet will thank you for making a smart decision when buying Re-play recycled tableware.

Prices start from $7.95.  Plates, bowls and utensils can be found here.  No-spill cups can be found here.

Yesterday…

Yesterday…

we made Power Oats for breakfast

made an avocado, orange and chicken salad for my lunch to take to work today

made Vietnamese rice paper rolls for lunch.  Ruby loved them, she wants to take them to school for lunch!

did all the mundane boring stuff like emptied the dishwasher, sorted washing, emptied bins etc

made an orange cake and then ate some while it was still warm

gave Ruby cuddles after I iced the orange cake without her and she got a bit upset…was nothing a piece of cake couldn’t fix!

washed my hair with bicarb and ACV

did a tonne of dishes after all the cooking

went to my parents for a roast dinner followed by baked apples with sultanas and honey with ice cream

survived the first weekend of Mr Natural Newborn being away for work.  1 weekend down, 2 to go!