The big reveal.

Okay, so I have been a little distracted and kind of completely not doing anything aardvarky for the last wee while.

But with good reason.

I have been quietly beavering away at an entirely different kind of project, namely making my life more like what I would like it to be like.

I have quit my job. Quit, quit, quit. Done, finished, resigned, left the building. And I have applied for PhD candidature on a project that I am absolutely super excited about. I think this is possibly my most creative act of the year so far. Certainly it is the act that has required the most giant leap of faith and reassessment of the shape of my universe.

And all this rearranging of things has made me realise that for me, art art is only one aspect of creativity. Because, you know, life is art, right? So spending time re-shaping your life to be more fulfilling and interesting and engaging and generally more like the kind of gal at the party whom you go home really wishing you had a chance to talk to, that's an art too. 

Also, I have been making gardens. At my house, in the backyard and down the side. Making gardens is good. And now I am like some kooky garden pervert and drive around just staring at other people's gardens and checking out their foliage.

So this year*, I am very optimistically going to attempt to -
1. revive the aardvark
2. write a PhD (ok, some of it)
3. do work that I enjoy
4. walk the dog every day
5. feed my child something vaguely nutritious every once in a while
6. keep the new gardens alive
7. paint the house
8. not get caught in another job that doesn't suit me
9. spend Sundays with my husband
10. start a new business with my friend Bec.

 * Yes, I am aware the the traditional time for new years planning has passed and we are now in March and it is way too late to pull a bunch of bogus resolutions out of my arse. But that's just how I roll.

Bisy backson.

I'm not going to say I'm back. Because that implies some kind of rekindled dedication to regular posting, and I'm just not sure if that is a reality that I can commit to at this very second.

At the moment, there is a great deal of thinking important thoughts going on inside my head. This is quite taxing and requires a relative degree of madness.

For therapy, I have been painting parts of my house.

I have decided, that with it's expansive walls and super high ceilings, painting whole rooms of the house in one go is an overwhelmingly large task. And I suspect such giant tracts of colour would perhaps be overwhelming for the sets of eyeballs that live inside the house. So instead I am painting small parts of rooms and experimenting with the ways in which little moments of passing colour can change the feel of the place. 

I have tried to photograph some of this but there is a giant thunderstorm outside and no natural light except of the extremely gloomy kind and it all just looks a bit blerg. I will wait for a sunny day and then share the joy of the very small painting project with you.

The insane storminess is a bit of a theme around here lately. It has been relentlessly rainy. But because I am a sterling dog owner, I have been taking my dog out in the extreme super wetness. This is what the beach looked like a couple of days ago when I was there with my dog and she made friends with another dog called Rufus who looked scary but was really quite nice. Rufus is a pretty good dog name I think.

Night life.

We get some pretty spectacular views of the steelworks from our new house. At first I thought it might be a bit oppressive, but actually, it's just gorgeous. And it's not even noisy or even one bit stinky. I am becoming quite fond of it.

Bread Winner.

Honey.

Rice.

Milk, yeast, seeds.

 Flour.

Rest.

  Grow (the Godzilla phase).

 Voila!

And for my next trick...

Today I am going to make bread. It is ridiculous that someone as bread dependent and food obsessed as myself cannot produce their own bread. Really. So, I'm going to brave the unpredictability of yeast and attempt to conquer the hitherto unexplored realm of homemade bread. I may even wear an apron and a pair of birkenstock sandals whilst I do so. If only I had enough hair to plait and a goat in my kitchen - then I would feel authentically rustic.

Stay tuned for results.

Get some taxidermy in your day.

My friend Michele, who is herself a very clever artist, put me on to the work of Claire Morgan. Check out loads of her stuff at her amazing website. Here's a taste of her fairly astonishing creations. Any girl who delivers taxidermy and dandelion seeds in one installation is on my list of personal role models. Thanks to Michele for directing me to this work.

Christmas creativity collapse.

Oh man. If the aardvark was a real live living aardvark, it would have totally have died of neglect and exposure and starvation and many other things that kill in a slow and debilitating manner over the last couple of months.

Any semblance of creativity has been totally smooshed out of my brain with a frying pan called 'I have a day job'. Work always seems to go stupid at the pointy end of the calendar and this year was no exception. I find myself entertaining fantasies of unexpected and stupendous wealth on a daily basis. Not so I could have heaps of things, but so I could have heaps of time.

However, I have been loving the little pockets of light in my new house and at least have some photos that I have been having fun playing with. Here are some.

And on the first day of my holidays, I sprang out of bed with the urgent and all too familiar I-must-move-furniture-around-immediately feeling and have finally configured our dining room in a way that works.These kinds of pressing furniture placement issues are generally consuming my brain when I am not thinking about my day job. Which I am not even sure if I want anymore. But that is a whole other barrel of cranky monkeys.

The dining room has been tricky from the start of the new house. It has a hilarious chandelier which is obviously a great start, and french doors and high ceilings so you know, it's not like it hasn't got things going for it. But every time I walked in there I felt like someone jabbed me in the eyeball with a fork. It was not right. It was wrong.

But now I think it is finally looking like a friendly place to be. It's still not quite there, I'm not convinced that in it's heart it's  a white room. Gold maybe? Or red? What do you think?

I love our new house. It makes me happy.