aka R’acquel

It’s slowly verging towards Newtown Mum’s 4th birthday in May. I found these old photos of the checkerboard cake I made for it’s second birthday which was celebrated at the Newtown Cemetery.

When my brother in law saw this photo this morning, it gave him a sudden craving for chocolate! =D The checkerboard cake has always been an incredible success with the guests, especially upon cutting the cake up because people are expecting a standard old boring cake underneath, but with this sort of cake, - they get a very interesting surprise instead!

The concept came to me via my bargain basement find of the Le Cordon Bleu Dessert Techniques book, which has been an incredible source of inspiration for amazing ways to create incredible looking eye-candy. This one used a combination of vanilla & chocolate cake strips, glued together with raspberry mousse - but the kind of combos that you can do with this idea are endless! You can do a circular version if you have concentric circle cutters in different sizes, but as i don’t have any, it’s far too complex and the standard square or rectangle version is effective enough to make people scream very loudly at the parties anyway!

The recipe for the “glue” is very easy, and can also act as a very simple fruit mousse as well.

Ingredients
450ml sweetened fruit puree - it can be anything!
1tbsp (15g) gelatin
300 ml double cream

Method
1. Dissolve the gelatin into the puree and leave it until it begins to ’set’.

I tend to dissolve it in a small amount of hot water before i add it to the puree and use 2tbsp gelatin to make the glue stronger (the brand i get here just seems to be too weak for the task). You can spice & fire things up with the puree by soaking fruit in flavoured liquour, so do consider the use of more gelatin if you add more liquid into the equation. You can put it in the fridge to speed up the setting process.

2. Beat & bash the cream up (erm…whip it!) until you can make it stand into mountain peaks, then fold the fruit puree into it. It’s consistency should be like butter cream, easy to spread on the cake with a knife so don’t pour all the puree into it if it’s begining to get too runny. You can still glue the cake if it’s a little runny, it just makes the application onto the cake more difficult and messy.

To serve as mousse - put it into nice glass jars or bowls & leave it to set in the fridge.

If you’re using it as glue to put the cake together, construct your cake on a sheet of “Glad Wrap” (what we call the plastic wrapping stuff you use to cover food with over here). Apply the glue to all sides that need to be stuck together. When you finish building it, wrap the plastic around the cake very snuggly and then put it into the fridge to set overnight. You’ll find yourself with a fairly solid lump of checkerboard cake in the morning, ready to dress in any kind of icing or ganache of your choice. If you’ve done a good job with the glue, you’ll get a nice solid slice of cake as you cut it! ;D

I’m a big fan of the chocolate, vanilla & raspberry combo, but would love to see pictures of other combos if anyone dares to try something like this at home. ;D

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Founds some old photos, so i thought it was worth my while to finally take you cruisers on a surprise side day tour of the Leura Cascades Bushwalk with pictures to go ooh & ahh at for immediate rest & relaxation via your own computer monitors. I was unable to score good shots of the actual Blue Mountains scenery with my former Leura Tour due to the poor weather a few weeks ago, so here are the good ones on a nice & sunny day, which are bound to bring a smile onto your face - especially if you enjoy the relaxing sound of trickling water that can have the capacity to make you want to pee at times too! ;D

The walk itself is fairly easy going with well built pathways in some sections and doesn’t require strenous prowesses in the fitness department to get there.

When you’re a local - you know where the shortcuts are so this walk only took about 10-15minutes to get to the cascades. *teehee* I was never affraid of heights until i became pregnant, so this part of the walk is not toooooo bad if sudden cliff dives freak you out. I still freaked out whenever my son tried to run several metres ahead of us during this walk, of course. You can see him a few metres ahead of us already in this picture! 555

My son was very intrigued by what we think was a blue tongued lizzard, so he took this shot himself with the cheap little Kodak digicam i got for him a few years ago. They really do have blue tongues!

This is a fairly typical view of the Blue Mountains during bushwalks. You usually journey through densely covered bush and then these really big windows arrive, revealing amazing views starting to open up when you reach various sections of the tracks.

This was one of the more scarier ones as it’s a cliff-edge featuring as a lookout point, so it did raise my heartbeat up by a few notches. At least you have the safety of viewing it from a computer monitor with this one. *lol*

Views like these are also the reason why it’s not a good idea to ever go bushwalking on your own too. I remember seeing a helicopter hovering around were i live on the day of moving in, a dead man was found last weekend. Mysterious & dramatic deaths in this region in the local paper are common and at times, have been very eyebrow raising. My husband’s brother died from falling off a ledge. Just a small 4m drop. He could’ve survived it if he weren’t impaled by a tree stump… Nope - not a good idea to go venturing out into the bush alone over here, but i can understand why people still do it as many lookouts can be a very powerful means for rest, meditation & reflection - a great way to “get away from it all”. I’d still never venture out alone myself! No way jose!

…and this is why sports like abseiling & rock-climbing are so popular in this region. If your lucky, you can catch a human spiderman trying to climb the rockfaces but you’re more likely to spot this along the non-touristy trails. If you’re a thrill seeker who enjoys the extreme sports involving heights, Katoomba isn’t short of businesses that can cater to your needs, skydiving & bungee jumping included. The less adventurous tourists can always enjoy the safety of the world’s steepest railway or fly through the sky via cable car.

Verging back into the dense bushland again, the beginning of the Leura Cascades arrive and then you’re pretty much walking down the side of perhaps one of the most easiest waterfall walks i’ve ever encountered to date. No leeches present here, but maybe we were just lucky! Always a good idea to bring a bit of salt or a cigarette lighter with you, just in case! =D

It’s a very easying going & very enjoyable walk from this point onwards.

…until you get to the very bottom of it. Strong spiritual vibes down here, especially where the rockface turns into a quasi-cave. It has the sensation of being enveloped in a giant warm & loving hug by nature. Then again - you can still be prone to acute paranoia if you allow your mind to imagine that the giant rockface could fall on top of you in any minute. I think that’s probably why it feels like a massive hug - the amount of rock living above the shelter is just fookin’ HUGE! The sensation of chi in this space is very dynamic because of it.

The pool of water collecting down here would’ve been my ideal childbirthing spot, although there’s no way in hell that such a thing would ever be allowed to take place within a national park in this era. Perhaps i should’ve gone bushwalking on the brink of giving birth over here anyway! *lol* I seriously wish that i had!

When i arrived at this spot, it made me wonder if many aboriginal women thousands of years before me had water-birthed in this spot, coz it really had that strong spiritual vibe about it. Not much help if you need an emergency caesrean due to an undiagnosed breech at the very last minute after a 30hr labour, but i get the feeling that my former aboriginal elders & sisters would’ve been a shitload more experienced with handling such a thing compared to the midwives from hell that i faced at the cold & sterile KGV hospital in Sydney that had beds covered in plastic sheets! =D Then again, maybe childbirth was naturally meant to be very traumatic for me anyway! It would’ve helped considerably to have nature hug me so grandly during what was the most horrible & terrifying experience in my life. Makes me wonder what the screaming would’ve sounded like with all the echo surrounding me! =D

This was the part of the walk where I arrived at; “I can no longer go any further because it is far too scary to go beyond this point!”

I did manage to take a very deep breath and peer over the edge in order to knab a better shot nevertheless. Hoo, it was a long way down, but i’ve survived much worse over here! *lol* I’m sure that daring feat over the edge is what made me want to go straight back home, but it was worth it. As for now, it’s time to get off my bum and go take a good long pee. *lol*

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Once upon a time, i used to dream of owning a 3bdr penthouse by Sydney Harbour. Oh, only just a few million to buy one but yeah - it was a fierce dream once. So fierce that i even used to fold triangles at the end of the toilet paper, just for the sake of a laugh…

Couldn’t afford one at the time, I still can’t - but that dream hasn’t stopped me from trying to make my own home *feel* like a 3bdr penthouse, or a 5 star hotel. It’s not the object, it’s the *feeling* I’ve been aiming for the last 6 years. A minimalistic form of zen - peace & tranquility, that’s what I want.

I’m estimating that this will be the second last “gutting” of my house. Life is getting very close towards gaining the prized fish fillets of ‘less is more’ now. It’s feeling fantastic.

Let me introduce you to our “Black Cupboard”, the home of hocus pocus and a lot of other oddities. This was the shape that it was in at our former house during a TIT a while ago…

I remember packing the contents of the black cupboard in Newtown 14 months ago, and dreaded re-unpacking them. As our former house had so much storage space, the contents of this cupboard spent the last 14 months on hiatus in 3 boxes that were never touched! This is why this cupboard wasn’t looking like much of a cupboard at the former house.

So - with the much smaller house here, the three boxes could not be housed in the linen closet, so i was left with the need to confront them today. I took a deep breath, made myself a cup of coffee and just went for it!

The state of things after i purged through the contents of two of the boxes. You can see the third box lurking near the window. So much stuff/shit/unuseable “ornamental” souveniers from relatives overseas. Gah! It’s no wonder i was dreading the re-opening of these boxes. Felt good to cast some of the items into the “ebay” box while others went straight into the garbage bags. Ohhhhh, that felt good alright.

My most confronting toss for the day, was all of my report cards & awards. The feeling of holding all the sporting ribbons, crushing them in my hands and then tossing them onto the pavement like a barbarian. It was a very cathartic release to discard them.

Had trouble tossing out a small handful though. Spent 4 years working my butt off for this one. Why hold onto it? Why do i need it? Maybe because it’s not poorly designed piece of paper/certificate. A heavy metallic object that’s a bit like a tallisman which reminds me of Bednobs & Broomsticks? Suitable for a cupboard filled with hocus pocus stuff like crystals & tarot cards for now perhaps.

The most funiest find was OS/2 Warp… erm, Version “3″. Hilarious that it hasn’t got a .31254 at the end of that number. These days, you need internet access in order update the latest patches to fix all the bugs from software you purchase off the shelf. Then again, it’s been many years since i last purchased software “off a shelf” too as it’s been online order or download for such a long time.

Very funny to reflect on the days that it took 20 or so floppy disks to load an operating system. I have no idea if the new computers these days still come with a floppy disk drive. Maybe they do, but it’s been many years since i’ve had to use my own A: drive.

Looking forward to getting rid of the light that doesn’t work and my late FIL’s bar heater.

Why order your DVDs alphabetically when you can do it by colour instead? *lol* It was something an old friend used to do with her books & CDs once, so it was a lot of fun to try and do it like that this time. Felt good to tackle the boxes and purge a lot of dust collectors. It still needs more decluttering work but it really must be my husband who has to review his own posessions within it, as I don’t know how relevant programming books on vrml, C & C++ are these days. Do we still really need that Internet for Dummies book with a free CD that probably doesn’t work on our computers now? *lol* Oh well, only my husband can decide on that one. For now, the cupboard is looking remarkable compared to the days in Newtown. It felt good to complete reviewing the entire contents of those 3 boxes that hadn’t been touched in 14 months.

Dining room area had more boxes to tackle, so there was more purging to get on with. There’s not enough space in my garbage bin to toss all the rubbish, so i’ll have to wait until garbage day on Wednesday. At least it’s not as bad as our first major purge in Newtown 2-3 years ago, when our garbage filled up all the rubbish bins in the entire appartment complex. 555

The state of things in the afternoon, when we get heaps of sunlight beginning to pour into the house from the western facing windows. I’m appreaciating how much warmer this house is by about 2-4°C compared to the former one. It makes a big difference.

Slowly getting very close to resembling a hotel room in small steps. Although things are a little sterile & cold right now in this space, i’m sure it’ll warm up rather nicely after i finish my painting of succulent flowers on fire. The chairs could do with some cushions so i look forward to knocking some up on the sewing machine soon.

That’s another thing i’m enjoying about this house - there’s painting hooks on the walls everywhere, even in the toilets. When you rent over here, you’re not allowed to nail hooks into the walls without gaining permission from the landlord in writing first - so it’s been great that all these hooks have been inspiring me to paint even more.

As this place is a temporary shelter for the next 6 months, i’m hoping that i can achieve my 3bdr penthouse goal before we move to the next place but placing the deadline for this goal before the year ends, regardless of where i’m living by then.

Must get on with tackling my workroom space today and get the sewing machines in a position to return back to my fashion design work, so I’d better get cracking!

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Quit Procrastinating I - Defragging Your Brain

TRACKING YOUR RECURRING OBSTACLES
If there’s something that’s always taken me far too long to accomplish (aka procrastinate), the core cause has nearly always been because of a really tough obstacle blocking me. It’s the equivalent of a brick wall - a truly serious block which can at times - truly scare the bloody fucking shit out of me. I’ve had some mighty paralysing obstacles in my day, and still do. I’ve come to realise that it’s incredibly normal to be scared of things like this. Everyone’s going to be scared of something, at some point.

The difference between now and back then - is that i’m better able to to understand and know that i’m facing obstacle when i confront one getting in the way of getting things done. By seeing the obstacle, i can then confront the breaking down of that barrier in my path.

Obstacles are like a noose around the neck. They can be exceptionally suffocating and can cut off the circulation of your project or thing-to-get done. They have the power to stop and get in the way of you achieving your dreams.

If your regular to-do-list isn’t quite working for you, give it a small twist at the end. Here’s an excerpt of what my weekly & daily planner looked like:

Notice that small section at the bottom? I used that space to review the day and list the reasons & excuses for why I couldn’t do the certain things I had set myself up for the day to achieve.

I had all the 7 days listed on one page and began to document the reasons for why i couldn’t get certain things done on the list. After practising this for several weeks, i began to notice my “recurring obstacles” and even moreso after a few months. Tasks of a particular nature - which i always found really difficult to overcome began to manifest in the form of recurring themes of things that i always had trouble with (and still do with some to this very day).

One of the primary examples that comes immediately to mind - was sending invoices to my client in order to get paid for my design work. It used to get so bad that i would have weeks of accumulated invoices not done. Not good at all.

The postal service in my former town at the time, had stroppy & very unpleasant sales folks. A matter of pot luck as to whether or not you would score a good or a bad person at the counter. To compound this problem further, my son (now diagnosed with autism) - couldn’t stand waiting in queues and there was always something acutely terrifying for him when it was time to approach a “counter” of anykind. It was acutely difficult for us to manage, so my husband & I would have to “tag team” when it came to getting the banking/shopping & any other kind of day-to-day life transaction that involved people standing behind any kind of counter. With my husband working a “9-9″ high-stress corporate job at the time, gaining access to the post office was near to impossible for me because they weren’t open on the weekends.

Week after week - my list saw the line up of;

“Write up invoice no.xyz” …and it wouldn’t get done. Used to have several attempts in a week too, often failing!

Anything which had a task dealing with needing to visit the post office to get things mailed - was always left undone. It was simply too hard.

By seeing this recurring problem in my life on my to do lists in this fashion - it made me realise that sending out invoices & dealing with the post office was naturally, a really difficult task for me to overcome. This didn’t make me stupid or bad - it was just something that didn’t come to me easily or naturally. Some people are better at doing things than others. When it came to visiting the post office, the job was too daunting, far too horrible & unpleasant for me. That’s why it had a habit of pushing itself to the bottom of my priority list all the time.

After doing the exercise over several months, i began to realise the commonly recurring things that i always had trouble with. I could see the “brick walls” very clearly - and this helped me to develop strategies to make it “less painful” for myself by confronting the reasons for why i found facing such brick walls were so difficult.

The way in which i tried to lessen the burden of this particular problem;

- I dared to speak to my client, asking her if it was ok to send my invoices via email instead of snail mail. She was perfectly ok with it! It made things more efficient for both of us, so it was a remarkable win/win.

- I organised to buy postage stamps & envelopes in bulk to save me from needing to check-in to the post office in person.

This didn’t eliminate the difficulty of such tasks for me entirely, but it did release a fair degree of the burden I used to carry. With time, i also slowly began to confront my client by daring to assert my own boundaries more clearly in small bites too, in order to make it less painful for me to deal with her.

My weekends were never respected and work always had to be done “urgently”. Being paired with the “disease to please”, this didn’t make things any easier for me! I had to re-state that i would no longer work on weekend about 2-3 times before it finally registered, but i also implemented other strategies. I stopped accepting any work on Fridays and stopping my pathetic habit of promising to deliver work on Mondays too. The latter was far more effective in getting the message across. It was an incredibly effective strategy of not commiting myself to anything unreasonable with a weekend living in the middle of it! I also managed to dare to renegotatiate my rate as well - a very confronting task for me - but again, something that could only be done in small tiny steps. I was thrilled how the small changes & strategies i took on in my life earnt further respect of my time & personal space. Writing up invoices became much easier after that. They got done every week…

As for dealing with the post office these days? Things changed miraculously for me when i moved to Leura a little over a year ago. My goodness - the people at the post office here - they’re so bloody nice, helpful & friendly! It’s perfectly ok for me to ask them questions about the services, they’re more than happy to help by explaining the processes to me! They never make me feel like a burden or a nuisance for simply asking questions to understand how things work! Another one of my recurring obstacles(problems) - is asking other people for help. I’m not very good at it. Actually, i suck quite bad at it.

My son also learnt how to handle his terror of facing people standing behind counters too, so it’s now a great pleasure to go to the post office and other places that involve people standing behing counters. 555. So much for a change in suburb which has finally tackled one hell of an obstacle my life used to face with such a job before. Great customer service certainly goes a long way for me.

Anywayz - one of the first keys to tackling the procrastination thing, is to realise that you’re facing an obstacle when it hits you. I was unable to see them clearly, until i began to document my excuses for not getting things done. I was blind as a bat before that.

By reviewing my list excuses, each one had a certain “feeling” attached to it when i read them. These days, i know i’m facing an obstacle because of how it makes me feel. If i experience a suffocating “glug”, I know i’m facing a brick wall and my challenge is to pull out my axe and smash that wall into smaller & more achievable pieces - but I’ll write in more detail on that with my next piece!

As diaries don’t come with the “excuse” section, feel free to use my following PDFs if you’re unable to make up a chart yourself. HIH.

Weekly Planner
7 Days To A Week Planner

I used the weekly planner to list up my goals for the week, and would then translate them into the 7day chart. It was very useful for me to track how things didn’t get done on a per week basis vs per day. The process made me realise just how over ambitious i was with my goal setting, which is another common problem that functions as the source of procrastination for me - so more on that later too!

Thats it for tonight, so i’m taking a break. Goodnight!

After much trepidation & stress over this house move, due to being forced to uproot ourselves with the sale of the former house - I am relieved by the amount of tension that has subsided upon settling in our new home.

Welcome to the new front yard, which features a waterfall fountain that we have no intention of using as I’m unsure of how things stand with the current water restrictions here, so for now - it’s functions as a 24/7 mosquito farm. The garden is more low maintenance than the former place we were at, so that’s a relief.

A shot of the other water fountain at the front of the house, which i can’t help but laugh at - a lion who dribbles water out of it’s mouth?! Ah well, at least it’s not a pissing cherub. *lol*

The move was a great challenge, as we had a strong male back who was unable to help us out so the burden was left entirely on the shoulders of my husband & me.

My preparation work for the Oz Whistles office. It was a huge mess of boxes but we had a pretty tough challenge ahead of us with regards to the transportation of the 24 inch geeky computer nerd rack my husband acquired a few years ago, so the room needed to be adequately cleared in order to get the ruddy thing inside. It made me laugh when i saw Debbie show hers off during a recent TIT because at least we only have one of them! *lol*

Ah…yeah - much to our relief, we managed to get the bloody thing in without dismantling the bugger. Thank goodness that the truck was equipped with a trolley as there’s no way we could’ve done it without one! *phew* My husband was impressed by how much stronger my body has become since we first got together. *blush* Let’s just blame that on motherhood for now, as my son currently weighs 24kg and we still carry him around in an “uphug” at times (…and oh! How heavy i thought he was as a newborn!). I was equally impressed by my husband’s skills in tying ropes to hoist the giant in and out of the truck, but i’m not sure if i got around to complimenting him back - so i’ll be sure to return it upon his arrival back from the St.Alban’s Folk Festival.

This house is a lot smaller than the former one, so things were looking rather cramped once we got everything in.

…but it’s certainly starting to shape up rather nicely and i’m beginning to enjoy the really pleasant vibe in this house. The new space is really intimate, warm & cosy. Pictured above is also the sofa that i designed & built together with my husband way back in 2001. When i first suggested the idea to my husband, he thought i was crazy (like, completely bonkers) …until he saw me designing the floor & elevation plans on my computer and began to see how achievable it was, which then got him hooked onto translating the design into 3D using Lightwave. We spent a lot of time sitting on heaps of sofas in furniture shops and got all the key measurements for what constituted as the most comfortable sofa in the world. Just about everyone who sits on it, often comments on how comfortable it is, so it was a dream come true to design a truly ergonomic piece …that could function as my retreat during those nights when my darling husband used to snore so loudly once upon a time.

I can also finally shit in peace now, because the location of the toilet paper no longer requires a feat of muscle straining gynmastics to reach for it. I haven’t had this kind of comfort with reaching for the toilet paper for nearly 7 years in the last two places i’ve lived in, so as you can imagine - it’s been a greatly welcomed relief & creature comfort to both the heart & “down under”. =D

View outside of the driveway. As so much of the house is west-facing, i guess this will be the first of many sunsets to start enjoying in the next few months.

Looking forward to getting the rest of the house shaped up, so that’s fair amount of things to be getting on with my TITs in the meanwhile! ;D Enjoying the new space and looking forward to the adventures ahead.

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Life’s been sending me so many signals of “Stop!” “Not Now!” & “slow right down!” with this house move. Phone calls engaged, road blocks, no car spaces in car parks, a blocked back door that wouldn’t open, the big & boisterours barking dogs sensing a stranger arriving at the new property, a car which has been parked so close to our driveway that it not only makes it difficult to drive in & reverse, but i couldn’t put the garbage bin outside our house either! Had to put it several metres away from the driveway! The 55m lens doesn’t do it justice. *lol*

Gah! I hope i can get past that on the day of the big move… which was initially planned for Saturday, but now shifted to Sunday - beause the trucking company called an hour ago to say “we can’t do it for fri/sat”. Another road block? *lol*

Upside is with the moving date changed, we can attend another person’s housewarming party on the Saturday, where kids are welcome so it’ll be a good opportunity for my son to meet other kids. =D …and we could possibly find another extra strong back for the Sudnay move too. Who knows. I can’t wait to get out of here now!

I’ve been feeling sensitive about the bad feeling vibes i’ve been getting, as though it’s a bad omen - but in another way, it’s as though there are external forces demanding that i must endure a course of internal shifting in preparation for big changes around the corner.

I began digging around in my front yard, to rescue treasured tulips bulbs, but couldn’t find many. The daffodil bulbs were saying,

“Please don’t uproot me, i want to carry out the rest of my destiny of turning into a perpetual weed here please …and besides - it’ll save you from all the hard work it’ll take to replant us guyz at the new place anywayz, so yeah - take it easy!”

A great reminder to myself that i should never expend the amount of effort & money that i did in trying to maintain this current garden and that such energy should return solely to my pot plants that i do “own”!

I guess this was the ultimate signal which told me to stop my efforts in the garden today. Check out this hibernating little bugger that i dug up in a place where i would never think that a possible funnel web could live! For those who don’t know what a funnel web is - they’re very poisonous & deadly Aussie spiders. While the venom is really poisonous, you will be ok if you can get to a hospital. It’s quite funny how a funnel web entering our house after a big storm last year made the humble huntsman spider look very cute in comparison afterwards! *lol*

I didn’t have the balls to check out it’s ass and back legs to confirm it, so while it could be a trapdoor - i was in no mood to muck around with it because we do have many funnel webs living in the backyard! It was very sleepy, so it didn’t move much when i tried to flick it away with the shovel and deciding to kill it during the process. Phew! *lol*

So for now - i’m taking things easy. Life’s telling me to slow down and enjoy the now, so that’s what i’m going to do!

Though i’d indulge the reason for why i’ve never been able to venture out into the backyard to hang out the laundry here and why I’ve had to use a clothes horse instead!

Alright - lets start walking down the stairs and dare to walk over all that ivy and the millions of pine needles that have made the dirt really soft & squishy!

Lots of funnel webs living under this area, so it was really freaky for me to walk across it without any gum boots on!

A momentary shot of some of the back yard

And here we are at the redundant washing line, slowly being burried by pine needles so you can’t lift it up. It’s quite dirty and not a good idea to leave the laundry out at night, as you don’t know what creatures will want to crawl into the clothes to make a new home for themselves! *lol*

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Spent 5 hours yesterday, clocking over 10,000 steps in my efforts to start moving house. It’s been a really stressful few weeks, actually - it’s been suffocating eversince the announcement of this current house being listed up for sale. The flow of chi in the household began to experience a progressive level of choking eversince - so i’m looking forward to getting out of here ASAP now.

The design of the new place is interesting and has a west/east alignment, with windows also exposed on north in our designated workroom too. As we spend most of our time in that space, the NE orientation will be good for winter. Having too much light entering the western face is usually not good as it makes houses really hot during summer. As we’re approaching winter and have no plans to stay at the new place too much beyond 6 months, i’m hoping it will help us out a bit with heating as we face the months of winter - or at least help us bridge until we can afford to buy a portable gas heater because the house has no heating at all! It was an interesting effect to see the sunlight pouring into the house yesterday, so for now - i’m counting on it to provide healing & nourishment to help me achieve the kind of lifestyle i want for myself before the end of the year.

My bonsai fig tree being the first thing to get shifted yesterday. The picture above taken in November last year, when we began the search for the new place. It’s still a live and going well. Here it is resting at the new place now.

Looking forward to getting settled at the new place soon. The experience has so far been really daunting because it’s as though the universe has been throwing obstacles in my path to say,

“Stop & slow down!”

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