At home in the countryside 🌲🪵 gardening and home updates

Craziest dreams last night. It's not uncommon for me to have, like, not the best sleep. Unlike Jesse, his head will hit the pillow and he's in a deep sleep until he wakes up and he can have, like, nine or ten hours of sleep and he's just, like, he's thriving. But myself, I'm much more a surface sleeper. I'm a very light sleeper, so the slightest noise or movement will often wake me up. And I do dream a lot. But lately I've just been dreaming so much. And usually when I dream, I'll wake up in the morning and I'll Google, like, the interpretation of the dream. So I've had, like, three dreams lately that have been about death, two of which were about my dad dying, and then one I was dying. And they're very vivid dreams. Like, when I dream, it's very vivid. It's almost like watching a movie or something like that. Like, they're very detailed and they feel very real. So if I have a dream about, like, death or something like that, I often wake up feeling really sad. But I was Googling the interpretation of, like, death dreams, and it's not generally about death in itself, but it's more symbolic of, like, new beginnings. I guess that's quite aligned with where Jessie and I are right now, obviously moving into the new place, and this is a new beginning for us. Last night's dream was just, it was all over the place. It was chopping and changing and it just didn't make any sense. It was quite a bit silly, really, but it was just a really weird night. And I woke up and I had a bite on my neck, and I thought it was just a mosquito bite, but when I looked in the mirror, it's actually, I'll come a little closer so you can see, but it's got quite a red, raised, lumpy head on it, and then it's a bit red around. So I'm not too sure what it is, but I feel fine. Like, I don't think I've been bitten by, like, a poisonous spider or anything like that, because I feel completely fine. Also, like, we have obviously had quite a big week, so I'm obviously still moving into the house. Nearly everything is unpacked. I actually thought that I had fully unpacked everything, and then I found a box in the room that I thought was empty, but it's actually full of, like, winter gear and stuff, so I still need to unpack that. But for the most part, we are unpacked. We still don't have a lot of furniture. We did pick up those chairs, like I showed you last week, but we don't have any outdoor furniture, so I keep dragging one of the diamond chairs around the house with me. Like, I want to be sitting outside on the deck, so I'll drag a diamond chair out with me onto the back deck for the morning sunlight, and I'll work out there, and then in the afternoon, I'll drag it to the front deck where we get the afternoon sun, where I'll either keep working or I'll read my book or do some knitting or something. It's just so peaceful, so I'm really excited to get some proper outdoor furniture so that I don't have to keep dragging my diamond chairs around with me. Also, I have picked up some flowers and some pots to put on the back deck, so eventually when we do get some outdoor furniture, I'll be able to sort of style that area and make it really quite pretty. But I do have so many projects that I want to get my fingers into. Actually, on that note, I wanted to ask you guys how interested you would be in me showing you a lot of the projects that I do. Like with my kitchen hutch, for example, I didn't actually film any of that process, but I got so many messages on my Instagram about how I actually flipped the kitchen hutch. But I didn't film it, so I just thought you wouldn't really be interested in it. But I can film it because I've got the diamond chairs and the desk and a couple of other things that I want to work on. So if you guys would be interested, let me know and I'd be happy to film it and incorporate it somehow into the vlogs or on Instagram or something like that. But yeah, a lot of projects to work on, but I think my priority is probably the garden because I want to get the veggie garden beds established so that we can actually use them and everything like that before we go on our big trip later this year. Yesterday, actually, I found these quite large terracotta pots in the garden that had, you know, just like some old soil and stuff in them. So I pulled them all out and I put in some extra potting mix and I put in this, it's called a beneficial insect mix, and it's got like a variety of seeds for these flowering plants that help sort of repel, you know, things like aphids and things like that, but also attract the good bugs that are going to kill those bad bugs that will eat the garden, eat the veggie plants and stuff. So I've done that. I did that yesterday and then this morning, very early this morning, the brush turkeys, which are those large turkeys, they've come in and basically dug them up, so that's going to be a big problem with the actual veggie garden bed itself, so we're going to have to do something to keep them out. But we do get quite a lot of them here, obviously because we're in the bush and we're surrounded by forest, which is where they live, but also because our neighbours have chickens, which is attracting them. So I'm going to have to do something to keep them out. I don't know if this is just completely unhinged, but if you might remember a couple of weeks ago I told you that I had my broccoli seedlings out on the deck at the Jessie's parents' place before we moved in here and some bug or something came during the night and just basically ate them all and cut them all up and stuff and I was so devastated. So now I'm just extra protected with them, so every night I bring all of my seedling trays inside from the deck and they're all just in the kitchen with their little mesh houses on, because the mesh houses are quite flimsy, they're actually just food covers, like what you would put over some of the food trays so you don't get flies and stuff on it. They're not sturdy really at all, so the slightest breeze or an animal or something would just knock it over pretty easily. So I think if I leave them out at night time, they're just going to get ruined and Jessie says it's ridiculous and it is a little bit ridiculous if I'm being honest but they all come in at night and it's like my morning and evening routine to just bring all of my seedling trays and it's not like one or two, like there's quite a few, there's quite a few. I think in a little bit I'll do a little seedling update for you guys. But with the garden, I'm hoping to turn over the veggie garden beds but we are expecting quite a bit of rain over the weekend, so I don't think that that, so I don't think I'll actually be putting the seedlings into the garden beds because they're just going to get essentially knocked about by the rain because I think where we live, like when it rains it pours, like we don't usually get like little white showers or drizzles, like it gets quite heavy and the seedlings will just get bashed around by the rain, so I'm thinking I can prep the garden beds before the rain and then after the rain has come I can put the seedlings in. So a lot to work on, a lot of projects to get started on and I'm really excited to sort of dig into all of them but priority is going to be the garden I think. So anyway, I think I should probably do a little workout actually, Jessie's parents, Jessie's dad gave us a little workout set, so I've been doing my home workouts on the deck in the morning and it's just been so lovely and then I think hopefully some more stuff arrives and we can style the kitchen but otherwise I think let's just get dressed, let's get on with the day. I'm hoping to maybe get out of the house a little bit as well and go and do a little bit of looking around there's a place nearby that I'd like to go to for dinner and they also have like a little plant nursery in the same place so maybe we might head there for a little bit and I think let's finish our tea, do a little bit of a workout and we'll get on with the day. I thought I'd quickly just hop on and show you what I'm wearing today because I think the outfit is really really cute I've just got this little polka dot dress this is the one that I bought when we were in Brisbane and it's like my little Julia Roberts dress because every time I wear it someone tells me that Julia Roberts wore a dress like this in Pretty Woman so I've just got that on. A little cardigan just sort of draped over my shoulders because it is getting a little bit chilly here during the day and I've just paired it with some ballet flats because we're going to go to the garden centre and I just want something cute but also practical. I'm just going to take my straw bag this is the Suzanne straw bag and that is it, that is my little outfit of the day for a day out in the countryside. We've had a little Amazon order arrive. I've actually ordered so much more from Amazon than what is in this box but as Amazon, you know they send like from their different warehouses so you'll often get like seven different parcels for everything that you've ordered so I thought seeing as we've got this one I'll quickly show you what I've bought. There's only a couple of things in here. Next up we have these like hand wash and laundry wash I have ordered a couple of room sprays from this brand as well but this is all that's arrived at the moment but an Australian brand called Koala Eco. So I mentioned previously that this property that we're in, it has a septic tank so we have to be really careful about the products that we're using. They have to be septic tank friendly so that we don't kill the good bacteria that's in the septic tank so I've been on the hunt for some sort of really natural septic tank friendly products and I mentioned that I did pick up quite a few from the Source Bulk Foods store and so far they're really lovely but I was ordering this laundry wash, I'll get to that in a sec I was ordering the laundry wash and I thought that seeing as I'm already ordering the laundry wash I might try a couple of other things like some hand wash that I can actually put these in the different bathrooms and in the kitchen as well and so these are Australian Lemon Scented Eucalyptus and Rosemary Essential Oil and honestly these just sound incredible like they're all, they're natural non-toxic essential oils biodegradable and septic safe no synthetic fragrance, plant based and eco-friendly so I think these just sound really lovely I got two of those and then the other thing that I ordered is a laundry wash so I did mention that I would give you a report after I had used the laundry powder that I bought from the Source Bulk Foods store and honestly it cleans really really well I don't think my whites have ever been whiter but the thing is there's just no fragrance to it so whilst they don't smell dirty they just, there's no odour at all and you kind of I think we're so conditioned to having these synthetic fragrances in our laundry products that we expect it to smell fresh and it's like fragrant when we pull it out of the washing machine and unfortunately it just doesn't smell like that so whilst it's certainly doing a fantastic job of cleaning I just wanted to add in a little bit of scent so I picked up this Australian Lemon Scented Eucalyptus and Rosemary Essential Oil Laundry Wash so it's a liquid detergent rather than the powder detergent and let's just give it a smell oh wow oh that is so fresh god you can really smell the eucalyptus that is lovely okay I'll report back to you after I've used this I'm wondering if I can use them both or if that's just going to be overkill or if I should just sort of alternate between the two but yeah I think I really wanted something that would smell quite fresh so I'm hoping this will do the job next up we actually have this little brush, it's actually, it's a vegetable brush but I'm not going to be using this on my vegetables I mean I could use it on my vegetables but I'm actually, I purchased this with the intent of cleaning our bathrooms like the grout and all of those sort of nitty gritty places, I'm trying to be more conscious about choosing I kind of harp on about this all the time I think, but about choosing plastic free items and just being more conscious about using items that are made from more natural fibres so this is a bamboo ring and tampico fibre for the brushes so this whole thing at the end of its life is completely biodegradable which is, I think that's really cool so yeah I'm going to use that and also how cool is this little functional design like that's going to be really easy to get in on all those places, I suppose if I was using it for vegetables it would be very functional as well I also picked up a little book stand this is going to be for my cookbooks in the kitchen so I'm excited to style the kitchen and have something like this and the last thing we've got in this little box of goodies is a garden tool set I have been waiting for this because at the moment I don't have any gardening tools, I don't even have any gloves, I'm still waiting for those to arrive because I'm not using any of those at the moment which obviously isn't good when you're handling potting mix and stuff like that but yeah I finally got my hands on this little gardening tool set and I'm really really excited so with that being said, I'll quickly show you something else that's exciting that's arrived and then let's go do some gardening A rug arrived! This is only one of our rugs, we still have another two on the way but I thought you know what, I think this one is for the lounge room so why don't we open it together and see how it looks and if the other two arrive hopefully sometime this week if they arrive before I upload this video I'll show you those as well but yeah, let's see how it looks in the lounge room, hopefully hopefully, it's nice There we go Now I have to roll it out until the upside down, let's do it anyway I realise that this does not look very graceful or coordinated but we're all friends here What do you think? I'm puffed That was hard work What do we think? I like the colours, nice and subtle I'm not sure that I love the pattern It's kind of Aztec-y but still nice Give you guys a closer look Come over here So I quite like the colours, they're really sort of soft pastel sort of blues, a little bit of pinkies brown sort of I think the colours are really lovely but what do we think about the pattern? I think I would have preferred something maybe a little bit more floral but not super noisy and I think if you could imagine obviously put a coffee table on here and some cushions on the couch and stuff, will that soften the pattern a little bit more? Probably But yeah, what do you guys think? What do you think? Music That will be in next week's video so I'll probably end up just leaving this vlog here. I've got to spend the rest of today editing this vlog so I can get it up for you guys this afternoon. I am actually going to a bread making workshop this afternoon which I'm so excited for because I cannot tell you how long I've wanted to make my own sourdough loaves so I might film that. If I can film it, I'm not too sure what the structure of the workshop is but if I am able to film it, I'll film it and that'll be in next week's video but otherwise I'll just tell you guys about it and how it went and everything like that so I'm going to love you and leave you and I'll see you guys next week!