When we worked out that we were fast running out of room in our home, we looked to move. But not wanting to buy existing, and not being able to build a home a step up from what we have, maybe only a better suburb, made the decision difficult for us. One day we made the random call, to build a small room in our existing roof space.  Loft spaces aren’t common in Australia, like the would be in the U.K. ornother parts of Europe.  By the next week my husband had organized a loft ladder and timber. We had a rough idea of what we wanted and a sketchy idea of what we could do.

I have always, always wanted a veelux window to watch the sky, the rain, the storms and the clouds so I was SO excited when he said he could make it happen! Once that was fitted it really opened up and brightened up the space. It’s now one of my favourite things about our house. I don’t understand why more people don’t do this to their house! It’s a really inexpensive way to gain more space, and we see so many people’s garages being solely used for storage. We have gained eight large cupboards, and a complete dust free cupboard / storage nook in our roof. We have gained a bedroom downstairs. As well as providing an office, a reading room, a sewing and craft room and a place people can crash if they have had one too many. 😂

We are absolutely rapt with this space, and I’m in awe of my husband being able to create this out of nothing, but also to project manage all other trades later in the piece whilst running his own business and coming home to a wife and three crazy kids.

Check it out below and let me know what you think. Would you want one in your roof? This is going to be one of the things I need in each house I have now 🙊

We’ve been loving smoothie bowls right now, this is the current fave.
Ingredients

1 frozen banana

Small handful frozen cherries

1 cup almond milk

2 tbs coconut yoghurt

1 tsp vanilla bean paste
Method

Add all ingredients to a blender and blitz.
Granola

Ingredients

1 cup oats

1/2 cup flaked almonds

1/2 cup coconut chips

1/2 cup seed mix (pepita’s and sunflower kernels)

1/4 cup chopped macadamia nuts

1/2 cup maple syrup / rice malt syrup

1/2 cup melted coconut oil

1 tsp vanilla bean paste
Method

Mix together, spread out onto a baking tray and bake until lightly brown at 180 degrees Celsius, stirring occasionally.
Pour the smoothie into a bowl, and top with the granola. Add chia seeds, cacao nibs, fruit, goji berries or whatever you prefer. Dragon fruit looks super pretty AND is full of vitamin b, vitamin c, and antioxidants. Don’t go too crazy on the fruit though as there is still two serves in the actual smoothie ☺️

What’s your favourite combo?

I wasn’t able to do up a nursery for Smith before he was born, as we just didn’t have the space. With a four bedroom home, three bedrooms being used for us and the kids, and the other being used as a study / office space for my husbands business, we moved as much around as we could, but still had Smith in our room for his first 10 months.

My very clever Husby built into our existing roof space to make a loft style office / storage space. It is a beautiful space which I’ll post pictures of soon.

By doing that we were able to finally move the office furniture into that space and create a bedroom for Smith. I used the same colours that were already in our study, and decided to stick with white, timber, and bursts of mustard.

Not knowing what theme to go for, I took to Pinterest, and my search always evolves from there.  #thepinterestjourney 🙂 I found gorgeous animal woodland prints from The Crown Prints and I’d fallen in love with all the fox plush animals and teepees and more boho room looks, that I decided to run with the tribal / woodland theme.

Shelves from the Timba Trend

Chair from Freedom

Knot Cushion from little.l.interiors

Wooden mountains from Huddy and Me

Grey Marble Arrow Teether from One.Chew.Three

Wooden Worm from Seed Heritage

Animal prints & Stag horns – The Crown Prints

Feather print – Stillblog

Frames – Kmart

Mobile – handmade

Headdress Print from Society 6

Wooden Camera from Behind the Trees

Fox Pillow from Kmart

Smith Name Arrow from Nest Accessories

OYOY World Map Playmate

It’s been worth the wait with this room, especially being able to move straight to more of a toddler boy room space.  Smith loves it, and regularly toddles off to play with his toys on his own.

Hope you like it or may get ideas for your next boy space!

Russian Piping Tips are so popular right now and I’ve been trying to experiment with them. They are just so pretty!  My Mum had her birthday in April and I decided to make this cake for her, combining her love for pretty things, pink things and flowers! It was five tiers of pastel rainbow inside. The recipe is the same one I used for my Easter Bunny cake, which I’ll link here ☺️ I actually used a Swiss Meringue Buttercream for the flowers this time, and it made them harder to pipe and I don’t think they look great. I’m still learning though and practicing, any other cake creations using these tips, please send them my way, I need ideas!

 

Judd’s Fourth Birthday was a lot of fun.  He was SO beyond excited to be celebrating it, and was obsessed with fire engines, so the fire engine cake was a given.  As it was an even birthday, it was another activity year, and we arranged with one of Mark’s mates, who is also a fire fighter, to visit the fire station and go on a tour.  Judd still talks about it, he was amazed to be at an actual fire station and get so close to a fire engine, and we were rapt to see him get his own personal tour of it all.  I can’t believe he is FOUR!  And finding all the photo’s and writing up about all four of his last birthday’s in a few days has really made it seem like it FLEW by!

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When Ellie turned two, I got really sick.  I had mastitis and some form of stomach bug as well, an eight week old, a two year old and an almost four year old.  I was so unwell we celebrated her birthday a few days afterwards, which was not ideal and a notch for my Mummy guilt scale (which let’s be honest, always feels like it’s unbalanced not in my favour!)  Because I was so unwell I don’t feel like I captured her birthday when we did celebrate, and the cake could have been a lot better, but I wasn’t able to go out and get everything I needed for it.  So it was a simple celebration, which we will make up for when she turns three I’m sure.  As I said for Judd’s second birthday, for even birthday’s we do an activity with the family.  We couldn’t decide what Ellie would love to do the most, and she didn’t speak very much at this stage.  She did however LOVE food, so we took her to a cafe for lunch and she loved every second of it!  It’s the little things 🙂  When we told people that that’s what we did for Ellie’s day they laughed and said ‘that is so Ellie’ 🙂  She’s a foodie!

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So by the time we started preparing for Judd’s Third Birthday celebrations, he was well into the swing of things.  He was very excited, and wanted to have a party, which we were more than happy to throw for him.  He asked who to invite, asked for the theme to be an ‘intruction party’ and wanted to be able to help make his cake.

So with the theme sorted, I started on the invite, and Judd started scouring Pinterest to pick his cake.  Yup, times have moved up from the trusty Women’s Weekly cake book haven’t they!  Judd picked a three tier cake that he could help ‘paint’ and while I inwardly freaked out (I was three months pregnant while organising Judd’s birthday and not feeling well at all) we DID IT!  And we had the best time doing it too.  Judd was over the moon with his day, and still 18 months later, tells people about his amazing construction party.  Now that he can pronounce it correctly lol.

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So I was pretty excited to go super girly for Ellie’s First Birthday.  I found a beautiful cake on Pinterest that I wanted to replicate (which I will not show you because mine looks so bad next to it!) and as that was white, pink and gold I went with that theme. It’s super popular right now, as it was back then, so decorations were easy to find!

Ellie’s birthday was earlier in the week, so I made a small naked cake, and then the big cake for that weekend’s family party.  Ellie was only having one sleep a day, so we did a coffee and cake catch up for when she woke up from her nap.

Ellie dressed up in a tutu and had such a lovely day.

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Next up is Judd’s second birthday.  For each even birthday we don’t have a party and instead we do something as a family.  We did a Fish theme, taking Judd to buy fish, making him a fish cake, and going for a trip to the Aquarium.

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Now that I am in full swing of kids birthdays and cakes so, so many times each year, I thought it would be good to blog about the birthday’s that have been. Judd’s first birthday was over three years ago which is insane!  But I thought it was worth having these memories in this little place.  Judd is really big at the moment on talking about each of his birthday’s and what theme they were, so this is really front of mind for me right now.

Judd’s First Birthday was a plane party.

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