Life Love and Hiccups
Life Love and HiccupsLife Love and HiccupsLife Love and HiccupsLife Love and Hiccups

Saturday 21 July 2018

Psssst... Anyone There?

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It's been SO long since I've blogged that the chicken sausage is practically a *geriatric these days.
*a gross overstatement but whatevs

Ahhh hello.

Anyone there?

Holy crap there's a lot of dust in here.

It has been SO long since I have opened my little old blog that I actually had a complete mental blank and couldn't even figure out how to get in the back end.

Cue the head slap 🙈

Seriously though - I am not even kidding, January was the last time I wrote in my blog... JANUARY!

And that post in January was one of the two blog posts that I wrote since the last time I took a break from blogging.

Once up on a time, I blogged frequently and regularly... like flipping clock work. In fact, truth be told - my blogging was probably more frequent than my bowel movements.

Oooooo too much info right?

Sorry - It seems that I am ridiculously out of practice with this.

For months I have written and rewritten by 'return to blogging' post in my head.

I mentally scribbled thoughts and things that I wanted to say and I drafted many a different reason as to explain why I haven't blogged for so long.

Honestly though... any excuse I could think of was probably a whole load of stuff and nonsense because the truth is... I kinda just lost my heart for blogging for a while there and after some time went by, I kinda just lost my nerve too.

It was a bit like that long overdue phone call that you owe a friend.

You know, the one you have promised you will call for like FOREVER and yet every night you as you are about to go to sleep you think "SHIT" I didn't call such and such... again?

Yep that one.

And so racked with guilt you go to sleep vowing to make the call tomorrow...  and then tomorrow comes and goes, and then weeks pass by, and then some more, and there you are and you still haven't made that call.

You put it off and off and and then some more and then one day you find yourself sitting in your car waiting for one of your kids to finish football training / school / work / (insert a zillion other reasons for you to be waiting for your kids) and you say "Right, I'm gonna make that call RIGHT NOW" and as you pick up the phone to dial you suddenly find yourself all shy and nervous about making the call and so you make a promise to yourself that you will do it another day... or week... or maybe, perhaps, some time this year but probably (most likely) the next one...

Or something like that.

I have NO IDEA why one would get so nervous about something like not making a phone call or writing on a blog.

I mean it's not like we've done anything wrong... except maybe the part about being a bit of a crappy friend for forgetting (ok avoiding) calling for so long but apart from that...

So what's with all the nervous crap?

It's like that first poo you have to do after you give birth...

You know the one that they insist you have to do before they are going to let you leave the hospital with your baby?

I mean HELLO - you are happy to just let me walk out of this hospital with a brand new extremely fragile human life in my hands but you're not going to let me go with a full bowel????

Okaaaaay.

The thing is... you know what you are meant to do right?

When it comes to pooing that is.

It's not like you've not done it millions of time before or anything and yet now for some reason you've gone and got all nervous about it you are putting it off and off until whoah it's getting bigger than Ben Hur... (the thought of pooing that is, not the actual poo...) but then again, I guess it depends on how long you wait because I mean if you are still in the maternity wing by the time your baby turns 3 and you haven't yet opened your bowels then I suppose there is a risk you are going to have to give birth again but this time to a...

Sorrrrrrry!

I can't believe it's been a zillion years since I have blogged and then when I finally I do - the whole post is about crap... like LITERALLY!

Anyways, I think you get my point.

I lost my heart for blogging there for a while (I'll explain why in another post) and so I took a break from blogging and then the longer I waited to blog again, I simply just lost my nerve to blog full stop.

It's as simple as that.

No fancy excuses, no big dark juicy secret as to why I've not blogged.

Just that.

But hey - here I am.

I guess you could say I'm back, and I do have SO much I am busting to tell you and SO much to fill you in on from the past six months.

I promise though... and I mean I PROMISE, my next post won't be quite so full of shit!

*** This post has been sitting in my drafts for quite a few weeks now and then tonight, I read this gorgeous post from my beautiful friend Sandra, and suddenly I found all the nerve I needed to hit publish on this draft. Thank you Sandra... for the boost of courage I had been waiting for to get me over the line.

Thursday 25 January 2018

Life Lately... In a Nutshell

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Yep, so I popped into the blog on the last day of 2017, announced that I was back and then promptly went AWOL again.

Well that was a great comeback huh?!

I guess there was no way of us for-seeing that my dad would be carted off to hospital in a red and white limo and that we could be preparing to face the New Year without him.

He was not a well man, at all, but the thing about my pop is that he is a hellava fighter and thankfully a stubborn bugger to boot and so it shouldn't have been a surprise that he made his own miraculous comeback and is here to give 2018 a red hot go.

For that I am SO grateful, but enough of the scares already thanks dad!

In other news, the hubby and I just celebrated our 22nd wedding anniversary last week.

I know, I KNOW... you are reading this and thinking - "she must have been like 8 or something when she was married because she is wayyyy to young to be celebrating THAT many anniversaries."

Bless your cotton socks, that is far too kind of you.

Oh okay then, just humour me and let me think you were thinking that alright because I do wonder how the hell I got old enough to have been married for 22 years, let alone be the mother of these glorious humans.

Yup, those lovely faces there would be our baby boys.

Our exceptionally BIG baby boys.

Holy Shitballs, they grew up suddenly and with their big feet come big appetites.

Those kids can flipping eat!

The bigger they get, the more horrendous our grocery bill gets and I truly pity the poor checkout assistants that have to listen to me wail every week at the size of the grocery bill... and I only have 3 of them. 

How on earth do you bigger families cope with the shock of the weekly food bill?

I reckon someone should invent a grocery savings plan thingymajig to prepare you for when your baby humans become bigger humans that like to eat... a lot. 

You know, kind of like those school savings accounts that you put money into when your bubs are born so that you can be financially prepared for the costs of school fees and such, except this plan is designed to prepare you for the food bills that will inevitably come given the amount of tucker those little babes will one day eat.

I remember how I used to worry about them NOT eating all their dinner.

Now I worry about them not eating EVERYONE'S dinner if someone dares to turn their back for a second.

It's been so nice to spend time with them these holidays though. 

I'm totally making the most of every precious moment they want to spend with us because I am well aware that given the speed at which time is passing, it won't be long before they are all grown up and off being busy living their own lives.

I can just see it... Carl and I will be happily forking out the big bucks at the grocery store and bribing them with roast dinners just to get them back home again, if only for a few hours.



I am kind of sad the school holidays are coming to an end... but excited to get back in the studio again and get stuck into all the plans I have for Little Lane Workshops this year.

I was hoping we would manage to get away somewhere these holidays... I even had big plans of surprising the hubby and kids with a trip up to Byron in a Winnebago. I found us the 'Bago to hire but then I totally left it too late to book anywhere to park it and so instead, we've been mooching around our local area and holidaying at home.

Good one Sonia!

It's been nice to mooch around for a few weeks though, and it's been a welcome relief from all the hecticness of last year. (is hecticness even a word or did I just make that up because spell check wants me to change it to say heftiness).

Hectic... hefty... whatever you call it...  2017 was a BIG year for us at the workshops. We've been  busy growing and planning, and branching out and working on some awesome collabs which I'm excited to share with you as they unfold. We were also stoked to be able to buy the studio that is home to our business late last year. 

I KNOW right... how terrifyingly grown up of us kids.

The truth is, as scary as it was (because being commercial property owners never even entered our minds before), buying our studio has given us a huge amount of security and peace of mind that the workshops have a permanent home, something that any business owner will agree, sure helps you to sleep at night. 

Having had to of move the business once already just over a year ago because we couldn't get a long term lease, I am relieved that Daydream St is now our permanent address. 

Ha has, Yup for real... we are on Daydream St. Can you think of a better street name to run your dream business from?

I still pinch myself pretty much every single day that I am living my daydream of owning my own business and doing something that makes every bit of my soul happy.

All I am going to say is this - keep on dreaming big you guys, because there is absolutely no reason that those big hairy dreams of yours can become your reality if you truly believe in them.

So that's been us lately... in a nutshell.

What have you been up to?
Got any exciting plans for 2018?


Sunday 31 December 2017

Just A Break... Not A Break Up

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Well hi there you guys...

You guys?

Is anyone still there?

It's been a long time since I last wrote on here... so long in fact that I kinda sorta almost FORGOT how to even get into my blog.

I've wanted to start writing again, for soooo long now actually... but the timing just always seemed kind of... I don't know... off?

So many times in this past 6 months I have made it as far as saying "right, today is the day" but then something happened... something big, like terror attacks around the world, or someone I love had a big thing going on and then I just felt so... awkward about sitting down and writing about my average day.

I questioned myself... like who really gives a fuck if I went to lunch at such and such, or I made over a room or I had some big epiphany about how I don't actually like fennel or some other lame ass realisation. Who cares about my obscure fears or random musings when there is REAL shit going on in the world.

Does that even make sense?

It's sort of hard to verbalise... I lost my voice for a while, and when I found it... I just kinda felt so insignificant in the bigger picture and therefore lost my nerve to speak.

That's not the only reason I took a break from blogging.

On a number of occasions over the past year I have found myself asking.... has blogging changed or have I?

It just seemed that there was a once upon of time when blogging was so much easier. 

I mean, you wrote and I read. I wrote and you read and yada yada.

When we could, we left a comment on each others posts, we chatted on FB or instagram and if you were lucky you got to meet your mates every now and then at some bloggy event.

But then the bloggy world changed.... the number of blogs increased at a massive rate. Sponsorships and monetisation became a viable opportunity but with that came a focus on numbers and stats, and online cliques and comparison. 

Snark sites emerged, FB & insta insights became important, Facebook wanted us to pay to speak to our communities, and follow/unfollow and analytic apps became yet another way for ones insecurities to go to town with an all expenses paid trip courtesy of our confidence and sanity.

Gah!

The more my insecurities grew, the more I withdrew and became private and guarded of my everyday life. I compared myself constantly and I questioned myself and my worthiness.

I lost my ability to share.

And so I took a break from the online world, granted a much longer break than I originally planned.

I stopped reading blogs and spending so much time online. I avoided online groups and social media for anything other than work, and I said no thank you to sponsorships and invites to events and reviews and all the stuff that I had been fortunate enough to experience in the past because of blogging.

I guess you could say I went AWOL or some might say I did an online detox.

Regardless of whatever label we give it, the biggest lesson I learned in my absence was that I miss blogging. I like writing on my blog and I like reading blogs. I enjoy taking photos and capturing moments and recording how I am feeling at the different stages of my life.

I missed sharing those moments and feelings and I missed the community we created together.

I missed my little place on the internet where I found comfort in sharing the randomness that floats through my head at any given moment.

I realised that I like looking at pretty things, making pretty things and sharing pretty things and I like being able to sit down at my computer and confess to my screw ups, rejoice in my wins, commiserate when our worlds are sad, and generally just chew the fat we call life.

And that's ok to like all those things.

I just needed to find my balance... a flow that works for me and that can adapt as my needs change.

Maybe I needed to feel insignificant in this big old world for a while. Maybe I needed my confidence to be shaken so that I could put it back together again in a way that fits me better and maybe I needed to experience all the negative emotions that the online world can conjour so I know exactly what I don't want my blog or me to be or succumb to.

I guess it will be a work in progress, a suck and see and make it up as I go kind of process... not surprising really given I myself have always been and always will be - a work in progress.

Anyways, enough already with my rambling. I have loads to share with you about what we have been up to this past 6 months and  I have lots to catch up on with what YOU have been up to as well.

The good news is, there is no need to rush things... I'm back, it was just a break and NOT a break up and I don't plan on running away again for a while.

Besides, it may be the last day of the year and all that... but we have a whole new chapter ahead of us.

Happy New Years you guys... it's so bloody good to be back!

Ok... so I know we have so much to catch up on, but if anyone is there and reading my rambling, I'd love you to say hello.
Tell me - what's been going on with you? 
What are your plans for the New Year?
Have you ever lost your voice so to speak?

Header Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash