Happeeeeee Neeeeeewww Yeeeeeeear!

Wow, where did that year go??? For us it's been a huge year... Moving house yet again! But ahhhhh, soooooo very happy we did. Curt and I are just delighted to have found a place to be, a place that is both alive with life and soothing to the soul. A home where we truly feel at home.
For Curt it's been a year of fixing stuff, he's certainly been kept on his toes with all the jobs that needed doing and continue to unfold. He also bought a kombi, his new beloved! I love how he likes to start the motor just to hear it run! And that he's joined a kombi club here in Australia! Yayyy!
For me it's been a huge year building the clay business up. I've found a most enjoyable way to teach is by letting people come up one at a time and just going for it. It's a bit more of a challenge because we're flying by the seat of our pants...spontaneous lessons/techniques...switching from one clay to another...but so much fun and so wonderful to feel confident enough to teach this way, having really grounded in expertise over the last 7 years or so. And I totally love my studio with the view. Talk about making it easy to go to work! And then there's the fabulous people I've connected with along the way. Taking over the management of the aussiepolyclayers group and setting up a new forum has also been a highlight for me. I really love the polymer clay communities that I am a part of and it's my goal to continue to foster the generoisty and support that these groups are known for. Yup, it's been a really great year for me.
So...defintely there's been new life breathed into us with having come to a place inside us where we are happy with 'what is'....ofcourse, it helps if most of "the boxes ticked"...you know, in that list we all have till we do away with it!

I wanted to say a big thank you to my family and Curts family for their own generosity and support in all kinds of ways. We love you guys...and to all our friends and family, we wish you a very happy, healthy and peaceful year ahead.

All our love,
Mel and Curt and Wiggles (Shadow's nickname)

Mullumbimby town

It occurred to me that I hadn't put any pics up of the actual town of Mullumbimby. So here they are. The one of the bridge is Brunswick River bridge. The middle one is Mullumbimby town itself. And the top two shows our much talked about (and many an expletive made about!) crosswalks. Mullumbimby is the only town I know in Australia that has these weirdly (and dangerously) placed crosswalks...right on the intersections of our main road. Talk about causing havok as cars and trucks all converge (or make a break for it!) at the intersection, waiting for the pedastrians. Ofcourse, when you want to take a photo of this 'havoc', there's none to be seen! But you get the idea...

The flowers keep on coming...

This time it's the poincianna tree with it's bright red blooms. And the sunflowers have had their last hoorah, gonna knock their heads off and grow sunflower sprouts for our salads. Here's Curt getting a breathe of fresh air after the paint fume fun!

Paint fumes make you funny

We bought a great shaped old dressing table for the guest bedroom and we're gonna give it a face lift. This photo cracked me up...looks like the paint fumes got to Curt!

The green room

Behind our fridge and under the stairs, there's this door which leads to a weird 'room' of sorts that is totally useless because it didn't have a roof. It's been a bit of an eyesore from the outside looking down, even after Curt cleaned out all the rubbish and old weeds, it still looked weird when looked at from the top angle.Besides which it wasn't even usable. So, Curt made a roof from some old green corrugated perspex sheets, now we have a seedling grow room!