My Dream Home...

This beautiful home is for sale in Tasmania.

Its not often you see such a substantial heritage home in Australia for sale at such a price - I think its just perfect and wish I was in a position to buy it...

Maybe one day. Maybe there will be a Christmas miracle?

For more on The Sheiling you can watch this episode of "Who's been sleeping in my house?"

Enjoy,
Sonya

Love this place

I've found a little shop and I'm in love with all the goodies they have. The photo above is of their ladder shelf - and wouldn't that look right at home in our place?

I first saw them at the Queensland Home Garden Expo and they had such a beautiful market stall set up. I think their wares go so well with French country look.

They are a family business creating bespoke things for the kitchen, the garden and the kitchen garden.

You can visit their website here. They even sell heritage breed chooks.

Cheers,
Sonya

the bedroom

The bedroom... is it quite possibly the most important room in the house? To me, a relaxing, calm space to sleep soundly is vital to getting through the day - so yes, I think the bedroom IS the most important room.

Our bedroom is small, like the rest of our home, but its also the best bedroom we've ever had. Sure we've had bigger ones, but this one is quiet, cosy and comfortable.

It's airy and well ventilated - great for this time of year. While its hotting up here and the humidity is rising, this room cools down in the afternoon so we know we'll always get a good night's sleep.

And with shift workers in the house, this space can be made dark and cool during the day too, with a quiet ceiling fan overhead if needed.

The back wall desperately needs to be painted and it will soon be lightened with a coat or two of white paint, which will make a big impact to the room. I love the central louvred window in the wall, it frames the bamboo outside so well, the vertical culms contrasting with the horizontal louvres.

Matching bedside tables and matching lamps finish it off.

We have a wardrobe and two other drawer / storage spaces in the room as well as the chest you can see at the foot of the bed.

Our bed is also extremely comfortable - investing in a good quality mattress and a woolen underlay have certainly paid off.

Mixing and matching the covers, I'm going with cool blues at the moment, but in winter its rich, warm reds and burgundies.

I've just found some beautiful french blue, stone and pewter sheets too, so they'll be making their way into the rotation soon.

I'm not brave enough to go all white in the bedroom, perhaps one day!

Planning for Christmas

It isn't long till Christmas now, the ham has been ordered from our local butcher who specialises in organic and biodynamic products and the menu for the day is taking shape.

I love the whole process of planning days like this... it starts for me with searching through my cookbooks. Deciding how many dishes and the theme of the meal - whether it will be seafood (we live so close to the beach and have access to wonderful seafood straight off the trawlers), hot or cold side dishes, how many courses... the planning is such fun.

Once lists are written and rewritten for the food shopping my thoughts turn to the table and the house in general. What do I have that I can use or perhaps we need a little something new to add to our collection of napkins, placemats, bowls, serving spoons, glasses...

Deciding on the wine to go with each meal is also exciting - cool whites or deep complex reds, to finish with a tropical fruit platter or perhaps a cheese platter from the fabulous Colin James at Maleny with walnuts and pears from the local organic store?

Going local and organic is important to me as is eating to suit (and celebrate) the seasons.

Here in Australia, Christmas is hot so its either seafood and cold dishes or if you simply must have a roast, cooking it outside in a webber to avoid heating up the house.

I'm enjoying planning Christmas this year, aside from the actual day there are drinks to organise with the neighbours and work functions to attend... things are getting busy.

And fingers crossed for a little French connection & inspiration under the tree this year too!

Cheers,
Sonya

the Potager Garden

Pear Ridge Restaurant Tasmania

I teach organic gardening and permaculture and I'm fascinated by French-style potager gardens.

Given the current economic situation, more and more people are turning to their own kitchen gardens just outside the back door to grow fresh produce for the kitchen table, so there is a resurgence of interest in home food gardens.

The idea of a carefully designed garden - there as much for its beauty and form as its function, really appeals to me.

Its a challenge to have anything neat in the garden here in the subtropics where things get out of hand quite quickly over summer, but in the cooler climates a tidy little kitchen garden would be perfect.

The name Potager is derived from the French potage meaning soup, they are often quite geometrical in design (great if you're house is double storey and you can look over the garden) but within those lines you'll often find curves and keyholes. The soup / garden link would probably come from what I call my 'all of garden' soup - being able to fill your harvest basket with armsfull of leafy greens and herbs that go straight into a tasty soup.

A potager garden is designed to supply the home with fresh salad greens, leafy vegetable greens (kale, spinach etc), seasonal vegetables and herbs.

Also incorporated are flowers - for their beauty, to be picked and arranged in the home and for their pest management qualities (carefully selected flowering plants can be used to deter pests, to attract beneficial insects and to bio-fumigate the soil as part of organic disease management strategies).

Edible flowers of course can also be harvested and added to salads for extra colour.

Potager gardens often feature fruit trees. A dwarf lemon tree (perhaps a 'lots of lemons' variety?) in a beautiful big pot in the centre will add a sense of style and formality to the garden too. They also often feature espaliered fruit trees, sometimes dwarf varieties, arbors and trellising.

Returning to study

As a distraction from all things French, I've decided to return to full time study next year to become qualified as a Registered Nurse.

This follows a lot of time spent thinking about what would be best for me and our household. I've decided on nursing because I do have a background as a paramedic and I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy the work once I'm qualified and out in the workforce.

I also chose nursing because its flexible in hours and location. Its also flexible in direction - so whether its specialising as an acute care nurse or working in the community visiting people at home, nursing offers a lot - it ticked a lot of boxes for me.

So now I'm putting in my application and planning how we'll manage the next three years of study and then the one year post grad that I'll need to consolidate all that theory.

And in the meantime, I can be distracted by visiting my favourite blogs, looking at beautiful photos, redecorating here at home and honing my French cooking skills.

I think I might be a Francophile...

I have a confession to make - I think I may be a Francophile.

I've never been to France, but I want to go there. Of all the places in the world I'd like to visit, France it is.

I missed out on learning French at school, so all these blogs I see of people who can get by on 'school girl' French leave me a little sad.

You see I did study French at high school, but in my second year, my French teacher had her jaws wired - remember that fab way to lose flab? Wire the jaws shut so you can't eat - simple.

Doesn't work when you wire the jaws of a language teacher shut though!

So here I am dreaming of France and thinking about classes to learn the language. The only French I remember is said through gritted teeth, which may come across as a little aggressive?

I'm also thinking of a cd to play in the car so I can learn French on the go.

Anyhow, if I want to go to France I do need to learn a little of the language at least.

Time to start studying and time to start saving.

It'll be all-white

I'm in a white phase here at the moment - our little cottage is built of western red cedar and the inside is timber too. We have a lot of timber furniture after 20+ years of being together, so there are a lot of dark colours. Everything's melding into another and looking lost and dark.

So I headed off to the paint store the other week (after finding just the right shade of white in a magazine - and what a range of whites there are too!) and we've been painting up a storm ever since.

From photo frames to walls, nothing is safe.

And its made such a difference to the whole look and feel of the place. Its brighter, cleaner and lighter to live in. And being a small space, the white has made it feel bigger too.

Inspired by French country style the place is taking on a whole new life. Its wonderful and the comments from visitors has been great.

Colour directly influences our moods and lightening up the house has had a great influence on our day to day living here.

Here's to great whites and the power of paint!

Focus

We're focusing on a couple of things here at the cottage - firstly to get this place running as efficiently as possible.

This means focusing on electricity use, water use, waste in and out of the house... all those things that lead to a comfortable financial situation.

Our electricity bill is kept very low thanks to the solar panels on the roof and this being a small home.

Our water bill is non-existent. We are self-sufficient in water with two large tanks capturing the subtropical downpours that happen here every year.

The other thing we focus on is recycling, repurposing and re-vitalising what we have rather than buying new.

Making our own furniture, repainting old furniture... those types of things.

At the moment we're undergoing a pretty major renovation here - walls are being painted, furniture moved around, furniture made from recycled timbers... and its all coming together really well.

While Cedar Cottage is only a small space, there is so much you can do with it. For example we have a choice of five different eating areas both inside and outside the house and through clever design we've been able to do this without making the house feel crowded.

We're also going through a big 'lighten up' stage at the moment too - lots of light and bright things going on here to lift the decor and freshen up the feel of the house.

Energy Bill

We received our quarterly electricity bill recently.

We’re down to 4.8kWh per day – at the same time last year our use was 5.8kWh.

To put our 4.8 in perspective I’ve believe the Australian ‘average’ household daily use is anything from 16-25kWh per day.
We have a 1.4kW photovoltaic system on our roof (installed in 2009).

We feed back into the grid (grid-connected) so we don’t have a stand-alone battery system. This means we sell our energy to our electricity company at one price and buy it back from them for another.

We had a 2.8kW inverter installed so we could double the number of panels we have in the future. We currently have six 175watt panels.

A ‘1.4kW’ system means it should be making 1.4kW of energy per optimum sunlight hours per day – here on the Sunshine Coast the optimum sunlight hours per day is six. So we should be making (optimally) 8.4kW per day.

In the last quarter, we made $95.50 worth of energy. (191kWh paid at .50cents per kWh)

We used $88.69 worth of energy. (431kWh billed at .20.69cents per kWh – less than half the price we sell it for) PS that 431kWh was over 90 days, so 431 divided by 90 = 4.78 – our daily usage.

If it was as simple as that we would have got a cheque back for $6.81.

But there are other fees;

On top of the $88.69 worth of energy we bought, we also paid $21.55 to ensure that energy we bought back from the supplier was green – in this case wind power.

By doing this we’re ‘offsetting’ our energy use.

Reduce consumption
Use alternative sources (in our case solar)
Offset the difference (buying wind energy)

The energy we do buy from the grid is not sourced from fossil fuel, instead its sourced from wind energy companies.

This means our home has zero carbon emissions. No fossil fuel energy usage here.

So the other fees added onto our bill are;

Energy use; $88.69

Green offset; $21.55

Service fees; $23.45 (visiting the property, invoice processing)

Community Ambulance Cover; this is a cost Queenslanders have been charged, but aren’t as of July 1, 2011. So we only had a $2.39 fee to cover from June 22 to July 1. We won’t be billed at all from now on.

So

Total charges; $136.08

Less what we made; $95.50

New total; $40.58

Plus; (goods and services tax)

GST; $13.38

Total; $53.96 for the quarter.

We know our summer bills are going to be slightly higher because we use the ceiling fans, but with some clever modification to the design of our home – as part of our eco-retrofit – we’ll fix that problem.

Plus having a solar hot water system makes a HUGE difference.

Now the challenge is out – to get it below 4.8kWh per day for this time next year.