Well it really is time to look back, sum it all up and review our first year in our first Australian home.  It's certainly had some tough moments, especially the few months when the interest rate just kept creeping up in both countries, for both our homes. 

But it taught me yet another lesson. And of everything the last year, lessons seem to be what I've come out of it all with.  In a strange way, being on a budget has made me re-evaluate nearly everything my life was hinged on and in the process I realised I was kidding myself about the values that I thought I held.  I'm still learning and wondering where I fit in…but I'm getting there.

And it really does feel like a home – coming away for Christmas has made me homesick, not for my house in England but for my Beach Cottage, the un-perfect one, the one with wet swimmers dropped on the deck, the one with sand in the hall, the one with the made-over bathroom with the dodgy paint & wetsuits slung over the shower door…

Here's to 2009, cheers to another year filled to the brim – I'm sure I'll be learning much more – wanna hop on for the ride?

 
  I know it's all over, I know women all over the world have heaved a huge sigh of relief, undone the top button on their jeans and collapsed in a bundle of Christmas fog but I didn't show you the Beach Cottage Christmas tree… and I realised that it would be a whole year before I could show it, so here it is in all it's white glory. 

You know I love white right?  Clearly I love decorating with white and layering its many different hues.  But a white tree, to me just doesn't cut it –  a hastily bought purchase our first Christmas in Australia when everything just felt so hot and colourful and a white tree seemed to remind me of good old blighty (and see the Union Jack bauble to the left, lurverly).

When we opened the Christmas box I felt the need to rush out and buy a green, bushy tree, dripping in nordic style but it just wasn't gonna happen, you know don't you, budget, blah blah blah.  So I stuck with this and those kiddos decorated it, in fact little Mr six year old Beach Cottage did most of this himself.  Pretty impressive if you ask me and had me wondering why I've spent past years tweaking and foofing their handiwork. 

We are still basking up here in the Whitsundays – it's hot, glorious, and can I say it, a trifle tedious.  I've read all my Christmas books already, bored the *** off Mr Beach Cottage with my lists of things for him to do in the cottage in the new year and swum more than I've ever done in my life before.  I must be turning Aussie.  Bring it on.

G’day lovely Beach Cottage girls, happy coastal Christmas !

We are on holiday in Queensland….and so I am trying some Nautical Cottage Coastal Christmas Cottage Decorating and some beach decor while on hols!

I have to admit I had absolutely no idea where Christmas days dinner was going this year, nautical cottage & beach decor?…who was going to cook it, where we would eat and what we would eat but I knew it would be a Coastal Christmas.  I am in most areas of my life a traditionalist, and up until moving to Australia, this was even more apparent on Christmas day. 

A few years ago, in my other life in England (not in a nautical cottage lol), should you have wanted a traditional British Christmas lunch after a trip to Christmas mass, with the Queen’s speach in the background, served with all the trimmings and I mean all the trimmings, cooked from scratch, you would only have to have stopped by my house just along from the village green to catch me in full glory, little black dress and high heeled shoes on, champagne in hand…its different here and Ive changed I suppose though I do put that change somewhat down to the climate, its all very well believing that Im this much more laid-back Aussie style Goddess positively wafting around in cold meats and salmon but ultimately this new, tropical kaftan-and-flip-flop clad me is not particularly out of choice but rather out of necessity and especially here in far North Queensland where the hot weather can be, if you are not careful, oppressively hot.

Anyway I decided a couple of days ago and a couple of days into the holiday that we would stay here for the day, not quite a nautical cottage but the multi-million dollar view, tropical scenery and cooling pool, really just could not be beaten…just perfect for some beach decor and a coastal Christmas huh? there was a small problem in terms of the table and its dressing - firstly your typical holiday apartment plastic furniture, if not truly white-plastic grotesque but pretty much there and secondly I did not want to spend any money on this celebration (if you read this blog regularly youll know we get to go to the Whitsundays for 3 weeks because we budget just about all areas of life).

Sooooo, a hasty shopping trip for a few bits of beach decor and all that was available to me was the dollar store and a budget supermarket….hmmm not much going on in there for a nautical cottage & beach decor feel haha!  Of course I was not deterred – the dollar store being one of my fave places to roam, but the cheap-as-chips, oh-so-sickly-christmassy tableware did nothing for any vague notions of table setting plans in the back of my head…I left with one $1.98 roll of wrapping paper and one box of crackers, $1.98 

And came up with this.  Complete with cafetiere vase, a handful of Coastal Christmas decs Miss Beach Cottage grabbed when we left Sydney, fauna from the resort garden beds and shells from the seashore…And learnt yet another lesson on my journey through frugalness.  That to conjure up  a celebration out of nothing, to make a table special, to rejoice in simply enjoying a meal with my kiddos while on holiday, really is pretty easy if you put in a bit of effort.  Just like finding furniture for free and making it over.  Holiday apartment inventory (the ugly table, the mis-matched glassware and the cheap, thick dishes) can be turned into, if not something amazing, but something worth savouring.   For less than 5 bucks.

And the nautical cottage menu?  We decided to drag it out pretty much all day and went for a six-course marathon,  Continental style, interspersed with a trip to the pool for the kids…there�s no traditional British Christmas here, so so unusual for me but so sit back and relax liberating

So that’s it from me and nautical cottage, coastal Christmas decorating I hope you enjoyed it !

Sarah

for more coastal Christmas, nautical cottage and beach decor go here

G'day sweet bloggy friends.  How you all doing?  Well we left New South Wales for Queensland on Saturday morning after a frenzied round of Christmas events, a morning with the kids surfing with their fiends as school broke up for summer and a whirlwind of preparation for my family who meet us on vacation and come back to the cottage.  We flew to the Whitsundays – if you ever find yourself in Australia, I'm telling ya make sure you get yourself here.  One word.  Glorious.

I have to tell you I had a strange almost home sicky type feeling before I left the beach cottage.  For the first time in 3 years we had our own home to spend Christmas,allbeit our simple, frugally put together, much though about, intensely budgeted home..but now so much more than the sad old lady we found last year.  She's really blossoming and though I harbour secret, well actually not so secret thoughts of a much older cottage, that's much closer to the beach, I've really felt those roots go down at the beach cottage.  It's almost like the going away for a 3 week break has finally made the cottage, our own Australian home, seem real.  Do you get that?   

I had no other plans for this 3 week vacation other than sit floppily around and surf but not on a board but the web.  Bundles of plans to make, things to research, blogs to visit, pictures to upload.  You know the score.  I lugged my trusty laptap and mobile broadband connection for my carry-on.  All excited with the oodles of time I'd have, multi-tasking sunbaking with blogging. 

A very turbulent flight and a glimpse at the airport in the middle of field with a shed for the terminus  I idly wondered if my internet connection would work.  It didn't and I am therefore posting from my laptop but at a PREMIUM rate…hmmm how many dollars per words is this post?

Soooo, I won't be doing as I wanted and trying to visit all my friends and wishing them happy holidays but I will be back here over the next three weeks with some pics of the Christmas tree I left in Sydney, some highlights of my holiday, an extremely budget-conscious Christmas day tablescape in our apartment (making it up as I go along, spent $1.98 x 3 so far).

Oh and my plans for a new business I'm hoping to start tinkering with next year and your advice, tips and views on how good you think I'll be at it…

Here's to the holidays…have one for me