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.