Our little house...

Over the next year I am hoping to include a series of blog posts on what I hope will be the transformation of our little 2 x 1 cottage into a more modern 4 x 2 with plenty of space for our growing family.

As they say don't count your chickens before they hatch, I have been hesitant to blog about our planned renovation but slowly slowly the wheels of progress are turning and we should be on our way to our new home very soon!

After working with our very clever building designer Cherie from Design Pitch we have a design we are super excited about. We are now just waiting on the our building permit from our local council and finalised engineering drawings. It is exciting stuff for us here as this is something we have been dreaming off for quite a few years now.

After pouring over endless examples of home remodels, stalking real estate websites for house tours to get ideas, the dreaded pinterest and a small fortune spent on design, home and renovation magazines Mr DD and I have come up with a pretty strong vision of what we need for our family to be happy and comfortable.

Aside from the essential of creating additional bedrooms, we really wanted a more open plan communal living space for our family to go about our business. While we love our current home dearly, just like typical 1950s homes in Perth it's very closed in with separate rooms for each purpose. This isn't super fun when you have a cheeky toddler and a crawling almost walking baby, turn my back for a second and the mischief happens!

I thought I would share a little tour of our "new" house plus a few pictures of our little house as it currently is.

This is what it looked like when we bought it (please excuse the horrid google maps picture it's all I could find)

How it looks today

To new beginnings - The good the bad and the downright ugly

I was once superstitious about how the new year kicked off. I had this theory that we all had to be happy and loving life and one another in order to start of the new year on a positive high which would then ensure that the coming year would be wonderful. 

I am not superstitious about it at all anymore because to be honest the lead up to and start of 2013 was beyond s**tful. My dear Dad had recently suffered a very unexpected heart attack, my Mum had some very serious health issues that bubbled up in a terrifying way, I had a bit of a scare with my baby bump and to cap it off, my bag was snatched while I was struggling with a tantruming toddler in 40 degree heat. True it could have been worse and I have no doubt that there are millions out there who have been worse off than me but for me it was a very stressful, angry, frightening and sad time not how I want to begin my year. 

Then something amazing happened, I had a wonderful year. It has been filled with love, laughter, the birth of our second daughter, our older daughter blossoming into a hilarious clever and beautiful little girl, we saw good friends get engaged, get married, announce pregnancies and babies of their own. 

2013 was a year that I was more motivated, rekindled my love of sewing and general craftiness, got into a better routine with the house and the girls,  lost weight that was holding me back and crippling my self esteem,  found myself again. I found peace with the darling hubs working away and realised I'm pretty great on my own too (actually I like it) and happily my parents got better. 

This year has kicked off to an amazing start but if it hadn't I know I would just take it in my stride. There is so much to come this year to be excited about and look forward to so come at me 2014! 

I really hope you all have had a good start to 2014 but if you haven't that’s ok to. Start looking forward- it’s not an evil omen if it was less than ideal.

Without further ado, here are some happy snaps from my year just gone...

Without a doubt my greatest achievement of 2013 was the arrival of our little Ally and seeing the bond between these two sisters grow.