– Dreams Are Always Worth Chasing –

I am finding myself very much in need of this reminder more days than not, whilst our little family continues our house build journey. Dreams take time, lots of time and ridiculous amounts of hard work, they don’t just happen overnight!! You have your down days and your ups, that’s all part of it…but what counts is how you carry on and keep moving forward among the challenges thrown your way.

It’s not every day that one decides to design, cost, project manage and build their own home…but that is exactly what we’re in the middle of doing right now! I know call us crazy! Kevin McCloud said it the other night (if you watch Grand Designs as religiously as I do), doing all of these facets yourself is “pretty out there”. Yup you can say that again Kev! I often wonder what pearls of wisdom he’d have to offer us. But at the end of the day, I never did plan to live an ordinary life…what is that anyway & I’m just beyond lucky that my hubby lives life the same way too! It may be a cliche but everything we dream is possible, children certainly live life like this, it’s just us adults that lose sight of that. The biggest downside to getting older is not aging but getting more fearful in my book! Fearful of the unknown, fearful of what others will think, of what we think we are capable of, fearful of change. Let is just be said – Fear is stifling!!

This leads me to a story that I’ve been following since day one…when an Australian family up and moved to France and started chasing their dream. One which is pretty damn cool and beyond inspiring and which involves the utter transformation and resuscitation (you might say) of an incredibly gorgeous Chateau in France (of course, would you expect me to share anything less!). I just stumbled upon this great blog post which provides a beautiful overview of the story herehttp://www.eszterieur.com/the-incredible-history-of-chatea…/. They’ve already been featured in Vogue and shot by my favourite photographer in the whole wide world Carla Loves Photography (of whom I may have a signed note on the back of a precious photo, eek!! and one big print that inspires me in so many ways) and you can follow their story first hand on their website here http://www.chateaugudanes.com/ for a seriously good daily dose of ‘get up and go’ whenever it’s needed! Heaven on earth, I know, you’re welcome!!

My castle might not be so grand as this one, but it is my castle, our castle, our dream and we are living it. Amongst all the hurdles, that is something that’s always worth celebrating!

To round off, let’s end this post with a little update shall we. As we really have been rather busy these past few weeks and there has been lots of progress and you  know how I LOVE PROGRESS, hahaha!!! So here is our house below, looking very house-y indeed now. I had a moment with Miss B today which was rather precious because I can totally relate to it. Some days the scale of what we’re doing makes you catch your breath a little more than others, perhaps it’s when your mind has a teeny tiny bit more space to wander than usual and Miss B clearly experienced that today. As we pulled up to surprise Daddy at the end of the week, she exclaimed “my goodness, look at our house”!!! We got chatting about it and the fact that it really does look like a house now and then she said the most darling thing I’ve probably ever heard her say about the whole experience, she said “won’t it be funny when we get to live in this house, that we actually built”. I know what she means… it’s hard to wrap my head around it too and I think ‘funny’ is the best way a child can describe ‘surreal’…because THAT is exactly what it will feel like to live in this amazing house one of these days, in the best possible way. Bless her!

{Excuse the stripy exterior to the weatherboards – I am mid-way through painting…the first coat! The dove grey is the final colour, the yucky yellow is primer}

{A beautiful porthole window was installed (last minute addition) in our stairwell…expensive little window but so very worth it considering it’s north facing and so damn gorgeous!}

{Looking down from the top level to the living room and you can see the fireplace is looking pretty lovely now!}

{There is a surround to go on the facade of the fireplace stove, we’re just holding off on installing until all all the messy 1st & 2nd fix is complete. I’m so happy with how it looks, it’s exactly the vision I had in my head – we used the amazing Hoobler Stone product http://www.hooblerstone.com.au/ and a wonderful stone mason called Chris to install (because this is an artform!) https://www.facebook.com/ImpressionionsLandscaping?fref=ts}

Au revoir until the next update x