Autumn 2013 was the season we finally took a deep breath and looked beyond the struggles of living in a shed and started to appreciate how lucky we are to be creating a home in such a magical place. 

I shared one of my favourite childhood memories with Little Eco - damper twirls cooked on a campfire and filled with golden syrup. She enjoyed them so much she promptly declared Monday night is camp fire night. I can live with that. 

We celebrated the inaugural dunny move. 

The garden is slowly growing, with a little help from our chooks, free stable manure from Cessnock Showground and cheap mushroom compost from Gromore Mushroom farm near Singleton. As an added bonus, we're now harvesting loads of mushrooms from our garden and are regularly enjoying mushroom risotto, mushroom soup and mushroom rissoles. 

We've welcomed six more chooks to our little farm. Little Eco fell so quickly and deeply in love that I was worried for a while there that she was going to move into the chook pen. 

We also welcomed two bee hives. Yay! After saying goodbye to my backyard bees a few years ago I'm thrilled to finally have bees again. 

We're increasing the number of worms we have so that we have enough to feed to the chooks, so Little Eco's cubby now has it's very own worm farm. Speaking of the cubby....

Little Eco's pre-loved cubby has become the focus of her outdoor play and she often redecorates and rearranges. 

Despite our living conditons being pretty basic (still no running water!)- Little Eco has never been happier and I love that she's blossomed into a creative outdoor kid. 

I especially love that she's forever covered in mud - literally. My absolute favourite moment has to be when I sprung her swimming in a puddle. 

Autumn was when I started to truly appreciate that happiness does not come from having what you want - but from learning to be happy with what you have. 

How was your Autumn? 

Summer was..

Spring was..

Winter was..