Where to start my blog…

• January 29, 2017

I have been sitting on the idea of starting a blog for several years now, and today seems like the right day to step in and start this thing properly.

What are the things that I want to blog about?
Well…first and foremost I want to share a little bit about me and where I have come from in the  journey of life.
I have always been a bit of a home body and spent 25 years as a full time Mum raising 4 boys until they were old enough to fend for themselves. I dabbled in many creative areas as the boys were growing up, making their clothes and dress up costumes, and playing around with fabric and textiles to make home ‘home’- cushions, quilts, reupholstering classes, sewing bags,

and branching out into the garden with seedlings & vegetables and potager gardens.

Cooking for a family of 6 with extra friends and family always around at meal time equipped me in the kitchen and my love for food and natural colour was probably evident by what went from the pot to the table at my house. As a young girl growing up on a farm I chose to always do the baking jobs and make hearty lunches rather than get dirty feeding out or helping in the woolshed. And when I wasn’t in the kitchen, I was up in the bedroom sewing, creating something that was supposedly the latest fashion.

My mother was instrumental in teaching me and my 2 sisters how to cook, sew, knit and basically how to be a good wife, and my father often used to say to me “You will make someone a good wife one day!”. All my dreams came true after being sent away to Boarding School at 12 years old, then spending 3 years at Teachers College and 4 years of Primary School teaching before I met and married and subsequently gave up my teaching career to raise a family.

I loved being a wife and full time Mum, and often looked after other friend’s children as well. Mother helping on kindergarten & school trips and being very involved with school committees and Board of Trustees gave me experience with administration and leadership roles, and as my husband was a businessman,  I learned to converse with people from many walks of life. We were also very involved with our church and I spent hours working in the kitchen practising hospitality and taking various groups ranging from craft groups to weight loss programmes to Bible studies & fund raising activities. Life was busy and at times a huge juggle between husband and family demands over church and school/social/work engagements. It was all fun, as far as I can recall, and in some respects it probably equipped me for what was to become a major turning point in my life, as not only did the last son leave home but my husband also chose to leave after 28 years of marriage. NOT what I was expecting the empty nest to look like!

So the past 5 years of my life I have done a lot of soul searching on where I went wrong and how I could have improved what I had. Where I initially beat myself up, I came to learn that there wasn’t much point in looking back, and that I had the opportunity to embrace life as a single woman all over again and I was going to ask God to show me how to do that to the best of my ability. Well He has not let me down. What a wild ride it has been. Now I know that everything in my life up until now, will be used for a purpose, and for His glory. God has given me gifts and talents unique to ME and I want to use everything He has given me, to be the best version of myself that I can be.

I have a vision for my future and the purpose of this blog is to encourage, equip and inspire others to follow their dreams by using my practical experiences to help them.

I hope to blog on a variety of subjects, namely:
•    Sewing projects
•    Garden projects
•    Cooking
•    Travel
•    LOVE & Family
•    A God Blog
•    Building projects
•    Colour & Styling
•    and whatever else I feel led to blog about

If you wish to follow my journey then I welcome you to this page and I sincerely hope you become inspired and encouraged and that indeed you become my friend through it all.

Today is the official launch of ‘The Eye Of A Needle’
Tomorrow I will tell you a little bit about that name and what it means to me.