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Yurt Life: Step into our bedroom *waggles eyebrows*

15 October, 2014

Really, it isn’t like that. Despite now looking like a harem our bedroom is pretty much asexual at the moment. It is our family bed, all four of us sleep there. So when it is time to put on our “business socks” we find somewhere more exciting.

(WOAH! Possibly crossed the how-much-intimacy-on-blog line there…) colourful family bed in yurt

So yeah. The harem look. Ramona has recently been saying that she doesn’t like the yurt. She wants a house with walls and better toys. I find it a little bit sad as I’m wondering if she has already picked up on what is “normal” and it is appealing to her. Or perhaps it is just a yearning for something different to what she has. I guess there are kids out there who live in a house with walls and would rather live in a Mongolian tent, right?

In an effort to help her love it more I spent the afternoon turning it into a magical place of dreams.Family bed in yurt

(Hmmm, yes, for some reason it seems like my brain decided that the answer to “I’d like to sleep somewhere more normal” was to make it even crazier. Gah. Brain.)

Tim found this bed, made of beautiful native timber, on Ebay for £150 (well, $300 NZ), beautiful condition mattress included. We waited for ages for something big enough to come up and then we got this AMAZING bargain. It is absolutely behemothic. Nice one, Tim. I’ve never been opposed to sleeping on a second hand bed, really.

It is super bouncy too, which the girls love.

These whimsical decorations have also hidden half completed craft projects, or projects that never quite worked out.
Yurt Bed
Like this bathroom mat. Made out of plaited tee shirt yarn, made from old shirts. It was going to be an absolute BARGAIN rug. You would have been astounded. But then when I went to sew it, I couldn’t make it flat and then it turned into a bowl. What the? Anyway, the plaits add a nice touch. I was going to cut the basket bit off but Ramona wanted to keep it as a nest.
Family Bed Yurt Bird Nest
So I put a couple of mod podge – retro fabric birds in it.

And I do love this. Although I’m not sure what it is. But it was fun to make, kind of woven wool. I was going to be make loads and then lost interest. Might still get round to it. Bright wool spiral decoration

At the end of me snapping away, Juno wanted to climb on the bed and read a book. Oh yeah, she knows what people like to see…
Beautiful Family Bed in a yurt

“Let her sleep, for tomorrow she will move mountains” I have loved this quote for so long, having liked it on Pinterest last year sometime. (Had to repin as couldn’t find it…) I painted one for my niece and felt it was time to do one for our own daughters. I changed it a little, to be plural. (Are you on Pinterest? Come and say hi!)
Let them Sleep - kid's bedroom painting
Tim had a bit of a laugh though, as it doesn’t seem obvious that the girls sleep here. It is as if we WELL rate ourselves. Don’t wake us up! We are going to change the world tomorrow! Like sleepy Gandhis.

But, maybe it is okay, if you think “moving mountains” is just living a loving life, being kind, being brave in your own way, finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. I think that is where most of the world-changing comes from….

So there it is, a peek at our colourful, harem like yet hermaphrodite, graveyard of failed crafts, Family Bed.

Family Travel, Parenting, Thrifty

Yurt Sweet Yurt – Family Life under Canvas

8 April, 2014

Yurt Sweet Yurt – Family Life under Canvas

Waking up with something crawling on my face has pretty much been a lifelong fear of mine. A fear that was finally realised last Wednesday when a tickling sensation on my cheek pulled me from my dream (my dream was probably about sleep – both my day time and night time reveries are basically about getting more sleep…)

I pulled the tickling thing off my face and flung it on to the floor, I hunkered under the duvet and begged my dream to return quickly, quickly, quickly. But it was too late, I was wide awake and needed to know what the Thing was.  I grabbed the torch and peered under the bed.

I was actually relieved to find an enormous Praying Mantis. Far, far better to have a goggle eyed, try hard stick insect having his devout way with my face than his cruel, shiny black scurrying cousin, the Cockroach.

We have a lot of cockroaches and other members of the insect community in our place. ALOT. There isn’t much you can do when the outside is so inside, y’know? Little cracks where the canvas wall meets the floor and gaping holes in the tree house kitchen. There are some serious blurred lines between our home and nature right now. family living in a yurt

If the rest of it wasn’t so darn perfect it would definitely be too much.

family living in a yurt

But fortunately (unfortunately?) we LOVE living here.

We love the yurt which feels like an almost sacred space with it’s circular fluidity. The few things we lugged over from England just fit in it so ideally. The look is retro-yoga-retreat-chic, yeah.Yurt Life

We actually love having nature all up in our grills. We spend 90% of most days outside, which is what life is meant to be like I think. It is still HOT here so we eat our meals on the deck. Both the girls have swings that fly off the deck too.living in a yurt

We have a sort of kitchen cabin off the deck, and through that an old caravan which has become a bit of a play / craft room. We don’t have a bathroom (we smell more than usual) and have a little walk to the composting loo which takes a bit of getting used to.
living in a yurt

We love living cooperatively with the other two families on the farm. It is making us fairly certain that we want this community life for our family.living in a yurt

We are surrounded by these little native owls called Moreporks and they sing us to sleep cooing “morepork! morepork!” There are plenty of nocturnal possums too but they have an unwelcome, evil witch cackle.family living in a yurt

We love milking the cow (Yep! I am rubbish at it as I have way too much empathy) and collecting the chicken eggs and eating whole meals with 0 food miles. family life yurt

We will have to see how we get on with the winter. It will involve waking in the night to put a log on the pot belly stove and pinning up wooly stuff all over the inside to insulate. It will be cold but hey, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, eh? We will be so jolly hardy by the end of it.family living in a yurt

I just need to be more assertive and get on less intimate terms with the local bugs.