bad things happen in 3s...

Oh yes they do. Good things do too, but let's start with the bad.

Last day of school term: the day started well with a Wet and Wild day at Zak's school where they kids got wet on a watery obstacle course and were showered by the local fire brigade and end with not-so-great house news.

Bad thing 1: Last day of the school term (not officially a bad thing, though some days I might claim that!) we received notice that the owners of the house we're renting are putting it on the market in two weeks. We were given the first opportunity to buy it, but politely turned them down (not really what we're after despite all the floorplans of potential extensions and room rearrangements I made just for fun). So that means that if it sells straight away - and given the ridiculously quick sales around here lately, I'd say it will - we'll have around six to seven weeks before we need to be outta here. And with barely any rentals around to actually rent and still no house to buy, I was a little panicked by this news. To be honest, though, I was much more panicked about keeping the house constantly neat and tidy for regular inspections! After getting over the original "oh crap", I figured I'd have a good week or so to thoroughly clean, cull and get it ready like the very nice tenants that we are. But then...

Not since 24 first came out (and I only liked the first series) have I fallen hard for a TV show. Totally obsessed with Game of Thrones - it made (my first) sick day bearable! 

Bad thing 2: I got sick. I never get sick - well, of course I get the odd cold and sniffle and cough - but this was lay-on-the-couch-and-do-nothing kinda sick. Which was fine for that first Monday when my mother-in-law had the kids for the day. I actually kind of enjoyed having that sick day. But then I got worse and I was sleeping as much as the kids would allow it during the day and at night and was all weak and gross and couldn't do anything or go anywhere...  My poor kids have had THE most boring holiday ever. Bless them - they've been so great considering we haven't done a darn thing. Our trip to Canberra to stay with my parents was cancelled, we missed out on my nephew's first birthday, we couldn't have our playdate at the park with our friends and my plans to do fun, adventurous things these holidays went poof pretty quickly. Probably around the same time teeny tiny ninjas had a sword fight in my throat and made it so very, very sore. And then just before I lost my voice, I lost something else...

Out with the old... how the blog used to look.

Bad thing 3: Bye bye blog. Yep, during Wordpress' major bot attack, my blog was majorly affected (or it was noticed that it'd been hackked) and it went bye byes. Everything was compromised - the back-ups I had were also dodgy so while on my deathbed (!) and panicking about everything else I had to do and how many other people and websites my brother-in-law hosted that were no doubt stabbing Belinda Graham-shaped voodoo dolls, I just made the call to can Wordpress and start over on Blogger. I like Blogger much more than Wordpress - not really sure why I bothered to swap in the first place. I kind of understand Blogger and don't feel like a moron when I play around with the behind-the-scenes like I did on Wordpress. But because the backups couldn't be imported (and were too bloody big to convert and import anyway), I will be manually transferring the words and images over here from cached pages. Oh yes, it's going to a L.O.N.G and painful process. And because all those thousands of pins on Pinterest that have been pinned and repinned are going to go NOWHERE, I thought I'd better start with a few of the popular posts so at least they can be found on the homepage. Even that has been incredibly painful. So I think I'm going to edit the original blog way down to just the best stuff and things I want to keep a record of - so probably mostly tutorials, pics of my home, kids parties etc. I'll likely leave off a few of those posts that I kind of just threw together to get something up, but it's still going to take forever to do, so bear with me please! If there is a tutorial/info/post/pics you desperately want to see ASAP, let me know in the comments and I'll prioritise!

And just when I assumed the bad 3 things were going to start all over again - the week had that ominous feel about it -miraculously, a few good things came instead.

New look: clean and simple

Good thing 1: I gave the blog a makeover. Seeing as I was starting over, I took the opportunity to give the blog a fresher look. It had been the same for four long years and while I liked the design at the beginning, in the end I couldn't stand looking at it like that anymore. But of course wordpress and I didn't get along and I just couldn't make it work, so gave up trying, figuring I'd eventually get someone to do it for me. That never happened. Instead I played around with some fonts and photoshop and came up with this. I'm going to miss Photoshop when the trial expires (I can't justify that price. Maybe I'll get Elements again one day). I'm no graphic designer, but I'm happy enough with it for now. Also, let me tell you how smarty pants I felt being able to put the social media icons in a row like that all by myself. I may have high-fived myself. All I wanted was a clean, minimal design. I don't need tricky widgets and weird layouts on my blog. I couldn't care less about the bells and whistles that you can have with Wordpress. I just wanted something simple and (hopefully) nice looking. So this is what I came up with. Oh I have things to add - my blog links aren't there yet, I still have some other things to add like contact deets etc, but I'll get there eventually. One thing that has also disappeared is all my email subscribers. So if you had subscribed by email, you're going to have to do it again if you want to continue receiving alerts (you can enter your address at bottom of the sidebar). Otherwise you can click on the RSS button under my smiling head to add it to your reader.

Good thing 2: I received a lot of lovely words, advice, help and so-sweet support after whinging about it all on social media. Thank you for being so lovely - made me feel all warm and fuzzy to have such lovely readers. And nice to know I actually still have readers - I may have had a day or two where I thought "why bother continuing? No one will car!e". You know those silly down times you get... So thank you so much! I also physically feel better - I finally went to the doctors on Tuesday and have been shoving antibiotics down my still-sore throat. I felt a bit human today - whoo hoo!

Good thing 3: We may - may - have some news on a house soon. Steve hates it when I say cross fingers and toes and eyes, so instead I'd ask you to all send some positive thoughts our way. I'll share more when I can regardless of the outcome...

Thank you all again - hopefully the blog will run smoothly from here on! x