Oh yes, I’m going to blog about the weather. But with good reason!

This big hailstone is one I picked up next to my front door – there were bigger ones but it was dangerous to go out and get them. I got bruises just from trying to cover my car!

In recent weeks the weather has been taking up an enormous amount of time and headspace as I clean up puddles of water inside my house, strategically place containers to collect drips also inside, deal with damage from enormous hailstones (including to my new car … excellent), deal with the real estate agents re the leaks and doors and windows that no longer open and close properly … and generally cower in fear wondering when the ceilings will collapse or the roof will fall apart!

It really has been that bad where I live. Despite being the middle of summer – and what we were warned would be a long, very dry and dangerously fire-prone season. Instead it has rained and rained and rained, stormed and stormed and stormed.

This has been going on since Christmas, but in the last fortnight has been unbelievably bad. People who have lived in this area for 30 years or more say they’ve never seen anything like it.

Nearby there have been mudslides and rock falls closing roads and train lines – there was even a train derailed. A house not far away had lightning come through a window and set curtains on fire! A gas pipe exploded after being hit by lightning as well. There have been many fallen trees, dirt roads (there are plenty of those around here) have fallen apart and sealed roads now have enormous potholes in them. Then there are all of the car accidents, power outages and other issues!

On the upside, drought conditions are suddenly looking better and our dams have had an enormous amount of desperately needed water go into them. And my garden looks greener than it did at the end of winter!

But all up it’s been very disruptive and there appears to be more to come, starting this very afternoon.

In addition I’ve been dealing with a few issues to do with my housing situation, which is currently less than happy. I’m working on sorting that out at the moment, which is also fairly disruptive.

I am getting orders out generally within the usual timeframe, unless the weather is so severe I can’t risk going out or if the power is out at the post office! However, I am a bit slow on the communications front at the moment, so please bear with me.

Well, finally it’s all over and a fresh year is underway. Hooray!

My festive season was even more tiring than usual, having lost about two months worth of preparation time after a major project ran behind schedule a bit earlier in the year. So I felt like I was on the back foot throughout the season in terms of my handmade jewellery business. But I survived it, which is the main thing!

I also had my entire family come and stay for several days – they all live in another state. Given that I was hosting Christmas it meant a lot of preparation for the day itself, as well as for having numerous extra people in the house for some time, including two children. Exhausting!

But they have all gone now and things have slowed down, so it’s time for taking stock and spending some time getting myself sorted out for a new year – and my first full year of full self-employment.

I plan on spending much of the next few weeks doing some serious business planning and analysis. But also looking again at the fact that I continue to work far too many hours and don’t have enough of a life! It will be good to take a long hard look at all sorts of bits of my life to make them work a bit better.

So here’s to a happy and successful 2010 for all of us!

Today I took some photographs in my garden – part of researching for new jewellery designs, but also just because the flowers are so beautiful now that spring is in full swing. So I thought I’d share some of them.

Not sure which – if any – will make it into new handmade jewellery pieces, but you never know! The garden here is certainly inspiring, but so is the national park at the end of my street, where I go walking regularly. I’ve been taking plenty of photos of plants in there too.

You can find more on my Flickr.

I have *finally* (pretty much!) finished a very large and complex web project this week. It’s something I’ve been working on directly since August, but it’s actually been in the pipeline and being talked about and nutted out for over three years now!

In recent weeks I’ve been spending almost every waking moment on the task – with one working day going for over 30 hours straight! As you might imagine, I’m exhausted. Plus I’m extremely behind with almost everything else in my life, having kept up with little else but some sleeping, some eating and getting jewellery orders out for several weeks.

So if I’m overdue sending you an email or a convo right now, this is why!

There are a few loose ends to tidy up on the project, but I’m already starting to catch up on the rest of my life.

And shortly I will finally be able to dive into preparations for the holiday season, which I hope to be a successful one for my handmade jewellery business, given that this will be my first Christmas of being fully self-employed.

If you’re interested in seeing what I’ve been working so hard on, you can find it here: www.ethics.org.au. If you’re familiar with the site, it will probably not look much different to how it did before the new site was sent live. But under the hood it’s been completely overhauled and turned into a dynamic site with much more and much better functionality.

Recently I was admiring the lovely and inspiring view from my front door. My front garden is a carpet of flowers now that spring is springing.

Thankfully I caught a few photographs of it before the truly enormous dust storm that a large chunk of Australia (including my house!) endured last week. Now the garden is all coated in red dirt blown in from the desert – even after rain and spraying it with water.

I guess it will take a while to get back to normal again.

But here are some ‘before’ photos to share with you. You’ll find more, along with some photos of the aftermath of the dust storm, on my Flickr.

Today is the first day of the new financial year in Australia. But for me it’s a day of new beginnings in more ways than one.

Yesterday I did my final day of work as an employee. So today I am officially fully self-employed – finally (or self-insufficient as my friend Jodie describes it!).

I have to be honest that this is a daunting situation financially and I keep wondering if the time really is right to be making such a change.

However, I suspect there would never be a perfect time and it’s good for me to be taking the plunge into the deep end to see what happens.

And all up I am feeling pretty pleased about the change at least at this very early point – it’s been a happy day for me and I’m feeling enthusiastic about the future.

For now I’m going to spend a week or two getting myself a bit more organised, making some plans and smelling the roses. And then I will be getting stuck into some freelance projects and some shiny new handmade jewellery as well.

Another new beginning today is the life of my new MacBook Pro! In a nice piece of timing it arrived yesterday afternoon so I spent the evening after finishing work setting it up.

My old MacBook Pro is a few years old and given what I use it for and the demand I place on my computers it was time for it to be replaced. It was starting to limp along and have a few issues, including an overly-full hard drive. Plus there was a one off bonus for Australian small businesses investing in this sort of equipment and I decided I should take advantage of it.

And so far so good! It’s a beautiful piece of equipment, of course. Plus it has some design changes which seem to be a big improvement on my old machine. And it has a nice big and fast hard drive and a battery with an amazing life (it takes up to seven hours to run down!). It’s all good – so far at least!