2014: The year we moved to Australia

As we approach Christmas and the end of another year, it’s time to look back. 2014 has been one crazy year. It’s INCREDIBLE to finally be coming out the other side of the mayhem at last. I don’t know about you, but I’m constantly putting pressure on myself to do more and then berating myself for not being able to get everything done. I never feel like I reach my potential, partly because I tend to spread myself thin and get involved in too many things. I love being creative, but it is also exhausting trying to do so many things. I think putting down on paper (or at least a computer screen) all the amazing things we’ve done this year will help me appreciate everything we’ve achieved. WE MOVED TO AUSTRALIA!!!!

What I did in 2014

I was part of the Southampton to Worthing Team Honk crew, and we raised a massive amount of money for Sport Relief.

Hubby and I renovated our entire house in the UK and sold it within a matter of days. You can read my tips and tricks about selling your home .

We obtained our Australian permanent residency visas in March, after completing lots of forms online, attending medicals and having police checks done (and after hubby aced his IELTS test just before Christmas).

I had my blog redesigned!

I attended Blogtacular (which is my favourite blogging conference so far!) and Britmums Live. You can read my five reasons to attend a blogging conference.

I started up a regular column in Australia and New Zealand magazine in the UK, all about family emigration. (The column is still running if you want to check it out!)

We had a brilliant holiday to Butlins at Minehead, and then toured the UK visiting family during our last month.

We got rid of loads of our things  through car boot sales/charity shops/eBay/Gumtree/family, then cleaned and organised everything we had left for the shippers to take it all away.

We did masses of admin so we could leave the country, then we took a long haul flight with three kids aged four and under to Brisbane, Australia!! And survived. Then did masses more admin when we landed.

After that we explored areas, found a house, picked a kindy and school, bought lots of new furniture, I started a new part-time freelance ghostwriting contract (and hubby started a new contract job at the airport), bought presents for all the kids for Christmas from us and from all of our relatives, and we’re almost done wrapping them all up. I’ve also just signed up to two online creative courses – one to introduce me to the travel writing industry in Australia and the other to help me be more strategic with my social media.

Plus through all of that, I made it into the Top 500 on the Tots100 list of over 8,000 UK parenting blogs (although by the time you read this I may well have dropped back out again due to my irregular posting over the last few months, knowing my luck!)

As I said, it has been one crazy year. Although we have achieved way more than I give myself credit for, I’m quite pleased the hard work is over and we can get on with living our lives again and exploring our new home.

Inspired by Dorky Mum‘s post about Susannah Conway’s Unravelling the Year Ahead workbook, I’ve reviewed the last year and started to look forward to what I hope to achieve in 2015.

I’ve got a long list of things (both personal and work related) I’m hoping to achieve in 2015, but here’s my top five.

1) I want to get more organised with my own writing projects, rather than always putting them on the back burner. This means finishing off my book about expecting and raising twins and triplets that has been five years in development. It also means blogging more regularly on here, and possibly starting up a second blog that I’ve been thinking about for the past year.

2) I want to get my freelance writing portfolio redesigned and update links to past articles and posts I’ve had published. This means coming up with a layout I like and finding a designer to work on it (if you know of any good WordPress designers – ideally in Australia – please let me know!)

3) I want to start exploring Australia with my family, and also start taking short haul holidays to make the most of our new location.

4) I want to start pitching my ideas to publications as well as finding some new digital agencies to work for so that I can afford to do above item 3) as well as get a mortgage next year 🙂

5) I want to settle into our new area, make some new friends and start to put down some roots.

So there is loads to look forward to.

Here’s to a year that doesn’t involve any DIY whatsoever, any form filling and any cleaning tools from the shed with a toothbrush! Cheers!

I’d like to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas and an incredible 2015.

xxx
PS If you want to give me a great Christmas present, you could give my Facebook page a like and even better share the link to it so your friends can like it too 🙂