Our First Winter in This House

A note on Mudgee mornings, unfinished rooms, and learning to let a home reveal itself slowly.

This is our first winter in this house, and I think I’m only just beginning to understand what kind of home I want it to become.

Not through a perfect mood board. Not through a list of things to buy. Not by rushing each room into being finished just for the sake of having it done.

But slowly.

In the way the morning light moves across the floor. In the corners that hold the cold. In the places my children naturally gather. In the quiet little rhythms that are beginning to form around us.

It took about a week for the house to feel like home.

At first, everything was chaos. Boxes, rain, unpacking, finding places for things, trying to make sense of rooms that still felt new and unfinished. There were piles in corners, children’s bedrooms waiting to be made beautiful, bathrooms still needing a proper clean, and a garden that felt like one enormous dream sitting just outside the windows.

Then one morning, after a week of wet weather, the kids were ready for school and Cooper and I walked them down to the bus stop at the end of our street.

The air was cold and crisp, the kind that makes your face feel rosy and awake before the day has begun. The sun was breaking through the clouds after days of grey, shooting soft light across the sky, and for a moment, standing there in the quiet of a Mudgee morning, I thought, this is it.

This is what I’ve been waiting for.

This feels like home.

Winter in Mudgee does something to me.

I know most people long for summer, but I would take a cold morning over a hot day almost every time. There is something about winter here that makes me want to be home. Crisp days, coffee warm in my hands, birds calling across the paddocks, and the first light slowly finding its way over the hills.

Most mornings begin with letting Daisy out before I’ve fully woken up. I step outside and see the mist over the paddocks, feeling the cold hit my skin, sharp and clean. Then I make coffee and stand there for a while, listening to the birds and watching the sun kiss the mountains before it spreads itself over the rolling hills and the mist slowly disappears.

We have this beautiful wide view of the skyline, and every time I see it, I feel so blessed. Just to be standing there in that moment.

Eventually, the plants and trees will grow. One day there will be more privacy, more layers, more green, and more of the garden we can already see in our minds. We won’t see as much of the neighbouring yards or the tops of nearby homes. But nothing will take that skyline from us, and for now, it makes all the unfinished things easier to hold.

There is so much to do here, inside and out.

But nothing feels unsettling.

It is my favourite place to be.

I am learning to be content with spectating.

That sounds simple, but it feels like one of the first lessons this house is teaching me. To watch before I rush. To live in the rooms before changing them. To notice where the light flows, where the cold settles, where we naturally gather, and where the animals choose to rest.

In the past, I probably would have wanted to fix everything quickly. Wollongong Jaimee always needed things done yesterday. Buy the things. Paint the rooms. Finish the spaces. Lose sleep over the undone.

But a home is not made in one big burst of effort.

It is made in layers.

In meals cooked and shoes left by the door. In washing folded in the sun. In furniture moved from one room to another until it finally finds where it belongs. In old music playing through the house, children waking up, dinner on the stove, and the way a room can change completely just because the light has shifted.

The library is probably my favourite room so far, even though it is nowhere near finished.

At the moment, it is full of boxes, old vintage art, and encyclopaedia collections from my Nan’s house. They smell so musty the window has been permanently open since we moved in and honestly the smell has still not left the room. It is not styled. It is not organised. It is not ready.

But every time I peek in the door and see the way the morning light glides through those windows, I feel excited for what it will become.

I think that room will be one of my last projects, because I want to get it right. I don’t want to rush it just for the sake of having something finished. I want to understand it first. I want to see how the light sits there in every season, what kind of chair belongs in the corner, where the books should live, what artwork feels right, learn how to construct the bookcases myself, source the right size rolling ladder, and make it feel like a room that has always held stories.

Our bedroom is beginning to have that feeling too. The sun comes through the windows behind our bed in the morning, and it makes the whole room feel soft and calm before the day begins. It is not finished either. Maybe sixty percent there. But it already holds a feeling I love.

And then there is the kitchen.

I am obsessed with it.

It is the place I return to without thinking. The room that already feels like the heart of the house. I am patiently waiting to put shelves above the oven and sink, and add wall sconces to bring in more warmth, more character, more of that country feeling. But even before those details are added, it is where I feel most like myself.

It is where winter makes the most sense to me.

Stock simmering from scraps. Bread cooling on the bench. Cookies baking in the oven. Coffee in the morning. School snacks. Dinner after a long day.

The kind of food that makes the whole house feel looked after.

I think that is one of the things I want my children to remember about this season.

Not whether every room was finished, or whether the house looked perfect. I want them to remember the smell of mum’s cooking. The warmth of their new home when they came in from a cold day at school. The feeling of waking up somewhere happy. The smell of bacon in the oven. Sunlight through the windows. Music playing. Knowing that time spent at home could soften the weight of any day.

I want this house to gather them back in.

Of course, there is still so much to do.

The bathrooms still need deep cleaning, because the house was never properly cleaned before we moved in. The kids’ bedrooms are white and fine, but I want to make them beautiful. The kind of rooms that feel thoughtful and special and a little bit magical. The theatre still needs warmth. The library is waiting. Outside feels like an entire lifetime of plans. Garden beds, an orchard lining the back fence for privacy, herbs, animal enclosures, pathways, a fire pit, pool, shed, and all the things that slowly turn a block of land into a place that feels alive.

But I am trying not to see unfinished as failure.

I am trying to see it as becoming.

There is something strangely comforting about living in a house before spending money on it. Although my husband would disagree. I like letting the spaces show me how they function. Noticing where we actually sit, what needs storage, what needs warmth, what can wait, and what matters most.

Sometimes beauty is already there, quietly waiting to be noticed.

In the view from the window. In the smell of something cooking. In the old furniture from Nan’s house, even if it needs a little restoration. In the children finding their rhythm. In Daisy and Prim cuddled up at the door. In Cooper running up and down the 20 metre hallway pretending he is a Hoosey, which is what he currently calls a horse. In the cold morning air and the sun breaking through into the chicken coop.

I think this is what Orchard & Vine is becoming too.

A place to notice.

A place to gather the small moments that might otherwise pass us by. A place for home, food, family, motherhood, garden dreams, animals, old furniture, seasonal rituals, and the quiet work of making ordinary life feel beautiful again.

I hope, when people read it, they feel something.

Maybe curiosity. Maybe comfort. Maybe reassurance that a slower life is possible. That you can be changed by a place. That you can move from the city to the country and find yourself softened by the skyline, the seasons, the people, and the rhythm of ordinary days.

I am not writing from the other side of it, with everything finished and figured out.

I am writing from the middle.

From the boxes. From the cold corners. From the muddy boots. From the bathroom floors that still need scrubbing and the bedrooms waiting for paint and panelling. From the kitchen I love, the library I am dreaming of, and the garden that exists more in my imagination than in the ground.

But also from deep gratitude.

Because even with all there is to do, I can feel it already.

This house is becoming home.

And maybe that is what winter is for. Not rushing into the next thing, but learning to sit with what is here. Watching the light move. Making soup. Opening the windows. Letting the house breathe. Letting ourselves settle.

Creating beauty from what is already in our hands.

So here we are, in our first winter in this house.

Nothing is finished. Not the garden, not the rooms, not the rhythm of it all. But there is coffee in the morning, children under blankets, country music playing, animals at our feet, and golden light finding its way in.

And for now, that feels like enough.