If in doubt, do a drawing

As I have already mentioned, Betsy and I were not instantly best friends. In fact despite looking through her twice I was still vacillating as to whether she was right for us. She had everything we wanted but her packaging was different from the house I had been dreaming of for 3 years and that threw me a little.

Usually I am a very decisive person. I think about things from every possible angle which sometimes takes a little while but once my mind is made up I am fully committed. With Betsy I was really struggling. My husband - let us call him Legoman as he has a weakness for the little plastic bricks- was not sold on Betsy, in fact was not actually sold on moving at all. He wasn't happy where we were but the whole concept of selling and buying and packing and moving was enough to make him just roll over and contemplate his navel for as long as he could get away with it.

So this decision would be mine, decided by me and driven by me as well. A big responsibility. So, I did what every girl does when burdened by choice and asked my mum for advice.

She did what she always does when pressed for opinion on something cataclysmically life changing and suggested I do a drawing of us living in the new house. She was not completely fobbing me off ( although it often feels that way) as she has a degree in art therapy and this is a well known tool for exploring emotions. (And she had done the same thing 10 years before when we buying our first house).

The point is not to be a great artist, or even remotely accurate for that matter but to just draw what you feel and not be self conscious about the quality of your work.

So I did and you are looking at it. I drew the beautiful garden, my daughter swinging from the huge poinciana tree, my son digging in the sandpit, the vege garden we would be able to plant, the chickens we were longing to keep, and Legoman and I kicking back on the deck with our mates. And mum sat there quietly until I had finished placing the last crayon back in the pack. The only comment she made at the end of this was- " do you realize that the drawing of you living in your new house does not include any image of the actual house?"

And she was right, no evidence of Blue Betsy at all, just her amazing garden. And from that moment I knew we were doing the right thing, the house would be wonderful for us mostly because of the space and trees within that gorgeous garden and all the experiences it would allow us to have with our kids that our old house could not. So even when the pressure of buying and selling was upon us and our friends thought we were mad to leave our beautifully renovated house with it's tiny garden, we KNEW that Betsy was meant for us.

If in doubt, do a drawing.