Well friends i have a big announcement to make! No i’m not pregnant hehe, but if you follow me on  twitter and have been wondering why i’ve been sounding like such a stress bucket for the last few days, here’s why:

We’re going home. After 5 wonderful, amazing, joyful, unbelievably eventful years living here in the USA, we’ve decided to move back to Perth to be closer to our families.

It’s been a hard decision. A really hard one. Also kind of a scary one. I won’t lie. One we agonized over. and over and over. As much as we’ve always called Australia “home”, America is where we built our life together, where we started our family and where we followed our dreams. We have been so so blessed here. I’m a mixed bag of emotions right now – flipping between sadness that we are leaving our friends and a place we love, and incredible joy that we will soon be home.  In perfect honesty, I think it would always be better for us financially and career wise to stay in the states – but our families aren’t here, and for that reason I think we were always going to come home at some point. This is a little sooner than we’d planned – but we’ve reached that stage where it’s just too heartbreaking to be so far from them. We’ve realised how unbelievably important it is for our kids to have their grandparents involved in their lives in a bigger way. Instead of once or twice year – after which they look out the window for days asking where they’ve gone, and why they can’t see them. I haven’t seen my brother in 5 years (he’s in the army), and he has never met my kids.  It’s something I don’t talk about much, because to be honest, it’s too heartbreaking. We’ve always believed in putting family first, and this is one of those situations where it’s most real for us.

So right now we’re a little hectic over here. We move in a few weeks, and with the thought of an international move ahead of me, I admit I feel a little panicked. I wish I could have told you all sooner, but I didn’t know sooner. I like to have everything perfectly planned and mapped out ahead of me, and that’s kind of impossible right now. But I’m trusting that as always, God has this planned – just like when we spontaneously came to the US, everything will turn out the way it should.

So that’s whats going on with me! It’s all kind of blowing my mind it’s happening so fast, but every time i get overwhelmed (which is every 5 minutes) i just keep focusing on the moment someday soon, when Bunny asks if she can go see her grandparents, as she constantly does, and I can finally say yes. Lets go. This afternoon. The thought of that makes me want to cry with joy!

(ps. did i mention the weather? because you know that’s gonna be awesome hehe)

I’m just going to side-track from the Darling Ranges sewalong for a minute. As you may have noticed, I’m super busy these days – and unfortunately for me that means I don’t have as much free time to do the pieces of sewing I often need to do. I simply cannot keep up right now. After some frustrating/fruitless attempts to find a reliable skilled seamstress in my local area to help me with this – I’ve decided to try reaching out through Design Diary incase there are any seamstresses out there looking for some extra work.

Here’s the basic deal:

• You don’t need to live in Virginia, just in the continental United States (it makes shipping etc much easier and quicker).
• Will need to have your own sewing machine, and preferably a serger/overlocker as well.
• Need to be able to very competent in sewing, feel comfortable sewing with knits and wovens, and have an eye for detail.
• You will be provided with all patterns, fabrics and notions etc. You will just need to sew.
• Reliability and ability to stick to a deadline / schedule is imperative.
• I’m looking for someone honest and easy to get along with, and who can start right away.
• There will be no set “work hours”, though there will be deadlines. You can work from home in your own time
• The work will be temporary spanning the next few weeks/ months, with the possibility for more regular projects.

If you’re interested please send an email to store@megannielsen.com with the subject line “help wanted” for further information and specific details on compensation. If you have a way to show examples of things you’ve made in the past (eg through a blog or flickr set), then please include a link to that – since I won’t be able to physically interview.

UPDATE: The position has now been filled.  Thank you SO much to everyone who applied, I’ve been thrilled and overwhelmed by all of the amazing applications !