I moved to Brisbane in 2008, arriving after 9 months on the road overland from the UK. A high school English Teacher for the last decade, I've finally left schools behind and launched a children's swimwear business. 

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My company, Mermaids and Astronauts, creates unique, stylish rashies, swim nappies and one pieces for babies and toddlers. At the moment we offer sizes 000 to two, but we're keen to expand into bigger kids sizes as we grow. 

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I love travel, reading and messing with ideas and images to create the fabrics for our swim fabrics. I've been lucky enough to work with some really good people over the last couple of years to help me turn those ideas into real products.

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All our garment patterns started off in cardboard form thanks to my mum, an old school dress designer from way back before computers! Sadly, she passed away in 2016 so never got to see the final product, but I'm so glad that she got to help start me off on this new path. 

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I have two kids, Abe who's nearly 3 and Bette who is 6 months old. Abe is nuts, wild and a whirlwind. Bette, a laid back little thing who is much smarter about getting what she wants than her nature implies. 

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So far, 2017 has been a year of big changes for us as a family. As well as Bette's arrival and the launch of M&A, my husband Sean left the industry he's been in for close to two decades to re train as a Doctor. 

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Maybe it's that it's the year of the Rooster, maybe it's losing mum. Whatever it is, we both feel it's time to stop wishing we lived differently and got on and did it. 

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I like the idea of being able to be creative and bring my ideas to life - as well as manage my own time to balance work and life as a mum. Sean just got sick of making rich people richer and wanted out of a money focussed industry to help people. 

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As you can imagine, with no stable and a much smaller income than was the case when we were a Teacher and a Geophysicist, for the next few years at least we'll be living a lot smaller. There'll be lots less travel, lots less coffee shop coffee (gulp) and what we choose to spend our money on is going to have to really be 'worth it'. 

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Here is a place for me to document how we're doing with that, what I am working on, struggling with and generally working through in both my business life and mum life. 

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