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Emma Sadie Thomson is a plant stylist who has firmly imprinted her very talented green thumb around Adelaide, she has created some of the very enviable installations you would have seen around the city. Her beautiful Instagram account highlights her talents and way with plants and provides you with all the green inspiration you could possibly need – and will make you want to do a bathroom renovation when you lay your eyes on her oh-so-dreamy bath, just saying. bath, just saying. Emma has recently become a new mum, to gorgeous little Frances, and we sat down to discuss all things plants and babies, and the synergy between the two. What is the greatest lesson you’ve learnt since becoming a mother, did expectations meet reality? Be kind to yourself and don’t expect to get too much done during the first few weeks. Enjoy the days where you might not get out of your pj’s! I think I underestimated just how little I could get done with a newborn; you are on their time now. But, it is also such a precious time during those first few weeks, so enjoy it as it will be gone in the blink of an eye, I can’t believe she is 10 weeks old already. You have had a very interesting career, beginning in interior and fashion and then pivoting into plants. Can you tell us a little bit about your journey and how you arrived at EST? I studied Landscape Architecture at University and then spent some time travelling. Upon returning I wasn’t ready to go back to landscape architecture, and I got a job in the fashion industry, working in set design, VM and then interior design. EST started when I began making and selling terrariums at various markets, then I got asked to help with the redesign of a beer garden featuring a large green wall, which was my first major project. This just lead to other projects and EST naturally evolved. I always wanted to combine interior design and my love for plants and found this was a great way to do it! Where did your passion for ora and fauna stem from? Growing up in rural Mallee Victoria, as a child I was always surrounded by nature and the importance of having a connection to it. Do you feel it’s important to immerse children in nature from a young age? It is so important. I remember always playing outside as a child, out in the dirt making mud pies. I think babies and kids have a natural desire to be outside in nature and getting dirty. Playing in the dirt can also help with training and strengthening their immune systems. Studies have shown that it can help with the proper formation of healthy gut bacteria and by restoring this beneficial bacteria it can help with reduced rates of allergies and boost immune systems. Being outdoors can also help with developing their cognitive skills. If we are having trouble settling Frances we take her out for a walk and she loves to stare up at the sky and the trees. Have you notices a synergy between caring for plants and babies? Both need nurturing and both will give you signs to let you know they aren’t happy. You bring this baby into the world and it is 100% reliant on you looking after it. I think its similar to you bringing a plant into your home, you are now its carer. Who have been the biggest female influences in your life? I have always been surrounded by such amazing women. My mum, grandma and two sisters. Also, nearly all of my close friends have built their own paths and careers working for themselves, which has been inspiring and they have all been a great support to me. What does a typical day juggling motherhood / work look like for you? It really does vary each day! I feel so lucky to be able to work from home and my partner Jasper also works from home, so he is never too far away. It has been a very busy few weeks though as we have just finished vintage up here, but now all of the grapes are picked we are looking forward to having some quieter family time. She usually wakes up around 5 or 6am, feed then back to sleep for a few more hours. This is the time we try and get some work done, washing, cleaning and cooking (so much washing). The afternoons are then usually spent going for a walk and more play time for her as she is much more awake in the afternoons. What advice would you give to a new mum? Support is so important, especially in the first few weeks. We came home from the hospital on the same day, but went to my parents house where we all spent the first week. It was such a big help having my mum to help with settling her after feeding, so I could get some much needed sleep. It’s a whirlwind and you don’t know what you’re doing, so it was so important to have some help! It really does take a village to raise a child. Best indoor plants to have with a newborn / child in the house? I guess nothing too spiky! I keep looking around the house and now see things as hazards that will need to be removed when she starts crawling, such as pot stands! Everything will have to be on the ground in a few months! What inspires your creative process? We get to work with some really great interior designers and architects on projects which is always inspiring to come up with plant installations to suit these spaces. Adding elements of different heights and clusters of planting are important in our plant styling. Light is also a big factor that dictates what kind of plants we can use in the space as well. From your experience,

LISTEN: The Teacher’s Pet podcast Confession: the only thing I’ve read in the last couple of months is the Kmart catalogue. Not proud. I can feel my brain cells evaporating. You know what they say, reading improves your spelling, vocabulary, grammatical proficiency and the stuff what we need to be learned about in our brain minds… … … IT’S BEGINNNINNNNNG! Anyyyhoo. What I have been getting into, is going off to sleep listening to true crime podcasts; because what better time to listen to the nitty gritty details of someone getting away with a heinous murder than whilst lying in bed in the total darkness while your husband is on night shift and all you have to protect you is the hairbrush next to your bed and the whiff of an unwashed sports bra? For my first foray into the world of podcasts, I’ve been delving deep into The Teacher’s Pet. This series, produced by The Australian, is focused on the unsolved disappearance of Sydney mother Lyn Dawson, whose teacher husband Chris has been long suspected of murdering her, before moving one of his 16-year-old students, with whom he was having an affair, into their home. I know. Right?? Quite a cracker of a podcast to whet your appetite for true crime analyses, and in particular how such a systematic failure of the justice system can have even occurred. The Teacher’s Pet podcast available from the App store WATCH: Younger Holy binge alert Batman, mama has a new day job. And by day job, I mean… opportunity to watch three years of television in two weeks. So, as is usually the case, I’m atrociously tardy to this party, with google helpfully informing me that Younger has been streaming on Stan since 2013 [at which point I didn’t even know Stan existed!! What is this Stan you speak of; the younger, uglier, more annoying sister of Netflix?]… but on the up side, this means there are now literally five seasons available for me [and YOU] to watch from start to finish, portioned out in binge-worthy bite size 20-minute episodes. The premise is thus; Liza Miller is a 41-year-old, recently divorced mother of a teenager who she is sending off to college. Having been out of the workplace for almost two decades raising her daughter, when she attempts to follow her own ambitions from college and get a job in publishing, she discovers that the industry is only looking to hire 26-year-old millennials [and here I am staring uncomfortably into my future]. So, with the help of her best friend she gives herself a makeover, buys some ripped jeans and applies for jobs pretending she’s a 20-something recent college graduate. Ultimately the ruse is a success and Liza becomes an assistant at Empirical Press, with the series following her day-to-day juggling being a 41 year old mother, life with a millennial boyfriend, and pulling off the charade as her ‘younger’ workplace alter ego. 5 seasons available on Stan DO: Staycation You know what I need more of in my life? Five-star hotels. This month I rectified this glaring oversight and treated myself to a little “staycation” in the Adelaide CBD, availing myself of the facilities at the Pullman in Hindmarsh Square. I swam, I steam roomed, I had cocktails at the bar, I stayed up until midnight watching the American Music Awards from the comfort of a plush bed with 174 pillows and crisp white linen sheets that I didn’t have to wash myself! I didn’t use the kettle because I read somewhere once that people use hotel kettles to boil their underwear clean. THE HORROR! Anyway, sometimes a mum just has to take some time out for herself, and I can’t recommend it highly enough! Book it in ladies! pullmanhotels.com.au

Lesson 1: Expected pre-game dad behaviour. Dad mode needs to start as soon as your partner is pregnant, not actually after the baby is born. Your extra support is needed straight away. Why you ask? Imagine going through pregnancy? Symptoms of pregnancy are: nausea, vomiting, headaches, dizziness, bloating, fatigue, mood swings, crying, constipation and back pain. Sound bad? That’s just the early symptoms. Wait, it gets worse. You can then add: leg pain, body swelling, aching back, pelvis and hips, stomach pain, heartburn, UTI’s, anaemia and shortness of breath. To top it off your partner has the stress of hoping your baby and the pregnancy is progressing normally and then being anxious or scared of giving birth. All this discomfort and your partner is usually still holding down a job too. To say I respect and admire women through pregnancy is an understatement. Once you receive the amazing news that you are expecting, you need to adjust your train of thought to make your partner as comfortable as possible. You are now: cleaning the house, cooking, doing the shopping, laundry and changing the linen. For not one minute are you going to complain about your extra workload and do not dare expect a pat on the back. This is the least you can do. Illustration – Owen Lindsay Your social calendar now revolves around what your partner wants to do. If you have plans to go out and she doesn’t want to as she is having an off day (which is more than expected when you look at previously mentioned pregnancy symptoms) then you are having a night in. You will show no disappointment in this change of plans either and you may even want to say that you would rather stay home. On these nights in you will do whatever the hell your partner wants to do: if you have to sit through a movie that you despise, let me give you the big tip, you are watching it and making some popcorn too and maybe even giving her a foot massage. A couple of months pre-birth you will get the nest ready. The biggest clean your house will ever receive and this impeccable standard must be maintained on a weekly basis until birth. This will take many hours but there will be pride in what you have achieved and your partner will be grateful for the initiative you have taken in getting the house ready for your new addition. “Throughout pre-birth just remember the sacrifice your partner is making. She is the hero.” Be proud of her and help her through this journey. The least you can do is pick up the slack and alter your lifestyle accordingly. If, for some, reason your partner is pregnant and you have done none of the above, pull your finger out and start making things right!!! PS: mum can pull rank on naming rights too. Deal with it. Dads, get to work!!!! You’re welcome, Symon Jarowyj thewinningdadmanual.com Instagram : @thewinningdadmanual

Everyone loves a visit from Nan. For kids, ‘Nan’s looking after you today’ means surprise candy, story reading and special hugs. For parents, it means the eternal struggle- juggle and daily-dilemma of rising early to make breakfasts, packing lunches, school drop offs, peak-hour traffic, supermarket calls, homework, sports commitments, evening meals, bath time and bedtime is made that much easier. Not all parents have the luxury of frequently calling on grandparents to help them… however, one new Adelaide business is changing that. My Mémère offers all day care, after school care and evening and weekend care for children under the supervision of Nans themselves, because who has more child caring creds than an actual grandmother? Mémère nannies are mothers and grandmothers and have knowledge and experience that only years of spending time with children can bring. While you’re saving some time to balance your lifestyle, My Mémère nannies can run errands, read stories, prepare school lunches and do school pick up/ drop o , in a way than only a nan can. mymemere.com.au

You could be forgiven for having looked at Osher Gunsberg through rose coloured glasses over the last couple of decades. One of Australia’s most loved faces, with a mile-wide grin, gravity defying (occasionally questionable) hair and most recently, the wrangler of the roses for The Bachelor Australia, he’s a guy who, one might assume, had it all. During the height of his career success however, Osher (formerly known as “Andrew G”) was falling apart behind the scenes. Struggling with anxiety, panic attacks, paranoid delusions, weight issues and addiction, things weren’t quite so rosy. Osher has opened up about his ongoing struggle with mental illness in his raw, disarmingly honest and powerful memoir “Back after the Break”, which delves into the complexities of the human mind, how our thoughts drive our behaviour and how the path to positive mental health is challenging, but absolutely possible. We chat with Osher about life with mental illness, being a step dad and (pardon the reckless use of stereotypical reality TV jargon) his journey towards recovery and sharing his story. Can you tell us about the process of writing the book? At what point in your recovery did you decide you were going to write a book about what you’d been through? I’ve been sober for eight and a half years, and it was during the first few years of sobriety that I first learned the power of hearing someone share their story, and the power that I had to share my own story once I was up to it. I noticed that the more authentically I shared my story, the more powerful it was for others. It really helped me when I heard someone else share their story, profoundly, and I just wanted to be a part of doing that for someone else. I’ve found that since writing the book I’m having two main points of feedback, one is “oh wow, except for the interviewing Madonna parts, that’s pretty much how it is for me, I thought it was just me”. The other one is “oh my goodness, my wife or husband or daughter or son or dad has talked about this but I never understood it, until I read this book” and I’m so grateful that that’s the effect the book has had upon people because that is precisely the reason that I wrote it. People all over Instagram are posting images of themselves reading “Back after the Break” which you’ve been reposting in your own Instagram stories. How surreal is that for you, seeing all of these different people, in different parts of Australia or the world, sharing their moments reading your book? It’s pretty interesting. For me, when I see the book in other people’s hands, it is a profound demonstration that thoughts become things. This is beneficial in positive ways in our lives and negative ways. If you have a brain that has a tendency and a great skill for ruminating anxiety, and you then take action based on those thoughts, that will eventually manifest into things based upon those thoughts. If those things are based mostly in fear, then that’s what you’ll end up with. This can be quite negative for you and the people around you. That’s all we really are as humans, the result of repeated habitual actions that we take in any direction. To see my book in the hands of someone on the beach in Rarotonga, it’s incredible. All I did was write it a word at a time, all I did was edit it a word at a time, and then someone hit go on a printing press and a whole bunch of people got enrolled, and it’s extraordinary. We need to appreciate that as humans we have this super power, that we can manifest thoughts into things, and that’s what sets us aside from other species on this planet. We can either create incredible things that benefit each other, or horrible things that can destroy us, our relationships and each other. I’ve definitely experienced both. I’ve experienced the result of when repetitive thoughts manifest into very negative things and then, seeing someone reading my book in Central Park or Croatia on the beach, well that’s pretty good. So, it’s nice that it can work in the other way. How have you found the response to the book thus far? Overall, it’s been extraordinarily positive. I’m very grateful that I’m in a position to do this. I’ve worked for a long time to get to this platform, to have this opportunity now to speak about something that is so important, not just to me, but to everybody. One in four people in this country lives with complex mental illness. That is not necessarily just the people who are living with it in between their ears, but also the people living around them; husbands, wives, fathers, daughters, employers, employees. It’s so important to share this stuff. The reaction can be intense sometimes. I’ve done quite a number of events for the book now and people talk to me about their experiences with mental illness, and it might be the first time they’ve ever disclosed this information to anyone and you’ve got to respect that. I’m a TV host and a broadcaster and a podcaster, not a psychologist, so all I can do is validate and check to make sure people are ok, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of that. In the book you talked about your experiences as a “fat kid”. Do you think that self-conscious feeling ever really leaves you? It is definitely something that stays with you. Body dysmorphia is a very powerful and strange thing. I was in Weight Watchers when I was 8. Even after being the very first vegan on the cover of Men’s Health and being as ripped as anything on that cover, my wife Audrey will tell you (and she giggles every night when I do it) that I still brush my teeth with my

When two is enough. Picture this: an old home, blooming with character and brimming with stories of the past lives, lived within its walls. A frangipani tree flowers the façade and an old caravan sits patiently in the driveway, awaiting its next adventure. The house nestles snugly into its country landscape while the smell of the nearby ocean fills its red-brick lungs. Three kids play out the back at dusk, swinging on an old tyre hung from a sturdy, old oak tree. Watching on from the kitchen window, Mum and Dad listen to an old vinyl, sip on red wine and make pizzas from scratch to be devoured under moonlight beneath that same Oak tree. Sounds pretty good right? I wrote that description a few years ago before the birth of my first child, in the hopes of manifesting a similar future. I still desire everything that narrative depicts, except one: I am pretty sure that after having two kids, I am well and truly done. The romantic notion of a tribe of five has been stomped on by the beautiful chaos that is two kids. The leap from one child to two has been so much bigger than I ever could have imagined. I have found it so deeply challenging, so utterly exhausting but I have also been left feeling completely content. Sure, the sleepless nights were to be expected but what I was unprepared for was just how relentless this Mothering gig was to become. It Does. Not. Stop. There is zero personal space and zero down time. You are juggling the needs of two (in my case, very different) individuals who completely rely on you for their survival. Getting out the door in the morning is an hour long process that requires supreme negotiation skills, peak cardio fitness and a strong-ass coffee. Juggling naps requires military precision and the bedtime routine will literally have you on your knees. Pass the wine! And just when you think you’ve got them all figured out, they will simultaneously, self-combust in a public place and remind you exactly who is boss. Like I said: deeply challenging and utterly exhausting. But don’t despair. Remember that other thing I said about being completely content? For me, that’s true too. Witnessing my daughter soothe her crying baby brother for the first time with a loving kiss on his forehead will be etched in my mind forever. Seeing the way my son’s face lights up when his big sister enters the room gives me mini heart explosions on the daily. And watching them happily play together and look out for each other while they don’t know I’m looking, makes me so proud to be their Mum. Loving them is easy, but loving me? Not so much. Being a Mother is all-consuming and in these early years of my children’s lives, there has been little time for me. After almost three years of being either pregnant, or breastfeeding, or both, I am ready to start putting a little more time back into loving and caring for myself. I look forward to my body being mine again, to prioritising some much needed alone time and to be able to put some energy into work and projects that light me up. To have a third child would mean putting all of these things on hold and for the sake of my children, my husband and my own mental health, that’s just not a sacrifice I am willing to make. Some families may want more, some families may want less. But for my family, four of us, is just enough. And what about that red wine-sipping, vinyl-listening, pizza-making Mum and Dad I mentioned earlier? Now, it’s their time: to get their groove back, and start dancing in the kitchen again. And as we edge towards our second-born’s first birthday, we are starting to see glimpses of a life less dictated by nap schedules and feed times and more conducive to moonlight dinners and impromptu weekend adventures. Now we just need to buy that caravan. @dannii.odonnell Image by @georgykeenphotography