Hi, 

I’m Frances Antonia and like you I am lots of things!

A wanderluster who is a hiker, runner, dreamer, adventurer, environmentalist, aspiring minimalist, a wife and mother. I dabble in cycling, yoga, photography and writing.

This is – My little space to share.

A little journal like.

Gentle by intention.

A lot heartfelt. 

A place to reach for a kinder life.

A space to connect with likeminded souls. 

I love serendipitous moments and synchronicity, it’s good flow.

I think karma matters. 

Whimsy, oh how I love thee. 

Always fighting the consumerist culture and buying less.

More about creativity than control.

Trying to balance my distaste of routine with the real need for some routine.

Working towards a more sustainable existence.

Love food. Particularly local and seasonal.

I’ve been sharing my life with my dry humoured partner for over 20 years and along the way we’ve been joined by four pretty darn awesome children! More recently a fluffy puppy joined our brood and we are all smitten with her. S.M.I.T.T.E.N.

Currently we’re living out our European dream in a small village in The Netherlands. When we are not travelling we can be found in our Italian inspired terrace eating pizza from our newly built pizza oven. That is, so long as the sun is shining! And let’s face it we live in The Netherlands so we keep our fingers crossed A LOT. And it is corona time so no travel . EEEK.

We are renovating our 100 year old house to reflect our love and life of travel – bringing Spain in with floor tiles and Aussie with a laundry. Ha ha. Many kids – many, many loads of washing. 

Oh la la how I love LOVE to write, actually I NEED to write. I am better when I do. I walked the Camino de Santiago for One Girl Australia, it was massive. I’ve written 50 first drafts of that! It’s a slow process. Now I have this idea that will do something different. I’ll write up our campervan adventure. I’m going to drop weekly posts about that here. On the side I’ll create a family album and maybe a long version for a book.

Deliberate is my word for 2021. I don’t want to do things for the sake of it. Life is too short. I feel like the last few years I haven’t been deliberate enough. I’m cleaning up my health, moving to whole food, away from many foods that feel wrong. I now drink celery juice instead of coffee first thing every single morning. I rate it. It’s helping me not only clear my insides but my life. Detoxing is like that. 

Currently, I am walking towards Rome from home, slowly. I started back in 2018 and I’m stuck at the border of The Netherlands and Belgium. Thank you corona! It is another slow burning project I have on the go. So many slow burning projects. Ha Iike my cook the book project – Italian recipes of course. I’ll get there. My kitchen has holes in the walls due to renovations so there’s an excuse. 

You can follow me on Instagram here. I’m always thinking I should let go of IG. I’ve come close many times, but dang it I meet the finest people there. Just when I’m so close to leaving someone says or does the nicest thing. It’s been a beautiful doorway to kindreds for me. So I’ve learnt to just take space from it. 

 If you’d like to work with me or simply get in touch please do!

📧 fcleven@gmail.com

Words and pictures © 2017 FRANCES ANTONIA. Please kindly request permission before republishing.

More of my story and writing:

Three Generations of Dreamers for Travel Play Live Magazine.

I wrote for Brydie Piaf right before we took flight on our Euro adventure. You can read that here.

I have written here  for Kirsty at Travel With Meraki about how my camino adventure took shape.

Adventuring with kids? I wrote about that for She Went Wild here.

We travelled in a Europe Road Trip Camper and we can’t recommend them enough. You can tell them we sent you, they are the best!

An older blog I’m wondering what to do with is Gentle Intention. I still really like it’s vibe so I think I’ll leave it there. I will try harder to bring that vibe here.