Hosting With Heart

Lisa Booth is a firm believer that you really can have it all - a beautiful, comfortable, affordable home that's also kind to the planet.

In 2016 Lisa and her husband Steve, aka Boots, built a home in Victoria's Ky Valley now known as Booken House. Lisa painstakingly designed and project managed the build of the home by drawing on her intimate knowledge of best-practice sustainability principles coupled with her experience in renovating.

Once completed, Lisa started posting photos of the house on social media, which somewhat unexpectedly resulted in a torrent of public and media interest in the project. This prompted her to start a business teaching others how to build their own similarly sustainable homes minus the exorbitant overheads.

The business is now known as Booken Blend, and in the intervening period has garnered Lisa, Boots and their blended family - on which the business name is based - some 45,000 followers on Instagram and an impressive array of press.

As a long-term fan of Lisa and Booken Blend, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to chat with her a couple of weeks ago. I know you'll come away from this episode feeling inspired to follow in her footsteps too.

Nadine Brown started her relationship with all things flowers as a teenager, scoring a job in a garden centre at the age of 15.

From there, she went on to volunteer at a local flower shop and study horticulture at TAFE before opening her own florist, Wildflower, at the age of just 23.

About 10 years later, due to the intense demands that came as a result of overwhelming success, Nadine sold the shop and transitioned the wedding and event side of her business to Nadine Floral Design.

She spent the next 17 years immersed in motherhood, facilitating up to 60 weddings a year and maintaining a career as a floristry teacher at TAFE. In 2019 however, it was time for another change.

Wild Flora Studio denoted the start of another chapter in Nadine's career, focusing on bespoke workshops and mentoring and a scaling back of weddings.

Like many, Covid prompted her to explore an online offering, giving members access to a huge library of professional tutorials, education, coaching & community. Recently rebranded as 'The Ivy Institute', Nadine now offers most of her resources exclusively online.

If this didn't leave Nadine busy enough, in 2021 she opened the doors to The Hut at Cedar&Fern, an off-grid rustic cabin built by her partner Rob using reclaimed materials and decked out with an assortment of family treasures.

Talking with Nadine was an absolute treat and I hope you get as much enjoyment out of listening to our chat as I did having it.

Alice Armitage is a young, energetic, creatively-minded entrepreneur with ideas in abundance. She's also recently become a host, opening up a 1 bedroom space within a property she not long ago bought in Moree, in north-west New South Wales.

Along with her newly forged role welcoming guests, she earlier this year launched Pandaemonium - an elegantly designed, quarterly newspaper that features stories of innovation in what Alice calls 'a decentralised Australia.'

The paper has long been a dream of Alice's, especially having authored and published a super successful book in collaboration with chef Luke Burgess, 'Into the Pandaemonium', back in 2019.

The second issue of the paper came out a month or so ago and was every bit as wonderful as the first - well living up to its goal to support and showcase innovators, creators, business builders and self-starters that live outside the traditional metropolitan mould.

Alice is someone I'm looking forward to watching go from strength to strength over the years to come and it was my absolute pleasure to chat with her a few weeks back.

If ever I was to meet a guest who personifies the saying 'don't let things happen, make them', it'd be Amanda Hogg.

Based in Port Lincoln, South Australia, Amanda and her eco-friendly plumber husband Tim started remote tiny house business 'Eyre Way' in 2021, launching their first fully sustainable, luxury off-grid tiny house, Yambara, in November of that year.

Since then, they've been almost fully booked and recently decided - only a matter of weeks ago, in fact - to dip their feet in the water again, launching tiny home #2, Maldhi.

Both houses are situated in remote locations on the stunning Eyre Peninsula coastline, enabling guests to enjoy a truly unique, immersive holiday experience in nature.

Through a very cleverly crafted strategy and great photography, Amanda has amassed an incredible 16,000 followers on Instagram since launching and she and Tim, along with their young kids, have further tiny homes firmly in sight.

Hosting With Heart has reached the incredible milestone of fifty episodes and accordingly, podcast host Jen Clark is interviewed by her partner Kirstie to reveal and reflect on what she's learned over that the past two and half years.

Jen and Kirstie also discuss their personal journey over the course of the last 12 months, along with unveiling what's in store next for the podcast and the broader Hosting With Heart community.

Katrina Chambers is a writer, serial renovator, stylist, DIY aficionado and more recently, holiday property host.

A prolific blogger since 2006, Katrina appeared alongside her sister Amie on Channel 9's The Block in 2011, an experience she fondly remembers and gleaned a wealth of knowledge from.

Currently, Katrina's passion lies in all things blogging and she is now a significant presence in the digital/social world via her website 'Katrina Chambers Life & Design' and on Instagram, where she's amassed nearly 50,000 followers.

She's also developed an affordable, accessible and practical eCourse for aspiring renovators named Reno Rules.

Behind the scenes, Katrina lives day to day in the bustling regional NSW town of Wagga, is a Mum to three grown boys and a committed advocate for those suffering from Crohn's disease, something that she has been living with herself for 24 years.

There are people who give lip service to being sustainable and there's Louise Freckelton.

Along with her partner David Bray, Louise owns and manages Kestrel Nest, an off-grid, offline eco-retreat for couples, families and groups, situated on their broader property Highfield Farm and Woodland, based in Mt Adrah, New South Wales, about 60km east of Wagga.

Louise is a former foodie turned farmer and is uncompromisingly devoted to treading as lightly as possible as she can on the earth. She is passionately committed to honouring the rich cultural heritage of not only the various buildings on her property, but of the land itself, something that can often go unexplored and unacknowledged.

Since opening the doors to Kestrel Nest a couple of years ago, Louise and David have been featured in an impressive array of print media including Delicious, Escape, Qantas Food & Wine, Forte and Country Style, They were also a finalist in the 2022 Sustainable Tourism Awards.

Louise has long been on my list of dream guests. Her socially conscious, highly considered ethos is something I both admire and aspire to and it was an absolute pleasure to catch up with her recently.

Carly Baker-Burnham is not your average fourth-generation Queensland woman.

Along with running Bloodwood Cabin, a rustic holiday shack she and husband Grant originally built as an 'adult cubby' made from reclaimed materials sourced from their 20,000 acre cattle farm, Bonnie Doone, Carly is a photographer, artist, celebrant, regenerative farmer, skilled management professional and Mum to four.

In response to the public's increasing appetite for remote, sustainable getaways, inflated all the more by Covid, Carly decided to open the cabin, located near the town of Monto in Queensland's North Burnett Region, some 600 kilometres from Brisbane, for public bookings in July, 2021.

Since then, the incredibly unique, refreshingly rudimentary cabin has been almost always booked out. This is without doubt down to Carly's ongoing commitment to Monto's livelihood via her involvement in multiple, community-building initiatives, including restoring the old town theatre and co-leading a town makeover project.

Annabelle Hickson started her writing career as a news reporter for The Australian newspaper in Sydney and Brisbane before a handsome farmer in a small aircraft lured her out west to a grazing farm which they transformed into Australia's second largest pecan orchard.

During this time, Annabelle wrote a regular monthly column at Country Style magazine, she co-created a podcast called Dispatch to a Friend that was named as one of iTunes Australia's Top 10 podcasts for 2018 and published a book called A Tree in the House (Hardie Grant), which has been translated into German, Dutch and Chinese.

Now, Galah is her focus. Galah is an award-winning cultural magazine for people who care about regional Australia. Over three issues each year, Galah celebrates regional Australia and the creative, diverse and innovative people who live here.

Annabelle brings together a first-hand understanding of life in both regional Australia and the city, as well as proven expertise in journalism and community-building. And most of all, Annabelle brings passion to this project to tell diverse and exciting stories from regional Australia.

Chances are, if you're part of the Australian and New Zealand hosting community on Instagram, you've come across the account of host and shopkeeper Belinda Satterthwaite.

Owner of the renowned Tomolly homewares store in Carcoar, NSW, Belinda is also a short-term accommodation host, having established the stunningly beautiful Hargan's Cottage, located adjacent to her own home in an old, converted flour mill, a couple of years ago.

Day to day, Belinda spends her time sourcing independently crafted, locally produced homewares and facilitating guest comings and goings at Hargan's, managing all bookings old-school via a pen and paper calendar. No Airbnb, no Stayz, just good old-fashioned hospitality - and perhaps a loaf of home-cooked bread to boot - delivered from the heart.

Belinda is such a warm and inspiring person and it was my absolute pleasure to chat with her a few weeks back.