new crop

Proud 9 year old tomato grower.

new courtyard

I have been painting and planting more in the new courtyard. Silhouette and Elizabeth-Rose seem to be pleased with the result.

ding dong

Beautiful new door bell (left) from Girl & Graaf to hang outside the yellow door. Better still, it was accompanied by beautiful service, thank you for your care and thoughtfulness Lauren.

spring

Busy creating craft kits, beads kits and hair clips for the girls school Spring Fair on Saturday. A crafty spring has sprung.

cloud nine

New bread board from hello polly (with vase from Kikki K).

little things

Heaven is a clothes line. Today I finished painting and planting in the internal courtyard that sits between the old and the new house. So after two years without it, I hooked up the old clothes line. Air dried sheets in the sun today... feeling happy and thankful for the little things in life.

oobleck

Best science homework ever...

Oobleck Recipe:
- 1 cup water
- 1.5-2 cups corn flour
- a few drops of food colouring

Thank you to Dr Seuss.

returning to normal

'Do more of what makes you happy.'

A busy month has passed. I'm still completing lots of house pieces... painting the old bathroom, finishing off incomplete bits of flooring, touch up painting, toilet rolls and towel rails, plus need to overhaul the old laundry... all the bits that will go on for some months yet I suspect... but also reclaiming a bit of normal. 

The last month included two new additions to the family for Babe 2's recent birthday - Guinea pigs (Pip and Miss Daisy), getting back to yoga a few mornings a week before work (my old bones need it), entertaining family and friends in our lovely space (joy), reading (I really missed reading through the build) and even a little bit of painting. 

It's good. Getting back into the world is good.

new additions

Introducing you to our 2 new family members - Guinea Pigs - Pip (left) and Miss Daisy (centre). Our now (slightly) elderly rabbits Silhouette and Elizabeth-Rose are still undecided about the new additions, however Audrey loves everyone (she's that kind of dog). 

I'm kind of hopeless when it comes to Pet Rescue... I just want to bring them all home. 

splashbacked

My first tiling attempt complete. Kitchen splashback with offset  100x600mm matt white tiles. Happy.

painting

Apologies for the absence, but it's been a good absence... after a much needed summer break and respite from endless renovating... I've been back in the thick of it and any spare time between work for me is painting again. We had left much of the interior timber work unfilled and unpainted so it's a big job.

However, this week I'm turning my attention to tiling the kitchen splashback. I've never tiled before so I'll fill you in on progress. Slightly scared.

Coffee. My best friend again.

just for fun

Through the tears of pain, we had to laugh this morning. Over the last 18 months the Lovely One has used every power tool and power saw available and survived relatively unscathed. Then this morning... he sliced through his finger making breakfast. He now sports a few very impressive stitches in his finger all in the name of bacon and eggs!

Fortunately a lovely day at Luna Park, Sydney cheered everyone up.

bush walks and waterfalls

'They say I'm old-fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast!' ― Dr. Seuss

It's been a busy eighteen months, sometimes too busy. Time out. It's good.

last days of summer

'I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again." Lewis Carroll

We're back from a long weekend at the beach where we enjoyed what might be the last days of summer. After swimming every afternoon last week, today is cold and rainy and it suddenly feels more like Winter than Autumn. Whilst I'm sad to see the long days end I'm also looking forward to some snug time... oh and perhaps a chance to finish painting the exterior of the house (which I avoided in the summer heat)... sadly sleeping til summer won't be an option.

happy easter

Easter egg hunt with the Babes and 3 of our nieces... too much fun. Happy Easter to you.

did we really live like this?

'The one charm of the past is that it is the past.' Oscar Wilde

I'm not sure if I was just too busy building the new extension, or if I was just fixated on the vision, the hope of future beauty not to really feel the chaos.

These pictures were taken along the journey, we all ate, lived, played in one room (top right), we had to cross that little bridge over rubble to get to the bathroom for a while (bottom right), the hall came down around us whilst we all slept in the room to the right of the front door (middle right), and the old playroom became a tool shed right next to the kitchen (top left). I can honestly say that I don't know how we did it... I can proudly say that no one even seemed to really complain... and I can very, very happily say that I'm so pleased it's over.

hello new watch

Oh so beautiful. Watches from Melbourne based AÃRK Collective and a great interview with the Designers over at the Design Files.

Eagerly awaiting the postman's delivery of this little lovely.

The ‘Classic’ watch in Grey by AÃRK Collective. Photo by AÃRK’s creative director Cedric Austria.

an old friend

After the success of our previous table restoration I decided to have ago at our outdoor table. This one was given to me by my older sister about 20 years ago when a graphic design studio were throwing out 3 of them out.

It's had a quite a life with us from outdoor table to stained dark brown for our dining room in Surry Hills, then my Studio table (covered in paint spills) at Randwick and then the work bench during the reno here.

An hour or so with the belt sander, then a lot of hand sanding, a very dilute layer of Porter's Paints Palm Beach White, then 2 coats of Porter's Paints Clearcoat (sanding in between).

It will be our outdoor dining / my outdoor studio table now and I'm so it's starting afresh. It really does show the wear and tear of shared adventures.

sunday collector

With our Master bedroom (pic) now complete and the Study/Studio super close, it seemed like a serendipitous occasion to introduce you to the very lovely Briar Stanley over at Sunday Collector ... just in case you haven't met yet. She does happen to be the younger sister of a couple of my very dear friends (both big sisters are also amazingly stylish), but she is also one of my favourite bloggers. Posts on home, baby, styling, food, family and more make her site (and Instagram space) places of great beauty, energy, style and grace.

Why serendipitous? Because today she blogged about her new bedlinen, on exactly the same day that I was photographing our new room... and we just so happen to have exactly the same lovely linen quilt cover along with yellow and grey themed resting places (even if they come up a bit beige under lights in the pic!). Enjoy.

Adairs Vintage Washed Linen quilt cover, White quilt and pillows Country Road, Fabric covered canvas in Marimekko fabric from Chee Soon Fitzgerald (this colour no longer available).

keeping the doctor away

We have our first apple! My father gave the tree to my daughters about 5 years ago and this week we picked apples from it for the first time. In truth they've budded before but the possums always beat us to it. Happy girls today.

Also a pic from the backyard of the extension and pool - you can see the terracotta roof of the original cottage popping up behind - the house. A rather sadly neglected garden in the foreground but it knows I'm coming back soon. Bit more painting and then back to garden duties.

have a love filled day

addicted to chocolate

One set of hooks from Margarita at Chocolate Creative (dresses below) just wasn't enough so I've added a new set in the outdoor room by the pool (towels above).

Hopefully everyone else (i.e. small people) will also find them irresistible and choose to hang their wet towels on them... rather than in a puddle on the floor.

Always beautiful Margarita, thank you... again.

a long eighteen months

The dining room... hard to do a 'before and after' when the 'before' was a rocky slope and falling down fence, so I thought it might be better to show you the journey. It may not make much sense but gives you a sense of what we did. (The little grey house that you can see being dismantled was my old Studio).

This is the kitchen, living, dining extension that we linked up with the old cottage (you can see the stairs that go down to form the link in the plasterboard pic).

Definately plastering and sanding those high ceilings and laying that timber floor were some of the lowest moments for me... and my poor hands. However the result is so lovely to live in that we forget the pain.

shelter?

Very rainy Sydney weekend so we got busy making pipe-cleaner houses to ensure that the pom pom people and their dice friends had somewhere nice to live.

inspiring

Madrid Unemployment Office. Just lovely. Hope you find sunshine in your day.

buying handmade

Arounna at bookhou (maker of perfectly perfect bags, papers and more) wrote a touching piece about buying handmade last week.

It prompted a discussion about how we price and value 'handmade'. Isn't it lucky that we all thrive on the joy, the satisfaction, the frustration, the promise and the peace we find in creating handmade objects and art... because it's rare that anyone does it for the money.

You can read her thoughts and all the beautiful responses here.

more old house

Downstairs is taking shape. Beautiful wall hooks in yellow and grey from Chocolate Creative, Bridesmaid dress was my mum's and Christening dress is The Lovely One's great, great grandmother's. Memento watch from my big sister last year to remember the search for the pale oak floor.

dinner

'Do more of what makes you happy.'

We bought this table about 9 years ago. It was made with reclaimed timber but had been painted with bright orange estapol. It entertained many an event at our old place on the back verandah. I think it was dirt cheap because it takes a couple of weight lifters to move it anywhere and I suspect they were happy to see it leave.

Of course we didn't have anywhere to put it in the old cottage, nor did the garden have any undercover space, so it has been left rather neglected in the garden for the last 5 years.

This week The Lovely One downed tools and did more of what makes him happy, furniture restoration. Many hours of cleaning and sanding and a few coats of beeswax later and it's now starting a new life as our beautiful dining room table. Thank you, thank you ... always.

New pebbles print on wall behind. 

splish splash

Girls bathroom is heavenly. After five years with four of us sharing the original squidgy bathroom we have now converted the old kitchen into a great big bathroom with enough room to actually have more than one person brush their teeth at a time. Penny round tiles on the wall above the big Kaldewei steel bath (one of the few splurges we made and just delicious to soak in) and two vanities have made it complete. Happy, happy.

old school

I love the summer holidays and I'm starting to feel sad that we've only got a week left until school returns. I have loved quiet mornings, no school lunches and activity and homework free afternoons. Girls have relaxed into the long summer days and this week they put away all things digital and made paper boats to race in the pool and discovered my old cuisenaire rods to create gorgeous pictures and enormous towers. 

Return to school also means a return to the tools and house renovation for me. I'm going to try and finish things in the first 6 months of the year... we'll see... I'll keep you posted on the progress. 

pebbles

A new year treat just arrived in the post. Beautiful. Thank you Garima Dhawan and Society 6.