Find of the Week

Well I was wandering through Myer today trying desperately not to buy anything and I have found the most amazing new product.

Its a brand called Fringe and its so pretty. Its almost vintage but still modern and just .... heaven.

I brought two pieces from their Christmas collection

but I am also in love with all their other stuff.

A Different Way of Thinking

In my last house everything on my walls was perfectly aligned and perfectly square, it made things easy on the eye and it just felt right to me. Saying that I am desperately in love with the way these people seem to have just thrown all the alignment and even numbers out the window to create something quite interesting.

I can imagine people stopping by for coffee and getting captured by the different displays and not quite making it to the kitchen.

Could you see yourself stopping to look at these amazing picture walls?

Adding a touch of class to my drinking

I will admit - after a long day torturing engineers I like coming home, kick off my heels and sit somewhere lovely with a long glass of scotch and coke (diet of course). So in my head I have been thinking and scheming of a way to make this simple little night time ritual something elegant and more special.

Here is where my story is going, walking through the markets on Sunday I spot the most amazing crystal decanter, its square so a little bit more modern and its perfect. Oh and did I mention the price $30!!!

So I am going to put my scotch in the decanter and it will be lovely. On my way home I stop into my grandmothers house to show her my amazing find. Only to be told she has 5 of these and I am welcome to them all. So I now have 6 different equally lovely decanters which will house not only my scotch but gin for G&T's on a Sunday, plus a whole bunch of other much used liqueurs.

What do you think, are they not pure heaven! (I only photographed 3 because the other 3 were already wrapped and ready to be boxed for a year)

The Doors Have It!

Short post today because life has just become busy at work again. Can you imagine a boss expecting you to actually work for the whole 8 hours!

Me - Hello, don't you realise I have a house to build and a blog to write.... no .... no fine my poor bloggy friends are just going to have to do without me today.

Boss - your what?

Me - .... never mind!

But I couldn't go without showing you my fabulous front door. Its going to be 2.4 (maybe 2.7) meters tall and about 1.5 meters wide. Its going to be heavenly.

William Russell Fusion Metal Entrance door in Blackwood.

Also - I am in love with this by Q Design Perth. They specialise in laser cutting and can make my this in a gate. I love the idea of having it powder coated in the darker shade I am having on the front of the house. What do you think?

Garden Dreaming

There are so many pretty things to show you and everything is getting me so excited but one that I am really loving is my garden. I am already planning my front yard and thought I would share some of my ideas with you.

So the main thing is that we will be having a security gate with intercom out the front, that way I wont have people knocking on my front door randomly. However I still want my gate to be pretty so I settled on something that will look similar to this but with a different cut out on the gate and a roof of some sort. It will also probably be slightly taller.

Between the gate and the front door there is only a very narrow walkway and I was hoping we could have a small narrow rendered wall and fill it with bamboo like this picture. It can grow nice and tall and add to sense of privacy the courtyard will hopefully have.

I do want a raised garden bed out the front and I think it will halve the space between the house and the road, probably another barrier but I want it to be very pretty. I am thinking three flowering plums giving my lovely house a beautiful pink glow in spring.

So that's what I have got so far. Its going to be an interesting mix of plants but I am hoping to make it as easy care as possible.

Also - you may or may not have noticed - I put a visitor counter on my site yesterday. See I was starting to think I was writing this to myself and getting a little bit depressed that no one loves me (whiny and princess like I know) but 54 hits in the last two days has surprised even me. I am wonderfully honoured that other people would take such an interest in my thoughts and ideas for my house. I am also terribly sorry I cant show you more just yet but my shire has decided its going to take its time over approvals. I can say we will have a retaining wall, a pool and a slab before Christmas so stick with me - things are happening!

My husband as I do a fair bit of travelling and one tradition I love is that everywhere we go we collect different artifacts / items to remind us of where we have been. Soapstone inuite people from Canada, solid wood carved warrior from Hong Kong, Vietnamese water puppets. Lots of lovely little items to remind us of where we have been and what we have done. The question is, how do you show these to their best advantage. Well i have found a few different ideas I kind if like very much.

Purchases

Today is all about my latest purchases. When I was in Vietnam I picked up the most amazing vintage water puppets, they are all cracked and old and ugly but interestingly I just love them. I cant wait to find somewhere amazing to put them in my new home..... when I eventually have one. I have 4 little men and woman one of which is a fairy. I hate to say it but I couldn't bear to sit through the entire show (Lots of screeching and over loud music in a hot hall with very little leg room) but the puppets themselves I had to have.

I also brought these mini apples from an online store called The White Shed (here). I want these on my white stone tops in one of my lovely glass canisters. I think it will contrast well with the dark wooden cupboards.

And then there are these. They are little glass drops, I have no idea what I will use them for or where I will put them but I just had to have them..... I know I will hang them from the roof at Christmas with some snow drops but for every day use.... I'm not so sure. I brought these from a place called Re found Objects (here).

Too Patriotic Perhaps but.....

A month or so ago we went to Sydney and my husband did the bridge climb. I on the other hand who likes heights almost as much as brussel sprouts, sat with a glass of wine looking at all the old pictures trying to figure out how they managed to build it.

Obviously its an engineering marvel but how many pictures actually think about how it was built and then I had my Epiphany. My theatre room is going to pay homage to the bridge. So one wall is going to have a floor to ceiling mural and I am also going to use a bunch of other photo's down the other end of the room to show just how it was built.

Then it got difficult. Where do I find construction photo's... not as easy as I first though, however finally I found them in the NSW State Library, amazing beautiful pictures you can buy and use. Wonderful. Only problem is it took me 6 hours to go through the 100's of thousands of photo's to find just the right ones. But I think I have.

I am thinking of using this one as the main mural......

or maybe this one?????

What about this one?????? Its not going to be as easy as I thought.

And what about these pics, don't you think they are totally amazing, breath-taking and worth having in my house.

To Pivot or Not

Sorry its been so long since my last post...... I was off in Vietnam swanning around in the heat and craziness. But im back now and finally focusing on house stuff.

No more holidays until the house is finished..... yes my love (fingers may have been crossed)

Anyways, doors! A hard call. Originally we wanted a pivot doors, something big and imposing and lovely but have been told recently that they arnt finished well and arnt weather tight.... so what to do????? No idea, its a hard thing to decide.... do I really need my fron door to be weather tight? yes I know I do but its so pretty and I want one so badly. So off this weekend to meet a joiner and go through the pro's and con's.

What do you think - they are pretty lovely right.

This last one is the actual design I want if possible.

Organised Is Not A Dirty Word - A RANT!

I don't know about you but I am one of those people who gets a weird tightening in my chest and I find it hard to breath if I'm not 100% informed about the current process of the build. This also happens when I forget something that was said, or get a little bit overwhelmed by the changes and decisions both already made and yet to be made. So I plan, and I take notes, make lists and spreadsheets and I have folders with every bit of information and samples of everything and I can breath that little bit easier.

Let me start by saying I work in a very high stress engineering environment where plans are made and changed in lightening speed and making sure those changes don't slip through the cracks mean certain systems need to be put in place. Now I had pre-start last Thursday and to be honest, I was nervous that I would forget something or that I would explain something and it would get lost in translation. To keep me breathing normally I took the spreadsheets I use at work for drawing modifications and applied this to the pre-start, Any change I scribbled on plans I put into my spreadsheet, I numbered drawings and sub numbered changes and it was just so much easier to understand the 87 or so changes I had made.

This is organised, this is good..... well except that my husband laughed at me and told me I was a control freak, my mother explained that the pre-start person probably wouldn't want the carbon copy I had made of my changes file and my friends told me to relax and just let it flow. HELLO! When did being organised and making other people life easier make me a freak. It seems there is merit in just scribbling notes onto pieces of scrap paper, receipts etc. It makes you look more relaxed and carefree. Why do we live in a society where people are teased and put into boxes for doing something that is essentially..... good. We want our kids to be organised, we obviously want our builder to be organised and yet when it comes to the client they are scary and painful because they have an organised way of conveying their wants and needs.

I actually apologised to the pre-start consultant when I met her for my organisation and I honestly did feel bad, I did feel like I had tried to hard, but then I feel bad for feeling bad about being organised. I received a compliment the other day about how inspired a person is by how organised I am and how they hope that they can be as "organised" as me when they build their house and I actually felt awkward about accepting it, I wanted to feel good but at the same time I felt like the nerd at the front of the class who has actually studied for the test.

Ultimately though and this is what I keep telling myself, the nerd who actually studies is going to become a doctor or whatever they want whereas the carefree, relaxed coaster will most likely be struggling in the future. Same with the house, I don't have to worry about having passageways in the wrong spot, about walking to the other side of the house to switch a light on, or about a kitchen that just doesn't have enough storage.

So the control freak stays - and to my lovely husband - Please stop laughing, its really not funny!