Buffet Finally Bought

After much searching, we finally bought a buffet cabinet for our lounge room. I was after something in a dark coloured wood, preferably with a wine rack to add a bit of character. While Oz Design Furniture actually make a cabinet in exactly the same style as our coffee table, I didn’t want things to be look all perfectly matched and preferred to find something a bit different.

We’re happy with our choice and now I need to work out what to display on top of it. We're also trying to decide what size and type of artwork to put on this wall - one huge piece or several smaller ones? Any ideas?

Weekend Snapshots

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend. We went shopping on Saturday morning to get a new suit for Paul for the wedding we have coming up on Easter Saturday. Later in the day, my friend Kylie came for afternoon tea and brought some cute cupcakes from Sherbet with her for us to enjoy (see the photo above).

Yesterday, we went to the local community fair. It was nice to wander around in the sunshine looking at the different stalls and Grace enjoyed seeing all the animals in the mobile farm enclosure.

What lovely things did you all do over the weekend?

Advice Needed

I need the opinion of some fellow mums out there. I was discussing the option of attending a playgroup with a friend of mine recently who was keen to join one. I thought it might be nice for Grace to start socialising with other children now that she's getting a bit older. We have looked into things and there is a session available at a playgroup nearby which means that we wouldn’t have to join an existing one and could start our own. There would only be 5 or 6 of us attending with our little ones.

Over the last few days though, I’ve starting thinking about germs and the fact that flu season will soon be approaching. I’m not worried about the other girls and their children in the group as none of us would ever bring our sick child along. However, what about all the toys and equipment that other little fingers will have touched? Am I being a worry wart or at almost one, is Grace still too little? Would really appreciate your feedback...

Blogging Award

This week, I have been kindly given the 'Sunshine Award' by two lovely fellow bloggers - Nellie from McCarthy Designs and Louise from Illume Design. Thank you girls - you are both so sweet and I adore your two blogs.


The rules of the Sunshine Award are:

1.Put the logo on your blog or in a post
2.Pass the award on to 12 fellow bloggers
3.Link to the nominees within your post
4.Let them know they have received it by leaving a comment for them
5.Share the love and link to the person who gave you the award.

I've decided to pass this award on to the following lovely bloggers:

1. Catherine at Little Glowing Lights
2. Flick at Everyday Chick
3. Melissa at Undomestic/Mumma
4. Catherine at A Time To Create
5. Sarah at Sarah Elizabeth
6. Leah at Little Maison
7. Belinda at Nest Design Studio
8. Kerri at Driftwood Interiors
9. Karlyn at Rosa's Room
10. Abby at Two Little Dicky Birds
11. Lesley at Life At Number 10
12. Rachael at A Room For Everyone

Please don't feel obliged to play along, just know that I have passed this award onto you because I enjoy your blogs and want to share the 'sunshine'...

Hope you all have a wonderful end to the week...

Top image from here

Birthday Parties on Etsy

I’ve been spending a bit of time lately searching the Internet and trying coming up with ideas for Grace’s first birthday which is coming up in May. I’ve decided to go with a polka dot theme which will be cute and girlie. I’ve already made my own invites but before I did, I came across some fantastic birthday party products on Etsy which I wanted to share with you all. They all come to you as PDF files so you once you pay, you can print off as many as you need. I’ve bookmarked them all for future parties!!

Olliegraphic’s invites are my all time favourite – if I hadn’t already made Grace’s invites myself before I discovered this store, I might have gone for one of these. With these invites, you customise the character on them to suit your child with choices for everything from hair colour, style, clothes, eye colour and facial expressions. I’d love to order some of these in the future.

Parties by Hardie have a fantastic Etsy store with printable files of themed party invites, banners, cake toppers and much more. This set of vehicle decorations would be perfect for a little boy’s party.

Happy Papers have such cute party packs for sale including invites, thanks cards, party hats, themed bunting, cupcake toppers and gift bag tags. I adore their Red Riding Hood set and hope I can use it for Grace one day in the future.

Finally, Paper and Cake have a great range of products which can be customised and then printed at home. My favourite is their ‘Sail Away’ party pack.

As I said, I'm making the invites and decorations for Grace's party but all of these wonderful stores have given me lots of inspiration. I'll share my ideas for Grace's polka dot party soon...

All images in this post are from the respective Etsy stores. Image #1 from here.

What A Weekend

Hi everyone, sorry I've disappeared over the last few days. I was planning on spending some time blogging yesterday, only to have our power go out at 7.30am and not return until after 9.30pm!!! It's amazing how much you rely on electricity. Then, while helping Paul pruning in the garden for our upcoming green waste verge collection, I sliced my finger badly with some secateurs and had to go and get a tetanus shot.

My weekend was not all bad though. I took advantage of the no electricity situation and managed to file away the mountain of paperwork that had grown in our study and after hunting for a buffet cabinet on Saturday, we managed to find a suitable one and ordered it yesterday (should be arriving today). I also went to a Hen's Party lunch on Saturday at the Windsor Hotel in South Perth which was a great afternoon out.

I'll try and get around to all your lovely blogs today and catch up on your posts. Hope you have a wonderful start to the week...

Lovely Mail

Yesterday, I went out to check the mail expecting to find nothing more than boring bills. To my surprise, a pretty pink envelope from Catherine at Little Glowing Lights awaited me with the gorgeous birthday card and two packets of mini-paper bunting which she made. I was really touched by her kindness – it truly made my day. Hope you all have a lovely day today.

Lovely Homewares Store

Have you ever been in a store and thought you could easily buy everything in sight? A store with so many lovely items for sale you don’t quite know where to look first? For me, one such store is Needle In Provence, a quaint little homewares store tucked away in the Kalamunda village.

Every now and then I like to take a drive out that way and head for this gorgeous store to see what new treasures they have. This shop sources the most beautiful pieces and there are always several things that catch my eye in the window before I even set foot in the store. Here are a few photos from my last visit…

Sidetracked On Etsy

Paloma's Nest

Hope you have all had a lovely Saturday. Grace and I spent the morning wandering around some furniture shops hunting for a buffet cabinet (no luck unfortunately).

I've been on Etsy a fair bit lately searching for bits and pieces for Grace's upcoming first birthday party (more on that in a future post) but as I always, I've found myself getting sidetracked with other lovely things for sale. Here are a few bits and pieces that have caught my eye...

heartoflight

helkatdesign

KathrynBloom

Ninuska

ohhellofriend

Heartbreaking

Two posts I read this week really touched my heart and have been on my mind for the past couple of days. One was this post on Belinda’s blog about babies born sleeping and the other post was about a gorgeous little girl Layla who sadly lost her battle with leukaemia on Tuesday.

Give your loved ones an extra hug today…

Image from here

Homely One House Tour - The Bathroom and The Laundry

Today is the final post of my House Tour series and we are down to the laundry (which is off our family room) and the bathroom (in between the nursery and spare room). At present, the most dated room in our house is our main bathroom. It has the same unattractive tiles our ensuite used to have before we renovated it. Down the track, we hope to completely renovate this bathroom in a similar style.

When we moved in, our laundry was virtually empty (except for the laundry trough) and had absolutely no storage whatsoever. Our cleaning products lived in a box on the floor for at least a year! We installed some simple Ikea cabinets and now everything is hidden away. The laundry is now in desperate need of window treatments (for privacy more than anything).

And so, that is the end of my little Homely One House Tour. Hope I haven’t bored you all too much. I will share progress around our house as I tackle different projects and hunt for items we need. Thanks for all the feedback you’ve given me. I’ll be back to posting about all different homely topics as of tomorrow.

Homely One House Tour - Lounge and Dining

This room has taken us the longest to get around to decorating and until fairly recently, was actually empty. Even once we got furniture, this room was hardly ever used. However now, I am in here every day as being carpeted, it’s a better room for Grace to play with her toys and our couch is the perfect place for me to relax with a cuppa and a magazine.

We have the main pieces of furniture like sofas and tables but there are lots of things still missing from this area. I am currently on the hunt for a cabinet for the spot where the packing boxes currently are and I’d like to move the chest near the entrance out of this room and have a feature chair of some sort in this spot. At present, our lounge room walls are bare so artwork is desperately required as well as display items. as with the bedrooms, we will get new carpet when Grace is a bit older.

The little white side table has only had a coat of primer so far – I am still deciding on what colour to paint it – any suggestions?

Homely One House Tour – Bedrooms and Study

Thank you for all your kind birthday wishes on Friday. I had a lovely relaxing day, received some really beautiful gifts and had a nice time celebrating at night.

To avoid boring you and drawing out my Homely One House Tour too much longer, I’ve decided to group together several rooms. Today I thought I’d share a few photos of our bedrooms.

Our house has four bedrooms – our room, Grace’s, a spare room and one which we’ve made into a study. New carpet and new white skirtings are on our future list of plans for these rooms (we thought we’d hold off until Grace gets a bit bigger). In our study, we are going to paint the windowsill and built-in wardrobe door white as we did in the other bedrooms to brighten it up a bit. Here’s some photos of these rooms - I’ll post some shots of Grace’s room later on in the week in a separate post to show you the changes I’ve made in the nursery lately and I won’t show you our spare room yet because at the moment, it looks as though a bomb has gone off in there (it’s become my dumping room lately).

Birthday Bliss

Today is my birthday!! I am planning on spending it enjoying all my favourite things - relaxing by the river, drinking cups of tea, playing with Grace, browsing through interiors magazines and catching up on all your lovely blogs. Tonight we are having a little barbeque here with some family and friends to celebrate. Hope you all have a lovely end to the week...

Image from here

Homely One House Tour - The Living Room

Extending out from our kitchen and meals area is our living room. This is where we spend most of our time in our house (although with Grace crawling, our carpeted lounge is getting its fair share of use too). It has all been repainted (goodbye ‘Iced Peach’) and has also had the tiles replaced by floorboards.

We have the main pieces of furniture for this area but it is still looking very bare. The area around the TV is definitely lacking something, especially on the wall to the right of it where the laundry door is. Our rug also blends in too much with our sofas so will one day be replaced with something a bit lighter and perhaps with a bit of texture. At the moment, I’m keeping my eyes open for new cushions to give the sofas a bit of a freshen up – am still deciding on whether to go for neutral greys and whites or bright patterns for a burst of colour.

As for our unattractive gas heater, each winter we think it will be on its last legs, only to find it pulls through for another season. At the moment, it heats up the area beautifully, but eventually it will be replaced with something more ‘pleasing to the eye’ as I think there’s nothing like a fireplace as a focal point to create a cosy feeling in a living room.

What is the focal point of your living area?

Homely One House Tour – Entryway

Next up on my little House Tour is our entryway. At the moment, this area is very bare. The biggest change here has been removing our old ugly tiles and laying our floorboards. Also, this wall used to be ugly face brick so we had it rendered which made such an improvement (no before photos sorry). The artwork hanging above our hall table is a Helen Norton painting. We also have some black and white wedding photographs in our hallway and several other pieces by Etsy artists and local artists.

The items on the hall table are not going to stay there (I am not that bad at interior styling!!) - I just haven’t decided what is needed for this space to complement the painting. This feature wall is also not staying. Paul and I both agreed on the weekend that it does nothing for the painting and so we are thinking of changing it to the same colour as the other walls.

At present Paul is in the middle of painting the exterior of the front door. We are changing it from ugly cream to crisp white. However, we are unsure what colour to paint the side panel. We are trying to decide between white or the charcoal grey of the frames. I’m leaning more towards charcoal at the moment as I think the white may look too stark against the bricks. Would love your opinions. Here is a before shot and a partly completed shot…

Homely One House Tour - The Garden

Following on from last week’s post on the patio, I thought I’d continue the Homely One House Tour this week with our garden. Being on a corner block, we have quite a big yard and a lot of lawn. However, the lawn is Paul’s pride and joy so this doesn’t bother him one bit.

The only ‘before’ shot is the first one below which doesn’t really show a lot. However, we have made some big changes to our garden and much has grown in the five years we’ve been here. The corner garden you can see used to be a real hotch-potch of plants. We removed everything, extended the lawn to reduce the size of this garden bed and planted Iceberg roses down the driveway, a Poinciana tree (which will hopefully one day reach the 12 metre height and 10 metre width the tag says it will) and three Ornamental Plum Trees along the fence as a backdrop.

As for the backyard, lots has grown, lots has been removed and lots of new plants have been bought. Here’s a few photos …

Will be back indoors for the next House Tour post…