Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Half done jobs

Due to the rainy weather, lack of spare time and the fact of having 2 kids, we are noticing we have a lot of half done jobs at the moment. Our side gate that leads to the carport has been rotting away for a few years and the gate has not closed properly for about 10 years. So we just decided to rip half of it down.




This is the result, now we just have to sand the putty and give it a fresh coat of grey paint. 
It actually makes the courtyard look bigger and nicer.




Another half done job that has been stopped from the rain. In a moment of craziness, during a break in the rain, I started painting the roof at 5.30 pm, and now has been looking like this for the past week. Hubby was not that pleased with me. Hopefully, it will be finished soon as we seem to have a break in the rain. 
We have been regretting not getting the shed re-roofed when we got the rest of the house done years ago, but this is a quick and easy solution and it actually looks so much better being gloss grey instead of red/black fibro. 



Unfortunately / fortunately Evie wont be able to 
enjoy climbing and swinging 
on the gate now that it has been removed!


The gate will be up for sale soon on eBay

Lou x
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Monday, January 30, 2012

Bon Laneway

We went on a drive to Ipswich before Christmas, we had been told about this cafe in Bon Laneway.
 It was well worth the visit! We had great coffee and all 4 of us shared a date and orange scone, a croissant made at the shop and an awesome Breakfast Tart: Egg, bacon, feta and basil tart with chutney. 
It was all so yum !









We went to a Charity shop to look for goodies and the kids spent 50 cents and bought these old plastic bats and ball that smelt strongly of moth balls! Then we played with them in the nearby park.



And, of course another visit to the Antique centre was a must.


Lou x
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Saturday, January 21, 2012

Christmas 2011 front table display...

 Good Morning, Happy Saturday to you.
Here are some pics of my Christmas arrangement on the front entry table.


The Dalia's are from a road side stall at Mount Tambo





Can you believe that Christmas was almost a month ago? In one way it feels like it was forever ago on the other hand its shocking that January has almost come to an end. 
Lou x

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Miss Lisa's Pink Paradise...


 As always, I had a wonderful day visiting one of my dearest friends Lisa.
She has written about it here: My Busy Little Life: My Boudoir .What Lisa does to her homes is a amazing, in such a short time and while also trying to manage 3 young, gorgeous and very energetic boys. This is her new bedroom, in her new house. The striped wall is a made up of pale pink, a creamy taupe with black gloss stripes. The other wall in the room are the pale pink. She has created a haven!



You can read Lisa's blog too, www.mybusylittlelife.com 

Lou x

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

One Rose...


Here is the 1st ever rose from an Old Fashioned highly fragrant Rose that we planted about a year ago. We have been waiting and waiting for something to happen, and finally it did!
It is the most beautifully scented rose . 
I purposely made up reasons just to go outside and walk past it just so I could have a big inhale of the scent.



Evie pulling a funny face

Evie was wanting me to only photograph her and not the rose, so she covered it!
Lou x

Sunday, January 15, 2012

My Princess and the pea...

In the lead up to Evie turning 3 it was time to finally close down the nursery for good and set up her bedroom. It was a bitter sweet milestone, as it means no more baby cuteness but also that our little baby has grown into a little girl and  that meant some fun for me designing her new room.

This was my inspiration picture of the sort of thing I had in mind, mainly the bed : ( ok, her actual room does not really look like this room at all, but you have to start somewhere)


Now, the challange as always was to acheive something pretty but on a budget.
This is what we created:

As this used to be the Beauty Room, I was really happy to leave the white paint and pretty green and pink wall paper and just work with those colours.



Her very own ensuite

Block out all memory from your mind the fact that she dressed herself in sneakers and socks with her dress. Lets just pretend that never happened.



Bed frame $39 from Ikea, I cut the head board off, sanded the base and spray painted it white

Bed Head $10 from a 2nd hand shop was cleaned, sanded then spray painted white

Bed Head ready for spraying.

The finished bed: Evie May loves her room!
Lou xo

Friday, January 13, 2012

A lovely High Tea...

One of my closest friends is having her 3rd baby.
Her Mother, Sister and family organized a lovely High Tea baby shower.







Kirsty, the gorgeous Mummy to be

A lovely afternoon was had by all. Kirsty and her family always put on a lovely "do"

Lou xo


Thursday, January 12, 2012

Street Appeal...




Here is Evie "helping" us at the front gate. Amongst many other things on our TO DO list, one of them was to remove the dated paver strip on the footpath and replace it with something a bit more modern and appealing. I have looked for about a year for large, narrow rectangular grey pavers with no luck, so I cam up with an alternative. We have now installed 3 peices of timber instead and transpalted grass between them. This area was always very dry with no grass growing here. Now we are just trying to keep the grass alive in this hot weather so it can grow. I will show you some before and after shots of the area soon.

I am back to work on Monday after 3 very busy weeks off. It has gone too quick, I have had fun though and done so much, yet still have so much more I would have liked to do.
Lou x

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Full circle

Photos are a bit dodge as they were taken with the phone

Its funny how things come full circle, when we bought the house 15 years ago , the shed had this basket ball hoop attached to it, as we had no thoughts of the kids at that time and we never used it so I asked hubby to take down the ugly orange thing. We re-discovered in the shed after cleaning it out.
Hubby and Toby as a project together, 
painted it grey and painted back board for it and have now attached in the very spot where it originally was
( just much better looking now of course) They have been playing basketballs most afternoons now!

Lou x

Friday, January 6, 2012

A 1950's Apricot Kitchen beauty

 Our house was built in the very late 1950's maybe 1959 or 1960 to be precise. When we bought it had the horrid lilac laminate kitchen which was already old and daggy however in good working order, but down stairs in the work room we found a treasure, it was the homes original kitchen. It has its original Bakelite handles and the doors are painted with a thick glossy apricot coloured enamel paint. Although we always guessed it was the homes original kitchen cabinets, it was confirmed when we gutted the lilac one to make way for our new white kithcen, we found traces of where the apricot one had been attached to the walls. 

The bench tops are made of ply wood and have been painted with a green paint effect to mimic the laminate/melamine bench tops of the day. We have enjoyed using the apricot kitchen as storage in the work room and I had planned to make it into a great cubby house kitchen one day it is too cool to not be used.

But sadly as part of my great clean out, we have decided to part with it and hope someone else will adopt it and love it like we have. 
It is for sale on Ebay at the moment, so we will see soon who its new parnets will be.







Lou x