Posts from a foreign beach

I am in Santa Monica, California visiting friends and doing some work. It's my first time to this part of LA and I have to say it's very nice.

Hubby and the girls and I came over two weeks ago to spend Thanksgiving with his family in Palm Springs, and I have taken a week for myself. I've rented an apartment on the beach so that I can host a dinner party for a couple of workmates. The view from the apartment is of the Ferris wheel at the end of Santa Monica Pier (pictured above for your viewing pleasure).

Let's just talk about the apartment for a second... I know the inside is not suppose to matter very much when you have the ocean outside to look at, but purleese!!! Do NOT decorate your lovely apartment on one of the world's most famous beaches in a tacky, cheap Italianate style! What's wrong with you people?! It hits such a jarring note with me that the bathroom has gold taps in the shape of ye olde Italian villas that I want to leave a note for the owners.

Just as well there are many excuses to get out of my castle ... such as the existence of an Anthropologie store five minutes walk away!! Heavenly bliss!!


I walked here this morning and it was beautiful. Then I sat on that beautiful sand and watched all of the beautiful people walking past. And there are a LOT of beautiful people in Santa Monica. I was not one of them because I forgot to pack my sand shoes and had to walk on the beach in my big hiking boots that were packed for the desert mountains, not the look at me! look at me! beaches of California.


There are some beautiful houses along the beach. I wanted to go in to them and ask if I could wash the sand off my hiking boots but they probably have armed guards at the door.

We return to Sydney on Saturday so I hope the weather isn't still 42 degrees! See what you can do about that please ;)

More space please!

... or the fun never ends.

Just as I thought I had the home rennovation bug out of my system, I have called the builders back for a last minute tweak.

I've always wanted a HUGH larder. Not just a big pantry, but a real walk-in, dance around, swing a cat larder. It was one of the must-haves that I put on our original design, but I backed down in favour of a bigger laundry. And I'm glad I did because I can store clothes, sort clothes, iron clothes, clean clothes, and parade around in clothes in my laundry and I wouldn't have been able to do that if I got the larder I originally begged for.

But my cunning little mind has been thinking and rearranging and I have come up with the perfect way to fit a larder into the back of the kitchen without giving up my large laundry or causing too much grief to the budget.

I'm going to borrow about two metres by three metres from the garage. The garage that just stores junk and one car. The garage that needs a massive clean out but has thus far lack the motivation to do it.

Now we have the motivation and the deadline - the builders are coming back next week and the junk needs to be GONE. Cue another skip to be parked at the top of our driveway and another weekend of purging.

I have been drawing my inspiration from a couple of fabulous photos I found on the handy interweb.


Yum yum! Look at the space!


Divine! I'm going to have floor cupboards on two walls like this and a window in the same place. I think I might also put a lock on the door so I can sneak in there and be at peace with my pickles and jams ;)


*Sigh* Mine will be all white like this... and hopefully beautiful like this.

Stay tuned :)

Wheeee!

Life really seems to have ramped up a notch or two as we hurtle towards the end of the year.

I'm so busy with a thousands different things - where do I start?!

My parents stayed with us for the first time in our new house and we did a lot of work in the garden. We created a whole new herb bed from a messy, used corner of the garden. Now everytime I walk past it I stop and smell the sage, and the girls are crazy for the garlic chives. Stinky breath is the new smell of spring!



We have been away for a couple of weekends to Dungog and Canberra to visit friends. Lots of fun at both!

We have had several dinner parties. And in related news, I have been trying to cook a new recipe every day for the month of September. I only fell back on old favourites TWICE! Two times I was lazy, but the rest of the time I ventured into uncharted territory. Some of the recipes will be added to the favourites piles, other might be tweaked or binned.

We all really loved Vegetarian enchiladas and lots of new pasta sauces. I recommend it as an experiment in your home :)

I have been making t-shirts for the girls for summer. Ever since I got the hang of the overlocking stitch on my new sewing machine I am unstoppable. I find a bit of red-spotting material around the edges of the arm holes and neck jazzes up an otherwise boring t-shirt and puts it in a fashion class above the ordinary. That's my style tip for today. You are welcome.


Also busy busy organising and discussing our community garden. It's sucking up a lot of my time at the moment but I think it will all be worth it once we can get those plants in the ground.

I suppose where all of this is leading is to the point where I know I should just close down this blog, but whenever I think of doing that I feel sad so I decide not to. Then I make a vow that I will update more often. Then I break that vow. But at the moment I'll just promise to play it by ear ... and hopefully I'll find the time, or the guts, to live by the decision I make.

Just go with the flow

This weekend will hence forth be known as the eBay weekend. Because just about everything we did involved eBay in one way or another.

We are still trying to off-load a lot of our old furniture through eBay and this weekend we sold some left-over bathroom tiles and an old tv unit. The tile man came to do his pick-up right on time... all good.

The tv unit couple came to pick up there's right on time, and left three hours later! They were such a nice couple that we just started talking and talking and didn't know when to stop. You can't get Hubby to stop talking at the best of times but throw in a new and willing audience and it's near impossible. We talked so much that we had to lubricate our tonsils with some wine. We talked so much that I had to whip up some guacamole and bring out a bowl surrounded by mountains of corn chips. We talked so much that the afternoon got away while four strangers yakked about everything under the sun. At the end of it I think we were all a little embarrassed to have gotten on so well. We exchanged phone numbers and might join them in a pub trivia group... but I tend to think the magic will never be recreated.

On Sunday Miss E and I spent most of the day stripping and sanding and painting an old chair I bought for $18 on eBay months ago. It will eventually be painted a bright green at Miss E's request and is to be the desk chair in her room. Hopefully it's sunny green-ness will inspire her to do her homework!!



(This is it pre-facelift... the camera went missing for the AFTER photo and is still AWOL. Little Miss S has most likely carried if off and deposited it in the dog's bowl, or in the washing machine.)

It has made me think I would like to start a little side business of buying cheap furniture, tables etc and doing them up in a funky way to re-sell. Sometimes just a bright coat of paint transforms them. Anyway, I don't really have the time but it is fun to at least plan it.

Riding along on a push bike

Just before winter Hubby and I rather enthusiastically took the training wheels off Miss E's bicycle. She wanted us to but we hestitated knowing she is not exactly a demon on the bike. But we eventually caved and took them off, and stupidly threw them away thinking we would never need them again. Ha!!! Oh, the naive optimisim of parents!!

Naturally, she hated her bike without training wheels. She couldn't ride it. It was scarey. It was NOT POSSIBLE to ride without little white noisy wheels to stabilise her ... that was, until yesterday.




After months of cajoling, encouraging, desperation, and tears she finally conceded to try the bike again. This time she got on it, wobbled a bit, then tore off into the distance chasing Miss N around the paths like she had been riding without training wheels for years!

My God children are strange creatures...

Blank walls, blank mind

There are only three boxes left unpacked. They are sitting in the dining room full of stuff we don't need and don't want but we have thrown away soooo much stuff in the past six months that, through some unspoken agreement, Hubby and I are unable to get rid of anything more. So those extra, ugly wine glasses, spare coathangers, extension cords, and flotsam and jetsam will sit there in their cardboard purgatory until we can get up the courage to throw the last of the crap away.

The other thing we haven't done is dress the walls. All of our artwork is stacked behind a sofa waiting for us to be inspired. I am really enjoying the sight of blank walls, not sure why because we have some lovely paintings (but want more!).




This corner of Miss N's room is crying out for some wall adornment but we can't figure out what to put there. I've been scouring the pages of etsy for weeks now looking for the perfect print or painting, but nothing has lept out at me. Last weekend Miss N and I made that butterfly picture you see on her shelves. We used a spare photo frame, a collection of old buttons and some scraps of material. I think it looks beautiful so I might just take a leap of faith and make my own artwork for her wall. Then, of course, the other girls will want something....



I just received this print from my artist friend Edel (that's her in the photo), who lives in Northern Ireland. It's divine isn't it??!? I have just the wall for it - near a comfy chair and floor lamp in a corner of the living room. I haven't bought the bought the chair or the lamp yet but will definitely take my inspiration from this print. So green things are needed.

I also want to go out and take some photos and have them blown up so that they look all groovy and abstract. I've taken a few that might work, but nothing is exactly what I have in my mind. Why is it so hard to get the image in your mind onto film? I suppose that is the mark of a brilliant photographer... which I is not.

I love the look of Joshua Trees which grown near where my husband is from in the Californian high desert. I think this photo I took a couple of years ago has the most potential but I don't want it to just look like a photo of a tree and a rock. I need a more abstract concept ... racking my brain, but if anyone has any suggestions I'd love to hear them :)

Photos for all of you voyeurs!

Well, I kind of hesitate to show you all my house photos, because this is the sort of look-at-my-room!! blog posts I am up against.

My house is not styled but it is just what we wanted in terms of space and finishings.

So let's start with something practical ..



... my beloved pull-out pantry draw!! LOVE!
The door in the background goes to the new laundry, but you aren't going to look at that because it is covered in dirty laundry thanks to the never-ending wet weather we are having. And this is not all of my pantry space. Are you people crazy!? There is no way I could horde all of my food in this one little pantry draw. I have a war era mentality and I hate to see an sparsely populated pantry. It needs to be full. I need to know that I have everything I might ever need to cook with at hand. So there is also a full pantry just behind the pull-out. I initially wanted a walk-in pantry. A full-on walk-in pantry that was actually another room, that would store lots of things including most of the saucepans and food processors, etc. But it didn't fit into the design.


And this is a close-up of my kitchen bench, cook top and gorgeous PURPLE splashback.
Those are my Furi knives hanging on the wall ... they make me feel like a professional in the kitchen.



I got these words laser cut in wood and painted a deep red. I love love wooden words and letters so I was glad to have a spare wall to help indulge my woody-word passion.


For a long time I have wanted a windowseat. I have always pictured myself curled beside a sunny window, cup of tea to one side and a book or magazine resting on my knee. I might be reading intensely or I could be staring dreamily out of the window - both fulfilled the brief of a relaxing, comfortable, comforting space.

Now I have that!!



I am still waiting for the mattress cushions to be covered so at the moment it is a bit of a dumping ground, but that will NOT last. It's going to be a place that all my girls will want to escape to to read or play a game. There are book shelves at both ends and four deep draws under it. I love it! It's my favourite part of the house.

The last picture is of the girl's bathroom. The gorgeous tiles are glass mosaic and I wish this bathroom was actually the en suite because it's absolutely the best bathroom I have ever owned!!



That's a whirlwind tour of the rooms you are allowed to see. More photos as more rooms get finished and packing boxes get removed. Hope you liked it :)