Randomness...

My Handyman Hubby fitted this shelf for me today in our living room above the coffee table.

I love it!!!

He also fitted three shelves in the playroom, above Will's Lego storage unit. Will makes so many Lego creations that we desperately needed somewhere to display all of them.

We bought the kids a trampoline for Christmas which they LOVE.
And now our backyard resembles a children's playground, with the swing set they already have!!!

Hope the start to your New Year has been happy and healthy!!!

Little Nooks...

Over the weekend I did a bit of re-arranging of the bits and pieces on our restored meat-safe and this is what I came up with. I wanted a stack of candles so I placed them on my glass cake stand. I'm going to add a few more to it. It looks gorgeous all lit up at night and anyone would think my kids had never seen candles before...they get so excited when I light them.

I've also got a gorgeous photo of my brother and Will in the mirrored mosaic frame, a little succulent and my favourite pear ornament (I collect pear ornaments...weird I know!!!).

Playroom...

Recently, we re-decorated the kids playroom. We sold all of the old playroom furniture on ebay and replaced it with some new bits and pieces from Ikea. I wanted to create a workstation for each of the kids as you can see below. The set of drawers in between the desks holds all their paper, colouring books and stationary (sticky tape, glue, scissors etc.). And above each of their desks you can see three green tubs that are hanging from a rail on the wall. These hold their textas, crayons and pencils. And they each have a shelf above their desks for displaying art work etc.

We now have a couch in the playroom which I love. Our playroom is such a sunny room for most of the day so it's the best place to curl up and read a book or watch a dvd. You can see some art work that the kids have done, hanging on the wall. Chloe did an aboriginal style dot drawing of a platypus and Will's is of a snake!!! The frames are from Ikea and their perfect for changing the art work around ever few months.

This little unit is from Ikea also and it has finally solved all of our Lego dramas!!! It's worth it's weight in gold!!! Every piece of lego has it's place and the kids keep it pretty tidy because they know where everything goes. When we are at home, Will spends most of his time playing with Lego so to have it so easily accessible for him is great.

And finally, this is the storage unit that holds our games, books, dvd's and other craft bits and pieces.

Not sure about you, but I love seeing other peoples playrooms, studios, lounge rooms etc (think that's the sticky beak coming out in me) so I thought I'd post some pics of ours.

Enjoy your weekend!!!

Reading Corner...

I took the kids off to visit our new Ikea this morning (I've been a few times, but they haven't seen it yet....and it IS a big deal!!!). We had a lovely morning tea in the cafe (that Daim cake is awesome!!!). I only bought a few little things for the house...a couple of succulents to go in each of the bathrooms, a basket to put some kid's books in for our family room and I caved in to the kids pestering and bought them a lovely little animal stable that came with about eight or so soft toy farm animals (have I mentioned Chloe loves animals?). So they've been spending the afternoon playing farms and zoos.

I wanted to make up a bit of a reading corner downstairs in our family room area for the kids. And two minutes after I'd set it up, I found Chloe reading to Will...so sweet!!! I won't mention that five minutes before this photo, they were yelling and screaming at each other because Will wanted to put the farm animals into the stable and Chloe didn't want him too!!! But all is peaceful now, so I won't complain.

And in the second photo is our book/reading corner...I think it will be lovely in winter because the sun comes in that window in the afternoon. I've got a couple of European cushion inserts in my linen cupboard so I'm going to make up some floor cushions to go in this corner too. I just need to decide on some fabric.

If you haven't already checked out Kate's blog over the last few days....you must go and congratulate her as she's had her little baby girl. And what a sweetie she is!!! Congratulations Chris and Kate!!!

Op Shopping and Gardening...

We had a pretty hot day today of about 37 degrees and I had the urge to garden. If I don't do it when I have the urge, then it doesn't get done. And our front entrance was in desperate need of dressing up. So I trotted off to Bunnings to get some plants. Usually I wander around for ages trying to find the perfect plants, but today I was in and out in fifteen minutes. They had exactly what I was looking for. I'm not the best at keeping the water up to my potted plants, so I needed some that were drought hardy!!! Mother-In-Law's tongue is always a good one and the smaller one is some sort of cordyline I think (can't remember).

I love this one with the red flowers. These are great as climbers, but my girlfriend has a white one in a pot that looks gorgeous. They flower pretty much all year round. And the little one is a Liriope.Just before school pick up this afternoon, I popped into our local Op Shop to have a look. This is what I came out with...these two lovely paintings. The floral one has already gone up in my sewing room and the boaty one will probably go in the family room. I'm thinking of painting the boat frame white to give it a beachy look.

I LOVE eating anything with lemon in it so I had to get this Little Lemon Book. All the recipes use lemons. I'm think I've heard about this little cookbook before, so hopefully I'll find some yummy recipes in it.

And lastly, a beaded bracelet. The beads are wood and I love the colour combination.

Isn't this painting gorgeous. There were actually two more of these, both similar to the two I bought. I did see a few other things I liked, but I find that our Op Shops are pretty expensive (certainly compared to what Eastern States bloggers seem to pay for their goodies), so I left the other things behind.

This Is...

This Is...looking out my front door.

I literally stood at the front door to take this photo. I think I've mentioned before, we live opposite a park, so it's lovely to sit out the front and enjoy a cuppa while watching the kids play at the park (my kids, not other people's kids....I'm not a pervert!!!).

And this is where I sit to watch them.


I'm sorry for missing last week's 'This Is...'post. I made sure I got in early this week!!! If you'd like to look out the front of other people's doors, then go to Three Buttons. And thanks to Brooke for this week's topic.

Chloe's Bedroom...

Chloe and I decided to re-decorate her bedroom a few months ago and it's taken us this long to decide on a colour scheme. When we were at Ikea several months ago, she fell in love with this quilt that has a floral design on one side and a very fine red and white stripe on the other. It has scallopped edges and it's gorgeous. So when I was at our new Ikea store last week, I bought the quilt along with some pale red linen curtains that match perfectly.

I have both kids home from school today with runny noses and coughs so I've spent the day doing housework, making (and eating) pancakes for morning tea, baking a slice for afternoon tea and making some cushions for Chloe's bedroom. I made a plain red and white stripe cushion using some great fabric from Ikea (another purchase from the other day....I can't believe the fabric range they have now.....soooooooo exciting!!!). The other cushion is made using the same red and white stripe, some red linen that I cut off the bottom of the curtains (they were too long), a beige linen square with a little embroidered flower on it and some red flower fabric from my stash.

I have a canvas from Chloe's previous bedroom decor that I painted hot pink with coloured polka dots on it, so I'm going to cover this in some red and white floral fabric and hang it above her bedhead where the other little painting is at the moment. And we used to hang all of her hats on the 'Dream' hooks, but they're all pink, so we've put them away in a little basket and I'm going to make a red and white bag to hang on the hook to keep her pj's in. (Her old pajama bag is pink!!!).

It's a bit of effort to change her colour scheme (especially when the old one was bright pink and aqua), but I've been promising it for a while now. The old quilt was her first quilt when she moved into her big bed at two and a half years old, so understandably it had seen better days. All we need now is a white-wash wicker chair for her reading corner (and probably a cushion to go on it), her pj bag and the fabric-covered canvas. I'll post some more pictures when I'm done.

And I might post some pictures of Will's bedroom too. I don't know about you, but I love seeing what other's do in their kids bedrooms.

Beautiful Art...

Finally, we picked up our painting for the family room the other day. And here it is on the wall.

I also picked up some beautiful photos that we had taken of the kids a few months ago. They look lovely in these beachy, white frames. Gradually, the house is coming together the way I was hoping it would.

Nothing to report on the crafty front today. Although I am in the process of making another crochet garland for the tree....I'm loving this crochet thing...it's so relaxing. I find I can't sit and watch tv unless I'm doing something with my hands, so crochet is the perfect thing. And anyway, tv is rubbish at the moment.

Thanks Dad!!!

Just a quick post today....some time ago, we were given a lovely old meat safe from my Great Aunty. It was beautiful but in need of some serious restoration work. I started to sand it back and realised it was covered in LOTS of coats of paint. I was talking to my dad about it one day (well, probably more like complaining) and he offered to restore it completely for me. Of course, I accepted his offer and only a couple of weeks later, here it is looking way better and more beautiful than I ever thought it would. And having said that, if I was restoring it myself, there is no way I could have got it looking this good. Right down to the original latches, dad has cleaned and scrubbed and sanded and painted and here is the end result. I LOVE IT!!! I'm still fiddling around with ornaments etc. to decorate it, but I'm happy with it like this for now. The outside is painted a semi-gloss off-white and for the inside I chose a very pale mint green. Have I already said how much I LOVE IT??? Well, I LOVE IT!!! Thanks so much dad.

This afternoon I made a couple of little things for Will's teachers at kindy. We've all put in money to buy them vouchers for a day spa, but I still like to do something else just from us. So, we've made tissue huggers and little Christmas decorations. Cute!!!

Alfresco Dining...

Well, we had a lovely weekend and the wedding was beautiful. Of course the bride looked gorgeous, the reception was great, the food was great and there was lots of dancing afterwards so I was happy!!! And it was lovely to spend a WHOLE day with Glenn on Monday (minus children). It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't have to get kids in and out of the car. And we were in and out of the car a lot!!! We were on the hunt for furniture for our alfresco area. We visited every outdoor furniture shop in all of Perth (well, nearly) and finally ended up finding what we loved at Big W of all places. It's the 'Patio' range of furniture by Jamie Durie. We got a six seater meals setting and two large day beds...they're my favourite. Glenn brought it all home last night and set it up for me....he's a sweetie. And I LOVE IT!!! Please excuse the plastic pots for the plants as I haven't potted them up yet, but you can get the general idea. There will be lots of tropical style plants around, a few coffee tables, maybe some wall art, some candles and that should just about do it.

Art...

I don't have much to show by way of my creations at the moment so I thought I'd show you the painting I was talking about the other day. My mum's friend is an Artist and this is one of her paintings. As soon as I saw it I loved it and new it would be perfect in our house. So here are a couple of photos of the painting in our entrance. Sorry again for the bad photos...photography is definitely not one of my strong points.

We have a wedding to go to on Sunday at The Vines and Glenn and I are staying at the resort overnight which I'm looking forward to. I don't know the bridal couple very well (in fact, I've never met the bride) so it will feel a bit strange to be sharing such an intimate day with them, but I'm sure it'll be lovely. ALL weddings are lovely!!!

Bye for now and have a great weekend...