The Festive Post

Looking back over the last 12 months it feels very surreal that we have been in our home for half a year and that we have had our first Christmas here. I'll admit, I seriously underestimated the amount of work that it would take to 'complete' our home and landscaping. It is still very much a work in progress for 2015. 

We had quite a large group of people for a formal christmas dinner and for the first time our house had bedrooms full of visiting relatives. McDonald Jones certainly build great homes for entertaining! It was a dream preparing the meal in our new kitchen and giant oven - our old oven could barely fit a roasting dish, let alone enough food for a small army! The house came up beautifully with our christmas decorations so I have a few photos to share. 

With the passing of the festive season I wanted to wish everyone all of the very best for the year ahead. Thank you all for reading and sharing in our building journey - we still have some exciting projects ahead to share you with.

The Side Garden

It feels like work on the house has slowed down over the past couple of months with the approach of Christmas. We have been doing odd jobs like having fly screens installed on our stacker doors, gardening and decorating the house for Christmas.

We love our home and are looking forward to doing some more jobs in the new year - especially tiling in the alfresco, the backyard and furnishing some more rooms. I have also been a little surprised at the maintenance jobs already needed such as re-staining our wooden facade posts as the stain is cracking and chipping with the exposure to hot afternoon sun. Such is the nature of wood!

In the last fortnight my wonderful dad has come up to do some work on the edging for our side garden. This turned out to be a larger job than expected due to the slope of the block and the troubles putting stakes into clay that had dried like a rock due to the lack of rain. We contemplated many options for the edging but ended up deciding on tough, rough cut treated pine which will endure the elements over several years. Dad stained the pine in British Paints oil based 'jarrah' stain and it came up beautifully.

This is the before shot:

Our side garden gets morning sun and shade from noon so we decided to try some bright coloured, tropical looking plants that are mostly hardy and difficult for me to kill (this seems to be a frequent occurrence when I am involved in plant care). We have used guzmania and red claw bromeliads, broad leafed crotons, blue fescue grass and one peruvian lily (on trial to see if I can keep it alive!).

This is after (much better!):

Some of the plants look a little sick because I transplanted them front the front garden, where they were getting too much sun. We also intend to fill these garden beds with the same marulan white pebbles as the front garden.

The garden at the top end of the house is a really strange, narrow shape so it will be mostly rocks. I do have some snake plant (which is a broad leafed, tall growing grass) which I am thinking about putting into this top section for some greenery.

Very pleased with this neat and tidy look overall.

The Guest Room: Copper and Pastels

A few months ago I set out to furnish our main guest bedroom which has been a bit of a slow process. We live several hours away from my family so I wanted to special place for guests to relax and enjoy when they come to visit. We still have several empty bedrooms as it is only the two of us in the house. The design for this room began with a geometric pastel coloured print I picked up from The Minimalist. I love pastels, and pink especially but I didn't want our guest room to be too girly. To remedy this I decided to use pastel pink as a main colour in combination with grey, black and metallic features to give a more industrial look.

After many hours of internet surfing in search of the 'perfect' lamp, I came across a fantastic concrete and copper lamp by the guys at Rustic By Design (check their pages out on instagram or Facebook!). They very kindly mailed it interstate so that it could become the wonderful feature that it is in my guest room. After the lamp came the linen which is from the Aura range by Tracie Ellis and the side table from Adairs. I found some great art pieces by the amazingly talented Jai Vasicek from the Ahoy Trader store in Byron Bay and have clustered them together on the empty space between the windows. The print behind the bed is by Blacklist and it struck me as the sentiment is really lovely. 

The last piece of the puzzle was the stunning Eden bed which I had to have from the moment I set eyes on it! It took many emails and some detective work to track one down, as these beds have been sold out and on back order for months. It is probably a bit extravagant for the guest room but I just loved it. I've also popped a chair into the corner which was looking a bit empty and will be handy for bags or sitting to put shoes on. 

I hope you enjoy the photos of this room, I have certainly enjoyed designing it!

Sir Walter Arrives

After 3 long months of dirt and dust we finally got around to laying our grass. Well, technically we paid for the grass and my very generous parents provided the manual labour while we were at work yesterday!  I'm hoping the wait for spring will help our grass grow well and not go brown and dry. 

I'm really happy with our facade which is nearly finished now. Once the garden grows it will be much more lush and colourful, plus we will be adding some slatted colourbond gates on each side in white.

Next outdoor jobs are finishing the side gardens/landscaping and eventually tiling the portico/alfresco. 

Slowly but surely we are getting there! 

The Front Yard

My posting has been a bit limited over the past few weeks as we have done lots of odd jobs around the house but nothing has been entirely completed yet. We had McDonald Jones come back to attend our maintenance last week and the majority of issues we raised have been fixed now. I'm not sure how long some of the fixes will last, especially on outdoor items like the wood on our front poles but I suppose the reality is that things do deteriorate over time.

After lots of indecision we finally had our front garden bed edged using Kwik Kerb. It ended up being the simplest option as our block is too flat to require taller brick or masonry style edging. Our poor plants have had a rough time as we planted them and then had a week of torrential rain and flooding! We will give them a chance to grow and then fill in the gaps as needed. Our driveway is still looking patchy in spots (it has been super wet though) but the concreter assures us it will even out eventually. The colour isn't quite what I had in mind, but it's growing on me. I'm fairly happy with our front garden seeing as we have never landscaped or gardened. We are all booked to have the grass laid next week (finally) too! The backyard is being ignored for the time being... Let's face it, I am far more interested with the inside at the moment :) 

Here are a few photos of the front garden, which still needs another top up of pebbles. They aren't the best quality shots as it was getting dark when I took them.

Parrots, Pineapples and Palm Leaves: The Master Bedroom

Since I was a little girl I have loved parrots. At the age of 4 my best friend was a sulfur-crested cockatoo named 'Chook' and through the years a number of other feathered characters joined the mix. I was given a turqouise parrot figure for Christmas last year and that was the starting piece for the decor of our master bedroom.

If you have been reading the blog for a while I'm sure you also know that Hawaii is my happy place, so I wanted to bring these themes into our master bedroom. The brief for this room was something relaxing, contemporary and gender neutral. I have also been pleased to be able to source a lot of my decor items from some very talented Australian artists and craftsmen. 

I feel that there could be more to add to this room yet, but I am waiting until we finish the decking outside to get a final impression of the space. The blinds are closed in this picture as there is nothing but dirt, rain and a gloomy evening to see out there yet! 

The entry to our master runs from a short corridor off the dining room. This piece of art by Heisuke Kitazawa works well to transition from the yellow kitchen/dining area to the subtle greens of our bedroom. 

This is the first king sized bed I have owned and it is glorious. You can read the details on our furniture and ceiling fan here. Our pendant lights from Beacon were also a wonderful option that we accessed through our builder. 

Lately I have been going crazy for the wonderful creations of Jai Vasicek from Ahoy Trader. I was fortunate to track down one of his neon pineapple tiles before they sold out. 

This stunning limited edition print from the duo at Blacklist is another favourite. I picked it up from The Minimalist a couple of months ago.

Last up is our ensuite, which has just had some small accessories added around the bath and on the vanity. I am intending to put a glass shelf above the bath but am still a bit uncertain on how to attach it with steel frames... 

The Laundry Room

Let me start this post with a sincere thanks to everyone who visits the blog. It is now approaching 20,000 hits which is astounding! I thought you might all like a change of scenery so I have given it a little makeover.

Time is really passing quickly in the new house and we have continued on the seemingly endless journey towards furnishing and decorating. This week we have started some landscaping in the front yard and had concrete garden edging laid. We still don't have grass (much to the confusion of many in our neighbourhood) but are so glad we have waited it out for the start of warmer weather - all of the other new houses that laid their grass immediately have brown, dead looking lawns from the frost.

The room I have to share today has taken me ages to finish, despite its fairly simple appearance. I love a good bit of organising, and what better room to start with than the laundry. I've never been so pleased to do the washing! Naturally you can also see our trademark yellow brightening up this room (which runs off the living/kitchen area).

The fun in this laundry really starts when you begin opening cupboards...

I had a fabulous time with some cane baskets from Masters, scrapbooking paper and ribbon. I also picked up some stackable plastic containers from Big W for smaller items (thanks to the lovely Leanne at Lime & Mortar for the shopping idea on her blog). Everything has a place and this makes the perfectionist in me very happy!

Moving into the next overhead cabinet I have my laundry powder and peg tins (which were a bargain from Aldi) along with my favourite, all natural washing detergents and mattress protector spray from Adairs. These products are beautiful and smell so great. I'm looking forward to testing out the rest of their range. 

Hooked onto the door is a cute flip book of 'stain solutions' which I have laminated and put onto a key ring. Very handy advice for removing a range of stains from grass to red wine. You can download your own copy here.

This last item is my favourite and was only just installed this evening by Tom and myself (with much trepidation as we drilled into our cabinetry). This handy wire laundry basket from Tansel slides neatly in and out of our cupboard to hide away dirty laundry. Gone is the time of clothes on the floor and over-full washing baskets.

I really enjoyed decorating this room and there really are some great storage and organisation ideas options to be found on the internet. I hope you have enjoyed the tour!