Pack your bags, Winter

I'm done with Winter. It's gone and good riddance! It's been nothing but coughs and germs for months. 
Bring on Spring I say. I've already packed away our Winter clothes (let's hope there's no more chilly weather), and I've completed a Spring Clean.
See below for 'befores' and 'afters.

...it doesn't really look like it, but I did do more than put the breakfast bowls away.
This below was a lot more untidy than it looks in the photo.

....and...

I also framed a few of the butterfly plates from the book I bought a couple of months ago. Now, in another couple of months I might just get some of them up on the wall?

The black frames are just Target specials, which I picked up for $7.50 each.

Now, I'm a dog person. Should I be keeping this brute in at night? He should be a lover, but he's getting the battle scars that say he's more a fighter (by night anyway).

In Breaking News, Anthropologie are doing half price delivery until the end of September, and if that ísn't enough.....tomorrow I pick up my basket chandelier that I bought on Ebay. If it's anything like the photo, it will be very exciting, or as exciting as a light fixture can be.

Melbs and me

I went to Melbourne on the weekend, only overnight on Saturday. I went to see my dear friend Fi, who turned 40....back in May.
I meant to visit for longer, but I got a bit muddled on-line when I was booking, and ended up with the wrong weekend, and one night instead of two.
The point was, however, as we agreed, that I got there in the end.
Fi has been my friend for 21 years, and as I like to point out to her, she will always be one year older than me.
I think people sum us up as opposites, but we actually have more similarities than differences. One difference, however,  is that Fi is less of a home-body than me.
She used to have a little apartment in St Kilda. She'd been there for quite some time when some friends came to visit. They were looking at her things still in boxes (including clothes I believe), just like a real life Holly Golightly, and at the mantle used only for shoes and perfume. 'I thought you'd been here a couple of years?', they said.  'I have.' she replied.
Now Fi has her own house.

Saturday morning we headed down to Hausfrau in Albert Park for a snack before lunch! I snapped the pretty kitchen dresser like a good blogger.

Saturday night we got stuck into the Whisky Sours at the Tile Market (yes, a tile shop by day, bar by night). P & K even stopped by so I could see Mary Agnes. The lovely Uraguayan lady who owned the bar let her come inside, which was very civilised. While I caught up with P & K, Mary sat on the floor beside a lady eating dinner, steadily being slipped tidbits and loving every minute of it - both of them. This is Mary. I'd just told her about my faux pas booking the flight, which she found hilarious.
  

And this snap is just a run-of-the-mill streetscape in Albert Park. She's a very pretty town.

I haven't been able to blog in the past couple of weeks because I've been so busy, working three days a week and then doing a lot of freelance work in any spare time I have. It all seems a bit calmer now.
I've also got myself a new camera so I can get right back in the saddle again! I shall be taking quite a few happy snaps tomorrow!

Off and Away

I'm off the air for a while. See you soon.

Dress Daisy Chain

Nigella Lawson has a segment on her talk show where she shows a panel of people a group of items. She might have four pairs of bikinis, four pairs of summer sandals, four evening bags, etc. She passes them around and her guests have to guess the price of each item.
It's very, very interesting. There's quite often a comment like, 'this is so awful, it must be very expensive'.
It's amazing how labels can sway our opinion. I wonder what our wardrobes would look like if we never looked at a label or a price tag? It's interesting to think about anyway.
I keep files of all sorts of things, mainly house-y type wares. I also have a little folder on my computer of frocks that I've come across that I'd like to own. I call it imaginatively, my 'frock foldér'. This is what I have in it. It's a daisy chain.

Anna's House

I visited my friend Anna on Thursday. She is a fashion person by trade and her most excellent personal style transcends perfectly into her home.

It's bayside, fresh, bright and light. Every time I visit the rugs have changed, the paintings have changed, the cushions have changed, furniture that was downstairs is now upstairs.  It is a work in progress and I love to see what's new.

This is how it's looking currently. My apologies again for my very ordinary photography, I completely blame the camera of course. All of these photos were taken downstairs in the living room, study and courtyard.

This is the study below.

The courtyard.

We have another birthday coming up in 12 days time. Fasten your seatbelts people, it's time for another cake!!

Butter, flour, sugar

It's amazing what can be achieved with a little butter, sugar and flour. Yesterday we had the Red Hill Fair, the main fundraiser for our kindy. Our cake stall raised almost $4000, not bad for some baking, well I suppose it would have been about five tonnes of cakes. Get a load of this....

...and that was about 2/3 of it. Cakes and sweeties as far as the eye can see. This is me simultaneously texting and selling cakes, being the clever person that I am! Please, don't anyone else try this.
I dragged out my special dachshund apron for the occasion.

I even got to serve a gang of fairies (I think that's what you call a group of them). They let me take their photo because I couldn't find my daughters at the time (they weren't behind me then) and I didn't think they'd believe I served a fairy gang actual fairy cakes!

I spent the whole day working on the stall. It was fun - kind of.
I spent $50 on ingredients and turned it into $35 worth of things to sell, through the magic that is my kitchen.
Now, late last week I was in one of my favourite thrifties - it's whereabouts shall remain a secret still. There wasn't a whole lot on offer, then what should I see as I was walking out? This painting, which is no doubt a  
masterpiece?

I asked the lady who worked there how much it was. Hmm? $2? Then she said, they were having a half price sale so it was actually $1. Some of you may think I overpaid, but I love it more every time I look at it.
Right, I've got some jobs to do pronto before my date with Kevin on the ABC at 7.30.

Lost and found

Our letterbox would take out an Ugly Letterbox Competition, if there were such a thing. It's not fixed to anything, and because of the slope of our land it quite often goes sliding off down the hill.
I know the postman gets frustrated with the whole thing, because sometimes I find our letters lying on the grass and I just know that he's thrown them in the general direction of the letterbox, rather than posted them in the slot. One day I say, we'll get a brand spanker.

Our palm has gone the same way as the letterbox. Winter is really knocking them around. This one is just plain old embarassing. I'm afraid it may be lost for good.

Despite my suffering from pneumonia, I know a good kerbside pick-up when I see one. I spotted this table calling out to me from the footpath last week. When my husband got home I asked him to drive down there and get it for me.
'You know this goes against everything I believe in', he said as he hoisted it into the back of his ute, and I knew how much he must love me.

Grey laminate, octagonal, genuine 50s or 60s. It looks a bit ordinary now, but just wait. Despite all the terrible things the others said about it on the way home, we immediately sat around it and had a game of poker on the verandah. It will do very nicely indeed.


This is what the girls are bringing back from their walks at the moment. If its your tree that's losing it's flowers bit by bit, day by day, I apologise.

I am off now to do some things for the Red Hill Fair. Don't forget, this Saturday 10am-3pm, Woolcock Park Red Hill.....