Shoppe

 

1. 2. 3. 4.

 

I popped into Freedom today and they have some really gorgeous stuff! These were a few things that caught my eye.... My 3 real faves weren't online, which has made me think I really must go back and buy them immediately so I don't miss out! I love those lightshades, I'm going to do a mix of shades in natural materials and some gorgeous french industrial shades from Ico Traders. Oh, and how good would these things look with my rug I bought back from Ikea in Melbourne! Now that the house is taking shape I'm getting SO excited about doing the interior!

 

On a side note, some of you may know about my hat addiction. I'm not proud, I would be if I wore them all with great confidence, but instead, it's kind of been a dirty secret, hoarding hats and really only wearing them while working on the section, adventuring in the outdoors, at festivals etc....definitely not while out shopping or doing the groceries and other normal stuff.

 

I realise this hat wearing anxiety is completely irrational.

 

Well, the dreaded mop on top of my head was just not working for me this morning, I had no other option than to don one of my neglected friends. I walked into Freedom, my "I'm just a casual, confident hat wearer" unveiling. I said to myself...."seriously, no one is even going to take notice of your hat". I walked in, past the counter and the guy behind it stopped mid conversation with a colleague and actually yelled "I like ya hat!" In my direction, I was mortified, I said "thanks" as politely as I could while I was mentally junk punching him, you weren't supposed to notice my hat! .....I carried on down to the back of the store (as far away from the hat liker as possible) and another Freedom staffer came over to me and asked if I needed any help, when I said I was happy just looking around he said "ok great....I like your hat". I couldn't believe it. 2 people in the first 5 minutes of my first public shopping in a hat experience. Baptism by fire. For someone who likes hat's so much, I really need to work on receiving hat compliments.

 

 

Upholstery girls

 

A few weeks back my friend and I organised a gaggle of girls to come out to the shed in Waikuku and bring an old dunga of a chair with them (or in Alice's case, a 2 seater sofa, girl got skills) we had a lovely upholstery man called Nigel come along and teach us how to turn these chairs from smelly-yuck to spiffy-wicked in two days.

Not all of us finished the chairs/sofa in the weekend but we all got pretty close, even Fliss whose chair had lived a hard life and was covered in bullet holes, had broken springs and a feared possibility that something furry and alive could have been living in it.

Unfortunately our 'after' photo was taken by Nigel and featured more of his finger than the chairs.... I'll hopefully get some photos from the girls over the next few weeks and show you their before and afters, until then it's just going to be my little fella.

 

 

Here he goes, my little chair's extreme makeover (upholstery edition)

For those with a keen eye, you are right, I have not quite finished..... I just need to staple the underneath cloth down and cover with some calico.......soon.

 

 

 

Fabric from Femme de Brocante ....the girls there were super helpful and friendly which was a real bonus on top of the fabric find!

 

If I can offer any advice for a weekend like this...

• Keep your class small
• Try and pull all of the old fabric and staples out before you go, the first half of our first day was filled with chiseling, ripping, pulling and cussing
• Keep it simple splashy, I was so pleased I didn't choose anything with arms to sew.... In fact my makeover required zero sewing, only a few hand stitches. Although in saying that, it meant I didn't get to learn any of those skills. Pros and cons

 

 

 

Oh yea, this is my sandwich. Haha. The reason I'm sharing is because feeding 8 girls over two days ended up being really easy, this is how I went about it

• Fresh ciabatta rolls
• Baked free range chicken breasts coated in spelt flour, chilli powder, turmeric and salt+pepper, then shredded
• Salad greens
• Beetroot salad (this recipe from the ripe cookbook) without sultanas and with chia seeds and sliced almonds and maple syrup instead of the molasses
• Parsley dressing (my mother in laws recipe)
• Feta

We all just made our own sandwiches and then we ate cookies.

 

It was such a fun weekend and we're all keen to keep catching up over crafty workshops. I'm thinking the next one could be macramé.....

 

Shed update

This shed is getting closer and closer to being done, once the battens are all on we can give it another coat of stain to have it looking dapper as hell. Oh, and there is a working tap on the side of it, right there, a tap!!!!!! The process of getting that tap on the side of that shed is no easy task... It involved a lot of digging trenches and laying of pipes and refilling trenches.

 

 

Ok. So I dug about 30cm of it, and even that had my brain in a boggle! I'm so impressed with Guy and how he has picked everything up so quickly. So far there has been nothing he can't do and I am as proud as punch. He does have an amazing mentor in my Dad, it's like watching a building themed karate kid movie.... You need to be one with the digger Guy San....

 

 

 

Mirror mirror

Mirror mirror on the wall, make my house look big not small.... Clearly I missed my calling as a poet.

Seriously though, mirrors are the perfect way to add big space to small places. The first time I created a mirror wall was in our first home in Lyttelton....it was tiny and adorable. We had these beautiful French doors that looked out to the hills , which was great when you were facing that way, but when you were looking inside the house it was a little darker and felt a bit small. The mirrors were the first things to go into our home, I found 16 square mirrors on trademe for a silly price and bought them before we even went unconditional. When I covered the small wall between the kitchen and living room with the mirrors it suddenly bought masses of light in to the room, not to mention the great views that were once outside my doors were suddenly right beside my couch as well. Win, win.

These couch side views ignited my love affair with mirror walls, we now have two in our current home. Let me introduce you.

 

The first is a collection of retro beveled mirrors (most found on trademe yet again) I think the mirrors averaged $10 each. I laid each mirror down on some news paper, traced their outline and cut them out, then with the help of blutak I moved them around on the wall until I was happy with the layout and banged a hook into each piece of paper which I ripped away before I hung the real deal. The wall really brightens up what was originally a dark little area of the living room and the mismatched mirrors become a great feature.

 

 

 

 

The second is in my little home salon and it's a different look completely, the room is reasonably small but has French doors going out to the deck that open it up nicely. By putting a mirror wall directly opposite the French doors it reflects all of that sweet light back through the room and creates the feeling of a lot more space

This time I went to Mitre 10 mega and bought some mirror tiles.....which, may i add, I was undercharged for greatly and when I figured this out my conscience and I drove all the way back the next day to pay the difference. I think they thought I was mad but I super mario bounced and collected 50 Good Samaritan points, thank you very much!

When hanging mirrors in a clean grid like this you need to be a little more mathematical as anything that's a bit off when laid in a grid pattern is really noticeable. Measuring tape, pencils, patience and a measured cut out guide are your best friends in this case.

 

 

Hooray!

 

This is how we feel today...we've done a lot of hard yakka over the last few weeks but the shed is almost done and we are where we expected to be timing wise! Hooray!

Waikuku beach has been an absolute treasure over this time, walks for Jed, Mum, friends and I, not to mention the tonic of late evening/early morning surfs for Guy.

Here's a few progress snaps.

 

 

 

 

Working holiday

Excuse the photo bombs, so many pictures, so little time.

 

The shed is being framed up today after a very frustrating mix up with the hardware required for its construction, they sent it to Waiuku in the North Island instead of waikuku here in Canterbury.... Not once, but twice!! Haha what can ya do! Dad and Guy are working tirelessly out there today trying to make up lost time.

 

I'm currently in the tent writing to you....

 

I did cook them up a nice big barbecue lunch, bbq'd corn on the cob, beef sausies, beef skewers and carrot salad and I made sure they were well watered. With pilsner....

 

I've got to be honest, I've also been getting all green eyed monstery while ogling everyone's holiday instasnaps.... Kinda wishing we were on a beach somewhere with nothing to do but laze around and get nice and fat. And then I realized that we were building our dream home and that the beach is less than 5minutes down the road and frequented by us regularly (see above), so I quickly slapped myself for being such a brat and then ate a toblerone....

 

stumped

 

 

 

It started with a stump......

As all good stories do right?

I should say that I only wrote that on the stump because it was a song that I had in my head and I thought it was quite nice. I actually did see the goodness in the stump and then I drew all over it.... I hope that's not too criminal.

 

I thought the bark made quite a nice frame and I felt like getting crafty. Arrows are so hot right now (ok, you have to say that in a zoolander voice otherwise I sound like a bit of a dick) I'm going to drill a hole in the back of each stump so that they can be hung.....on my wall/Someone else's wall after Xmas? I haven't decided. If you get these for Xmas and you read my blog, act surprised.

 

pallety project

 

Recycling pallets for furniture, you've seen it before and loved the idea but ultimately it ended up in the 'too hard basket' zone in the back of your brain buried under all those ideas for apps that could make you millions, am I right? Well, fear not dusty to-do list, for I am offering you a cheats version. Pallet wood as a surface veneer..... Pallet furniture just got real.....easy.


If you have a piece of furniture in your home that you're sick of, so sick of you have been drafting its obituary..ahem...trade me listing in your head, look again and see if it could benefit from a mini makeover. I bought two secondhand besides recently, $30 for the two, and painted them white, they were looking great, but the only thing about white painted furniture is that the tops of them get marked and stained faster than you can say "where's your coaster fool?!".

Now I can let my water glass ring it's little heart out, Reeessuuuuult!!

 

I also gave our lamps a makeover with some geometric loving. I used painters tape to mark out the triangles and a few resene testpots in different colours. Can one own too many test pots? No, one cannot. (I watched Downtown Abbey last night).

Our quilt is from bed bath and table. I'm obsessed with their quilts.... The kind of obsessed where you are walking in the mall with your Husband and then suddenly you do a weird right angle turn and a straight arms down the side of you body run into the store looking like a weirdo so that he doesn't try and claim you and just leaves you to it. Clever AND classy...win,win.

 

 

weekend dominated

 

This weekend we dominated our section... We bought trees, filling two trailers, then unloaded all of them on site. We marked out where every hole would be (1 metre away from the fence and 1 metre apart.....for 115 metres) Used a crazy machine thingy to dig all of the holes (oh and tear through a water pipe - fail!) then planted all of the trees in a nice looooooong row.

 

When we finished that, I stained the pump shed to pretty much finish it off AND today we set up an irrigation drip system for every single one of those trees.

 

 

 

My body does NOT want to do anymore squats....EVER. There were more up and downs (literally) in the last 3 days than I've done in my entire life.

 

As tiring as it was....it was freakin' rewarding! And last night we felt deliriously happy with ourselves. Unfortunately all the photos I took of the work we completed were taken at the end of the day and unbeknownst to my tired eyes my camera lens was covered in dust.... So you'll just have to take my word for it. We did good, kid.

 

Off to sleep for as long as this body lets me.

 

 

stage one, done & done

 

WELL, Today we met with our draughtsman and went through some final bits and pieces to confirm our design...eeeeeee so much excite. A few things I'm looking forward to the most are... my high ceilings, my white painted brick super-would you like fries, onion rings and a soft serve with that-sized fireplace, and the fact that we have decided on our exterior scheme! HUZZAH!!!!

 

 

We knew we wanted vertical cedar but we have been completely inspired by this summer house designed by Stockholm architect Mikael Bergquist to keep it all natural with white trimmed windows and a charcoal roof. It's gonna take a while for the wood to weather to that great silver colour but I'm just going to have to hold tight, because I want it to look just like this wee beauty.

I first saw this home on Nordic Design blog via Pinterest... Seriously, how did we design our new homes, plan weddings, get dressed, decide what to have for dinner or get inspired to go for a run walk before Pinterest!

 

 

 

 

Now that the plans are all confirmed its time to get onto the costings..... Deep breath.... Lets hope the dream home isn't just that!!!

 

All house photos taken by Mikael Bergquist

 

 

 

 

 

Boxy day

 

Oh, The yesteryears! When it only cost 30c for a loaf of bread, when your parents would walk for miles to school in the snow with barefeet and when old wooden boxes were used for packaging nails, screws, car parts and the like....None of this throw away nonsense of today. It's time to ask your Grandpa, Dad, Uncle or Old man next door if they have any of these sweet wooden boxes that you can make use of.... Or if you run out of man options....maybe just go to a junk shop.

 

These boxes were readily available in my Fathers garage, a builder for many years and a hoarder for many more he has (well, had) loads of them. So, I got to tipping all of the contents into any vessels available and using them for a greater good, like my bookcase, recycling bin, small side table, shampoo station in the salon and a place to keep all of my salon products.

I could drone on about how I did each one, but really, that's an incredibly long post. If you're thinking "don't be such a lazy mofo"... email me (maybe not with that subject title, meanie) and I'll send you some tips.

 

fragments of a few days

 

Seriously busy weekend, so busy it has to be done in bullet points... 

• Friday fun times with friends at our place, there may have been some "catch the cheese in your mouth while going fast on the cross trainer" games.
• Move Guys parents (and their impressive hoard of belongings) out of their family home and inherit some AMAZING stuff!! Including a couple of old wooden boxes, one of which is nice and shallow and ideal as a water station for my kitchen, yep, I like to feel like I live in a cafe.
• Meet baby Jack piercey... All 3lbs2oz of him, what is going on with all the TINY babies that my friends and family are having. Bite sized little beauties!!!
• Went for a Waikuku mission with my lady love Emily
• Made a massive lot of macaroni cheese for dinner....comfort foodius maximus! Yuuuuuuum
• Watched the hunger games with Guy, seriously.... Can't get over the Peeta casting. Just not what I had in my head! Gale... I'm ok with. Very ok.
• Mowed our lawns at the block...love our little tractor. Still trying to think of a name for her....
• Cut my lady love Clare's hair off....from lower back to above boob! She cradled it in her hands and then we both took photos of it. Not weird at all.

 

 

How sweet is this photo of my father in law learning to row a boat in the sounds...awwww

chain gang

 

This is an advertisement....Not a blog post. 

Required: one hard working chain gang.... Preferably one that can sing "don't you know that's the sound of the men, working on the chaaaiiiiin" in sweet harmony while glistening in sweat and doing some hard some labour.

Not a big ask, right?

But, until I find the successful applicants, the gang of Dad, Guy and I will have to do....

 

 

 

Note to self, weed whacking is a messy business and do not punish your body doing at least 250metres of it before finding out that there are harnesses you can use to make it 80% easier on the jelly worms that you used to call your arms. Fail.