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domesticated

I've been feeling far too domesticated lately. Which is sad, because I'm a domestic kinda woman. I love the baking, the home decorating, the sewing, the nurturing of the small folk. But lately I've allowed myself to let the not-so-great parts of this domestic based time in my life to get me down - the constant cleaning, the caring for sick kids, the juggling everybody's needs, the groundhog-day stuff. 

So, in aid of finding some perspective, I thought I might post about a couple of domestic-related things that are making me happy at the moment. 

1. I made marmalade from a whole lot of excess grapefruit we had. From this Nigella recipe (scroll down). Thanks to Charlotte for the idea - when I googled for grapefruit ideas, I came across her post about grapefruit marmalade and ricotta. Oh, how I love the internet.

2. I recently started a tumblelog of houses/home decoration that inspires me. I love that images on tumblr can be tagged (Did you know that? I didn't!) - so this is the perfect way to group all of that house related eye-candy. If only my magazine collection (about half of it above, currently being sorted through) was so compact and easily accessible.

three things

Hello! Three things that are making me happy this week. One: I'm loving machine quilting. I've been putting off quilting the flock of triangles quilt. Mostly because I envisioned loads of swearing and puckering fabric and general grumpiness as I tried to squeeze a proper quilt though my domestic sewing machine. After thinking about it far too much, I just jumped in. Amazingly - amazingly - it's been ok. More than ok. Granted, I'm just sticking wth some basic zig zags, and admittedly, it's not a king size quilt we're talking about. But so far it's been a really enjoyable experience. Fun. Who'd have thought it?! I don't think I mentioned that I invested in a walking foot for my husky. It's all about the walking foot as far as I'm concerned - she chomps through the layers like butter. Love the foot.

Two: During the shed palaver last week, we moved some furniture about. This old trunk came out of storage and is now functioning as a bench seat in the living room. That is, a seat that I can chuck toys in at the end of the day! The sun even came out for a while today so I could take a photo of it (er, and the, 'characterful' (cough) half brick/half plaster wall behind it...)

Three: Henry turned 6 months old this week, and we've started feeding him solid food. He's been so lukewarm about it. After grimacing, even dramatically gagging, through offerings of rice cereal and cooked apple, tonight he downed a bowl of banana. He even smiled about it! The boy likes banana. Hooray!

What are three good things from your week? Let me know in the comments here, or if you blog about it. :)

smitten (again)

Today, I'm smitten with this girl's bedroom from the new edition of Inside Out magazine. This is pretty much how I'd like my kids' room to look (project kids' room is still ongoing) - from the chalkboard table (love that idea, next weekend I'll be painting our tattered old ikea children's table top with chalkboard paint) to the hand knitted blanket at the end of the bed. And the poster! I've just looked online for a reproduction of that gorgeous vintage poster for Audrey. All I can find are the originals, which start at about $1200. Yikes! So that's not going to happen, but what a great poster.

On the same note, I'm finding Blosem' Kids series, Open House, so inspiring when it comes to decorating with kids in mind. I would need very little encouragement to set up camp in Eliza Gran's beautiful home. No problems at all!

on my desk: the other one

Toward the end of our renovation frenzy & room switcheroo last year, I finally got my own work room. One thing I'd really looked forward to was buying a new desk so I could separate my craft stuff from computer. It's not the best photo, but I love this little corner and I'm sure the keyboard will live a whole lot longer now it's not subjected to fabric fluff every day. There's a little inspiration wire above it with some favourite images by Ana and Camilla, Audrey's art, and a favourite piece of Liberty print (the one with the little houses, can't find a picture online).

On this desk today? Um, Audrey - still home sick from kindy. Miscellaneous stationery, framed photos of Aud as a baby and of my brother, a stack of white Ribba (sensing a pattern here?!) frames waiting for me to get photos printed. That pinkish blob in the middle is a doll quilt I'm binding in quiet moments. Underneath it are a stack of delicious magazines my Mum has loaned me - it's Matt's birthday in a few weeks and we're having 40+ people over for breakfast (faaark!) For this I need all the help/cooking inspiration I can muster.

More desks here.

saturday

I have to be quick tonight because Matt is coming into my work room with a paintbrush as I type. This will be the last room to get a lick of paint in this most recent spate of work to the house. I can't wait for it to be a fresh shade of white and to start hanging pictures and to pack away all my sewing stuff. Getting inspiration from a couple of places today - the inspiration boards blog, which has some lovely interviews with some well known crafters about their work and workspace. There's also some lovely craft space eye-candy at desire to inspire. Thanks so much for your lovely words about the garland. Audrey was so excited to open the first one this morning, she was out of bed just after 5.30am. As much as I love her enthusiasm for advent, I'm hoping tomorrow isn't quite such an early start. (The photo is unrelated - just some agapanthus from the garden).

oh christmas tree

I know it's early, but we were in need of some christmas cheer today, so the tree's up! My very favourite decoration, a gift from Sarah last year - a bird by her talented friend at paper boat press (more here).

friday

Audrey found a new spot today. I found her here this morning eating a nectarine. I'm so glad it's Friday! It's been a long, hot week. Matt won't be home until late tonight, so after Audrey goes to bed it's me, feet up on the sofa and some wonderfully unchallenging reading material: I just wanted to say a very big thankyou to everyone who has been stopping by to read my daily posts this month. Especially those who have commented - it means a lot and this would be no fun at all without you continuing the conversation. Happy friday to you all!

in the blue corner...

This is our progress on the new bedroom for Audrey & the wee chap. I should say Matt's progress as he's the one who has done most of the work. I'm loving the colour. So aside from some paintwork on the architraves, now it's time for the fun decorating part. I need to get cracking with some cushions, and of course Audrey's quilt. I'm considering ordering some of these alphabet cards from Mahar Drygoods for the walls. Plus, if the budget allows (probably not, but dreaming is good), I'm thinking a lamp like the giraffe one here. While we're in fantasty decorating land, I've stashed some of this Alexander Henry 2d-Zoo fabric for a quilt for the baby (I say fantasty because it could be some time before this one is done). I was inspired by this (scroll down - it's the pink quilt with the red binding) on the purl bee a while back, so I'm hoping it will work to 'just' hand quilt around the larger animals & shapes. Seriously though, I feel like the combined forces of pregnancy and hot weather are impairing my ability to make a half decent decision about anything, so if anyone thinks that the hand quilting plan will ruin an otherwise lovely piece of fabric, um, tell it to me straight!

a (finished!) corner

It still needs some patching and painting in parts, but our kitchen has been finished now for almost a couple of months (where did that time go?!) After living with our dingy, dark & crumbling '50s kitchen with leaky gas cooker and no bench space for nigh on 6 years, I'll never be taking this baby for granted. So this is my favourite corner of our house, looking out onto the back yard (we'll get to that one day, too). If anyone's interested there are a couple of before photos here and a couple of wip shots here. Oh, I should add that the cabinetry & shelving are all ikea, the benchtops made by a contact of my Dad's, the appliances are all factory seconds we scouted around for over months & the table is my old work desk that we've had for years. The light (that funny looking thing hanging in the top right corner of the photo) was our splurge for the project - it has little fairly lights woven through the wire and looks like a star when lit up at night.

nesting

It has recently occurred to me how relatively laid-back I am this time about getting everything ready for baby. By this stage in my pregnancy with Audrey, we'd already chosen paint colours and were well underway preparing her bedroom. This time around, all nesting to this point has been conducted purely in my head. Last week we decided that we are going to knock out another wall and change the function of every room in the front part of the house before Christmas (admittedly, only 4 rooms, but still, it's definitley not in my character not to have such things planned and executed months ago). I sure hope this unexpected, yet welcome, 'relaxed' approach continues after he's born!

Audrey is very keen to share a bedroom with her little brother - which is lucky, because it's really the only option we've got! In practice, of course the little fella will sleep with us until goodness only knows when (and if the sleeping record of his older sister is anything to go by it will be, ahem, years before they move in together). I was wondering, though, if anyone had any advice/cautionary tales about siblings sharing rooms? I realise it totally depends on the children involved, but what have you found to be a good age to initiate sharing?

So I've been obsessing about how to decorate a shared room: boy and girl, 4 years apart. These are some of my favourite images from a couple of the children's rooms books from Jeu de Paume: Stockholm and London, and the Judith Wilson book, Children's Spaces. We're thinking white walls with plenty of coloured textiles and pictures to brighten things up - primarly lots of pale blue and orange since it's a combination I like which is conveniently gender neutral. I love the blue wall in the first picture, and in the one below (both from Paumes' Stockholm). The white room above - a room shared by a little girl and boy- is from Paumes' London. I love those shelves.

Again from Paumes' London. Love all the knitted goods in this boy's room (apparently his mother owns Loop)

And this is just sweet (from Children's Spaces).

And then of course there's the children's rooms pools on Flickr here and here. (via Kiddley) There's so much inspiration to be had, all we need to do now is stop daydreaming and start painting.