Rustic Pieces

quick update on master bed pt. 2

2010-07-25T18:59:00.004+10:00

howdy everyone!
first of all, apologies for the slackness.. it has been awhile since abby or i have posted anything. like everything else, i would have to blame this on the weather.. the cold not to mention the actual virus 'cold', haven't been helping me be motivated. also, i have found myself a new job :D hoorah! its only part time - two days a week, 5 hours a day.. at a graphics firm, which is my ultimate dream industry to work at.. i definitely couldn't have landed the job if it wasn't for my good friend melissa who has put in a good word to her boss :D
so in between taking care of my lil munchkin max and working and studying (yes, forgot to mention im also doing a course in graphics part time), this leaves little time with diy'ing :(

anyhoo! so i went ahead with sydney's as they have given me a very good price with my furniture but it also came with a headache as they have given the tables the wrong stain and wrong legs :( .. im willing to put up with the legs as it isn't that obvious but the stain i couldnt let go.. it was orange! :/
so i went in there again today to see the re-stained job.. its no where close to what i want it to be.. but its much better. I don't have the energy to convince them they need to redo the stain again so i would have to do the re-staining myself if needed :/ but hopefully once furniture is next to my bedhead it wont look too bad.

so finger's crossed people!

till then!

Autumn Country Market

2010-05-01T18:07:00.005+10:00

Can you guess how excited I was when I saw these banners!! I nearly fell out of the car (SERIOUSLY) in my hurry to see what kind of treasures were waiting for me. This little road trip to the beautiful towns up in the mountains (Leura and Wentworth Falls in particular) was done last Anzac Monday.

Couldn't have asked for a better way to spend the last day of the long weekend! Treasure hunting with autumn leaves everywhere along with much needed stop overs at cozy warm cafes, old fashioned candy stores, CHOCOLATE bars... ahhh the life!

But I guess you really can't please EVERYONE...

Anyhoo better get on with the goods. What exactly did end up coming home with us? Unfortunately we ran into a little problem: everything was waaaay over priced! Of course these places were for serious professional antique hunters. For example that framed cafe print above is almost too beautiful for words but as you can see the price tag is at $229. So sadly we had to pass on many many many wares, but the good news is we still found treasure!

Our new beautiful kitchen clock is - I think - a bargain at $25 (or is this only a bargain compared to $229 framed prints??)

Framed Monet prints at $5 each! Yep definitely more sweets to add to my frame collection. And today I found the perfect mistint can of duck egg blue to colour up the frames:

So keep an eye out for when these goodies are up and painted, hopefully by next week the paint gun parts will arrive and I will finally have more pieces to show.

Happy Saturday lovelies, let's make the rest of this weekend count!

quick update on master bed

2010-04-17T11:51:00.010+10:00

before i blab on about the master bed, i would like to say a big congratulations to bernadette and khristian on the birth of their baby boy Alexander! well done guys!

more little people!! yay!! hehehe

on my last post, i mentioned something about doing white for most of the furniture. like most rooms in my house, i have changed my mind.. again.. and decided to just do dark and use white for accessories.

i have been looking everywhere online (because i am too lazy to go anywhere with max) for bedside tables that are atleast 70cm high, but could only find 67cm ones from ikea that is within my budget and also goes with the bed frame.

and dresser

the only negative thing about this is we would need my dad's van to get all these to the house and aaron now refuses to drive it as it is soooo unroadworthy!

feeling forced and desperate, i went out with max yesterday and drove along old geelong road and stopped at the first furniture shop i saw, sydney's furniture . there i spoke to one of the sales guys and told them my 'dilemma'.. they dont have any bedside tables that are 70cm high in the shop BUT they might be able to custom make it.. 'how much' i asked with no enthusiasm as i already knew this was going to break my bank.. but i was quite surprised when he told me his price.. no it wasn't my usual bargain find but knowing the average price everywhere else, i thought that was quite good seeing as i was going to get exactly what i wanted.. they can also custom make my dresser!

SO! i'm thinking this design for both bedside and dresser

i should be getting a call tomorrow from them with a quote.. fingers crossed it is within the budget!!

till then mateys! xx

hopped back on the diy wagon :)

2010-04-14T17:43:00.012+10:00

g'day everyone!

apologies for taking awhile to blog again. been quite chaotic in my household, with the new addition to the family:

max aaron

max is 9 weeks old and a very alert baby! he's a good sleeper at night so i can't complain there.. but he's so alert, he refuses to sleep during the day.. making it quite hard for mummy to do anything!

so in between the feeding and trying to get this lil guy to sleep, i shall endeavour to finish the master bed.

not sure if you guys remember but we upgraded from queen to king a couple of months back.

here's a before pic of our old bed, quite horrendous i know lol.. also, apologies for the mess.. have no idea why i didn't bother tidying up.

and here are the after pics:

and here's the rest of the room:

as you can see, max have set up shop on this side of the room. i guess until he does atleast 5 hours sleep this will be known as his side.. who am i kidding, the whole room is max's room!

the doors on either sides are our built in robes and our ensuite behind the door facing us. i would luv to get rid of these robes making way for a bigger ensuite and use max's room (which is located next door behind where our dressing table is) as a walk in wardrobe. ah to dream!

so back to reality! i'm not even sure if this is going to work but i'm thinking white for most furniture....

i've tried looking for inspiration on the net but only found a few:

fingers crossed it'll work for me! :)

so over the next couple of days.. or weeks lol.. i'm going to paint the bedside tables and the dresser white (taking out the mirror bit, which hopefully is do-able).. and see how that pans out :)

so stay tuned! :D

till then mateys! xx

The Frame Collection

2010-04-10T10:39:00.004+10:00

You may remember me sharing about the golden ornate frames that I painted white last year. Recently Jona asked me about whatever happened to them so I thought I'd share the finished pieces along with my growing frame collection.

You'll have to excuse the lighting, it's been a pretty cloudy Saturday morning down here!

Nothing like a fresh coat of white paint to make things look new! If you are wondering why these frames are lying on our coffee table instead of hanging up on a wall.. you'll find out all about that in a moment. Meanwhile these beautiful ones came home with me after a recent trip to the Salvos:

I love the look of the ornate frames! I know gold is abit old school but they do have a certain aged look about them already. So I am still trying to decide whether or not to paint these or not. I know that the prints will be updated though so still trying to find them. The little oval frame is cute, only 50cents! I wish I found a larger one though.

And the following two frames were collected on another treasure hunt in a local homewares store:

Confession time: even though I have been steadily building up my frame collection, there is actually only ONE item hung up on a wall in our entire house - a beautiful clock given to me by my mother in law. This is because I'm abit hesitant to hang anything up - it seems too permanent once it's up there! What if it's crooked?What if it would look better on another wall? What if the hanging glue starts making a sticky mark on the walls? Hmmm.. I'm sure I'll get over this fear one day. In the mean time I hope you enjoyed seeing the frames and if you have any tips on how to hang frames up properly please let me know :)

Have a great weekend!

Serious Eye Candy

2010-04-07T21:06:00.004+10:00

Lately I've been randomly window shopping around Etsy, particularly for new cushion covers. Thanks to the awesome rise of the Aussie dollar shopping online has never been SO MUCH FUN!! Or window shopping anyway.

Check out these beautiful rustic cushion covers from Marley & Lockyer's Etsy Shop

So beautiful! I LOVE the rustic look of canvas with classic french images. I noticed that the seller was from Tasmania so I decided to check out her blog. Her blog is full of images that will definitely inspire your diy home projects so you should definitely check it out.

THEN I found an entry of hers introducing another blog full of images that got my heart racing....

It's given me the exact inspiration for my hutch! Yes I confess I've had my unpainted hutch sitting in our dining room for months just begging for a paint job. I realise now that part of the reason I've held off painting it for so long was because I wasn't sure how to sit in in the middle of a blank wall. Just the bit of direction I needed to motivate my lazy self. Hoping for a beautiful sunny weekend coming up so I can get started!

By the way the beautiful kitchen above belongs to Stina, so check out her blog to see the rest of her gorgeous home!

The End of My Sewing Career

2010-03-28T19:23:00.003+11:00

Well, this is pretty embarassing. I haven't blogged since the start of 2010! A big HUGE sorry for everybody that has been diligently checking up on our blog. Jona of course has the perfect reason for her absence - she gave birth to a gorgeous little boy!! She and the bub are both fine & well but will be out of action as they're getting to know each other better. As for myself.. well I did lose my laptop & internet for a month.. I did get a new job which needed abit more settling into than I ever thought was needed.. but even with all the valid excuses, yes I was also abit lazy too. So here I am back in the mode with my new kitchen curtains to share!

The fabric on the dining chair above is the one I chose from Ikea for the homemade kitchen curtain. So the inspiration for this idea came from a recent Ikea trip where I fell in love with a show case kitchen (I've tried to find pictures of this showcase kitchen online but I can't find it anywhere) that had a simple, flat blue striped curtain which was one quarter the length of the window height. Now I have absolutely ZERO textile experience - I've never used a sewing machine in my life or never had to measure and cut any kind of fabric before. But since it was just a flat curtain piece with no ruffles I decided to give it a go. How hard could it be?

So I ran over to Ikea and chose the Beskada curtain rod:
Then I went over to the fabric section. I had no idea that I had to actually cut the fabric myself?? So I tried to calculate it on my own while the unhelpful sales lady tried to explain things like allowance and multiplying the length by this and that and at the end of it all she basically said that maybe I should come back after I had properly calculated the length of material I needed. But since Ikea is a 40minute drive from my place there was no way I was doing that. So I told her that I think I would just rather fluke it and started cutting the fabric up. She just gave me a look and walked away!

Discouraging much? Nope I was still excited and determined to see that fabric up on the rod! I wish I could remember the measurements right now in but really I can never keep up with figures in my head. So onto the next step: actually sewing the fabric into a curtain!

I had to borrow my parent's sewing machine which nobody had used for a couple of years. Since it had only been used once before and since I've never seen one up close before I'm not too sure if it's just my parents' machine that seems abit fiddly to use. It took me ONE HOUR to setup the thread properly before I could start sewing. It then took me another half hour to pin the fabric up properly. So when I finally finally had the machine and fabric all ready to go I thought that I was on the home stretch. But for some reason it took another ONE & A HALF hours to actually get it all sewn up! I was actually sweating beads of sweat! Despite all the crooked lines and the slightly uneven finishing I was pretty proud of it in the end, but I definitely know now that there is no way I am meant to be a seamstress and that I will unfortunately never ever DIY anything involving fabric ever again.

So after all that you must wanna see what I actually got at the end of all that...

This is the before shot of our kitchen window with its boring vertical blinds. The kitchen was abit hard to get a shot of since our kitchen is pretty long and narrow.

The end result! Like I said before I am happy with the outcome but still not 100 percent satisfied, particularly with the colour. I'm thinking I need something abit darker to make it stand out abit more, the fabric from the Ikea showcase kitchen was a dark navy striped style.

Just on a side note, here is one of my favourite parts of the house. My breadbox, straight from the Reject Shop, was something I'd been looking for so I was so excited to find one for $18! It was also the first piece that I painted white :) The Leksvik hooks are another Ikea purchase, while the napkin holder was another bargain steal - online this pretty little thing was around $20+ but I found one at my local homewares store for $10! Love bargains! Underneath the Leksvik hooks is my wooden step stool which I tried to include in the picture but I just couldn't get the angle right.

Anyhoo I think that's it for tonight, gotta get started on the usual preparations for the coming week (folding clothes arghhhhhh) but I hope every has an awesome Easter break!

Till next time!

nursery - wall decor

2010-02-02T15:31:00.012+11:00

so i've finally finished dressing up the nursery walls! yay!

also, we purchased a change table top that goes on the cot (when baby isn't in the cot of course) and made a cover for it.. i thought this giraffe print is just adorable!

this is just great specially when we dont have the space for an actual change table. Initially, I was going to use the aneboda drawers as a change table but it is just way too slim and i can just see baby falling off quite easily.

so without further ado.. the baby room:

i have no idea why the animal prints appear blurry, i have taken gazillion of the same ones and theyre all blurry. so here's an upclose:
FYI i did the lacing to cover some of the background that didn't get printed - a4 paper was obviously too small :/

i also made a little alphabet frame decal to go in between the windows as the wall looked quite bare:

you really gotta see this in person though, it looks way better.

then i thought, hmmm something's missing.. so i framed some of the extra giraffe fabric :)

and that's all folks! :)

next on list? have baby! lol

i will now be spending my days playing cake mania until max or sierra arrives :)

till then! xx

nursery - done!

2010-01-20T20:28:00.007+11:00

YAY!! nursery is finally done! well the big, main things anyway.. walls are still bare.. so i will be slowly dressing them up in the coming days/weeks.. depending on how i feel, which i hope is like today, very productive! it was like i just had a sudden burst of energy!

but for the mean time, i would like to show you some before and after photos :D

please note, not much diy'ing happened in this room.. only shelves and staining of rocking chair

before:

after:

and that's about it with the nursery.. its a tiny room but cozy .. dont u think? hehe

next on the list:

- master bed! but can the bed frame come any slower!? feels like i been waiting forever! 5 more weeks i think, boooo! meaning i'm going to have to tackle this when baby is around. all good though, i always love a challenge :)

- lounge room is slowly slowly coming into place, i just have to now hang my frames (which im hoping to do tomorrow!) and paint, but hubby stretched a tendon in his shoulder so painting is postponed until further notice :(

i am hoping to post updates on the lounge quite soon.. so stay tuned! :)

till then! xx

even more exciting news!

2010-01-16T00:24:00.002+11:00

i got both cot and king mattress today!! i know! it was an awesome day lol

so stay tuned for the nursery update.. should be up sometime on the weekend or early next week.

and just quickly, how expensive are king sheets!? and not to mention quilt covers??!! i have been looking non stop for nice quality yet not over priced sheets and quilt covers.. cheapest i found was $60.. for a 250 thread count.. that any good? sorry i'm clueless

any suggestions as to where to find affordable manchester please do tell!!

till then!

im just so excited that i just have to share this!

2010-01-14T23:50:00.002+11:00

but first and foremost.. i hope you all had a blissful Christmas and a fun and exciting new year! xx
have we broken any of our new years resolutions yet? lol just teasin!
i dont have any this year.. i have been either too busy nesting.. or just resting haha

anyway, before i get sidetracked!

the news is!!...

cot is coming a week early!! YAY!

i get a call from baby cuddles today, informing me that cot is on the way and it'll come either tomorrow or Monday! YAY!!! which means i finally get to finish nursery!! YAY!

i just can't believe its a week early!! so it should be, right? i should've had it on the 4th!! but anyways, whats done is done.

also, more exciting news! hubby and i have been looking for a new bed since we found out we been sleeping on a double! we thought it was a queen! (i know, right? how did we manage that!?) i mean, our queen sheets not fitting properly should've given us a clue, you'd think...

so a couple of weeks ago, i dragged hubby to go look for a king bed.. we found a chiropractic mattress for a grand.. bargain right? and this beautiful king frame.. both $1800 in total.. i didn't realise it was going to be that much!! yikes! but its an investment i guess..

and then after i got a call from baby cuddles, i get a call from the bed place saying that our bed is ready to be delivered!! whoohoo! BUT frame will take around 4 - 6 weeks :( - theyre going to loan us a base while we wait.
its ok though.. as long as were out of that squashy, uncomfortable double bed!

what kind of frame are we getting? u ask
i've actually been googling a similar one but can't seem to find any :(
so i'm going to try and describe it..
it's timber with walnut finish.. i customised it so the legs are 15cm higher (from 15cm) and the headboard to be extra 15cm higher also.. which would mean the headboard would gain a total of 30cm.. making it 150cm tall! that's nearly as tall as me! haha
i wanted a real dramatic look to it so hopefully 150 is enough.. it should be though

initially, i was going to try and make the headboard myself (upholstered) but it was going to cost me more and not to mention the time and effort!

since, we're getting a new bed with a new frame.. i'm gonna have to go look at new bedroom furniture too.. :/ haha jk.. they can wait.. although, the plan was to get everything with a budget of 2g.. but i went overboard :/

so fingers crossed, bargains aren't hard to find like they have been for the past two months! :(

anyhoo its nearly 12am and i still gotta play legends of zelda on ds lol

till then!

Seasons Greetings . . . With Cashew Tarts

2010-01-03T21:56:00.004+11:00

Wow I haven't blogged since last year! With all the crazy happenings that the holiday fever seems to make I have been officially in holiday mood - no work, no emails, no worries has made me a happy little vegimite for the past couple of weeks. But yes reality hits unfortunately and I have to go back to work tomorrow...

So how was your Christmas and NYE celebrations? Hope you had the best time ever with all your special ones close by! My Christmas and NYE was spent with family - a nice quiet getaway with my immediate family to Port Stephens and a big old fashioned Christmas day with my larger extended family. Sorry not too many pics were taken this season, the weather was abit gloomy so it made me abit lazy with getting the camera out.

In one of my old posts I talked about how some of my Christmas gifts were going to be DIY. I decided to go for boxes filled with Cashew Tarts and I thought I'd post up the recipe.

Makes: 24 tarts

Crust Ingredients:

2 cups flour
2 1/1 tablespoons sugar
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 egg yolk, slightly beaten
1 tblsp lemon juice
6 tblsp iced water

Cashew Filling:

3 eggs
1 cup maple syrup
2 tblsp melted butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
150g chopped cashew nuts

Steps:

For the crust: sift flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add butter until mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs. Add egg yolk and lemon juice. Blend in 1 tablespoon water at a time until the dough can be formed into a ball. Wrap in waxed paper with abit of flour and chill in the fridge for 30mins.
For the filling: combine all the filling ingredients and set aside.
Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. After crust has been chilled, roll out dough on a floured surface until it is 3mm thick. Grease mold (I used a muffin tray) and cut out circles to fill the base of each mold (I used a wineglass for cutting circles).
Pour about 1 tablespoon of filling into each mold. Don't overfill the crust since it will spill out! Bake for 20-25 minutes or until crust is light brown. Let cool and store in an air tight container if you're not planning to eat immediately.

That's it! I made about 96 of these tarts and the house smelt so gooood for about a week. I had to keep on taste testing as I went along to make sure each batch was fine so that's probably the only hard thing about making these - they're too good to pass up!

nursery - part 1.1 - quick update

2009-12-28T22:11:00.006+11:00

on my last post i mentioned something about hoping to get the nursery done before 2009 ends.. so on sunday, i dragged hubby to baby cuddles, hoping to pay off and pick up our layby.. we get there and they're closed.. what's worse, they are not open until the 4th of jan!! u can imagine my utter disappointment!

i was so determined to get the nursery out of the way this year that i even went and looked for a different cot.. but hubby is set on getting what's on layby.. which i'm glad he is as i would have probably regretted buying a different one.

so the following are the furniture that are definitely going in the nursery:

1. old rocking chair stained in black
2. ikea dalom pedestal table
3. ikea aneboda chest of 3 drawers - front drawer covered in some damask wallpaper or fabric.. like this
4. bootiq annabelle walnut cot

i am hoping to go to ikea tomorrow and purchase 2 & 3 and a desk for the study.. fingers crossed though, everytime i make plans to go to ikea it never happens :(

nehoo thas all for now

till then!

ps. hope you had a wonderful christmas! xx

nursery - part I - painting done!

2009-12-20T00:11:00.011+11:00

i just can't believe the day has finally come and i am super ecstatic to announce that... nursery is finally painted!! hubby and i decided to tackle it in one day! fair effort huh? hehe even though painting was the last thing i wanted to do that day.. luckily, hubby was determined :)

i can finally cross that one off my to do list, after having it on there for atleast a month!!

so here's a before photo.. sorry only took 1 :/

so far we only have cot to go in there.. which is still to be picked up from baby cuddles.

a rocking chair.. stained in black or painted in white.. haven't decided yet..

and maybe floor lamp from the dining room....

so i've been scouring around for some inspiration and found these

i'm also thinking of having a tree decal in the corner of the room like this

but can't decide on what design.. i quite like these ones

and/or maybe have wall art like this.. but not as big

i'm hoping to finish the nursery before 2010 comes.. i have 11 days! i have a feeling i may be biting off more than i can chew though :/ as i've noticed i have been feeling tired quicker now :(
lucky tho maternity leave for me has already started so i have more time to chill as well as my runnin around :)

till then!

living area - part 1.1: recliner dilemma

2009-12-17T17:09:00.009+11:00

so i thought i'd share with you my recliner dilemma as im sure my home living buddies are sick to death of me talking about the same thing! lol

below is a photo of one of our current recliners (the other one is identical except has more patches)

i did the patching myself :) pretty aren't they? haha
i patched them 3 years ago and as you can see, more and bigger ones have appeared :(

the other night, the newly fixed recliner broke again and was going to buy the ektorp muren on the weekend.

which would've ended the 'recliner saga' but my car decides to play up and will probably cost me 1500 to fix!! grrrrrrrrrr

today i dropped the car off to get a full service hoping it would fix it.. its a little better but it still takes awhile to kick off to the next gear.. we suspect gearbox is on its way to retiring so would probably need to get it replaced definitely by next month or so..

with christmas just around the corner and the baby coming, it decides to play up.. why car? why??

so anyways, i might have to postpone buying the recliners :( and bought these blankets last night to cover them up

oh and i know i mentioned on my other post that i was going to make slip covers.. but they are way too complicated for a newbie like me :(
i sewed them the other night and couldn't slip em on :/ yes i know, i need a stretchy material.. i didn't think of it when i bought my fabric.. all i was thinking was oooooh $5 a metre! :/

i've also rang upholstery places and they've quoted me ridiculous prices.. cheapest i got was $500!!!

i have seriously ran out of ideas on how to revamp the tired lookin recliners and is seriously going insane! last nite i had a dream about recliners... i mean who has dreams about recliners?

fingers crossed santa buys em for me.. haha!

till then! xx

Free Labels & Templates!

2009-12-15T17:05:00.003+11:00

With Christmas around the corner (OMG next week!!!) I'm know I'm not the only one going for DIY presents this year. I've always had a thing for beautiful packaging and tags so finding these free templates from Martha made my afternoon. Can't wait to make up brand new tags for the sugar and flour bowls!

I've decided to hold off on all my refurbishing plans till after the holidays with all the last minute shopping (I've just barely started), Christmas parties and baking of goodies as presents. Hopefully I'll be able to post the gift boxes once they are filled and ready to go.

Also Rain and I recently ran off to Queenstown in New Zealand to celebrate our first wedding anniversary :) We found the most AMAZING country that seriously took our breath away just by driving around the country side.

I was extra excited to find a rustic little french restaurant that sold yummy french patisserie.

Too bad I couldn't take a souvenir with me, these tea towels were actually $135NZ each!

The pic below was taken at sunset at 10pm.

Till next time!

living area - part 1

2009-12-12T14:49:00.007+11:00

so i've now moved on to the living area :)

here are a couple of quite horrifying before photos:

I've been doin lil changes here n there but its still not finished so I won't post any after pics as yet.

here are the changes so far:
- red curtains taken down, replaced by white roman blinds.. which i just bought curtains for to soften it abit

- tv mounted on chimney breast (this took a lot of nagging to get done.. haha)

- 2 x a metre high bookshelves (painted in black) beside chimney acting as dvd storage and to hold my buffet tables.. yep they finally have a home :)

- coffee table stained in dark dark brown

and upcoming changes:
- living room to be painted (same colour as dining, off white)

- hang frames as per abby's post white on white picture wall. thanks abz for the awesome inspiration! hehe

- attempt to create a loose cover for our two hand me down reclining chairs.

one actually broke recently and i was running around like a headless chook trying to find new ones that are cheap and matches my decor... yes i know asking too much!
because yet again, i didn't find any second hand ones or maybe i'm just impatient and want everything NOW lol

i nearly was going to spend 1200 on two (from either ikea or fantastic furniture).. these were actually the cheapest brand new ones i could find... my husband nearly died when i told him the cost

then one night (and dont ask why we didn't do this when it happened) we thought, hmm maybe we should see whats wrong with the recliner and maybe it can be fixed?

so we had a look and one of the springs broke from its handle.. restricting some mechanism that's in-charge of the actual reclining.. so we nailed the spring in and sure enough it was as good as new!

so fingers crossed on the loose covers! as this is going to be my first time.. just like the upholstery hehe

- maybe change the pendants.. but dining pendant is more important as there is nothing there at the moment.. only a lonely globe :/

and thas all, i think.... :)

till then!

dining room - part 2

2009-11-30T19:17:00.015+11:00

so dining room is partly finished.. all that's missing is some sort of wall ornament for the wall, nice ceiling pendant and maybe a new runner

for the pendant i'm thinking something like this:

but seriously though, can a room really be finished? just something to ponder on.. hehe

anyway, for dining, i decided to go black for main furniture with a splash of whites and grays with a hint of brown.

here are some before and after shots:

- wine rack stained in black.. might be a tad too black tho...

- hall table painted in black and varnished (silly me bought matt black paint)

- dining chairs reupholstered

- also, as i was pulling down the old curtains in the nursery, i noticed the once were blue tie backs have faded quite nicely into silver.. and thought they might go well with my new white curtains in the dining :)

then i thought, hmmm not sure about the gold though.. what if i painted them white....

they are now hanging very happily in their new home :)

there are still a bit of faded blue here n there to it but i think it gives the tie back some sort of character

and without further ado.. my dining room :)

so far........ haha

will be posting on reupholstery steps soon

ciao for now!xox

White on White Picture Wall

2009-11-25T20:46:00.003+11:00

Awhile ago I mentioned that I had frames that needed to be finished on my to do list. Here are the beautiful golden frames I inherited from Rain's aunt months ago:

Nice slightly ornate gold frames, just needed some white paint! Here it is after a few coats of paint:

So I finally managed to get pictures for them printed out and I thought all I needed to do was get some plain white cardboard for the background. It looked awful!! The school project cardboard look just didn't go. And then I found out today that there are proper mat boards for this kind of thing, NOT cardboard. So I will need to hunt around for a board that's cheap, abit off white in colour and the right size (38cm x 38cm).

In the meantime I thought I'd look around and see how white frames look on white walls. I'm worrying that it will look abit too white, but the ones I found look reeal good! I think I might also chuck in some darker coloured frames on the same wall but first gota finish these off. So fingers crossed I'll find my mat boards soon!

I know the last one isn't actually white on white but how good does it look!! I LOVE stripes, which I'm planning to do in one of our rooms and I love how a whole bunch of different shapes and sizes manage to match with each other.

Overdue Updates

2009-11-21T21:37:00.000+11:00

Holiday fever has definitely hit me hard and I'm having way too much trouble focusing on what I should be doing! This will have to be a VERY short quick update since I'm about to head off and watch NEW MOON!!! (HELLO TWILIGHT FANS!!)

Our very first Christmas tree was a steal I found last December at the end of year Christmas sales. From $210 down to $20 at KMart! You can't go past a bargain like that! I'm planning to hit the after Christmas sales again to stock up on new decos for next year, I'd love to have a Tiffany blue / silver theme instead of gold which are well loved hand me down ornaments from my parents.

Finally as promised I managed to get pics of the finished dining table. So here is the before picture, just a normal wooden dining table that had been in my family for over 10 years. Still in beautiful shape, just a few scratches and the wrong colour.

Here is a picture of my "workshop". Chairs with just prep coats of primer but they already started to look much better!

And finally the finished product is ready:

That's it for now, hope you enjoyed the pics! Sorry I have to run but I'll post up more soooon.

Have an awesome weekend!

dining room - part 1

2009-11-15T13:44:00.009+11:00

so as per my recent blog 85% done kitchen makeover, i have moved over to the dining area. Surprise surprise! i actually have a decent before photo.

Before Photo of Dining:

I kinda dont mind this room actually, but it just didn't feel like my taste. haha 'my' taste! sorry aaron, you dont get a say in this lol.

so i am now in the process of slowly changing things around.

i really wanted some sort of buffet in there to hold our nice cutlery, preferably with a built in wine rack too to replace our sad looking 9x9 two dollar rack. But because of the limited space (room is only 2.7m x 3.4m), normal sized buffets are just a tad too big.

so i have been on ebay non-stop trying to look for a buffet that measured no more than a metre n a half long with 35cm in depth, at the same time looking for new lamps for the master bed.. and whadoyouknow! i came across these lamps going for $29.95 for two plus $12 postage.

i showed abby my find and was threatened if i didn't hurry up she would grab it.. and so i got paranoid and bought it.. without reading the description "buffet lamps" :/
yes i know. i got too excited.. i didn't even realise they were buffet lamps until it arrived the next day and aaron told me they were too high and will be an effort to turn on and off while in bed :/

so i've got these beautiful lamps with no buffet table :/

a week later i found this wine rack for $10 and couldn't resist..

1. u can't go wrong with that price
2. i just had to get rid of our old wine rack and thought it'll just be temporary until i found a buffet with built in wine rack. and;
3. u really can't go wrong with that price

naturally i kept searching for buffet tables with wine rack built in that measures no more than a metre n a half in length, 35cm depth and didn't cost over 100.. askin too much u say? you're probably right coz i didn't find any.
i got over it but still wanted some sort of side table and found this for $45:

i bought it hoping the lamps would match.. but theyre much too tall for a little hall table :(

so yes i still havent found a home for these lamps.. i'm determined tho.. maybe they can go in the 'soon to be' tv room :)

i know i bought items that weren't on the agenda but what can i say i'm a cheapskate.

i also purchased new curtains for $59.95 from spotlight.

and how can i forget about the dining chairs.
upclose of old fabric:

fabric i will be using for reupholster (grey with leafy design):

the other day i took one of the seats apart. it took me half an hour to unstaple the old fabric only to find out there's another layer of fabric to be unstapled!! grrrr! lucky the fabric was so old it was easier to rip em.

these chairs were that old, the foam would crumble in the slightest touch and the frame was all cracked!

so yesterday, i took aaron with me and went to bunnings to buy mdf board.. i am not going to do webbing as i am too lazy to do extra stapling plus i just don't have the tools to make the frame.
then to clark rubbber for the foam and wadding
aaron convinces me i should just get one for now in case it doesn't work.. i shouldn't have listened coz i laid everything last nite and it seemed ok.. and now i have to go back to bunnings and clark rubber to buy the rest!

stay tuned for the finished product as well as the after photo of the dining :)

85% done kitchen makeover

2009-11-07T16:07:00.006+11:00

i have no idea what came over me, but one day i just decided 'o i might paint the kitchen!'

maybe it was the hormones (i am 6 months pregnant) or maybe it was the fact that hubby and i are painting the whole house anyway.. but that's another story.

so off to bunnings i went and enquired if it was possible to paint on laminate.. and was informed that it IS possible to paint on laminate AND tile! :D
so bought miself the following:
- tile and laminate cleaner
- tile and laminate primer
- laminate paint

theyre all the same brands and the lady suggusted i do the 3 step process (clean, prime and paint) otherwise, warranty will be void.

i actually do not have a before photo because i keep forgetting to take em... thanks to abby she keeps reminding me :)

here are some 'kind of' before photos:

so imagine the bottom cupboards in the same colour as top cupboards.
and window sills in lovely brown colour

and after pics

the bottom cupboards were done with the laminate paint.. but the smell was just too much for a pregnant lady :) so i thought, 'hmm i wonder if normal paint works' (as we use water based paints for the house and has no smell at all). yes it does! the rest of the cupboards i used enamel paint.. and i thought they looked better than the laminate paint.
laminate paint gave a matt finish whereas enamel paint gave it a shine and is actually brighter and whiter.

my next project is to also paint the tile splashback.. so fingers crossed that works!

i would also like to change the yellow benchtop.. i haven't done any research on it yet.. but most probably we won't get an actual benchtop as we will be renovating the whole kitchen in the future so i'll probably just take the laminate top off and replace that.

but i probably won't be able to do anything until hopefully in the next month as I am quite over the kitchen!

I have actually moved on to the dining but i'll save that for another day :)

The Hutch Affair

2009-11-04T19:33:00.005+11:00

It all began one day early this winter when we stopped off at Berry. I love Berry! Maybe because I don't get to see it as much since it's about 2 and a half hours south from Sydney. Berry is a beautiful authentic country town with a good old-fashioned style main strip filled with vintage cafes, an ice cream parlour, awesome pubs AND of course tons of country homeware shops!

So there we were just shopping around when I saw the most beautiful white hutch used as a display stand for odd bits and pieces. It was similar to this hutch here:

Beautiful and the perfect size! Not too large or deep with nice open shelves so that you can see the detail of the different wooden boards. Unfortunately it was priced at $800, so adding delivery cost would be around $900. So after failing to convince Rain that this was one of those investment pieces that would last forever and would be something that we would never ever regret or need to buy again, we left it behind.

A few months later while ebaying at random I came across the white hutch in the picture above for $355! I knew then that it was definitely a sign! But Rain was still not convinced and after another round of nagging I let that one go too. It turns out though that agreeing with him actually paid off, because a few days later I saw and won this on ebay for $70!!

Who could say no to that? It's exactly the same!! I soo can't wait to have it in my garage ready to be painted! It will have to wait until next week since we'll need all the room in our garage for our house warming BBQ this weekend. I'll definitely do an update once it's been through my paintshop. Other pieces that are on my to-do list are my dining set (which should be finished by tomorrow YAY!), a giant bookshelf from thanks to another great ebay sale and the refurbishing of my old frames (yes, jona still not done, not happy jan!). I'll also need to find or get a new USB cord for my camera so I can actually have more pics to put on show.

Anyhoo that's all for now, I'll be back after the BBQ with more updates!