Oh my. Hello again, blogger world! I can't even say how sorry I am about the lack of posts I've done in the past two years :( Such an unbelievably long time has passed and I don't blame everyone for giving up on our poor blog. BUT here's to second chances and new beginnings! Big, big thanks also to Jona who didn't give up on me either - did you know I was going to come back eventually?

I shall start slow and leave my recap of the past two years for later :)

Today was a Saturday here in Oz and I was lucky enough to have a lovely catchup planned with a friend. Just a regular catchup would have been enough to make my day but a few extra special things happened that cranked up our feel good factor. First off, we drove to Parramatta in search for lunch and had those round-and-round-the parking-lot fiascos while trying to get a spot. After about our fifth time around, a nice lady waved us over to her carspot with a big smile on her face. Her hubby moved their car out of the spot and she turned around AND GAVE US HER PARKING TICKET! As in, her paid parking ticket with a few hours to spare! Yay! Nothing like free parking tickets to put smiles on anyone's face right :)

Lunch - we walked a few blocks down and saw a newly opened burger joint, Grilld. Lovely, proper juicy beef burgers grilled beautifully with amazing chips (yes this was abit naughty). But with our meal came a couple of beer bottle lids, since they had an in-store program where three jars for three different charities stood on a shelf. Each month the store donates $300 to the charity who's jar had the most beer bottle lids. How beautiful is that!

Lunch Dessert - another newly opened store was around the corner called WOWCOW. It turned out that today was their big opening day and all frogurts were $1! The store was covered in pink balloons, loud music pumping, a cow mascot face painting kids faces and real baby cows in a pen wearing pink hats - great atmosphere all in all.

Lunch Dessert Dessert - yes we had a very naughty day, we didn't stop with our frogurts. We headed over to San Churro, sat in a cozy little spot next to a window eating macarons, churros and drinking tea.

   Sweeten Thy Soul - San Churro Goodies
Yes, my soul was sweetened by the time we headed home - nothing like good times with good friends. Till next time, have a great weekend! xx

I have finally forced myself to paint the tiles in the kitchen. Yay!! This was actually finished two weeks ago. I just haven't had the time to write as I have been busy painting some of our furniture white. Yes I finally have had the courage to go white! but we'll talk about that some other time :)

Here is a before before photo of the kitchen (I've had to go through painting stages), though I'm not sure why it's so tiny?

And the finished product! It feels unbelievable to finally tick this off my list!

Max caught me taking photos and wanted to be in the photo too!

The space feels so much bigger and fresher. But at the same time now I think it may be a bit too white?

I can't remember how I came across this idea (most probably from :)) but I'm thinking of doing a painted splashback on the tiles to break it up a bit. Here are some inspirations.

Jones Design Compay

High gloss on matt background by Cutting Edge Stencils

Cutting Edge Stencils

Cutting Edge Stencils

Cutting Edge Stencils

Cutting Edge Stencils

I am also thinking of stenciling the dining so still deciding whether to do a damask design or not. All the designs look amazing which makes it hard to decide :/

Which one do you think I should go for?

Hello there! So in one of my recent posts, I have mentioned taking photos of changes we had done to the house. After some thinking, I'm not sure if I'm going to do that anymore :/ because 1. I didn't really take any photos lol and 2. well it seems like I'm bragging a bit too much? and there's nothing really to brag about because it's not an actual renovation i.e. no walls were knocked down and therefore nothing major was really done. But don't worry I will soon be bragging about the kitchen even though its only a paint job :)

Yes it will soon be 100% done! After being 85% done for so long! like around 2 years! hah! Here is a little preview.

One side primed.

I hope to finish before the weekend! Anyway have to keep this short as I still have to wash my grubby little munchkin! and then I can finally do some painting! yay! :)

So yesterday Aaron and I took Max to the Werribee Zoo to see the lions and the elephants (the pawooo and raaahhh as Max calls them). But as we arrived at the zoo we realised they didn't have elephants.. uh oh! Lets hope the lil man forgets.. he didn't but he got to see the lions and the monkeys so he wasn't as upset. Phew!

My two preciouses.

After the zoo, we had some snacks at one of the town's cafes. As we were eating the following conversation took place between Max and I:

Me: I love you Max, do you love mummy?

Max: No.

Me: Aww (as I pretend to cry). Do you love mummy?

Max: No.

I gave up, knowing I wasn't going to get a yes that day and said: "It's ok Max, I'll still love you even if you don't love me back".

Aaron looked up as if he couldn't believe I had said it lol. Which was fair enough, I mean even I was shocked that came out of my mouth. Being an only child, I didn't have to worry about siblings or anyone but myself and that's all that mattered. I have never felt a love so unconditional, so pure. I guess this is what motherhood is all about :)

Hope you're all having a good weekend! xx

That's right! Posting two days in a row! Making up for lost times! haha! 

So anyways, I've been really obsessed with Pinterest lately and have been pinning all day everyday since I became a member. Its like my very own virtual vision board. It keeps me motivated and inspired! Here are just some of my pins:

 

I guess Pinterest got me started with blogging again :) though I'm afraid not working for Abby lol.

If you have the time come follow us on and have a fantastic weekend! xx

Love,

Wow!! I am really feeling sorry for this blog as it has been neglected quite a bit that I couldn't even remember the login! :(. So much have changed around the house that I don't even really know where to start either. I might have to do a one massive one I guess and then decide whether I need to create a separate post for it. So over the weekend hopefully I get to take pictures of the house and show you what's been done. This is considering of course Max lets me, who by the way is now 2 and a half years old and is quite a cheeky lil munchkin! How time flies, right? So you might get a glimpse of the little guy in some, if not all of the photos lol.

the loud to my quite! xx

But I guess in the mean time, I'll share my current house decorating dilemma ;). So I am thinking of doing one of those inspirational text wall art somewhere in the kitchen. Like all my house plans, I have photoshoped the wall art in places I thought would look good.

Photoshoped wall art featuring Moo Moo the cat.

Yes, as you can see I still have my beautiful yellow bench top and of course the lovely orange and brown tiles. I am still confused as to which one to do. I like both of them. What do you think? 

 

Love,

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!

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!

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

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