Exterior/Street Front Inspiration for Chez Pirate

The renovation is about to begin in earnest and the pressure is on to make some decisions.  For some time I have been photographing houses in our neighborhood and the surrounding suburbs for inspiration and one of my husband's hobbies is to spend hours perusing real estate sites so we have amassed quite a collection of images to inspire us in our latest renovating endeavour!  Currently concentrating on exterior colour, weatherboard style (ie. classic,rusticated etc) and fretwork...

Love the colour of this house (am pretty sure it is the house in the Dulux ad!) and we are also planning to do a similar path of sandstone pavers across the back lawn to the pool.

Closer shot for y'all of the colour!

This house is in my Aunty's neck of the woods and everytime we drive past I swoon!

Another divine weatherboard!

Love the porch light!

This house is even further North at Palm Beach and is truly spectacular.  Image is from Architectural Digest and if you want to see more photos of the interior (divine) see here.

Love the colour of this house as well, in fact I love it so much that I knocked on the door once on my way back from the beach with dripping wet hair and still in my bathers and asked the owner what the colours she had used were.  She was just gorgeous and very kindly shared with me!  (Image originally from Domain.)

Another jewel on the Northern Beaches.  The pirates often play at the playground across the water from this house and I find it very distracting! (Image originally from Domain.)

Here are all the colour samples painted onto the side of the house... we are leaning towards the centre one.  Any thoughts? 

Two lovely things happened to me today!

Which is especially lovely as I have a horrible flu like cold at the moment! 

                         Lovely thing number one:

In the mail arrived my first giveaway win ever, infact my only win ever!!!! I won a copy of The Outside Boy on Julia's fabulous blog and I am so looking forward to reading it!  Thank you Julia!

 Lovely thing number two:

I popped into our local Salvo's store (my favourite shop EVER) and look what I found!!!!  A perfect, unchipped immaculate Carlton Ware single flower plate.  AAAAHHHH!  Rufus Wainwright was singing the chorus from Hallelujah in my head as I walked out of the shop!!!!  I have been collecting Carlton Ware since my early university days and I have been looking for one of these plates for a LONG time.  I feel better already.

A lazy weekend.

Recently we have been frantically busy.  Partly as we are just about to undertake a fairly major renovation,  (plans approved, builder engaged, organising storage and rearranging bedrooms right now!) and partly due to the Captain starting school and R's business expanding.  So it was a lovely change to have a relatively quiet weekend with only a few comittments to attend... and for the first time in ages we actually managed to capture all four of us behind the lens.  This is such an unusual event that I have posted the photo!  Here we all are, admittedly not the best photo of all of us, but as Jane would say... we're keeping it real people!

Saturday night we went to Hugos Manly for dinner. A truly great local restaurant.  It is in a fantastic location on Manly Wharf and has an amazing colonial/plantation style ambience.  It also manages to simultaneously be both intimate and romantic and yet family friendly!  We have had dinner there on date nights and also pizza early in the evening with kids and it is perfect for both.  Not many restaurants can accomplish this!  Can you tell I love it? 

The view from our table.  Note the bicycle leaning against the railing outside.  Every time I looked at it I thought of Julia and her fantasy bike collection.

This is the dish that we go there for... not the little one's pizza, although the pizza is fantastic, proper crispy thin crust! No, we get cravings for the... Wagyu beef carpaccio with roasted baby beetroot, whipped goat’s curd & balsamic  glaze!!! Delicious! I also recommend the Pimm's cocktail.  As a Pimm's aficionado I often find it undrinkable unless I have mixed it myself.  Hugos gets it right everytime, half ginger ale, half lemonade and just the right amount of fruit to cucumber!  Refreshing, delicious and perfect for a late afternoon or early evening cocktail.

The boys like it there as well. He is spotting fish!