Getting ready for Christmas!

This year for the first time I am hosting the family Christmas.  Admittedly not the entire extended family is attending, however there will still be 10 adults and 5 children and I feel a little overwhelmed by it all!  So far, all I have done is dress the tree and put up some of the decorations around the house.

Not these ones though!  My beloved vintage Shiny Brites are well and truly out of reach for the time being and I am currently undecided as to where the safest place to display them is.  Obviously somewhere high though!  Very high, as I am afraid I can't trust my two mountaineers not to attempt an expedition to retrieve them.

The rest however are fairly hardy and have been hung by the boys on the tree, with a little tweaking by me afterwards!  I am loving the baby's tongue poking out in concentration here!

And his tippy-toe stretch here!

We have been reading Christmas stories every evening before bed.  We only have this small selection, some of which date back to my childhood and I would love to get some more, does anybody have any good recommendations? 

And if anyone has any ideas about what Dragon Island might be, I would be even more grateful!

My close encounter with Oprah...

On the weekend we flew down to Melbourne for a Christmas Party and look who I ran into outside our hotel:

I know!!!  I can't believe it either!!!  I had taken the boys downstairs to go for a quick scooter along the river before the babysitter arrived and had noticed the police cars/boats/helicopters as the boys were scootering about.  About 10 minutes later Oprah sauntered past us chatting with the Prime Minister!  Apparently not long before she had made an appearance in Federation Square with 26 000 fans... there were maybe 50 people outside when we saw her!

This is how close she was to us! 

A trip down South to Milton

 We have just returned from a weekend away on the south coast of New South Wales.  The highlight of which for me was a trip to nearby Milton, a tiny little village up on a hill loooking over the coast.  It is a lovely little spot full of charming cottages, cafes, boutique homewares shops and best of all some great  antique shops.  I have been visiting Milton for years, (although as a kid I was more into the Scarecrow Festival they have annually than the antique shops), and have watched the gentrification of the town with interest.  At the moment I think it is just about perfect and definitely not too touristy like Berry is nowadays.  

A lovely cottage in the main street of town:

The view from where I parked the car:

 I spent Friday morning exporing several antique shops and there were numerous items I desperately wanted to bring home with me but considering the amount of luggage that our car was literally stuffed with I was obliged to "look and not touch" (as I warn the children every time we enter a shop in a steely voice). 

How I would have loved this old lobster pot to decorate our back deck with.

I can't stop thinking about this rustic meat safe, with it's crackled old blue paint.

I already have way too many of these old suitcases, but I still adore them!

I don't have any of these old trunks however and surely they would make great storage for something...

Lots of divine items here...

and here!

Tretchikoff prints can look amzing in the right houses and this one of the "blue lady" against the wall paper looked fabulous.

Looking forward to my next visit and this time I will make sure that there is some room in the car!

The joys of boys...

As the only female in the house I feel a little outnumbered, especially when I come home to find...

A tadpole on the dining table... (plus random peg)

Alongside, a very furry caterpillar...

Just in case you couldn't see the little guy (yes, everything is male around here I am sure of it!)...

and... that would be a bike in the background.  Apparently it needs to live in the dining room until it is added to the insurance.  Hmmm.

Swimming Pool Update and a visit to Abode Bazaar

We have had a rather industrious weekend at Pirate HQ.  My parents have been up visiting, which has been lovely as R and I were able to complete various tasks around the house.  Often a challenge when small children are "helping" or feeling needy, so it was fabulous to have some extra pairs of hands!  One of the main jobs on my to do list was to source some pots similar to the one above.   My mission was unsuccessful unfortunately, however at Abode Bazaar in Willoughby (one of my favourites!) I found some other lovely pots that I decided were perfect anyway!


This is one of the new Abode pots with a lovely Bromeliad in it, I so love the aged, stone effect of the pots.  They remind me of the gardens in India for some reason.  Whereas, my blue and white china pot makes me think of KL and Singaporean gardens ( that particular pot was purchased years ago when we were on posting in KL though.):

Another to do list job was to complete the landscaping around the swimming pool.  R has been pottering away at it for the last few months slowly but having my Dad around for a few days, they both got stuck into it and I am truly impressed with the result.  The stone is from Eco Outdoor and is  the Random Ashlar "Clancy" one and they did it themselves!  In one day!  R also did all of the decking himself, that did take a fair bit longer than one day though!


In this photo you can see the pile of stone that was delivered.  They then stuck each piece of stone onto the cement sheeting, fitting the pieces together like a puzzle.  The more random the better it looked we decided!

My Dad hard at work,(R is cracking the whip somewhere in the background!):

The end result!  (Ignore garden and pool furniture for now, still working on those parts...).  Although, you can admire the lovely new glass pool fence!:

The Apprentice

There is a new apprentice working on the decking around the pool...  I so love his choice of workwear.

A new bedside table.

For a while now I have been using a stack of magazines and books as a bedside table and it was starting to irritate me no end each time I entered the bedroom and glanced at my side of the bed!  Clearly, I desperately needed a new bedside table and as we are about to renovate and my bedroom will be completely different once finished, I was reluctant to spend a lot of money on something that might not work in the room post-renovation.  I also didn't want to spend a medium amount of money on a stop gap bedside table that I didn't love.  Instead, I popped into our local Salvos store and picked up this rather ugly bookshelf for $15. 

I gave it a light sand and a new coat of paint and I am delighted with the end result.  After the renovation is complete and once I have found the perfect bedside tables I am going to move it to the future guest bedroom as a new bedside table where it will work perfectly next to my old black wrought iron bed that is currently stored under the house.  Well, I hope it will work anyway!