New bedside tables

Good morning, how are you all?

I am sorry for being away from you for sooooo long.  We have been busy with our bedroom renovation, the new wardrobe is in, the new blind is up and the new paintwork is done.

  

I have been loving every minute, my creative juices have been flowing!!  But I must admit the house is upside down, I have no energy for any housework, (so I am blogging instead)!

We are so close to a reveal, but I have to hold out just a little longer.  I am so excited as the  new carpet goes down tomorrow.  We have chosen an eco friendly carpet made from corn.  Very soft and extremely hardy.  You can read all about it here.  I have never had new carpet in any of my homes before and I can't wait...

I can show you our new bedside tables from La Maison.  They are so beautiful and we got them on sale too, which is even better!

Here is a sneek peak...

 Isn't she lovely?  A soft creamy ivory, which will fit into our scheme perfectly.  We will have one on each side of the bed.  I am still on the lookout for matching bedside lamps but I think they will have to wait for awhile.

We spied some beautiful chairs for the bedroom too in our local La Maison store, Wishbone, unfortunately the budget wouldn't S-T-R-E-T-C-H that far....

 I will be back soon, (I promise!) to reveal our new Master bedroom, so until then take care. 

I'm thinking a photo wall

Hello dear friends, I hope you are having a relaxing Easter!

We are spending our time with family, the kidlets are so excited to have some lovely family members around for the holidays!

Speaking of family, I have been thinking about the multitude of photo frames we have been accumulating.  Before we painted the interior of our house we had a wall of large frames in our stairwell.  The nail holes are all still there but we haven't put the photo frames back up.

I am thinking black.  As the frames are all different I think a uniform black would look great.  And you know I am loving black at the mo...  Mr Echoes is taking some convincing, but I can work on that!

Here are some photos I have found on the web that are of interest...

One of my favourite blog reads is, Young House Love, John & Sherry have a new photo wall in their hallway, which looks fantastic!  If you want to read all about it go over here!

Anyhoo, I will endeavour to work on Mr Echoes for our black frames, stay tuned!

Until then...

All things black...

Good morning dear friends, I hope you had a relaxing weekend.

I am in a dark mood, not a bad mood but a black mood!

Who is loving black at the moment?

I certainly am.

Thinking, new black pendant light for over our dining table, we've got the new black clock for the kitchen/dining and I am going to paint my small desk (where I am going to blog from in the very near future) gloss black!

So enjoy my small feast of black!

So until next time, enjoy your dark mood with me!

Take care,

Winging it!

Hello lovelies!
I am thinking a new chair for our bedroom.  Maybe a Louis wing chair is in order?  I am not sure if I will be mixing styles but it is always nice to be able to sit in a bedroom.

I am loving this one here with the linen look fabric on the white, gorgeous!

An all white one?

Maybe something like this will suit the room better?

This one is nice, but maybe a little over the top?

I was inspired by a blog I have recently found, dear lillie.  She has the most beautiful home and her new baby's nursery is to die for! 


Go over and have a look!  Here is a sneek peek and the reason I am thinking new chair!

Hope you are having a great week,
  I am off work at home with a sore throat & head :(

As always,

A calming living room

Hello beautiful people, 

I hope you have had a great week.  I am feeling really excited about all that we are planning to do in our little home.  I have been looking over carpet this week and it is so confusing!  Lots of different colours, piles, makes, textures, quality.  I have a headache thinking about all the possibilities! :(

A calming living room photo is what I need, isn't this one just beautiful?  It all works together perfectly!

Photo courtesy House Beautiful

Have a perfect weekend.

Take care,

Chandelier before & after...

No, it's not my work (unfortunately), but I had to show you this fantastic job Ellie Snow of Mint has done with her chandelier make over.  You can read more about it here.

 

Drum roll please...

to this...

Maybe I could do something like this for our bedroom reno, a chandelier with three lights instead of five.

I might have to arrange a trip to our local tip or charity shop...

*Sigh*

As always,

Overripe bananas, a bedroom renovation and making a cake...

Good morning everyone, I hope you are having a great week!

I am at home today, normally I work on Tuesday's but both my girls are a little under the weather and are staying home from school.

As I only work part time it is normally Mr Echoes that stays home with sick children.  He had something he had to do at work today, so I am the one nursing the girls.

I put on a load of washing, made all the beds, (I really need to change my sheets but they can wait another day or so!) tidied up the breakfast dishes, chose my Roman blind fabric, baked a banana cake...

Did I say, chose some fabric?  Yes I did, I am soooooooooooooooo excited!  Can you tell?  We are starting our main bedroom renovation very and I mean very soon!

Let me start from the beginning.  We bought this house a three bedroom, (with living, kitchen/dining,  bathroom, laundry) and the potential for a fourth bedroom and small ensuite downstairs.

 

We started using the downstairs room as a movie room,  a mancave for Mr Echoes an adults room for us to relax in, watch movies, sit and chat once the kidlets were tucked up in their beds.

When our living room tv died, we lugged up the one from our movie room.  It is a far better tv than we had anyway.  We lost our movie room but we gained a better tv for all of us to enjoy but the room became lots of other things...

It became, the family guest bedroom, (they only get a blow up mattress to sleep on, I know it is not great but they keep coming back, they really do like us!), a computer room, an exercise room (Mr Echoes cycles), and a junk room - where everything that doesn't have a home ends up, or is that the garage???

 

 

Now, getting back to our reno, we have decided to move our bedroom downstairs so each kidlet can have their own bedroom.  Miss Echoes 10, (going on 18.. ) says she is way too old to share with Miss Echoes 5, and truth be told they are kinda squashed into a little bedroom :(

 I have been constantly talking at Mr Echoes with all my ideas, non stop for the last 6 months Mr Echoes and I have been discussing all OUR fabulous ideas on what to do with the spare room and the little ensuite bathroom.

It is a total mess at the moment, so I am sorry to say I can't show you any photos just yet, but I promise, very soon!  

So, the first little thing I have done is choose the blind fabric for our new Roman blind!  I know it is only a small step, but Rome wasn't built in a day - small steps are always good! Well that's what I am telling myself anyway :)

Here are two shots of the fabric, it is hard to tell the exact colour, but it is a creamy stone colour, which will match with the paint we have on our living, kitchen/dining walls.

I hope you like it, the scrolls match our bed which is a bronzey wrought iron style - photos to come...

Back to the cake baking...

I had some overripe bananas and between selecting fabric, I baked a fail safe recipe, which turns out every time!  I am not the best baker but this one always gets favourable comments!

 

A piece for me :)

 

Here is the recipe if you are interested.

 

Moist banana cake

250 g soft butter

1 cup castor sugar

3 eggs

3 overripe bananas, mashed

2 cups self raising flour

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy

Add eggs one at a time and beat well between each

Stir in mashed bananas

Stir in sifted flour

Mix well and put into a greased cake tin, cook in a moderate oven for 45 minutes.  Stand to cool on a wire rack, dust with icing sugar, then eat :)

Yummo!

Take care and thanks for stopping by! Any main bedroom do overs, or renovation stories to tell? I would love to hear from you!

As always,

Clocks

One of my favourite things is a clock.

They can be old, new, retro, vintage, 

you name it I like 'em all.

The one above is from here.

This one is from a local tip shop, it doesn't work anymore

but I loved its face.  The colours work well with other items in this little vignette

on the side table in my lounge room.

 This is our new kitchen clock. I have been keeping an eye out for a new one,

ever since the kitchen reno.  I tried my hand at spray painting a clock we had before but ended up wrecking the clear plastic cover.

So when I saw this one I was really pleased, you can buy it from this gift shop here.

Now this baby below, was the very first one I ever purchased!

It must have started my collection.

It doesn't work anymore but it did for a long time

until I overwound it one day :(

It had a fantastic alarm sound, it would definitely wake up the heaviest of sleepers!

 

This blue and white number below is Cornishware.
You may still be able to buy it from somewhere like here.  
At the moment it sits on my dresser.

 amongst my junk "collections".

 

  

What time pieces do you like to use? Are you into collecting clocks like me?

I hope you are having a lovely weekend, enjoying the Autumn weather at home, or some of you may be enjoying Spring over the other side of the world!
I love that blogging brings us all together :)

Take care,

My new mantra...

Hi everyone,

I hope you have had a great week!

We are going into a long weekend here and I am looking forward to a nice quiet one...

Don't you just love this poster? I just hung one in my kitchen in a vintage frame I spray painted cream.  A gorgeous friend of mine framed it for me and she did a wonderful job!

 The grey and cream look so dreamy! I love it <3 <3

 I walk out every morning and see it hanging in its splendour and it calms me instantly! 

Sorry about the blah photo!  I took it at night and had to crop it to bits to avoid the overflowing dishes in the sink, the messy bench and the black windows (due to a night time photo).

I will have to take a better photo sometime soon for you!

I hope you are calm and enjoy a fabulous weekend!

As always,

 

Weekend wonders and freebies...

I

It is amazing what you can do with a computer and a printer,

this little beauty was done in an afternoon.

I went through the alphabet using each letter in order, 

and came up with a type of food or something to do with the kitchen.

I printed it out using different fonts and framed it in a frame I had painted white.

It was easy and because I typed it I can change the words on a whim.

The frame sits on an old box I turned sideways to make into a little set of shelves.

I picked up the box on the side of the road in a council clean up last year.

 I thought twice about picking it up,

but was glad I did, as I have had heaps of comments and questions about where I got my rustic shelves!

They come in handy for our kitchen radio, a small basket of cables and chargers, an old jar full of spare change, and our telephone.  I like the spot on the top for a little vignette of odds and ends.

At the moment it has a beautiful dove that used to be be grandmother's.  A large frame I am in the middle of spray painting and a collection of white bowls.

 

There are all these holes at the side which I really like, it adds to the rustic charm. I use little star pins at the side to attach invitations or cards I like.

I love it when you find freebies that work well in your home,

what have you found lately?

Take care and enjoy your weekend,

Kitchen renovation

This is a long post (sorry), so sit back with a cuppa and enjoy!

It always takes time to get things done...

I am one of those people (like probably most of you out there!) once you decide on 

something, you wanna get cracking straight away!

We lived in our house about 5 years before we even tackled the kitchen...

This is a shot of what it looked like when we bought the house just over 8 years ago. Sorry for the grainy look, I only had this photo from when the house was for sale. Gotta remember to take those before photo's!

The people we bought the house from were really clean and tidy

BUT, we didn't like their style.

The stove was the first thing to stop working, so we bought a new stainless steel number from Clive Peeters.  The staff are so helpful there and although the stove wasn't in stock, it was delivered within a week of purchasing it.

Here she is, our De Longhi beauty.  She sits next to our Bosch dishwasher.  We thought we would get a stainless dishwasher but we liked the white, it allows our stove to stand out!

Once the stove was in, everything else looked old and tired.  We then installed a stainless rangehood, which fits in perfectly above the stove.

Sorry about the dark photo's from my iphone, I will have to take photos one day with my camera.  Or better still Mr Echoes who loves photography, could take them for me? (I am sure he will be reading this at some stage! Hi honey :) )

We then replaced the old cupboard doors, the panel under the bench, the kickboards, and the pantry door all in vinyl wrap.  We also replaced the bench with laminex, we would have loved stone but it was out of our budget and new hardware.

The kitchen looked better instantly!

It was a good way to save $$$$ too as the carcass to the cupboards and the design of the kitchen was perfect for the small space.

We also had drawers installed in these areas for storing glasses, cups and utensils. Soft close drawers too, which are just wonderful!

The splash back was a really old fashioned 80's tile with fruit on every third of fourth tile.  I have searched for before photos but can't find any.  Trust me, they were gross!

Our budget didn't allow for removal of the tiles, so we painted them!  Using this fantastic product White Knight tile paint.  We chose a green and have had amazing comments from people including the trademen who installed the kitchen!  

You can make the tile out here in this photo.

It is a 3 step process, first clean the tiles - with this then prime with this and then paint with this and finish with this! It makes it a 4 step process with the grout pen!

If you go to your friendly Bunnings they will be able to help you with the process and the White Knight website can help you through it all too!

We ended up doing one extra coat of paint just to make it look even better.  It wears really well, it gets a bit greasy behind the hotplates but wipes clean and so far no paint has come off or chipped off!  We have regrouted using the pen a couple of times as this does where off with cleaning.

We then realised our fluoro light wasn't working for us, so we had installed 2 stainless lights from Bunnings  they were only about $30 each from memory, (you can see them in the above photo).  We also had 2 downlights installed, which makes it perfect at night, no more working in your shadow!

Finally we purchased 3 new faux leather stools from one of my favourite homeware stores Freedom.  Here they are here. They were a bit more pricey than we wanted to pay, but we had to get them once we saw them, they were just right!

So there you have it,

from this:

to this:

How are your renovations going?

Have you done any lately?

Take care,