I'm So Excited!!!!

I just ordered our new dining room chandelier!!! It's made from coconut beads and is half off at Anthropologie. It reminds me a bit of Nina Griscom's ($5000) branchelier:

Obviously that's a bit out of our price range... ;) When my friends gave me a gift card for my birthday, I found the coco-bead chandlier & was in love. To be honest, few people in my "real life" seem to like this chandelier, but I was hoping you design divas would "get it." ;) ;) hahaha

Anyway, I'll be posting pics when it arrives!!

xoxo,

lauren

A Collar for Ned

I just came across these very cool Mascot dog collars and leads. I think I am going to have to order one in for Ned. Only problem will be trying to decide on which colour.....probably Navy.

A Beautiful Vignette

I am in-love with this beautiful vignette in the home of Melbourne based artist John Young which was featured in the July/August 2009 issue of Inside Out Magazine. I think the composition of the simple, natural tones of the objects with the divine, earthy coloured portrait is very beautiful.

Loving Ruffled Kitchen Skirts

I love the informality of ruffled kitchen skirts. I'm thinking from a budget conscious point of view this might be a fun option when we renovate our kitchen at our Stradbroke beach cottage. Are they a pain to use and keep clean?? I would love to hear from anyone who has had these before...

image 1 - mary ruffle, image 2 - skona hem

Pretty Yellow Wattle

Whilst I have been out on my morning walks of late I have noticed the wattle trees in flower all over the place. When I went down to the park with Harry yesterday there was one large tree in flower. I picked a few branches and brought them home and then arranged them in an old crystal vase my grandmother gave me a couple of years ago. I just adore the vibrant yellow of the flowers against the grey-green of the leaves.

Saturday Vintage Shopping Trip

A friend asked me to go hunting for vintage pieces with her yesterday {Saturday}. I warned her before we left that sometimes it can be hard to find things and sometimes we can come home with no great finds. Well, didn't I eat my words. We had one of the most successful vintage hunts I have had in a long time. We filled the boot of the car and then filled the back seats with things too. We even have a few pieces which need delivering next week!! Now, that's what I call a successful day...

Friday Flowers

I was very lucky to be given these pretty mottled roses from a friend today. I arranged them in a pretty yellow vase we have at Black & Spiro. I placed them next to our beautiful vintage lamp and shade {note the beautiful embroidery on the shade} on a table in the shop and then a very lucky young lady came into the shop with her mum and her sister and they took the lamp home for her bedroom. I am sad to see this beautiful one-off vintage lamp go but I know it will be loved and cherished by it's next owner...

Happy Weekend. See you next time.

xx

Anna

We All Start Out Somehere: My First Laboratory

Let me start out this post by saying that I am trusting you here. I'm letting you in on where design all started for me, and it's not pretty. :) As designers/ homeowners, we all have our labs in which we experiment, our homes. I attribute so much of what I've learned today from my frist apartment after college. I think I did pretty much everything one SHOULD NOT do in decorating. hahahah I really probably shoudn't have even been ALLOWED near a paint can. So, I thought it would be fun to share some photos with you, but be ready for some scary stuff!

To begin with, let me tell you that I was aware that a home should have flow with colors & a tone that relates to one another throughout the rooms, but I totally disregarded this because I knew I would only be living there for a short time & I wanted to go crazy with colors, to experiment. And experiment I did...

We painted the living room was a bright olivey green (a fun color actually) I had lots of things from my grandparents who have travelled extensively in the East and got really "themey" around that. (like the Temple Rubbing, above.) I found the table below for $64 at my favorite thrift shop and was in LOVE with it until we broke it doing SAKI BOMBS on it. :( The poor little legs just gave right out!

I ended up replacing it with this one below. I also can't tell you how proud I was of the arrangement of mirrors. Virtually everything in the space was a hand-me-down so it never really felt like "me."

We painted the kitchen in a terra cotta and (here's where it gets bad) the dining room in BLUE. hahaha oh well... talk about flow! The rooms were fairly closed off from one another but from one point in the entryway, if you looked just right you could see all 3 colors at once. I kid you not, I kind of loved it & would stand there to see all 3 colors at once, telling my roommate, "Oh look! If you stand here it's like a rainbow!!!" hahahahaha

In the end, over the course of one short year, I painted my bedroom twice, my bathroom twice and the dining room twice, and I repainted my roomate's bedroom in a crazy mustard when she moved out because I thought I was going to stay there with my husband when we got married. (Although we ended up buying our townhouse.) At this point in time, I had "themes" for my rooms. (Please check out my post on kitsch here.) This room was going to be "Tuscan." :)

This was one of the most educational paint jobs we ever did. (To be honest, at the time I LOVED the bright mustard) We learned about faux painting & glazing & were able tone it down a bit more in our next house.

We also knocked over an entire gallon of paint on the white carpet and had to rip it out to expose the hardwood parquet underneath. Now, this was an apartment and when this happened, I did not expect to get my deposit back, but they did give it back!! WOW love them!

My bedroom started out a robin's egg blue. The color below is what I was going for & when the robin's egg blue went up I learned how much darker & brighter paint appears on walls than it does on the swatch. Again, really educational. The 4 poster bed was my first "real" purchase ever. It was from Bombay Company & I loved it.

This purchase & room redo happened about 10-11 months into the 1 year, so I wasn't there for long! Below, I also learned from studying these pictures, how to style. At this point, I didn't even read design magazines or books & really had no clue how to go about doing it. I just photographed the spaces exactlty as they were, without paying attention to how pleasing it would look in a photo.

When I painted the bedroom & bathroom a pale blue & got the Bombay bed, I would say it was at this point that I started getting a sense of what was "me." I repainted my bathroom a pale blue to match the pretty toile shower curtain I got from Restoration Hardware at a wedding shower. (below)

I wish I had photos for you of the dining room & kitchen. All the pics above were one of the first times I'd ever taken photos of interiors & I also have to say, I learned a lot about styling & angles & lighting from taking these shots. I learned you should try never to use flash (as I did in lots of these!! :) as it makes the room look dark & cheap. (But here's another trick-- I TOTALLY use flash in my "befores'!!! this is twofold: 1) the afters look way better in comparison, haha but 2) You get lots of detail when you're using them for referencing on projects)

Anyway, I think it's so interesting to see how we all start out at the beginning and have the ability to educate ourselves. It was through my experimenting & eventual education & reading-reading-reading that I began to grasp what good design was. I'm not going to kid myself though, I'm sure I'll one day look back on where I am right now & feel the same way I do about this apartment!! Our tastes are constantly evolving & we're constantly honing our skills.

I had to laugh when I read an article about Darryl Carter experimenting in his first DC condo and calling it his "laboratory." Well, his experimenting led to a spread in Met Home!! Like I said, we all start out somewhere!!

xoxo,

lauren

Black & Spiro Today

It's been a while since I posted some pictures of the shop so I thought I would post some today. We have some lovely new pieces in at the moment including some beautiful vintage/antique pieces.

Summer on the Otherside

One of the things I love about this time of year {Winter in Australia} when it comes to my magazine subscriptions is the beautiful Summer homes featured in my favourite American magazines. Even though we are a little lighter on this year without the likes of Domino to give us our hit, this month's issue of Elle Decor looks like it's a cracker!! Loving this house belonging to Scott Currie {Elie Tahari public relations} in Southampton, New York.

The Origins of Taste

I've been talking a little bit about my mother's style in comparison to my own this week and I happened to stumble across this article by Anne E. Collins the Executive Editor over at Point Click Home in which she talks briefly about the origins of taste. I think it's a good read and applicable to my posts here this week. I hope to talk more about this topic in the coming weeks on ABT.

Geraniums

My mother has always had lots of large pots of geraniums growing on her verandah. No family dinner or lunch is complete without some sort of flower arrangement on my mothers dining table and geraniums have often filled the void when other options aren't flowering in her garden. I thought I'd post a couple of her little geranium arrangements. You won't believe it when I tell you the last image is actually in her old bedroom at my grandmother's house. The black and white ticking wallpaper which you can see in the background has been on those walls for around 40 years! Mum chose the wallpaper for her room when she was a teenager. Now doesn't that spell timeless....

On the Homefont

I thought I'd give you an update on what we've been up to at our new house & share some plans for our family room.

Above, our yard is finally getting there... The flowers are getting big enough for cutting and my husband built a pretty fence around the property. Life is so much easier without having to worry about our toddler & dog escaping to freedom! (We're waiting for it to gray/ dull a bit with age)

My husband's been working like crazy...And Christian has to do everything his dad does... He has to "help daddy" as he so urgently tells us, so here he is below, shoveling and "making a garden."

Below, our favorite spot to hang is under the maple tree in our two adirondack chairs. The other night, after transplanting an entire truckload of plants from my mom's garden, (thank you mom!!) we put the little one to bed & just sat out in the chairs. It felt so good because we've been running around like crazy and it was awesome to look around & see all that we'd accomplished. Writing this now, I realize we need more of this relaxing time...

Our little guy's having so much fun out there & we have one of those really ugly bright plastic baby pools with the slide in them. He absolutely loves it, which is enough to make me not care about how bad it looks.

Our friends, Amy & Greg, made us this awesome vegetable garden!! (below) Yes, they actually came over & built it & gave us plants & everything. I can't believe how sweet they are & can't wait for those 'maters to grow!! yum! yum!

We've picked the paint color for the outside of our house, the gray below, and hope to get to it in the next couple of weeks.

And finally, my in-laws came this weekend to help again. yay!! My husband & father-in-law removed all the panelling in the basement/ family room, waterproofed it, changed some walls, added new insulation & put in a new drywall ceiling to replace the drop ceiling. We're closing up the walls today with paneling & will be carpeting the floor.

The sofa will go on the left wall:

And the hutch will go on the other, for the TV & toys:

Below is where I'll be putting my office. (The sofa pictured will be reupholstered & going upstairs.)

I think I'll use a table as my desk that can double as an eating & game area: (image from Country Living)

Below is another view of the room. OH SO PRETTY!!! hahahaha We have a woodburning stove that we'd eventually like to replace with an actual fireplace.

I plan to put two cozy chairs & an ottoman in front of it: (image below from Cottage Living)

Below is the cottage by Ruthie Sommers from House Beautiful that I recently posted on. I really fell for the color on the walls & we've already bought the paint. (I went a bit lighter than the actual paint shown but it looks the same- funny how photos work like that.) It looks awesome on the paneling. (It's much brighter than I usually go for but I wanted a fun, casual, bright vibe down there & I'm excited for a change.)

Here's another image from Real Simple, with a similar color scheme. I'm loving all the pops of white:

So, there you have it! I'll post after pics as soon as I get them!!! So, do you have any projects planned for summer??

xoxo,

lauren