Harvest

I picked the first fruits of our mini vege patch this morning.
We only have corn and tomatoes and were a bit late in planting them but the tomatoes are starting to colour ever so slowly and these corn were nice and fat for dinner tonight.

The Finds

Here are my finds from the Fryerstown antique Fair on Saturday.


My first find was this glass flower frog. I was particularly looking for one but as soon as I saw it, I knew it would be a great pen holder for my desk. I am always searching for pens, so now having a nice way to store them, they may return to their home. Yesterday I thought that I should have bought the other one there as they would make a great way to store the kids pencils and crayons, so I'll be keeping my eye out for more flower frogs.


I've been looking for two children's school chairs to go with a double school desk I have. I only thought to look for them half way thorugh the market so when we were deciding whether to do the last strip of stalls or leave, I just knew that if we didn't do the last stalls, I'd miss out on the perfect chairs. Although these aren't what I was originally looking for, they are perfect and at $5 for the pair, I couldn't go wrong! The desk is currently pink and a bad paint job at that. I plan to strip it back and depending on how the wood comes up, either varnish or repaint it. Once recovered and the frame sanded and repainted, these chairs will go beautifully with it. I plan to recover them in a fabric that I'll also make lounge cushions with as the desk will be in a corner of out new open plan living area.

One thing that I did see and had to restrain myself from buying was a wicker fishermans basket. I would have been great for one of the boys bedrooms but I already have more baskets than I know what to do with...but they aren't boyish and this was. Oh well, something else to keep an eye out for.

Finds

I'll be back tomorrow with pics of my finds from the Fryerstown Antique and Collectors Fair that we went to yesterday. Hot and dusty but worth it, even if we did spend more on icecreams for the kids to bribe them to sit in the pram than on our other purchases.

Please, please, please!

This is a painting by one of my favourite Australian artists, Joseph Zago. Sorry, I cannot tell you the title of this work. My brother has a gorge landscape that I have always admired. Zago passed away in 2008 and his last works are being brought into the gallery that my brother bought his piece from. I have always wanted one of my own and now I may be so fortunate. I am (not so) patiently refreshing my email waiting on details of these last paintings. I think it would be a perfect piece to grace our new home.

Inspiration

Its funny how location affects you.

I have a subscription to Australian Country Style and Home Beautiful. My husband always gets me a subscription for a gift during the year. Its his recognition that I need time for myself. Anyway, I used to love devouring them cover to cover, dreaming of designing my dream home. We moved across the country in October and although the magazines kept coming, I have had no inclination to read them for the last 4 months - if you look closely, there is an ACS still in the plastic. I couldn't put my finger on why until we signed to buy our new house. Suddenly my urge to read them came back.

I realised that although we had rented for the past 3 years, it was this particular rental house that sapped the creative spirit out of me. We are all living on top of each other and noone has any space to do just what they want and to be able to leave it without it being interfered with by little hands. Not even room to sit and read in comfort. We also don't have a dining/kitchen table or even a proper laundry. The bathroom is incredibly impractical in design and it all adds up to a disorganised house.

But that is all soon to change. Even with out the planned renovations, my husband will have a study, I will have an area to sew ( I'll blog about that room later) and the boys will have a corner of the living room as well as a bedroom each. If having the toys in the living area doesn't work, we can always put the boys in the same room again (they share now), move the sudy into one of the bedrooms and the toys into what was to be the study (an open lounge room). This shuffling and talking about rooms makes sense to me as I know the home's layout - I hope it makes sense to you.

You might notice that I try to make a distinction between 'house' and 'home' as I don't feel like we've had a 'home' for a long time - certainly, for me, not since I left my parents home and my husband is the same.

Fresh

I thought I'd give you a sneak peek of our new home. This is our new bathroom.

Image from realestate.com.au

And I love it! I never in a million years would have painted a bathroom bright green but this is lovely. I'm even considering painting the second bathroom (that I plan to install one day in where the kitchen currently is) this colour.

As it is, the bathroom is a bit storage poor but I think a couple of white floating shelves and some baskets should do the trick. Add a palm and some white towels (although I'm not sure how practical white towels are with 3 males in the house - I may stick to my tan bamboo towels for now) and I think it will be a beautiful space. It will be getting a new shower stall in the near future though as this one is a bit small for my 6'2" husband. Oh and some long towel rails too. One of my pet peeves of bathrooms is lack of towel drying space. You must be able to hang out every person's towel to dry properly.

Happy Day!

Today is our 7th wedding anniversary.

Image by Linda Norris

We have come a long way since then. My Husband was studying to be a teacher after a varied career. I was working full time and we lived in Western Australia. Now we are parents to two wonderful boys and live in regional Victoria where my Husband is finally teaching the areas he trained to teach and has a real passion for. I am able to be a stay at home mum and once the boys are in school, I can pursue whatever I want.

Today is an extra special day though as this morning we signed a contract to buy our first family home. In the past 7 years of married life, we have lived in shared or rented houses and rarely in a location of our choice. Our eldest son has lived in 4 different houses and he hasn't turned 3 yet! Add to that a month of being 'homeless' where we stayed at holiday accommodation between rentals and we are well and truly looking forward to making a real home. A place where we can hang our pictures and paint the walls. So, all things going our way, we become homeowners on the 20th of March, 2009.

Image care of Realestate.com.au

I'd love it if you would follow my decorating journey as I make this house a home. Those of you who don't have the opportunity to decorate a home yourself can live vicariously through me as I'm sure to be asking for opinions and suggestions.

Hello!

Hello, I'm Heather. Welcome to my little place to put my thoughts out there.

So what is 'H' for? H is for Me (Heather), my Home, things I like (Heart), things that make me Happy and my Hopes and dreams to name a few. I can't promise to keep everything relating back to H but you never know.

Please enjoy.