Blue and green should never be seen...

This gorgeous home featured in the latest issue of Lonny Magazine really caught my eye. (For those of you who don't read Lonny - do it! Now! It's a free online magazine and is amazing!)

I admire people who have that bower-bird mentality and can manage to really bring such unique collections together in a cohesive way.

The collection of blue and green vases has me in awe! I have to admit I have loved that combination of deep green with the lighter, almost turquoise, blue for many years. My love for this colour scheme was brought on many years ago when I first set my eyes on the Jasper Conran for Wedgeood Chinoiserie collection.

Blue + green + birds = heaven in a plate.

Confession time... while I have been in love with this Wedgwood set for at least 3 or 4 years now, the price point is somewhat prohibitive so I've never been able to justify buying it for myself. So I secretly (or at least secretly up until now) put it on my list that, "if one day I ever get married and set up a wedding registry, this is the first thing going on it".

50 pots of mondo grass please

Following on from a suggestion from one of my lovely commenters, lupinbunny, I have been checking out gumtree on the search for cheap plants.

Being the budget-conscious renovator/ home-decorator/ gardener / general tight-ass that I am, you can imagine my excitement when I saw mondo grass advertised for $3/pot (or $2.50 each if you bought 10 or more). Talk about a bargain in comparison to the going rate of about $8/plant from the various nurseries I had checked out over the prior weekend.

As a member of the fairer gender, I'm more than happy to admit that I don't have the best spatial awareness... trying to guess how many 5 inch pots of mondo grass would be required to do a boarder in my front courtyard is just beyond my skill set. (Seriously, the only need for maths in my daily life is to figure out perfentage discounts when I go shopping.) Given the bargain price I figured it would be better to purchase more plants rather than less. Fifty just sounds like such a nice round number... right?

For the record, 50 pots of mondo grass is a lot. It took up the entire boot of my car (Clementine):

Plus this:

Sometimes less is just more. On the upside, it looks like I only need about 25 plants to do a boarder in my front courtyard, so I have another 25 plants to play with in the rest of my garden.

Back courtyard

This is another courtyard I have to tackle in my gardening efforts. As you can see it is beyond ugly. There was previously a pseudo-retaining wall in place. I say pseudo because it was falling down and not doing much retaining.




Now I'm left with the remnants - a massive pile of soil I need to remove in order to reclaim the garden bed.

Once I manage to get a skip bin in, remove the sand and actually get the garden bed in a decent state, I'm not quite sure what to do with this one. As you can probably tell from the picture this is effectively a service area at the back of my house with the (currently out of use) clothes line.

I'm thinking a low maintenance hedging plant of some variety. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Miss Lola

This post has absolutely no relevance to my blog whatsoever, but after *misskitty* spyed a hint of Lola in an earlier picture, I thought I'd post a full picture. Lola is my family's gorgeous pet Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, she's about 8 months old now and is very popular with the neighbourhood kids. If anyone is considering the breed I can highly recommend them. This is the second Cavi my family has had (and we love them so much my Mum is considering getting a second). They are gorgeous, gentle dogs and are great with kids. They aren't the brainiest breed out there, but definitely trainable. They love company, so probably aren't suitable if you aren't home a lot.

So by popular request, here is a picture of the gorgeous and totally pampered Lola , snoozing on my brother's bed. There's a few more pictures on my flickr account if anyone is keen - just click on the picture to access flickr.

Before and Afters - the Kitchen

Ahh yes the kitchen. I'm sure I've posted a few progress shots along the way, but I don't recall if I ever provided full on gory before shots. Looking at them now I have to admit I don't remember it being that bad.

Before:

Here it is in all it's cream and brown glory.

You'll see in the after shots I chose to lose the pantry to open up the space.



During:


Carcass of the kitchen cupboards being installed.






After:

Is it my ideal kitchen, no... if I had the opportunity to do things again, would I change anything... maybe, but hindsight is a bitch. At the end of the day, I do love it. Even if I still dream about having extra money in my budget to install stone bench tops in as opposed to laminate. I think I made the right decision for my house and the market when (if ever) I sell.

Garden inspiration

If I had unlimited funds to revamp my garden... and

If I lived in Sydney....

I would be using Secret Gardens of Sydney to design my courtyards.

I happened to stumble across their website while looking for garden inspiration and let me assure you, it was love at first sight. Here are some examples of their work which make me want to cry (because they are so very beautiful). One day Kristen... one day...

All images and garden designs via Secret Gardens of Sydney.

I love my Mum

I love my Mum... we had one of those typical mother / daughter moments over the weekend as I'm sure every single person experiences from time to time.

She popped over to visit me with a bunch of gorgeous flowers and take-away coffee from my favourite local coffee shop in hand. I'm not sure if it was a peace offering or just because she's wonderful.

In any case, I think she's the best Mum ever.