Close To My Heart
« Previous EntriesA Birdy Told Me
June 19, 2013 | Close To My Heart, Decorate | 2 Comments »
I would like a little bird. Not a real one; I can’t bare to see birds in cages now. We had one, like a lot of families did in the eighties and it was interesting how this little budgerigar was such an integral part of the family. He spoke, well swore actually, he’d welcome our guests with “hello you silly little bastard”. It took us a while to figure out where he’d learn such language and in the end put it down to a drink delivery man who most probably put his finger in the cage and would have gotten bitten, Ben had a sharp bite, so no doubt said that to him each time he delivered.
This little bird lived for about twelve years and had many lives. We’d let him out to fly around the house and would need to turn all of the lights out to catch him. One time my father left the television on and through the flicker of the television light, saw Ben flutter past my dog Beau who in turn opened his mouth. My Dad gave the dog a big kick and Ben escaped. Not long after my sister was cleaning Ben’s cage outside and he escaped in the process for what we thought was forever at the time until my neighbour heard an announcement on the local radio station that someone had found a bird and they knew it was domestic because he said, “hello you silly little…” He then moved to Sydney with us, we grew older, threw parties while my parents were out and I once found him walking around the feet of partygoers… I think he was senile by that time because we had him with us for only a few more months.
While I loved our Ben to bits, I wouldn’t have another but what I would have are decorative birds, they are a great little interesting piece to add to groupings or standing alone as a statement.
Here’s my little bird wish list:
1. Bird Oak smoked large – Kristian Vedel for Qrchitectmade
Simple yet a little quirky and available in smoke or natural oak and many different shapes and sizes.
A gorgeous modern take on the flying wall ducks. Available in pink, blue, black or white and are affordable too!
In true Eames style, this is perfection in every possible way. Love is the only word.
4. Origami crane – LeeAnn Yare for General Eclectic
These cute little decorative cranes are available in orange and white, at $10 each, they’re a steal!
These lovely songbirds were made in the fifties by designer Kay Bojesen but were never put into production until last year and is available in six different colours.
6. L’Oiseau – Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec
I love the form of this “oiseau”, simplicity rarely disappoints.
Do you have a favourite little bird here? Or perhaps you’ve owned a funny pet yourself?
See you Friday!
Mel x
Our Renovation, The Bathroom
June 12, 2013 | Bathroom, Close To My Heart, My Home | 7 Comments »
When we renovated the bathroom of our Sydney apartment some six or seven years ago, we faced two challenges, a lack of space and a limited budget. That bathroom was teeny tiny – so tiny that it was impossible to take a photo of all of the features!
As mentioned in previous posts, these photos are by a real estate agent photographer to rent our apartment out long before I even thought about doing a blog, so these are the only photo’s I have to work with. With the angle of it, you’ll have to use your imagination because not everything could be captured.
While we love soothing colours in a bathroom, we decided white would be the colour choice to make it feel as spacious as it possibly could. We were also stuck with the layout of the room because of the costs involved in rearranging the plumbing in an apartment.
The first thing we decided on was a spacious walk in shower, but had such a narrow area to work with. To correct the space, we narrowed the door and extended the wall and placed two freestanding shower screens with a gap to enter and a stainless steel grate for a drain. While the door was perfectly acceptable in width, it did look a little narrow to the eye, so we made a feature of it by installing a lovely leadlight window above that I sourced from a second hand building supply store. Much of the renovation was modern, so to marry that with the art deco apartment, we found an old cast iron pedestal basin and had it resurfaced. We used penny white tiles on the floor which also kept a little of the old world look. In all, I think the bathroom renovation cost around $4000 and we didn’t skimp on the fittings. How did we do it? With the incredible help of a much loved friend for the demolition work along with fitting the new door and lead light window. We also sourced the tiles and fittings ourselves, including carrying them all up two flights of stairs! Most of the money was spent on the plumber and tiler.
That’s the end of our Sydney apartment renovation before and after, I hope that you enjoyed it. To recap, I’ve included an after shot of each of our rooms so that you can see the entire apartment together. You can also visit the previous before and after posts here: Kitchen – Living – Bedrooms
Mel xox
Insta-Move Week
June 10, 2013 | Close To My Heart, My Home | 10 Comments »
It’s been just over a week in our new home and I have to say that with all of the stress and work involved in the past couple of months, it feels worth it. We’re now in a renovated villa in Ponsonby with the front part of the house keeping it’s old world charm with polished floorboards and high ceilings and the back part a little more modern with lovely views over Herne Bay with the Waitakere Ranges in the distance.
I thought I’d share a little Instagram summery of our hectic week with you.
Move day went well. It started and ended on a colourful note, which I take as a very good sign for our new home! I can’t believe how many beautiful rainbows Auckland has…
I won’t bore you with boxes photos, because that first weekend, that’s all I saw. In fact my head was spinning from not knowing where to begin. So when we woke up Sunday to a beautiful blue sky, I didn’t hesitate to ignore them for a bit longer and jumped in the car with the family, grabbed some takeaway lunch from a café and spent most of the day at a lovely little beach in Herne Bay. The weather was incredible, in my two years in New Zealand, I’ve never known for my children to strip their clothes off this time of year.
Fast forward a few days and I love my little spot on the dining table with that outlook. Around midmorning while I prepare my posts, I get a beautiful stream of sun coming through the side window – nothing better than the feeling of winter sun on your skin! This house is full of windows and light, it’s so good for the soul.
By the weekend, a couple of little spots were starting to feel like home. The first and easiest places to look a little complete would have to be the bookshelf and kitchen. Not exactly the end result, but getting there… Oh I also had to add a photo of my new Eclectic for Tom Dixon cutting board that I got for my birthday during the week! I have wanted one since I went to Tom Dixon’s talk at The Department Store. Love!
So how was your week?
Mel x
P.S. You can follow my day to day life on Instagram here.
Blogosphere Love – Picks for May
June 5, 2013 | Best Of, Close To My Heart | 4 Comments »
I can just peak over the top of the mountains of boxes so I thought I better pop back here to say hi and to show a bit of love over on the blogosphere. Now normally I give three picks but to be truthful I have been a little busy with the move this past month, so haven’t been reading as many posts as I normally would have. These are the two posts that particularly stood out for me for the month of May:
For the bloggers, I know that some of you are thinking about bringing on sponsors. Before you bring any on board, you need to get pull a media kit together and if the thought of that makes your eyes glaze over like mine, you should check out Jeni from The Blog Maven’s very useful step by step guide:
How to Make a Media Kit that Rocks
Some of you may recall my fascination with a String Garden from a couple of months ago, well I’m now also loving air plants thanks to Kreetta from the beautiful blog, Gretchen Gretchen. She recently guest posted over at Monster Circus with the sweetest DIY Air Plant hanger that looks super easy – oh and you have to crack open a bottle of champagne for it – twist my arm! Check it out:
I’ll be back on Friday with another installment of “My Space” where we visit a favourite little nook of a gorgeous blogger. See you then!
Mel x
A Personal Giveaway from me to you
May 20, 2013 | Close To My Heart, Giveaway, My Home | 321 Comments »
Yesterday I was clearing the attic to sell a bunch of stuff in preparation of our move and then saw my four vintage Scandinavian style chairs that I’ve never been able to part with. I love these chairs but can’t take them with me as there’s just not enough storage space, but the idea of selling them kind of breaks my heart… I need to know that they will go to a good home and be loved. So I thought perhaps one of you lovely readers might like them? ?? Yes???
These little beauties actually made a cameo appearance in Inside Out Magazine’s blog as my Sydney apartment was used as a backdrop for Australian Designer, Ilias’ wallpaper. You can also see that they’ve been pinned by them here.
The design of these chairs are timeless and are ultra comfortable – perfect for those long dinner parties! We used them around a Scandinavian style table but they would look great around a farmhouse or contemporary table or simply as a side chair. You can even mix them up with other designs, a look that I really love!
Now because of the physical size of the prize, anyone is welcome to enter however they need to be collected from Grey Lynn, Auckland New Zealand before the end of Wednesday 29th May. So if you don’t live here and have friends or family here that can hold it for you – go ahead!
Okay, this is all you need to do to be in the running to win four of these cool dining chairs…
Please read carefully…
1) Go over to my Facebook page and share the same photo that you see above
2) This is to say thank you to my supporters, so if you haven’t already, please “like” my Facebook page
3) Come back here and in the comments section let me know you shared on facebook.
Anyone can gain an extra entry for each of the following:
a) Tweet this blog post or the photo on Facebook with the hashtag #APCGIVEAWAY
b) Pin the giveaway image from this post
Don’t forget to let me know in the comments what you’ve done!
Simple!
Entries close midnight this Friday 24th May Auckland time and will be drawn through random.org. I will contact the winner via email submitted with comments and I will also announce the winner on Facebook this Saturday so please keep an eye out. If I don’t hear from the winner by Tuesday 28th May I will re-draw. Remember that it is for an Auckland pick up.
Good luck everyone!
Mel x
P.S. Below is the photo used in Inside Out Magazine blog feature about Temple & Webster Emerging Artist, Ilias.
Make Your Month
May 15, 2013 | Close To My Heart, Health | 9 Comments »
With yesterday’s news of the courageous Angelina Jolie, I thought I’d step a little off topic today and talk about prevention. Perhaps I can slip it in here with my tagline ideas to live with…
I love this photo of my son at the dentist so I thought it perfect to use here for a post that’s a little serious and personal. But hey, this is a blog after all…. My attitude towards protecting my health has changed of late, perhaps it’s just because I’m edging closer to forty and I have kids. Suddenly I don’t feel so indestructible and the fear of something happening to me and not being here for these little people that need me so much, literally rips at all of my heart strings. It’s probably being way too paranoid but I wonder if you ever feel like that also?
You see, I have a long line of history of cancer on both sides of my family; let me be clear that it’s not a sentence at all but certainly something for me to be aware of. In the past I’ve tried to block the thoughts out of my mind in fear of attracting it, but they would always creep back. So instead of worrying about it all of the time, I decided to do the best I can, live (relatively) healthy and be vigilant and get regular check ups and then forget about it. Prevention and early detection is key.
So today, I’m putting it to you. If you don’t already do it, will you? Set up some sort of schedule for yourself to get regular check ups, all the things most of us put off. Get your teeth checked, eyes checked, mammograms, pap smears, prostate checks, bloods checked and whatever else that you need checking – do it. You do it for your car. A nurse once told me to schedule all of these annual check ups around my birthday so that I never forget. I thought it was a pretty fine idea – make a month of it and then enjoy the rest of the year.
My birthday is the beginning of next month so I started this week with a physical and blood tests along with a dental check up and a good clean with a hygienist. It actually feels good.
It’s a simple thing; something that we most ignore out of fear but these few uncomfortable appointments could mean everything. My month is now, when is yours?
I’ll be back on Friday with something a little lighter:)
Mel x
We’re moving!
May 13, 2013 | Close To My Heart | 11 Comments »
I can happily say that a huge wave relief has swept through our household because we’ve finally found a lovely new home!
In the end our current place was sold on Friday and the new owner actually offered for us to live in it for a year before they moved. We were about to sign and then on that very same day, we found and were offered another house that ticked so many boxes. It’s weird how these things happen, six weeks of nothing and at the last moment we have choices.
The new house is nicely renovated, has loads of storage and luxurious central heating (not a standard over this side of the world). It also has a big sunny deck off the open plan living and the other bonus is that I still get to walk my eldest to school.
The only downside to the house is that we won’t be able to fit all of our furniture in because it’s lacking in wall space due to so many windows. Not that I will ever complain about too many windows! So decisions whether we sell some of the furniture or put them in storage…
I’m really looking forward to showing you our new pad! We’ll be moving at the end of the month so not a lot of time to pack.
Any tips on moving and getting organised?
Mel x
Origin of image used unknown but thought it was too cute to pass up!