Do you like the sound of modern living with some old school character?

Let me introduce Kalyn. She is a New York girl with an eye for the coolest modern vintage finds for the home and she has a selection of rotating vintage stock that usually has a little turn in her home before being sold in her online etsy store, Gallivanting Girls. I actually stumbled upon her store a while back when I did a little post on affordable art and I’ve been following the store ever since. If she had a shop here in Auckland, I think I’d be visiting weekly – I really love her style.

Today I’ve listed my six favourite smallish items that could be popped in the post, but it doesn’t stop there; she has some serious items of furniture that I’d love to have in my home. Check out the Franco Albini style rattan coffee table or the small gold table with a round glass top or what about the Danish modern rocking chair… oh I could go on! So if you’re in New York, think yourself lucky.

For the rest of us, here’s my selection from left to right, top to bottom:

Art Deco Bookends

I could imagine these would look great nestled inside a crowded bookshelf amongst other little objects.

Neon Pink, Green & Gold Cuckoo Clock

This original German cuckoo clock has been hand painted by Kalyn and would look fabulous amongst a wall collage or all alone as a statement. Love!

Solid Brass Box

Described as a perfect desk or dresser organiser, this is really gorgeous and would always have a use in the home throughout the years.

Vintage Globe on Modern Brass Stand

Well I would love this for my kid’s room, but you don’t need kids to display a globe – especially a vintage one on a brass stand.

Perfectly Pink Olympia Typewriter

This typewriter is quite a piece and I adore the colours; pale bubble gum pink color with green/aqua and grey details – divine don’t you think?

Danish Modern Candle Stick

I’ve had my eye on some wood turned candle sticks for some time so had to include these.

There really are so many other wonderfully curated items at Gallivanting Girls, you really should check them all out for yourself.

Have a lovely weekend everyone!

Mel x

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

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!

I hope that you’re all keeping well. It’s been rather busy for me playing nurse to two out of my three kids this week. The poor little things have been quite unwell, hopefully we’re at the end of it and my eldest escapes it!

Now for the bedrooms in our old Sydney apartment. I was wondering whether to include this because the photos are a little distorted. If you’re new to this series, I’m showing before and afters of our old Sydney apartment.  I pulled these photos out of the archives and they were taken by the real estate when we put the apartment up for rent pre-blogging days! As I said, the photos are distorted, the main bedroom was a huge 25 square metres, it was actually larger than our living room, to get an idea of the size, the bed is actually a queen size. The bed you can see in the boy’s room is a toddler bed, so no you’re not seeing things.

We didn’t do anything major to these rooms, just ripped up the blue carpet, polished the floors and freshened the walls with white paint.

You can see our kitchen before and after here and our living room here.

Have a lovely weekend everyone. I just got news that they sold our house and there is a possibility that the new owner won’t be moving in for some time so we may be staying on. That would be a relief, the thought of packing this family up and moving again is the last thing I feel like doing and I’m realising more and more how much stuff we have . But that’s another post – “stuff”!

Mel x

If you’re in Auckland today, chances are you would be dreaming of curling up under one of these with a cup of hot chocolate in hand right now, brrr.

You may recall a post I did some time ago on The Woods, a collaboration between Norwegian designers, Andreas Engesvik and StokkeAustad. Today I’m sharing some beautiful homeware accessories by Andreas Engesvik.

Bunad Blankets are based on traditional Norwegian folk costumes and the idea of these exquisite pure wool blankets came to Andreas Engesvik whilst sitting in the kitchen with his girlfriend and her family one Christmas Eve, each of them dressed in bunads from Setesdal. In his words, “I sat in a chair while the others stood and walked around me. The abundance of colors, stripes and details where overwhelming. It hit me then, that bunads can be experienced as colors composed on a surface. 

Andreas has certainly brought his image to life for all of us by merging his Norwegian culture into modern design. The harmony of colours makes it easy for them to look great thrown over almost any couch or end of the bed and is certainly on the top of my wish list! I’d love to know what you think, are you as in love as I am?

Keep dry Aucklanders and hope the sun is shining for the rest of you.

Mel x

Today I’m really excited to introduce a new feature, “My Space” to the blog.  Here I ask the person of the month to take a photo or two (or more!) of their favourite place in their home. It could be a little reading nook, a mantle, desk, the kitchen or table – whatever it is that makes them feel good when they pass it or are spending time there.

My very first subject is Caroline Davis, a stylist from just outside of London who shares her experiments and ideas on her blog, Trend Daily. I discovered Caroline’s blog not long after starting my own and have always been in admiration of her still life styling. I do love a behind the scenes, and this turns out to be one of them as Caroline shoots most of her photos in her study.

As you will see from some of her photos here, she has a glorious mix of vintage, botanicals and produce and they’re always so rich in colour and texture with beautiful lighting.

Thank you Caroline for inviting us into your study, I now can see where you get so much inspiration with these surrounds.  Mel x

Deciding which part of my home was a favourite was actually far more tricky than I thought-partly because everything is unfinished, so I have favourite little corners in mainly untidy rooms! No where really has a true identity either-I wouldn’t know how to describe my style. Lots of friends say some rooms are very Scandinavian, but then there’s some retro vintage and ethnic thrown in too! I tend to work at the old barn door table at the front of the house first thing to catch the morning sun and then our big oak floorboard kitchen table in the middle of the day when the sun’s moved round. My one and truly personal space though is the tiny office upstairs at the back of the house, which gets the sun from mid afternoon until it sets. Even in mid Winter the light is just perfect to practice my photography. I’m ashamed to say it took 3 years to clear out the room properly after we moved in and until then it was little more than a glorified cupboard!

We visit a house clearance and antiques barn in Leeds once a year with our friends and invariably come home with something- the 1940s table was £40 and I plan to paint the top white eventually to make a background for some of my pictures.  Our friends actually spotted the 1950s kitchen cabinet from there, sent me a picture on the phone and I bought it straight away! The Ikea shelving unit was left over from the kids’ playroom and the wall mounted cupboard came from our old neighbours-all a bit of a mish-mash at the moment, but getting there!

Since discovering The Home Barn last year, I honestly can’t think of a moment when something from them isn’t in my house waiting to be photographed. The owners Sarah and Sally have the most amazing eye-if I could buy everything I would, but they very kindly let me borrow anything whenever I want-the blackboard painted drawer, vintage school rulers and apothecary bottles are all from them-a real treasure trove. I guess it would be fair to say my study is more of a mini studio space than an office. Jon just bought me my first tripod for my birthday and I bought a 50mm lens from the earnings of my last freelance shoot, so my camera is out all the time. I love learning how to take photos, but I’m hopeless at reading instructions-it’s taken me a year to get where I am now, mainly by instinct and a lot of trial and error. I really appreciate quality light and how important it is to a shot, so things may stay laid out for a photo for a few days.

Plants and food have (oddly) turned out to be two of my favourite subject matters, along with vintage bits and bobs of course! Just about everything gets photographed at the beginning and end of its life and beyond. When I get time, I love to sketch and paint them too. I’ve always loved botanical drawing, but didn’t follow the advice of my art teacher and go into wallpaper design, so it’s lovely to paint whenever I can. I also spend a lot of time at my desk designing room sets for my editorial and commercial styling. The wall moodboards change every few weeks depending on my latest favourite magazine features. I used to keep all my magazines, but it just got ridiculous and I never got to see anything at the bottom of the pile, so now all my tear sheets end up in A4 folders after they’ve made a brief appearance on the wall-I’m building quite a large collection of folders, but every page is a favourite!

I’d love to get a vintage swivel office chair at some point, put up the venetian blind that’s been sitting in the corner for two years, pull up the carpet and paint the floorboards white (no I’ll never move all that furniture), hang the 1970s pendant light sitting on top of the cupboard…. And, and, and!!!!!

Readers if you haven’t already, you really must pop over to Trend Daily to see more of her beautiful work! Mel x

All images are courtesy of and copyright to Caroline Davis of Trend Daily 

Goodbye April, hello May!

Wow, that flew by quickly. April was a big month for me with the good and… not so good. We were told that our lovely villa that we rent is for sale so we will most probably have to move on. I’m still kind of heartbroken about this, I love this house and the street. We were really hoping that we could stay here until we leave NZ… Being expats means that renting is really our only option and I have to say, I’m a bit disheartened by the lack of decent properties around at the moment. Fingers crossed still.

Positive things also happened! I had my first column published in the “Arts, Books & Blogs” section of the NZ House & Garden May issue. The other exciting piece of news (if you didn’t already catch it on Facebook & Instagram) is that I had an interior magazine here last week shooting my house for an upcoming issue. I can’t wait to see the results and I’ll definitely keep you all posted.

Now to my favourite reads for April:

Catherine over at Farmhouse Home has gone all healthy on us but she’s doing it with a real twist. She cooked up some easy snack bars that won’t leave you feeling guilty, she’s shared a recipe from Gwyneth Paltrow’s  new book, “It’s All Good” but the one that really got me was pizza made with a cauliflower base! Truly, I haven’t made it myself yet but I will when I have a second to spare. Intrigued?

Farmhouse Home: The Green Kitchen Book Review

Don’t you love taking a peek into people’s homes? I certainly do. The lovely Corinne over at Emerald Green Interiors has recently had a baby (congratulations again Corinne!) and while she’s settling into a routine with baby number two, a bunch of bloggers are guest posting for her. One of them is Holly Marder from Avenue. She shared a house tour of non-other than Corinne that she did for Houzz website that she’s contributor to. Corinne is an interior decorator based in Brussels with an affection for colour. I always enjoy having a read of her blog so just loved looking into her world and how she’s pulled a rental property together so elegantly.

Emerald Green Interiors: Houzz hometour by Holly Marder

Okay bloggers, we all have our days where we ask ourselves “what on earth are we going to write about today?”  Brittany from The House That Lars Built has compiled a list of tried and tested blog post ideas – and there’s a whopping 50 of them! Thanks Brittany, I think I might give some of them a whirl sometime…

The House That Lars Build: 15 Minutes to a Better Blog: 50 Post Ideas for the Rough Days

Enjoy!

Mel x

I had a skype call with my mother in-law in France last night and she was showing me some of her brocante finds from the last couple of weeks and oh how it got me dreaming! It’s the springtime there so the market season is in full flight and right now I’d love nothing more than to hop on a plane and spend the next month travelling through the countryside of France visiting friends and family and scouring all of flea markets, brocantes and vide greniers along the way. I’d fill a truck or perhaps even a container and finally open that shop that I’ve been dreaming about.

To me, walking around a market would have to be one of the most enjoyable experiences. I might not necessarily purchase something every time but I love people watching and seeing the purchases they have under their arms and imagine what they might do with it. Market finds are the things that make a décor really interesting don’t you think?

You might be wondering the difference between the three markets I mentioned. Here’s a little explanation:

Vide Grenier – The translation is ‘empty the attic” and it’s like one massive garage or car boot sale. There’s a lot of junk, broken toys and old games but there’s also loads of treasures to be found.

Brocante – A market full of small storeowners or collectors selling vintage wares.

Flea Market – Professional and casual store holders of clothing and bric-a-brac. You do also get brocante storeowners at flea markets

If you’re ever visiting France, you can find all of the markets of regions listed here. Note that there’s an English button down the bottom.

Hi everyone, I’m back with a little more feng shui for you and today I’ll cover the two areas of career and personal growth.

Just in case you’re wondering, the image above is of the entry to our home with lots of little enhancements to stimulate career growth, but I’ll cover that a little further down.

This is part 4 of the series to date and the basics of feng shui was covered in part 1; there you will find your home’s bagua map, it’s really important to know this so that you can work your magic! For previous entries, click the corresponding for part 1, part 2 and part 3.

The examples I give you in this series are just symbols and it’s really about interpretation. It’s fine to make your own symbols up just as long as the meaning is obvious to you.

Career

Colours: Blue/black

Element enhancements: water & metal (avoid wood & earth)

Body part: Ear

Numerology: 6

If you’re ready to kick-start your career, move up the ranks or work on your path in life, here are some examples of symbols to add to your career bagua:

• A water fountain
• Aquarium
• Any type of career symbols
• Career books
• Mirror
• Metal objects
• Heavy objects (something solid/grounded to avoid redundancy)
• Telephone

The photo above is in our career bagua and probably makes a bit more sense to you now I suppose? When I started to pay a little more attention to feng shui around the home, I actually found quite a few areas that was already set up for it without me knowing. Instinct? Who knows, but the career area was one of them that was working well in our lives, particularly my husbands. We already had a small bookcase dedicated mainly to our career and personal development style books. On top of it we had a metal lamp along with a retro phone. The only thing that I’ve added to be absolutely sure is the number 6! For those in Auckland, we bought this at Flotsam & Jetsam and they had loads more the last time I looked.

Personal growth

Colours: Brown/yellow/terracotta

Element enhancements: Earth & Fire (avoid metal & wood)

Body part: Hand

Numerology: 7

This relates to inner guidance, wisdom, study and skills.

Symbolic examples:

• Hand object (vintage glove moulds would work really well here)
• Books
• Symbols or pictures of mentors or wise people
• Setting up a quiet nook in this area
• Awards
• Landscape pictures
• Anything clay, brick, terracotta, cement & stone

So what do you think? Do you need a bit of helping hand in either of these areas? Would you give it a go to see what happens? Wishing you all a fulfilling career and inner wisdom!

Mel x

I really appreciate good design that is practical and flexible in function.  This modular +/- Magnetic Shelving System by Haymann does just that. It folds up nice and snug (good for moving) and unfolds and flips into various shelving shapes. I checked out their Facebook page and it seems that it can also be used as a table. Pretty cool don’t you think?

From what I can see, it’s not yet available in New Zealand or Australia, fingers crossed it makes its way to our shores soon.

See you Wednesday everyone!

Mel x