Friday, 2 August 2013

Girls weekend at Byron

My girlfriends and I spent the weekend at Byron last weekend and I honestly forgot how much I love the place! I love the happy people, beautiful scenery and zen way of life.
We stayed in the most beautiful refurbished "old dairy" in the hinterland of Byron Bay, that was the cutest place I have seen in a long time.

Very much want to take Hudson and Jeff here soon - I don't know if he would know what to do with all the open space. 

Whilst away Jeff and Allen (our cabinet maker) had installed the kitchen island, as soon as I saw it I squealed with delight.  It's even more beautiful and perfect than I imagined, and now can't wait to get the remaining in.
We are now hunting down some marble for the tops and knobs/handles for the drawers.  Love this kitchen from verandah house - might contact them about sourcing some handles like these...
Other than the above I have basically been kept busy setting up more nooks around the house, j constantly says "stop buying pretty things and but stuff we actually need like timber and concrete blend" (for the driveway) - but where's the fun in that!!!

Friday, 21 June 2013

Kitchen Progress...

We are very lucky to have an amazing cabinet maker who shares our love of Hamptons/French Provincial style kitchens, and last week we met with him to begin the process of "tarting" up our IKEA kitchen carcass that we bought and installed earlier in the year.

Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with an actual Ikea Kitchen - here's some pics of some that I think look amazing:



... we just have such a unique open space with extraordinary high ceilings and would prefer something a little more custom and our own.

So we purchased the Ikea cabinets and have since kitted them out with all the Ikea bells and whistles:

... and are now up to the part where we need to choose a style of door/drawer profile.  After much deliberation we have decided to go quite simple here's our inspiration pics and plans:


We have also been shopping and researching Kitchen Aapliances like crazy.  I had a hard time deciding between the Smeg 90cm stand alone and the Ilve:

They were both around the same price so finally decided to go with the Ilve T906.  I was going to buy the floor stock model from the Brisbane showroom on sale for $3500 from $5000 but ended up finding E&S Trading had it for the same price and we got a $950 kitchen gift with purchase pack - love getting stuff for free! Here's the link if you are in the market: http://www.estrading.com.au/ilve-90cm-electric-oven-with-gas-cooktop-t906lmp/w1/i1059448/ and here's the link to the redemption promo flyer http://www.ilve.com.au/pdfs/93-ILVE%20Gourmet%20Pack%20promo%20May%202013%2060-90%20Landscape.pdf

So we now have an oven - very happy lady!

Next we started looking at dishwashers.  I was adamant I wanted a fully integrated dishwasher so you couldn't see it was there, I am not keen on them looking like a feature unless it is a super duper fancy one.  Last night we finally settled on the Ikea integrated dishwasher, it was $800 and is made by Whirlpool.  I must admit the main reason I purchased it was the standard 5 year warranty it came with, I joked with the lady when we bought it and said I should just tell my employer to start paying my pay direct into their accounts! feels like that at the moment.  Anyhow here's the Ikea dishwasher:

So as you can imagine all of the above has kept us super busy at the moment but whilst doing this we have also been working on our walk in wardrobe, fence for the herb garden, front batwing doors and fixing the cladding on the exterior of the house! So busy...I'll leave with some final pics of what else we have been up to, sleep when your dead so they say...
The house survived our first official play date with Mummies Group

Huddy fishing for a prize at my old school fete last weekend

New Silver Tray and coral from the Highgate House sale

Mandarins from our Mandarin Tree

Lenny our fur baby has claimed this as his new bed - not sure how I think about that :-/

This amazing buffet from Rylo Interiors - I would love to have one of everything in the photo please :-)


Thursday, 30 May 2013

The beautiful work of Lulie Wallace...

Stumbled across the beautiful work of Lulie Wallace today and cannot stop thinking about her pretty floral paintings!

This is my absolute favourite!





and this one too - i have a thing for stripes!



Her prices are very reasonable - find her online store here: http://luliewallace.tumblr.com/

Happy Shopping!!!

Tuesday, 28 May 2013

What I am currently obsessing over...

Veranda House new beach house project - kitchen is exactly what I want for our house...

Fireplaces... more on that later

My new coffee table from Town and Country (they are having a BIG sale atm)

My new cabinet also from Town and Country


This colour scheme - perfection!

Hudson's "H" jumper

Literally EVERYTHING in this pic - taken at Magnolia Interiors store on James St

Hudson's new cluster wall...

This vintage pendant for the front veranda - Amazing!
As mentioned above I am currently obsessing over Fireplaces.  We have a internal wall in our lounge room that I bought a mantle for a few months ago.  We had planned to pop a mirror in it once installed but as winter approaches and the house gets cooler by the day we have been toying with the idea of installing an electric or gas fireplace.  There are pro's and con's for each; Pros for electric is price (around $800 from recollections) and requires little to no work for installation - cons it expels a dry heat and doesn't look that great:
Recollections Fireplace
Gas fireplace... pro's looks more realistic expels a much greater more pleasant heat, con's will be time consuming to install and costs twice as much (at least).  We would likely get a style similar to below so that Huddy can't get to it - open flames freak me out!



I would love to hear anyone's reviews of either style- i think at the moment we are leaning towards gas but I will likely obsess a little more before making my final decision...