Townmouse

A new house for Townmouse

Friday 8th March was the sixth best day ever.  Up there with getting married and the birth of our four children is the day we bought our new house.  I still can't believe that our search is finally over.  As well as huge excitement, the other emotion was one of relief - relief that we don't have to house hunt for at least another 20 years.  This is the house Will and I will become 'empty-nesters' in.

Our new house has the perfect floor plan for a family of six. The children will finally have their own bedrooms.

This lovely space is a retreat area upstairs for the children. Max and Tom's bedrooms lead off it.  The house was built in the 1930's.  It's red brick, with white window trims and a black front door with wisteria growing around the door frame.  It's very symmetrical from the street, which I like, and quite English looking.  Although the floorplan is brilliant, the kitchen and bathrooms need an update, so that is what I'm now thinking about.

And so begins the process of renovating.  I am madly pinning and using lovely pictures like this one as inspiration.

I have started a new Pinterest board with all my favourite interiors images.  This has been sent to the architect so he knows what I like.

And speaking of the architect, have a look at the dreamy house on his website.  How stunning is that roofline?

The only thing our new house doesn't have is a studio space for me.  So we are looking into the possibility of building an attic studio in the roof, complete with dormer windows to the north.  

A few pins like the one above have gone into my new Pinterest board.  Now that's one space that I am particularly excited about.

So the severe lack of blog posts here can be blamed on big projects going on in the background. There's been a big tidy-up at our current house too.  Although we don't plan to sell until our new house is ready, a persistent agent has brought a couple through for the second time.  The bright side of that is that I now have an especially tidy house, right down to the Lego drawer in the boys' room.

And, well, I may as well put it out there: if anyone's looking for a family home in Malvern with a 9 month settlement, let me know.  Don't know if anyone's ever sold a house through a blog post before - but you never know.  Come to think of it, I'm not sure that I ever linked to the feature on our house that appeared in The Design Files.

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Ocean waves quilt

Saturday morning is always a nice time for some sewing in our house.

Everyone is calm and enjoying the slower pace a weekend brings.  And I'm pottering in my studio and enjoying the precision required to piece these blocks.

This creation is totally inspired by Denyse's Ocean Waves quilt. Most of the fabrics I'm using are Denyse Schmidt fabrics from various ranges.

There are lots of exciting things happening in our family and life is good.  But does anyone else find the return to a new school year exhausting?  I'm only just finding my feet now and the term is nearly over.  It's always the way, but seems evermore so this year.

Too easy

In a household that avoids wheat, dairy and sugar, desserts can get a little monotonous. Really there are only so many variations of fruit that will keep little ones happy - fruit salad, stewed fruit.... Yawn.

So right now these are impressing my four.  And I'm impressed more than anyone because they take about 4 minutes to prepare.  I use these fabulous fruit juices from Preshafruit. This one is the apple and raspberry flavour and its a lovely pink colour that Adelaide approves of.  I've just added two gelatine leaves to one small bottle of juice and poured them into these shot glasses. Done.

Last night's jellies had fresh raspberries floating in them. Such an easy thing to make.  I'd also love to make jellies with those italian pear and apricot nectars.  Mmm, I might have to make a trip to Leo's.

Library ladder

Isn't this pretty.

This was the window display just before Christmas at a sweet shop not far from me.  I rather liked the look of this antique ladder so took a photo of it to discuss with Will the possibility of bringing it home.

Then I promptly forgot about it until I rediscovered the photo on my phone.  Well the ladder had sold but I still like to admire this pretty window display.

These ladders are a lovely idea but you need to have quite a large space to use them in.  They have a large footprint and encroach into a room quite a bit.  There's certainly no space for it in our crowded house.

It's probably just as well I wasn't too tempted.

Term time

Well hello there!

Wow I still can't believe we're back into term time.  As I stood at the kitchen bench in front of the school lunchboxes the night before school started, I couldn't quite believe I had a whole year of making school lunches ahead of me.  And this year I have to make four.  Best not to do the calculation.

This little minx started kindy this morning.  Following which we (she) had a nasty meltdown in Country Road which stopped a few people in their tracks.  We're going to have a little bit of a focus on manners these next few weeks.  I suppose it was a tall order to take her shopping following her first morning, but there you have it.

Although I'm determined for her not to be the spoilt youngest child and over indulged daughter I don't think her brothers got that memo.  Really, they all dote on her, it's ridiculous.  I have to keep reminding them that they are creating a monster.  "Just wait til she's ten and expecting you to jump to her every command, then you'll be sorry", they hear me say.

Anyhoo, time to do the school run and collect the boys.  Swim lessons and taekwondo tonight, tennis tomorrow, sailing and more taekwondo the day after.  Yes, it's all started.  And for me?  Well hopefully a little sewing time in the weeks to come. Will have to show you some projects I have on the go in the next few days.

Time to wrap some gifts

There is a fab Australian business called The Wrapping Paper Company.  I've ordered giftwrap from them in the past. This morning I was suddenly inspired to lift my game in the giftwrap department so I jumped online and placed an order that we then picked up from their warehouse (because I just couldn't wait for the post and I had left my run so late).

They make these narrow strips of giftwrap they call Belli-bands.  I like the way they dress up a plain roll of brown craft paper.  It's also an affordable way to get a number of pressies looking different and interesting as a group.

They also have  pretty and affordable ribbons and cards.  Got to love that.  The big one at the back is Will's birthday present and I love the Ikat print on his. He gets to unwrap that this evening.

Now I'm good to go.  Bring on Christmas.

Crafter's block

I've been suffering from crafter's block.  All year really.  I don't know where my sewing mojo has gone. Maybe it's been sucked into the Pinterest abyss. Too much time spent looking at other people's creative output, leaving less time for my own creating.  I'm not sure what it is - the pressure to create something equally pretty; too many pretty things to choose from it's hard to know what project to choose.

When I look back at my industriousness of previous years I'm quite impressed. This year's mosaic won't be quite so large.  

Meanwhile, look at this pretty yarn.  It's a linen yarn from Quince and Co. It's quite dreamy to look at. I've been flicking through my Japanese crochet books for a little inspiration.

I came across this image.  Isn't this granny square blanket fabulous? I think it's the red that makes it so striking - a nice change from the white bordered ones.  I love the bobbly edging on it too.  It's from this book. Not sure how it helps me with my little ball of linen yarn though.  See, there I go, dithering. What to do, what to do?

Company in the studio

I'm swimming in a sea of orders today in the studio.  I'm working flat out.  While I'm stitching at my machine I'm watching catch up episodes of Smash on my laptop.

I also have company in the studio now.

Meet Lucy.

She's our new puppy.  She's already 5 months old.  We got her a little under two weeks ago.  She's the sweetest little thing. She likes to sit at my feet while I sew.  And every now and then I get a nudge on my thigh by a little wet nose.  Someone wants a pat.

Yes, those ears are enormous aren't they?  

Owl Halloween costume

As in previous years, the children and I got into the Halloween spirit.  I carved some pumpkins, put some orange balloons on our fence and got our bowl of treats ready on the hall table. Halloween is big in our neck of the woods, because our streets are full of young families.  And the children in those families aren't going to pass up the opportunity to amass a large quantity of free sweets.

I borrowed some inspiration from Pinterest.  As you can see, this costume idea is by no means my original design.  But I happened to have a pretty selection of owl coloured fabrics and I couldn't resist replicating it.

I made a little feather template that was 4 inches wide and 5 inches long.  I grabbed a handy Townmouse tee, set my machine to zigzag and got to work.  This little outfit took about 30 minutes to construct.  The owl eyes were cut out of my very handy patternmaking card and stuck to an old pair of sunglasses.

Teamed with some grey leggings, Adelaide was good to go.

Now I think it's time for a bowl of pumpkin soup!

Inappropriate short shorts

What's making you laugh this week?

My boys are loving this ad at the moment.  It's causing us much merriment.

And we do like to sing along.

Seaside cottage

How cute is this room?

Found this great cottage for sale in the seaside town of Flinders, where we spend our summers.  It's perched above the Flinders golf course, so you get a view of golf course and wild ocean.

I think this room is charming and would be very happy spending a cold, wintery weekend on one of those sofas.  I hope someone I know buys it.  Maybe we'll get invited over.