Pillow Love.

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We've had an incredibly busy start to the Christmas season, dividing our time between friends visiting from New Zealand, going to visit family in Brisbane and the big one, moving house! It's been a daunting but fun task unpacking our new home and decorating every room to match our style and taste.

One thing I think you can never have enough of, are throw pillows. You can swap and change, mix & match them between rooms to create fresh and interesting features. Christmas came early for me with these lovely animal throw pillows from Uncommon Goods. A quirky and adorable set that now live in our bedroom and add a little bit sunshine and joy to our room. Don't they just make you happy??

With only days to go before Christmas, Uncommon Goods has an incredible selection of, as the name suggests, uncommon, quirky and funny gifts for everyone. Definitely worth a look!

Corners of Our Home: The Awkward Corner

No matter how much I would like to say that we have the perfect home, where everything fits like a puzzle, that's just not the case. There are a number of quaint and quirky layout aspects to our place which has just not been ideal to work with, but I've come to accept that it's those things that makes our place unique.

There's one particular corner in our lounge which I've labelled the awkward corner. It's just a random little corner right by our front door that's been bothering me. We have to run the silly television cable up and around this corner, as the antenna plug is on the other side of the room by the dining table (like I said, there are some odd layouts in our place!), and I've been wanting to add something to that corner to disguise that cable. That's where my handy husband comes in! He's been a complete genius with making us pieces of furniture to match our home, so it was easy for me to convince him to make a piece to fit in this corner.

The results, well, I'm a happy wifey! With a little bit of paint that I added afterwards and a few favourite books put on display, we've finally managed to use this corner to it's full potential. Moral of the story, why buy when you can build?? Customise or start from scratch to create pieces to fit your own little awkward corners. And if that fails, let me know, I might be able to convince Neil to make something for you too! ;)

Corners of our Home.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I will be taking the time to document and share little corners of my home with you all. It's a fun journey to set up home (not that I think we will ever 'finish' it as our taste and style is always developing and changing, there will always be something else we will want to do or add to our home) and I'm happy to be sharing corners in our kitchen today.

There's something I absolutely love about being in the kitchen. I don't call myself a chef or the worlds greatest baker, but I do love trying new meals, exploring different tastes and textures and learning new tricks when it comes to preparing food and baking. I love spending time baking, even if it's only something simple like cookies (this weekend I tried my first batch of sugarfree, glutenfree cookies!). There are a lot of things i love about my kitchen (include loads of cupboard space, yay!), but one thing I absolutely love is my recipe books. I've only got a small collection of recipe books to start off with, but it's great when you have your go-to books to rely on for a new and interesting meal! I must say though, Jamie Oliver and Donna Hay is a must buy for my next recipe book!

I'm also a big lover of spices (it's possibly the South African in me!) so for me, I always make sure to have enough supply in my spice pots. I obviously ran out of my gorgeous labelled canisters quite fast that I ended up hunting down little glass pots with mini-spoons to use other spices. Very handy!

One thing I do recommend spending cash on, is a nice kettle and toaster. It's amazing what a difference to your kitchen a nice set will make! I don't know why some people don't want to invest a little bit more on a nice set, when really these appliances are still probably the cheapest ones you will have in your kitchen! But keeping in mind, you use them everyday, so it's worth the investment :) When Neil and I came across this gorgeous yellow Morphy Richards set, we couldn't walk away from it! Plus it didn't help that I have an unhealthy obsessions with yellow too ;)

So welcome to my kitchen! This is where you will always find a nice cup of tea or coffee (Neil loves his coffee and I love my tea), a fresh batch of baking and little memories we love to put up on our fridge (especially if they are letters from our nieces and nephews!). If you've shared your home interiors before, I would love to take a peek, so feel free to drop your link in the comments!

Corners of My Home.

 

I am rather excited about starting this little series, Corners Of My Home, with you today. As most of you would know, it's been a journey this past year to set up and settle here in Melbourne and I feel like parts of our house is finally starting to look like a home. It took a while for us to get here, as it's a very expensive process buying everything for your home again (we sold majority of our belongings and furniture back home).

So let's start with our cute little dining room. This beautiful dining table we got when Neil and I first got married but so far it has only served as decoration - we've never had dining chairs to use with it, or it served as a computer desk in the tiny apartments we lived in that didn't allow for me to get a separate table. So you can only imagine my excitement when we added these adorable Jasper  chairs from Click on Furniture to our previously empty dining room. Finally, dinners at the table can become a regular occurrence and dinner parties (...okay perhaps just small dinner parties till we get a bigger table!) is now a possibility! Exciting!

My Husband the Handyman.

Lately Neil and I have been doing a lot of DIY jobs around the house. There is nothing more satisfying than putting your hands to work and creating something beautiful and fun for your home that fits your personality and style. Neil has been quite the handyman, and as a hobby he has started creating these beautiful rustic furniture pieces and selling them. It's been wonderful seeing his ideas turn into beautiful creations. The only sad thing is that I would have certain pieces styled and fitting in our home perfectly, only to be bought by someone else and removed a week later.

This table I fell in love with! Thanks to my darling husband...he let me keep this one ;) And what makes me even more excited is that he's working on another little project for OUR home which I cannot wait to share with you all. So grateful to have a man that knows how to use tools, it comes in very handy!

The Design Files Open House.

Since I started blogging years ago, a favourite blog of mine has always been The Design Files. Filled with inspirational interiors, decor and fantastic homeware products, it always draws me back for more. Lucy, the lovely lady behind the blog, on the weekend hosted The Design Files Open House and Neil and I decided we would head along for a visual feast.

The house was packed! There were curious and impressed crowds everywhere and with good reason. The house was styled wonderfully with an assortment of beautiful homewares, art and furniture and we instantly fell in love with the home as much as the decor.

A wonderful job done by Lucy and her team! I will slowly but surely start adding some of the wonderful product featured there until my home looks fit for a magazine like this house!

Handyman.

There's nothing quite like getting your hands dirty and doing a bit of DIY around the home. Unfortunately I cannot take any credit for these pieces. My husband has been quite the handyman and has decided to get creative! The last couple of weeks Neil has been spending in the garage working away to fill our little home with a few extra pieces and not make it look so empty. And I think he's done such a wonderful job! So glad to have a man around the house who can build me pretty furniture! I must say it's pretty awesome to finally have a place to put all my books again :)

Friday Furniture Feature.

I am in love with so many beautiful designer furniture pieces at the moment. The exciting thing about moving countries and leaving most of your possessions back home (or giving it away and selling pieces like we did), is that you have a blank canvas to start afresh with when it comes to decorating your home. I must say it comes at quite a price to set up home from scratch, but this time round I will be taking the time to decide which pieces we buy and save up so we can actually splash out with a few dashing feature pieces.

Today I really wanted to feature the most incredible loveseat you would have ever seen. Temperature Design are the creators of this little beauty and I must say, they sure know how to pull off those gradients! Ever since I first laid eyes on this piece, it's been stuck in my mind and I know exactly where it will go in our house one day.

Nothing like brightening up your home with a tinge of orange!

Celebrating Creative Spaces: Jessica Hische

Jessica Hische is one of my favourite typographers, illustrators, designers...So it should not come as a shock to you that I hunted down to find some snapshots of her creative space and apartment :) And I love, love, love! Creative people have such awesome houses! I especially love the chalkboard wall in her office - I can imagine that would come in quite handy for taking notes for jobs, deadlines, drawing some inspiration, or wasting time and doodling all over the wall (which is probably what I would end up doing!).

Little Treasure Box.

Photography by Jeska from Lobster & Swan.

This lovely house just made my day! Jeska's house is a little treasure box full of gorgeous finds and sweet trinkets. You can find way more photos of some sweet corners in her home on her flickr page, but thought I would just share a few of my favourites.

Celebrating Creative Spaces: Fabian Barral

If you are a graphic designer, or involved in some other creative industry, there is no doubt that you would already be acquainted with Fabian Barral from Graphic Exchange. I have been a fan of Fabian's design blog (and his own work) for some years now, as there is always the most inspiring of work on there. But just this weekend I discovered this set of photos from his office space. I absolutely love seeing people's work spaces, as it's so interesting to see what different people surround themselves with daily and what inspires them in their office.

Room Love.

Images of Kara Haupt from I Just Might Explode, found via Down and Out Chic.

This room just makes me so happy that I couldn't resist sharing it as well. It has everything that I would love in my own room/office:

A to-do list (this is a must!)
A pretty desk
Shelf for books
Creative storage space
And of coarse, wall art

This will all have to come in due time, when we find our perfect home and transform it into our own little haven. Cannot wait!

Apartment of Silke Neumann.

Imagery of Sulke Neumann's apartment, Freunde von Freunden.

Freunde von Freunden is a fantastic place to find living and working spaces of creatives all across the globe, and is a regular visit of mine (see this and this). Which is how I found this gorgeous Berlin apartment of Agency owner, Sulke Neumann. Can I just say how jealous her book collection is making me??

Inspiring Interior.

As we get closer to the end of the year, I cannot seem to help the anticipation growing of Neil finally finishing his studies! Oh the joys of a full time income next year will do wonders for our little home, as I have so many ideas brewing in my mind of what I want our decor to look like.

One thing I know for sure is that I would love an array of art pieces and photography on my walls (including this adorable bunny print by Debbie Carlos). Which is why I took a fancy straight away to these beautiful interior shots by Thom, as it embodies so many of the things I would like: frames, books, chalkboard, cameras!