Joyous Jonquils

Today we start up close to some joyous jonquils...

Dressing table dilemmas!

Ever been tempted by an op-shop find? 

Thrifted crochet, leather 'n cane

 There were more thrifted finds in the holidays...

Sanity in the house

 Today I'm in a rush. As usual I know. But I've set myself a challenge...

Mapping the table

Late last week I (re)mapped our dining table....

The entry hall

Here are some moody shots from our front entry...

White table = blank blog canvas

It's a holiday here today, so the house isn't very peaceful, but let's go to another world. A world of fairy tales, and white tables.

"Once upon a time there was a little farmhouse built in the middle of a paddock. It was built by a farming family who used pieces of a war barracks building (WWII) that had been demolished and they lived in this house happily sowing and harvesting the paddock around the house. Then times changed, the children grew up and moved away, the parents grew older and moved to town. The paddock was sown by another farmer. The farmhouse did what all old empty farmhouses do and slowly fell down. Just before it's roof fell in a newly married town girl happened to visit the farm and this old house. Inside it were many of the families old pieces of furniture. Including a well-used, round wooden table and a cupboard just like this one. The newly married town girl really loved old furniture but she lived too many kilometres away to take any home. Somehow  she convinced her new husband (they were obviously newly married) to remove the furniture from the old falling-down farmhouse and they both convinced the farmer to find a spot in his shed for a few bits of furniture. And so the furniture was saved from becoming a pile of rubble along with the farmhouse.

Fast forward about 8 years and the newlyweds were no longer newlyweds, in fact they were awaiting the arrival of baby #3. The farmhouse had fallen in, but the furniture was still in the farmer's shed! Plus they had moved house and were now living within a reasonable range of the farm.... ahah, here is where to fairy tale progresses ;-) The baby needed a change table and the round wooden table needed a new home. With a few fresh coats of white paint the table looked MUCH better, and it came to live in the baby's room providing a very valuable service to the new family.

Then the town girl started taking photos inside her home to use when writing a blog. She noticed that she was frequently taking photos on the dining table. And although it's a great backdrop, it's covered in maps and the resulting tones are generally blue. Added to this the baby is now the littlest one and soon won't need a change table.... the fairy tale can have another chapter added. The table can be moved to a new room, the living area, where there is lots of lovely natural light and it can be used for all sorts of new services. And so the furniture re-arranging begins! This is what it the living area looked like on Friday morning:

Basically this is where everyone lands at the start and end of the day. The littlest one has her own chair and book basket here. The cushions get rearranged often (mostly to the floor) and the stack of books/magazines on the basket to the left has to be regularly sifted/sorted/culled. It's a well-used spot in the home. The photos are a collection of our's in a set of $2-shop frames which Mr Accommodating biscuit joined together and I painted many moons ago. The cane lounge was an Ebay purchase, it was cheap to buy but after picking it up from 500kms away Mr Accommodating explained just how much it had really cost me! Though I still think we're getting a great cost/use rate from it.

You might notice that there doesn't seem to be much room for a round table in this set-up. A few things had to change.... so I put my muscles on and shifted things around until they looked like this:

Here's the layout from another angle... Moving furniture around has long been a past-time of mine. It's been happening for longer than my tea habit. Early on in our marriage Mr Accommodating used to state that he wouldn't dare come home after dark for fear that he'd stumble into furniture that I'd re-arranged that day. I still maintain that a change is as good as a holiday plus it's got to be good for a work-out.

The new layout has the gorgeous white table in it. As well a retro old chair that I 'won' at a clearing sale for $10 (there were 2 others and a side table in the purchase too, they are in other places about the house). I was bidding despite some VERY raised eyebrows from Mr Accommodating. I admit that they did look rather decrepit. One even had a circular wine stain on the arm (the clearing sale was an old winery closing down). Amazing what sand paper and some gloss lacquer does! We've had many admiring comments about these chairs, the lovely Mr Accommodating just rolls his eyes and waits for me to tell my clearing sale story again!

But back to the story... The table looks just lovely in it's corner. White against white. So blank ;-) Great for clear, crisp blog images. Gives all the colour to the subject."

And that is the story of the white table. Well at least up unto this day! So good to have a blank canvas to create images for blogging. Funny how such 'whiteness' can make other white things look awesome too. This white 'Fire Stone' vase is a thrift shop purchase from a month or so ago. Just before I started blogging, really it was! I promise to now blog other little finds as they happen! It was a $5 purchase, just like this sweet vintage find of Sarah's. Little finds like these... they make me smile. Why? A number of reasons. The price fits into my aim to not spend much money at all on unnecessary things for the house, yes I'll admit it's unnecessary. Old things seem to have such gorgeous character, what's that saying "they don't make things like they used to", so it just couldn't be left on the shop shelf un-admired. And there's an additional environmental bonus of re-using something, Mr Accommodating and I do try to have a green tinge to our psyches.

So what have you re-arranged lately? Or found for $5? Or smiled about? I'll leave you with a shot that made me smile.

 

Wool in the White Cupboard

This is the white cupboard. It's the white cupboard that used to be my Grandmother's medicine cabinet to be exact. And when you first open it you still get that whiff of old medicine. It's only recently become white. And it's only recently been allowed to reside in our living area. Even more recently has there been wool in the white cupboard. So here is the story of the white cupboard, and the wool within!

My Grandma lived in a true seaside house on the east coast of Australia. She and my Grandfather bought the block which was across the road from the beach. They bought it before living by the sea was fashionable, when your average couple could afford a patch of land where now you pay squillions of dollars. You see, there is nothing between that house and the beach except bush. You lie in bed and hear the ocean roar, you open the window and smell the salt, you cross the road and walk to the beach barefoot. The house they build themselves, on weekends when they brought the family with five kids and camped on the block. The house itself was just two rectangles, one for living and one with bedrooms, joining these two rectangles was a hallway. And in the hallway lived this cupboard. Full of medicines. Jars, bottles and potions.

When my Grandma had lived out her days by the sea the medicine cupboard came to live at my house. I loved it. I loved the smell of it and the way it took me back to that hallway in the house by the sea. But not everyone in my house loved it. You see it was this rather ordinary brown colour and dingy looking. And when one doesn't have the emotional attachment of the smell of medicine of a cupboard in that seaside house, well there is no magic to see past the brown.

So, I decided to wave the magic white paintbrush over the cupboard. After many coats (turned out the 'paint' was a stain and once I'd started I had to continue!) it looked a rather different cupboard! Everyone in the house thinks it's a lovely cupboard now. And it is a rather handy hiding storage spot for all the games and some of our arty stuff. All pristine vintage glass on the outside...

But chaos on the inside...... and that, my friends, is just the top shelf!

Well. To get to the wool part of this story. If you've read this post you would know that there had been a bit of wool floating around this house. And the balls of wool seem to be growing in number too, strange isn't it?! I've also found that balls of wool and children don't mix, I had to find a place to store it and quickly. Out of sight and out of reach! The cupboard seemed ideal but where in the cupboard???

Not in this drawer, though now all the paintbrushes are together.

  

 Nor in this section, though I MUST do something with these gorgeous little shoes one day! 

Finally I took everything out of the cupboard, put some things elsewhere, put some things in the donation box and the bin. Then I carefully put the remaining things back in the cupboard whilst holding my breath and crossing my finger and toes... It worked, see, here's the wool going in! Looking all lovely in a basket of it's own and with my very precious instruction book that I need so much in the basket too. Right where it's easy to find - yay!

 

Please excuse the stray dab of yellow paint on my pointer finger, I nearly got waylaid in the paint drawer it was almost too tempting!

Ah the joys of an organised white cupboard! Not only does the cupboard look pristine on the outside, the inside is (almost) neat too! It'll never be perfect whilst there are multiple sets of hands trying to store and grab their games and art stuff in there. Who am I kidding, as if small hands 'store' things! Unless they've actually learnt the lesson of clean-as-you-go from Monday's blog. But I am very pleased to have a place for my wool in there. Small things people, small things. 

What have you organised in your life lately? I've also been trying to organise my week days and the littlest girl, it generally means working out just what I have to say 'no' to. More about that some other time. I'm still working on it and probably will 'til I have my very own seaside house along with the wisdom of age. Huh! We can all dream hey? About wisdom and seaside houses!!!

'Til next time.