Little Things

Just some little things from around the house ...

A Christmas gift for this year's tree

 A little pot

Christmas decorating

 My attempt at making sugar cubes in fancy shapes and taking a bad photo of them (both successful!)

 Zwarte Piet (read about that here)

 Little Minis

More little Minis!


















Merry Christmas
J xo

Visitors

We have had some visitors lately. We had to quickly put together the guest room bed and scrounge together some linen and cushions for that and the sofa bed.

Both rooms still need work and the quilt on the dbl bed is way old. I need to decide what look we want for the guest bed so I can put up our pictures on the walls and decorate, but in the meantime ...

Guest Bed:

Study (sofa bed):

We have also had some other visitors. We have a resident pigeon and a resident cricket!

J xo

Out and about October

There is a lot of inspiration in our neighbourhood ... lots of little (or used to be little) workman's cottages to give us ideas for our place, plus a few grander designs.

Firehouse














Blue #3














Pale Green #10














Messy



















Multi














Brown



















Blue & white cutie (Hi you guys!!!)














Love being in our 'hood.

Doggie in the window ...

Looking at a book about dog breeds the other day I came across this:

Small Munsterlander:

We also like the look of ...

Dalmations

Weimaranas (possibly a bit large though)

Welsh Springer Spaniels

Has anyone got any suggestions for a gentle, happy, fun, small-medium sized dog breed?

Home ownership blues

Don't you love it when someone has left lots of lovely maintenance work for you to do in your new (100 year old) home?

So, this looks like a nice bathroom yes? I don't want to give too much away, but you can see that it is quite new, a decent size, fairly "stylish" (as real estate agents might say!) It is missing the rustic quality that we look for but we were thinking we would get something way more 1940s and pink ;-)

But, all is not as it seems.

We are big believers in doing things properly; some clearly are not. So far we have a long list of things that need to be fixed, not least (by a very long shot) is to fix the plumbing from the bathroom.

Some bright spark installed the pipes so the waste from the toilet and the shower has to go uphill! They also installed decking over where the pipes run through the back garden and one of the footings for this decking sits right on top of a pipe, so the pipe has cracked.

Oh joy. We only moved in yesterday!!

It's amazing how something so seemingly innocent can cause great problems, and MASSIVE holes in budgets.

It's such a nice welcome back to home ownership, but we are still firmly in the no regrets category.

Just teasing

Adding to the mystery ...

 

 

 

... how I wonder what you are.

Charlotte this week

Last weekend I attended the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute Heart to Heart Masquerade Ball.

It was a great night and we raised much needed funds to help in the fight against heart disease.

As I was there in an official capacity, I didn't really have time to get in any of the photos (some of you won't be surprised at that!). But I did take a shot of the Charlotte ring I made up for the night.

Peridot band around the outside, jade disk in the middle and a little pearl in the centre.

On the Lamb

Look what we got ...

Have you ever seen so many (blue) keys? And they all let us in to the same door!

A sneak peek ...

Dreaming of Italy

My niece is going to Italy with her grandparents in September. I hope she is enchanted with all things Italian, as we were.

Here's some inspiration for you Dani:

Pizza anyone?
J xo

(all photos taken by Jenny McKellar)

Charlotte 101

So, this is how it works ...

Let's start with a finished ring design first

With the little pincer tool, push the ends into the holes on each side of the base ring

push together gently

and the little pin pops out of the base and all the parts come away together.

Taken apart, this is what all the parts look like (for this particular ring design).

But, perhaps you now want a different design ... 

choose from the library.       

We'll go with a white topaz centre and a carnelian disk.

First, the white topaz centre goes into the carnelian disk,

then turn them over and put on a plastic washer (to protect the parts and stop them from moving around) ...  

  

... then insert the pin through the holes in the centre part until it's poking out the other side. (There are 4 holes in each centre; choose whichever one you like, it makes no difference.)

Sit the base ring onto the centre and disk combination and use the pincers to ease the pin into the holes in the ring. (Can't show this bit 'cause I need two hands!)

Voila!

How clever

Then you can start from the beginning and choose a different design :-)








Thanks Charlotte and thanks Michael (part-time photographer).