Door love...

Here endeth a week that would be best forgotten. One sick little boy and a bigger boy with a broken arm.  Just a 'greenstick fracture of the distal radius' as he will proudly tell anyone who asks but there is a rather large cast from wrist to shoulder. No soccer, backyard cricket or swimming. No swinging from the furniture. Oddly enough he does need reminding.

The damage was done slipping from the school monkey bars. I'd like to blame the rickety playground but of course I can't. He was leaping down onto the bars from a great height so that sounds much more like his fault. As many kind friends have pointed out it is amazing it's taken six years.

He's fine and hasn't complained once. If I were in a cast from my wrist to my shoulder you'd hear me moaning from where you're sitting now.  One can learn a lot from children.

So it's been a little quiet on the blog front and will be even quieter in the coming two weeks. I am having a blog free break over the school holidays to tend to the wounded. Actually I'm going on holiday.  Happy holidays to you all.

Oh yes, this week's door. I don't really like it. 

Call me old fashioned but I just think it would look better on a sleek new house not a villa. And the picture quality is rubbish as our zoom button is broken so I'd have to walk up the stairs to get a nice close shot. I may be old fashioned but I'm not crazy. 

Small things...

While in Sydney I shopped until I dropped but didn't buy much. What I enjoyed was the wandering, peering in windows, feeling the fabrics (apparently women always touch when they shop - I certainly do) trying things on and laughing and chatting as we went. Just the sort of shopping trips that were very much part of my life before the boys came along.

I bought the black twine at the divine Paper2 for $1.95 and it's one of my favourite purchases.  It really often is the small things in life.

The present was wrapped for my husband's birthday. Paul Kelly's new book and a promise to choose a painting together.

Of course turning forty is not really a very big deal these days. It's just another one of those small things in life.

We'll keep saying that over and over until I turn forty too. Which of course is years and years and days and days away.

Door love...

In amongst all the slicked up, glossy and rather groovy front door makeovers in the streets around here is this front entrance to a rather  rundown little wooden cottage. It's like a traditional Kiwi bach (holiday home) in the middle of the inner-city suburbs. I rather like it.

Happy Friday to all.

Bromley blogging...

David Bromley's work hangs in the windows of a gallery in Auckland, that I drive past most days. I love his work, particularly the Childhood series and even the nudes - although I am not willing to have a set of breasts much better than mine on display in my home.

I love the colours he uses.  I also rather love his prolific approach to his work and that he doesn't hesitate to use his images on things that will - gasp, sell. Not terribly fashionable in art circles but he doesn't seem worried. In fact he seems to have a wonderful time.

I popped into the Bromley Arcade while in Sydney, if you have a chance do go. I could have bought the shop but didn't so there's plenty still to see.

This week Mr Bromley's been guest blogging on The Design Files ahead of the launch tomorrow of his new venture, quilts. A great read for any Bromley fan.

Images from here.

Flying high...

We are knee deep in paper. Not paperwork but paper planes.  It's my six year old's new obsession. He wakes in the morning and seconds later is on his knees somewhere in the house measuring, folding and smoothing.  When I need him to eat or dress or bath or do anything he's building another plane. He churns out six every half an hour.

We bought him a new planes book last week and it's the best I've seen. The Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes.  It has ten plane designs including the Swashbuckler, The Hammer, The Professional and the Headhunter. Apparently they're not just paper planes, they're paper machines.

They have dihedrals, elevators, ailerons. My son mutters to himself as he works, "sloppy folds won't fly."

Luckily the instructions are so clear even I can make a paper machine though nothing to match the master.

The new book also came with forty sheets of 'flight-ready' paper in such groovy designs you could wallpaper a house with it. Too late for that of course, every last sheet is gone. And the recycling bin is full.

Calling time...

Why (oh why) are the phone companies still producing these and dumping them on thousands of doorsteps each year?  At least Auckland's directories are half the size of Sydney's. Should save a few trees.

Unsurprisingly the people who sell the ads in Australia's Yellow Pages insist people still use them. Well honestly, really?

Fine. Keep the yellow ones then but ask before you deliver.

Surely the white pages are of no use to anyone?  As a child I used to take great delight in scanning through the white pages on holiday and finding the handful of residents with my rather unusual surname. But that, as my son would say, was in the Olden Days.

This week's delivery is resting on the sideboard on the way from the front door to the recycling bin. I'm open to any  ideas about what to do with them instead.

Door love...

One of the nice bonuses about going away for a few days is getting back to the blogs I usually read every day and reading four or five posts at once.

It's like saving up your Easter eggs and then eating them when everyone else is done. Of course I was never that kid.

So to end a very short week for me, some Friday front door inspiration. I'm actually not a big cat fan but he or she looks thoroughly happy here and rather adds to the scene. Not that I would recommend getting a cat to enhance your front door mat. That would be wrong.

I could, however, stain my stairs just like that. If we had stairs.