Book thoughts...

Have I mentioned yet that I love Melbourne? It has an indefinable something that just makes me feel quite happy to be living here. It's not stunning like Sydney or filled with beautiful buildings and oozing history and charm like many European cities, it's not even easy like other smaller cities. There are too many cars, rather average beaches and it's pretty darn flat but it has a really great feel, really great food and really great shops. 

God that's shallow... See? Undefinable.  I'll work on that and come up with a better reason or perhaps a list one day.  

One place I do love is our local Readings Bookshop. This is the sort of place that make you want to forget that Book Depository exists. The walls are lined with an amazing array of books, their kids selection is good, the staff know their stuff and it's alive with shoppers and browsers. It doesn't feel like a bookshop that's dying a slow retail death.

I popped in today and spotted these. Handbag queen Orla Kiely is now doing kid's books for uber cool mid century styled up bambinos. 

Pop into your local bookshop and have a flick through the beautifully muted pages.

While you're there stay awhile, buy something, we need them to stay open. This week we learnt that an entire swathe of Melbourne's South East (population 140,000) has no access to a local bookshop after the demise of the big book chains, Borders and Angus and Robertson.  I don't like the idea of a suburb without a book store. I also don't like to pay too much for a paperback so perhaps I'll order online and buy some locally too and enjoy the experience.

It did occur to me that if you cut these Kiely books up they would make the most fabulous nursery wall art. I know, a thought like that could get me banned from bookshops.

Shopping, cooking and a little light reading...

Shopping, cooking and a little light reading? I wish.

Instead we're prepping for a move, polishing up the house for a sale and researching where we might settle in the next city. Not much time for more pleasant things.  

There is, of course, always time to get distracted. 

These lovely books were released last month in the UK. Penguin's Great Food Series -  in their words twenty volumes with excerpts from the finest food writing in the past 400 years.  Sounds promising. Here's a little more about them from a Penguin publicist who's been cooking her way through the books and blogging about it. 

Paid to cook and blog? Just add sleep and it's my ideal job.

The series has been released in Australia and hopefully that means New Zealand too. I want to go and flick through the books and decide which I want. At first glance Elizabeth David, Mrs Beeton and perhaps Alexandre Dumas?

The stunning covers (by Penguin's chief designer Coralie Bickford-Smith) are reason enough to want them all but you know what they say about books and covers. If you do buy all twenty they look like this on your bookshelf. 

I'm really rather against colour coding books (akin to ironing underwear) but a rainbow would work. Just this once.

Toasted...

This is just about a toaster. 

I hate burnt toast almost as much as I hate buttering cold toast so that window is not just cool, it's useful. Although I suppose I'd have to watch the toaster and is that a good use of my time? Does a watched toaster never toast like that whole kettle/boiling thing?

Whatever. It is so much cooler than the crumb carrier we have on our bench. Actually ours doesn't hold the crumbs, it scatters them. I want someone to make me a toaster with the cool window bit and a way of incinerating the crumbs to nothing so I never, ever have to clean them off the bench again.

Can you tell when I'm avoiding housework?

Image from here.

For the wall...

Simple. Gorgeous. I want one. My husband is not so keen and it is his house too. Boo.

You can buy them here. 

Breakfast in red?

Lovely vibrant colours to start your morning... and a surprise too. It's Cornishware, the distinctive blue and white has had a twenty-first century makeover.   I have never much like the blue version - not quite the right blue. Spode blue is more my shade of blue and white.  The RED is my absolute favourite... and so appropriately Christmassy. 

Apparently in the fifties they did briefly make the red version but couldn't quite nail the colour consistently so ended production. Now that we  can fly quite easily to the moon and all carry the world in our iPalms they can also make red Cornishware.

Why am I more thrilled by the advances in red striped pottery than space travel or the digital age?

A reminder too that I am having a rather red giveaway this week - join in, you have until Sunday to enter.

Found via India Knight... again. The images are from here. Have a look, you'll want to buy some too.

iGeneration

That's iGen as in iPhone. And iPad, Touch and Pod.

'i' (as  in 'I') still haven't got any of them. Apart from an iPod of course. I'm not a total dinosaur. And I haven't bought an iPhone because I'm always about to move again (and there are a few issues with responsible ownership and me drowning my current Nokia three times in six months).

On holiday I spent some time with my old friends.  I hasten to add that of course they're not old (they're gorgeous and they read this blog) but they are all late thirty-something women and men and they all have an iPhone... except Simon. He's like me.

It's interesting to see how iPhones are changing the way we interact. This is not scientifically tested of course and I'm not judging. Honestly, I'd quite like to join the iParty too and my kids would love me to.

While holidaying in Tasmania I stayed the night at a friend's holiday home. It's an hour or so from Hobart at the beach near Port Arthur.  I showed you how beautiful it was here. 

I've been going there for a long time. Fifteen years ago none of us had a mobile phone and I think there was no landline either, five years ago we were mostly out of phone range. This time, we girls spent an hour or so online shopping at the kitchen table via the iPhones. I bought a trench coat. It's very nice but I probably didn't need to be browsing online on a Saturday night.

On the same weekend my husband was in Melbourne with his fellow Collingwood fans. He found the same thing with his mates... a lot of diving for the iPhone mid conversation and a bit too much time looking at the top of someone's head as they swoosh through their phone looking for something to show you.

I think we're all just a bit excited about the new technology and haven't quite worked out how to make sure it doesn't dominate. The iPhone images are gorgeous to look at and quite enthralling so who wouldn't want to whip it out for a quick look at every opportunity.

There's a lot of rubbish written and said about this fearful new age.  "Twitter is making us a bunch of twits. Facebook is threatening our privacy. Texting is enlarging thumbs and killing the written language. Gr8."

I don't approve of txt speak but I like social networking. Obviously. I blog and I have blog friends online who I've never met. I write about my children online (carefully). I share what I'm thinking. I treat this as the newspaper column I'd like to have but no one's offered.

I like twitter too. I don't tweet (nothing interesting to say I thought at first) but I am thinking about starting and I already tweet stalk. I often look at my favourite writers/reporters/programs and see what they're chatting about.  I'm referred to a lot of interesting articles via twitter. It's invaluable for a journalist and I should get on board.

I use Facebook. The privacy issue doesn't worry me so much...  and there are a lot of people on my Facebook network that I would have completely lost without it.

I think we just need to learn how to handle the fact that oodles and oodles of stuff is literally in the palm of your hand.

Remember how badly people behaved when they first got mobile phones? Lots of shouting into the phone, taking calls at the dinner table, on the bus and in restaurants. Fifty years on and some still haven't quite mastered the art of television and leave it on when you go to their house to dinner. But I think most of us have learned the rules about mobiles and television. Or we've learned not to get offended.

The rules about iPhones and iPads will follow too. Then we'll have to learn how to properly use the next Cool Big iThing.

I might just buy an iThing.

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The Cartolina app in the image above is just one of the squillions of iPhone apps to covet. Fiona Richards' beautiful card designs to jazz up your messages. I found it here.

Home shopping...

I know I'm on holiday but it's nice to be able to look forward to heading home. This lovely new store in my part of Auckland looks reason enough.

It was featured on The Design Files  today but I saw it in My Real Villa Life a week ago. That's right in the flesh so to speak. I know shops don't have flesh but I'm on holiday and my brain is having a little break too.  It's right opposite the local library and I spotted it as I dashed past to drop the boy's books back.

I'm going back for the cushions but not for another week or so. A little more holidaying first. 

Douglas + Bec. St Mary's Bay, Auckland, NZ. More here.

Book love...

My husband and I (why does that phrase always make me think of the Queen's speech on Christmas Day?)

Anyway, my husband and I took some time out over the weekend for a nice lunch and a stroll in a couple of local book shops. Heaven. So much nicer to book a babysitter during the day... by nine thirty at night my sparkling wit has put itself to bed.

As part of the whole 2010 Read Better Project I have started exploring our local second hand bookshops and look what I found...

        

A bunch of old penguin paperbacks published between 1948 and 1950. 

Now for some reason the titles on the spine are upside-down even though the books are the right way up. Here this might help....

Mr Fortune's Maggot might have caught your eye. A maggot by the way is a 'perverse or whimsical fancy" so this is not a book about rotting meat.

Our house is littered with the new penguin classics and I really love the concept and the new titles they're releasing but I was so drawn to these.  Don't judge a book by its cover, they say. Well I did, sorry.

My aversion to iPhones is softening but I can safely rule out the Kindle. Call me old-fashioned or a plain old luddite but I like the feel of paper and I also like the irrational part of me that bought these because they look so, um, bookish...?

Look out for them in my reading update in the right hand column if they make it there... my other half reckons they'll fall apart before I get to the final page. I'm a bit worried about my dust allergy... I sneezed when I opened the first one!

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By the way, a thank you to those who have given me encouragement to persevere with the slow cooker... I am off to the butcher to buy some beef to get back on the bike. I will try all your recipes and let you know how I go... and I am trying to ignore the uncomfortable truth that I may have just bought an appliance that does exactly what my rather expensive Le Creuset pot does anyway.

More for the wall...

I do love a map... and I love words too so this is perfect.

A fabulous type map of New Zealand drawn in place names from the UK company Bold & Noble.

You need a closer look...  see, how cool is that?

See what I mean too about unpronounceable Kiwi place names? I'm okay with Hamilton but Ohakune and Pahiatua are taking more time to remember.

America and Australia are available too and kindly they haven't left Tasmania off the Australian mainland... as a Tasmanian it's the first thing you look for! 

 Of course this is what they started with... good old blighty....

There's a new London version too and there are more rather lovely, covetable items.  I have seen this on a few walls lately in the piles of magazines I'm sifting through before I bin them. I love it. 

I found the prints on one of my favourite UK shopping blogs - Home Shopping Spy and the talented folk at Bold and Noble have a blog too.

Dressed to impress...

I am not really a fashionista. Actually anyone who knows me in my real villa life will be snorting as they read this... I mean I am REALLY not a fashionista.

I'm not even much of a shopper.  I'd like to be better and I gave it a really good crack as a single girl about town in London. My materialistic phase as it's known...

I have a secret fashion interest. I love the Sartorialist. I like the Awards season for the frocks not the flicks. I like those pages in the trashy mags where they compare celebs in the same dress. I like Sex in the City for the clothes. So yes, I am just like you.

I'd love to be assaulted by Trinny and Susannah in some godawful British high street, shoved into a mirrored cubicle and poked and prodded into a totally new and dazzling ME.

Now there are lots of fashion icons and blogs and blogs paying homage to them but today I have chosen Samantha Cameron... odd you might say but she wears clothes well and that is all that I want. Did you ever see this dress?

I know the real fashionistas are questioning her inclusion on this year's Vanity Fair Best Dressed list because she is really not terribly fashion forward and is posh and skinny so should look good. But she's the first pregnant woman to be included and she rarely puts a foot wrong, even pregnant. And she looks good dressed down too and let's face it, that's my life.

Poor Sarah Brown having to front up every day during the election to be pulled apart and compared by the subtly sneering Daily Mail.... ouch.

Rather like doing the school run with Elle McPherson.

If I ever go back to a real job I would like Tim Gunn of Project Runway fame to do me over in that very New York way he has on his makeover show. He has an essentials list for your new wardrobe.

1. Black Dress
2. Trench Coat (surely the classic Burberry?)
3. Dress Pants (think black)
4. Classic Shirt (white I imagine)
5. Jeans (ones that fit and cost more than 80 bucks)
6. Any occasion top (that will go from day to night)
7. Skirt - flirty or business
8. Day dress (I love this under used term)
9. Jacket
10. Sweatsuit alternative or as we would say at this end of the world, something comfortable that is not a trackie and uggs...

As a bonus one is allowed one trendy item. One?

If I win the lotto (if, if, if) I would start again with this list and burn all my black country road cardigans.  Then I could sashay along on the walking school bus with a bunch of five year olds in my sweatsuit alternative.

Hell, I've won the lotto. I'll move to New York and get a nanny.

For now it's jeans, one of those aforementioned cardigans and converse in a very un-Elle McPherson sort of way. And looking down, my taupe and white converse are now all one shade of Auckland grey. Shopping anyone?

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(All images from the Daily Mail. A middle class rag but great for celebrity gossip. My sincere apologies too for the inclusion (twice) of David Cameron. This blog (and blogger) has no affiliation with Conservative politics or those other Labour jokers either.)

Chapel chairs...

I just never see these chairs in the hundreds dozens of magazine pages I flick through each month  so I was very excited to find this room while flicking online recently.

These are MY chairs. Wooden chapel chairs I bought in London -  the church authorities there have been replacing them with a more practical (and much less charming) plastic option. 

I found a couple at a Chiswick antique store and then tracked down more at a tumble down barn in Surrey that housed all manner of church antiquities - altars, candle sticks, robes and of course church pews. An old wooden chapel bench came back to Australia with us too and has sat in quite a few hallways since.

The chairs are sturdy, made from elm with a slight curve in the seat and a ledge for your song book or bible - or toy car, fork or sandwich crust in our house!

I love my chapel chairs  but so too did the borer that hitched a ride back to Australia. I know, I know, criminal. But how was I to know?

Luckily they were well wrapped in the container and didn't munch through all my other furniture. For some reason the quarantine officials didn't find them either.

Only four chairs were infected - when I found the sawdust  I panicked, banished them outside and liberally doused them in borer killer and again twice more for luck.

Then I painted them. Now don't YOU panic. They look quite good or they will when I paint them for the final time and find just the right shade. But that's another story for another sunnier day. When I get a break in the weather I'll get them outside and tell you all about it.

Pictures from here... these chairs live in a rather grand house - well worth a look.


AND a footnote - I have just popped over to Marie Nichols' blog and she has them in her London home and has posted pictures of her house today. Odd how life works like that...

Design smarts...

I want one of these. Not the phone, the receiver...

It's a Yubz mobile handpiece - and they claim it even reduces your exposure to radiation...

You can buy it at Top3 by Design for $95. Australian dollars. 

When I lived in Sydney I used to often float through their Bondi store. It was started by a very clever woman, Terri Winter, who aimed to stock what she thought were the top three products in each design category.  

Great for gifts and now they sell online too. Need a new bin? These are the top three...

Terri Winter was featured in last week's Sydney Magazine - my other half brought it back to NZ along with the weekend papers and my latest Australian mags. ( I am still mentally living in Australia - it will change with time.)

Terri was asked to list her top 10 blogs and sites for design inspiration and I thought you might like a look.

• This next
• MoCo Loco
• Core 77 design magazine
• indesignlive
• The Design Files
• 2modern design talk
• Designspotter
• designboom
• Stylepark
• Dezeen design magazine

Enjoy... 

Giving in to grey...

I've been shopping  - a rare event these days. Each trip can only last as long as it takes a two year old to eat a handful of tiny teddy biscuits.

I bought the scarf at Country Road and could not go past the grey, despite the grey skies and a cupboard full of grey and black. It's a beautiful soft, bamboo weave - perfect for throwing on with the uniform of converse, jeans and long sleeve T.  

The silver bracelet was my grandmother's, a gift when she was a bridesmaid at her sister's wedding. I didn't really know my grandmother or her sisters  - my parents emigrated to Australia when I was very young.

For years my parents sat down each week to write an aerogramme with our family news.  Phone calls were rare and quite special events with a lot of pressure to say what you had to say. Mum would whisper loudly in the background, "Thank Granny for the present," while Granny talked non-stop eager to make the most of the short time we had. 

Luckily it's a little different for my kids. Our family is not terribly good at staying in the same city or even the same country but we keep in great contact. When the phone rings my little one says "DiDi?" Maybe my mother and I talk a little too much!

Our skype sessions see both boys leaping around on the bed in view of the computer showing off to the grandparents or  if we can make them stand still, holding out their cars or reading aloud from the latest school book.

Anyway, back to shopping. You can see I am totally out of the habit - I can't even talk about it for long.

If I did shop I would have to buy these beauties from Boden. Nothing wrong really with a little more grey in your world and doesn't navy look lovely with it?

That's winter sorted. In my head anyway.

iPhone, iShould?

I have spoken to three friends this week who have each just bought an iPhone.  I had coffee yesterday at the gym with three women who each pulled out their iPhone. Even my in-laws are thinking of getting one. Like the 14 year old girl desperate for a Canterbury rugby top or two (they were THE thing to wear as a teen in Tasmania) I'm starting to feel the pressure.

How things have changed  - and yes I am wondering if I'm I old enough to be talking like this...

When I went to live in London 12 years ago I'd never had a mobile phone. I got one of course and so did everyone else. From then on we never ever made a firm plan to meet. Just, "I'll call you when I get there".

I remember getting my first text and not knowing what it was. A few years later and still in London we went into one of the many high street mobile phone shops - all looked the same with a crowd of young guys in cheap shiny suits who circled the customers like sharks.

"This new model is what you want," one said to us with glee. "If you and your boyfriend buy one each you can take a photo with the phone and send it... if you're in the same room." Oh, handy. I'll just get the one that makes phone calls, thanks.

The technology's moved on from then but my policy hasn't changed. I very deliberately buy the simplest one - Nokia though because I know how they work.

I am not worthy of a fancy phone. I lose them, drop them and drown them.  (I've learnt that a bucket of rice can dry a phone better than a hairdryer)

Maybe the new Cath Kidston iPhone cover I found here will swing it for me. Love it.
I can't have her in my home (too country and too frou frou) but in my handbag she'd be ok.

I have a sneaking suspicion I'll end up with a fancy phone but only when everyone else has moved on to something better. Mind you if it tidies up and does the dishes, I'll sleep overnight at the Apple store.

Still searching

If you put this

And this together.

You get this. A white painted tolix stool. Gorgeous and just the thing for my kitchen. And I can get one here in Auckland from Madder and Rouge (lovely shop - a little like Ici et la if you're a Sydney sider) - although given they're ordered from France I could be waiting a while.

This is Capital Kitchen at Melbourne's Chadstone shopping centre. I found these images here - a rather nice blog to visit.

You may remember that I have been searching for stools.  I think a white tolix stool could be the answer and maybe, just maybe, a bit of inspiration from my other half's favourite city might swing it for him too.

Okay, he loves Melbourne for the sport, his mates and the Collingwood Football Club and definitely not a shopping centre but he should be swayed by this... surely?

Getting around...

My husband is having a love hate relationship with the bus. Actually hate hate. We live 5kms from his office and it can take an hour to get there by bus... and we live on the route of the tourist link bus. Apparently that's the best bus.

Good to know that we have found somewhere in the world that makes Sydney's ailing (journalists always say ailing when they mean crap) transport system look pretty good.

Anyway this wall decal might cheer him up or just annoy him more....  I could put it near the front door.

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It's from Perth based Little Design Horse who have a groovy shop and take phone orders. They also have a blog. All the cool people do.

Wall art

It can be hard to find European designer homewares in New Zealand - luckily there are a few clever people importing them.

Here's a selection from a new online venture paper room set up by a friend of a friend. I'm slowly learning that Auckland is all about friends of friends.

They have beautiful wallpapers and fabrics and one of the best ranges of wallstickers I've seen here.

World map wall sticker by Ferm Living. $199

Paperbacks wallpaper by Tracey Kendall, $595 per roll

Cool Britannia Royale wall mural by wallpaperspace $675

I love the grey wall map... such a lovely subtle choice for a kid's room.

The stack of books wallpaper is fabulous - they have stacks of plates too but I think there are too many stacks of junk in my house already. Of course fabulous prices too but a girl can dream.