Black, white and wood...

The boy is back at school, the year is well underway but I am still floundering around trying to kickstart 2011. It's times like these I really miss a formal job. 

My son said to me last week, "You're always on holiday Mum because you don't ever go back to work." Ah sweet. And so insulting to the SAHM movement. What he doesn't realise is that I really need a holiday after his holiday ends. 

No holiday but in the meantime some inspiration to get me going on a few jobs around the home. 

I just love the combination of lots of white, lovely old wood and a dash of black. It's the dash of black I am aiming for in the next month or so and much as I would love to conjure up some black framed steel doors or windows I just have chairs to paint.  As you may remember I planned this little job quite a few months ago... then it rained for three months and I forgot about it.

I also have things to throw out (again), things to frame and lists to make. I feel better already.

(Images: 1 Elle Decor, 2 via Pure Style Home, 3 via Driftwood Interiors)

R is for Rrrred....

Couldn't you just eat this? Obviously not... but I do LOVE red and nothing is better than fire engine red. These engines are on display at Auckland's best destination for boys young and old - MOTAT - the Museum of Transport and Technology. We went a few months ago. 

This engine was built in 1937 and raced the streets of Waverley in the Taranaki region. 

 The one below was built in 1907, it's a Merryweather and is believed to be the second oldest surviving fire engine in the world - there's one in London that's three years older. This one was put to work in Sydney and eventually brought to NZ by a collector.

This next carriage was the earliest fire engine used in New Zealand, pulled by a horse with three firefighters balanced on top it needed another eleven men on each side to operate the water pump.  Hard to imagine but the Wellsford Fire Brigade was still using this in 1955.

I really would have liked to take one home and put it in my son's room. Obviously not the most practical idea so instead I found my fire engine in a can and yesterday started painting.

Resene Red Berry. A dollop of this in my boy's room should go rather well with this. Despite the best efforts of my two year old 'helper' I'm nearly done so I'll show you more in a couple of days.

Black and white...

Paint colours are never just black and white are they? The very thought of having to choose a new paint colour for the outside of our house fills me with dread. I'm not. But two of my friends are so this post is for them.

I have always loved this image from Skona Hem...

And then found this beautiful Kiwi version in NZ House and Garden. It just sits so well against green.

And it must have been a heart in the mouth moment when buying the paint for this villa. It's an awful lot of dark, dark paint. 

It's a look you don't see much on the lovely villas here and I don't think I would have had the confidence to do it but it works well. Most, like the ones I have shown you already, are white, taupe or grey. Or like ours, a combination taupe-grey. 

I found this in the real estate pages online.... It's rather a little Kiwi house but quite Scandinavian - perhaps they saw the top image too. 

I like it. It makes much more of what really could be a rather ordinary house if it was plain white or in the dreaded cream. 

What these pictures prove is that black or charcoal with touches of white really needs rather good architectural detail to work.

Good bones. Good shoulders perhaps. Rather like a sharp charcoal grey and white pin stripe suit on a fat City trader. Nothing worse.

(Image 4,5,6 found here)

Hole story...

When I see the words 'kitchen' and 'organised' I jump to attention, so this morning when the very accomplished blogger, mother, builder extraordinaire, A-M, at The House That A-M Built sent me to check out Martha's kitchen hints I hopped straight over. Quite apart from Martha's incredible array of pots and spatulas (and obsessive neatness) this is what really got me excited.

Adjustable shelves built with old fashioned 'bird's beak' supports - and as Martha  - or more accurately her minions who write all this - say there are no holes and no hardware. 

I HATE those holes.  And those stupid plugs that fall out of them. So much so that when I saw this a few months ago on the DIY blog Young House Love I saved it. 

BEFORE

AFTER

While installing an Ikea bookcase they went to the trouble of filling in the holes... and it looks so much better. They cleverly left a couple open for adjustments.

My dream kitchen (in the dream house) will have bird's beak shelving. Some clever carpenter type suggested they might be dust catchers. I choose dust, and my dream kitchen comes with a dream cleaner anyway.

For now, it is me, those darn holes and a bucket of filler.

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.

Liking...

I am rather liking this...

From West Elm via Lonny magazine. And I am also rather liking these on my wall.

Yes the pictures I showed you last week are done and not only in frames but on the wall. But wait, like a bad commercial, there's more. I started with this.... 

It doesn't look too bad outside on a lovely sunny day but it was really not that nice. I liked the shape and size and height and price, I just didn't like the whole el cheapo honey-pine thing. And it came from a shop stacked with so much el cheapo honey-pine furniture that you would sear your eyeballs if you stayed too long. So sandpaper, a paint brush, primer, paint and Me and you get this...

Yesterday to reward myself, instead of the black vases which wouldn't last a week on that table,  I brought home a bit of winter greenery.   

Hydrangeas are my favourite flower and seem to do pretty well inside. Our villa is heated to a nice average temperature of 21 degrees. I like it like that and so does the hydrangea. The last one stayed for six months and the blooms slowly turned from white to a lovely pale shade of green.

Bikes and wandering minds...

I have a degree in procrastination. Actually a double degree and I graduated with honours. It took five years at university and a small fortune in fees and cheap wine.

Every now and then I hear a term like 'unconscionability' or mention of Lord Denning and some of my legal knowledge floats back... but what I have never forgotten is how to put off work until the last possible moment. 15 years ago it was essays on international law and exams on the rules of evidence, now it's freelance writing and radio work.

I am procrastinating right now and I have been doing it all week. I mean honestly, yesterday I randomly posted about Wendy houses. Wendy houses????

Kids help too... I spent a good hour searching for my two year old's shoe this week and when I'd stopped looking I found it  - stashed in the seat compartment of his ride-on Thomas train.

The upside of procrastination is that I clean things so this week I have sparkling (ish) floors and a much nicer smelling rubbish bin.

I also tackle little jobs that can clearly wait - you know the pics that have waited years for new frames. Which is why there is a rather large picture of a bike in black and white at the top of this page...scroll up and have another look. It's finally going back on our wall - a memory of great weekends away in Amsterdam with friends.

This will go next to it. My other half went down on bended knee in a snow covered Venice.

And of course there's London, not an iconic London shot but Richmond Bridge a stone's throw from our old house and a lovely place to stroll in the sunshine.

They're going in frames today, the Ikea frames I have stacked under our spare bed that are almost as well travelled as my procrastinating mind.

I may need to take a week off from My Villa Life and do some work. On the other hand I might be back on Monday. Hell, it's not due tomorrow...

Stow it...

It's an endless search... finding the right bag, basket, bench, bucket for all the things you want stashed neatly away. You might have gathered that I am not naturally tidy but I do rather like a tidy home.

We have cleaning frenzies which are actually really just races to tidy the house - mostly in the evening when I have had ENOUGH of tripping over lego, cars, puzzles and race tracks. Or sometimes about fifteen minutes before guests arrive - yes I'm trying but Flylady's CHAOS (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome) still rules some days. My sink is clear though.

Of course  most of our guests have children so an even bigger frenzy is required when they leave. Then I use the I MEAN BUSINESS kind of tone and my five year old jumps to it.

But he has to have a place to jump to... and we're getting there. We have a drawer for paper and sticker books, a lidded box for the growing collection of big boy lego, a car basket, lots of snap lock boxes for small things and I've just bought a couple of these.

Not the kid, the bucket. They hold the lego and the Thomas train set... but they're also good for lots of other things. Tubtrugs are cheap, strong, green (100% recycled plastic) and come in all colours. We are right into red.

I also bought these at Ikea on my last trip to Melbourne... and lots of other equally useful stuff of course!

I didn't quite see they'd be used like this...

But apparently a sword (or plastic Star Wars light saber) and one of these and you are quite the Knight in Shining Armour. Might give one to my husband...

Second chance...

A few weeks ago I tried to find a picture that summed up what I liked in one picture. A blog game from From The Right Bank. Well, like searching for the right pair of shoes and finding THE shoes six weeks after you needed them, I've found the room.

The people behind this lovely, lovely space work at the American architects, Buttrick Wong. You can see more here.

Even though it's a Northern Hemisphere room I think it has a very light, indoor outdoor feel and would fit very well in my family's life. Minus the white couches. Or I could sell the children.

Awfully orange....

At some point this weekend I am going to sit down and flick through a couple of Australian mags kindly delivered across the ditch by my other half who flew to Melbourne for the day this week. You can get them here but not until weeks after they're published - and a magazine a month late is just not the same. 

When I put the these two together I was a little horrified. Are Australia's style makers trying to tell us something? All that orange and brown and black? Doesn't it take you back to this...

See what I mean? More than a little horrifying. You can groove it up, add some black and give it some hot new label but it still takes me right back to the seventies.

Ah now that's better... I will take a breath,  open the mags and hope the orange thing GOES AWAY.

First image from here and the second from Canadian House and Home, and yes, go on, tell me how much you LOVE orange!

Black moments...

This is Vogue Australia's editor Kirstie Clements' home. You might be looking at the incredible Moroccan inspired tiling job which is fabulous and all you'd expect from Ms Vogue (you can read all about on here at The Design Files) but I am looking at the chairs.

 And once you start looking for black chairs you find them everywhere.

This is Canadian designer and decorator Tommy Smythe's kitchen which I found here.

He's Sarah Richardson's sidekick and I suspect more talented than he is allowed to be on Sarah's shows... he's her witty 'yes' man and always gives in to the boss's whim on wall colour or tile choices. Apparently he doesn't cook much in this room but I bet he sits down on those chairs occasionally.

So here are the colour chart choices for my chairs. I was hoping for charcoal grey/black. 

I've decided on the one in the middle - Resene's Jaguar.  Just have to wait for a break in the weather....

(Image 1 The Design Files, Image 2 Living Etc, Image 3 & 4 House & Home)

My style in one picture...

It's Sunday... time for a bit of 'me' time.  Ally who writes 'From the Right Bank'  is challenging readers to post a pic in the  Your Style in One Picture challenge. I was over at My Pear Tree House yesterday and got inspired - thanks Jane and thanks Ally!

Okay so my style? Am I stylish enough to have a style? Let's not answer that this early on a Sunday morning.

I really nearly went with this but you've seen it before and I need something new to think about.

Do I like this room? Yes, very much

Could I live with it? Yep, for a long time.

It has wooden floors, fresh white paint, soaring ceilings, gorgeous windows and lots of light, comfortable simple furniture, a lovely large wooden dining table and black painted chairs (did you read yesterday about what I'm up to with mine?) and not too much else. I like too that the cook can see everyone.

I'm hoping that behind the photographer is a fireplace, generous book shelves and art on the walls.

(Image from Canadian House and Home. Photographer Ted Yarwood)

Hang it...

I think after years living with stacks of pictures waiting for walls I'm becoming a little obsessive about different ways to frame photos, prints and paintings.

While strolling down Brunswick Street on Saturday we came across Panel Pop. It's a company making a a groovy new stone surface that artists can paint or draw or print straight on to. I'm no artist but we have a lot of photographs and they too can be printed on the panel.

Even the poor quality seventies snapshots looked fabulous. It's all recycled material and you can choose to have them edged in reclaimed timber if you like that look. I do of course.

They deliver overseas and all over Australia and have a great website - even the answers to your FAQs are rather witty.

I think really now I just need to become a little more focused on getting the framed pictures we have from the stack to the wall. Next year's resolution maybe?

Clowning around...

Whacky Hair Day at school. That's a lot of hair and even more hair wax. I've warned him not to go near a naked flame. Unlikely at five I know.

And how cool is this? It's a room designed by Kate Dixon in Kansas City, Missouri with whacky kids in mind. Lots of ideas to steal. I have seen it half a dozen times already and keep forgetting where. This came from here and now it's here so I can keep it.

I am certainly not into the modern travelling circus idea but Enid Blyton's version was pretty fabulous. Remember Mr Galliano's Circus?