Bloggy award!

The lovely Nellie from McCarthy Designs and Hilary from a gal and her dog passed on an award to me last week. Thank you ladies!

I'm to list 7 things about myself and pass it on to fellow bloggers.

Righto, lets see if I can think of anything interesting...

1. I have always loved animals. If I won the lottery I'd buy a big parcel of land and create an animal sanctuary where any neglected or unwanted animals could live out their lives happily.

2. I like to sew and create art and when possible, I like to combine the two. I am strictly a jeans wearing girl but when I sew I like to use sparkles and beautiful lace. I have been lucky enough to win a few prizes with my creations, including a great prize of a brand new Bernina. Cool.
3. I'm a fire bug (in a good, legal way). Having the wood fire here at Molly's Maison has helped me discover my talent for getting a good fire going. I can get flames out of a half warm coal and a bit of patience. I think it's a genetic skill passed down from my mother.

4. I'm a fan of Musicals. I grew up watching The Sound of Music, Hello Dolly, My Fair Lady, just to name a few. I love the happiness, the costumes, the songs - they're so much fun. Strangely, I've only been to see one stage musical, Wicked. I just loved it!!

5. I must have been a Bower Bird in a previous life - I just love the colour blue. I live in blue jeans, love blue flowers, blue china and secretly think all bathrooms should have at least something blue in them. I've always loved blue and while I go through phases of liking other colours, I always come back to blue.

6. I'm mildly obsessed by all things Parisian. I spent a couple of days there about 12 years ago and have been thinking about going back ever since. Standing at the top of the Eiffel Tower was simply beyond exciting! I can't explain the attraction..hmm, maybe something to do with the art galleries, gardens, the beautiful accent, fashion designers, croissants, champagne...  :)
7. When I was a child I wanted to be an Egyptologist. My friend Zeta and I planned trips to Egypt where we were going to make incredible discoveries. Zeta was going to write about them and I was going to illustrate our discoveries and adventures. Mum and Dad said no to me studying Egyptology so instead I studied art. I'd love to see the pyramids but my rather romanticised view of it wouldn't include sharing the experience with hundreds of other tourists. I like the idea of sitting there on my own to ponder the mysteries. I girl can dream...

Why is it so challenging thinking of 7 remotely interesting things about oneself?
Well, passing this on to other bloggies I invite the following ladies to take part...only if they feel inclined...
Now I sort of ignored the versatile blogger award theme and chose people who's blogs I enjoy and a couple you might not heard of...
Anja from Everyday Angels- Everyday Beauty
Annelie from Nature As I See It
Janette from My Sweet Prints
Brismod from Fun and VJ's
Edwina from the Weekend Island

Please visit their blogs for a look!

Image credits: 1 my mum, 2 google images, 3 House of Turquoise, 4 The Cherry Blossom Girl

Friday flower

Look at this stunning Hakea bloom that came from my friend Leonie's garden.

It looks prickly but it's actuallt quite soft. I believe it's a West Australian native. SO pretty!

Not much happening in my garden at the moment - lots of preparation for spring still going on. Can you believe I still have bulbs to go in? Hopefully that job will be finished this weekend. I've just planted a beautiful David Austin rose, The Dark Lady and luckily I have space for about six more roses.

Have a lovely, relaxing weekend everyone!

Giveaway winner!

Well, it's come time to announce the winner of my Blogiversary Giveaway - a handmade vintage lace pendant made by moi!

I decided to ask "hound of the house", furry kid Molly, to randomly pick the winner.
By the way, thank you so much for all of your entries and lovely comments.
Here's Molly with her fuzzy head in my good crystal bowl picking a winner from all the names on little pieces of paper.
"Mumma, maybe we should make this my new water bowl?"

I had to do a bit of quick rescuing...she ate the end piece of it...Sorry for the blurry pics - I had to act quickly!

Drum roll please...the winner is...

Congratulations Amanda from Small Acorns!! I'll be in touch very soon. :-)
Amanda has a lovely blog and wonderful shop in Wellington, New Zealand.
Cheerio!!

Friday flowers

Friday again and so a pretty orchid to show you. I brought it in from the back yard the other day and the warmth of the fire is helping it open pretty quickly. I love the look of a blooming orchid in the house.

I am participating in "Friday lovelies" again over at Joyce's blog, I Love Pretty Little Things where she is providing links to pretty photos from other bloggers. Go take a look :)

Oh look, there's Harry Horse! Do horses eat orchids? Hmm, best keep an eye on him...

Dont forget my lace pendant giveaway! Entries close next Wednesday evening the 26th May Aussie time.

Cheerio bloggies! Have a lovely weekend!

Lace pendant giveaway!

In a week's time it will be Molly's Maison's one year blogiversary so I thought I'd celebrate by having a little giveaway! Yippee!!!

Up for grabs is one of my handmade lace pendants on a black velvet tie. It is made from a vintage optometrist lens (see my last post) and the image comes fom my small collection of vintage French lace. These little guys retail for Aus$100!

So, how to enter:

• For one entry, become a follower and leave me a comment!
• For an extra entry, blog about the giveaway on your blog or post in your sidebar. Please leave me another comment to let me know if you do this :)

I will draw the winner by random computer selector (if I can get it to work - if not, by Molly dog selection)

next Wednesday evening Australian EST.

Good luck bloggies!

A vintage treasure

I was lucky enough to win a great vintage optometrist set on ebay very recently. It came from the US. I was amazed at the amount of bits and pieces in this set. As well as all the lenses, it has three pairs of spectacles, 2 pairs of spectacles that the lenses fit into, a monacle, extra little bridge, all the eye charts and a small collection of photographs of the man it belonged to.

Above is a photo of the store owned by Dr Joseph Levitan, the optometrist who owned and used the set.

These photographs show Dr Levitan at various times through his life, the last one is a polaroid taken in 1991 outside his shop. He retired in 1993 and passed away last year. I found his obituary online.

What a sweet little bridge with beautiful engraving and Mother of Pearl nose rests.

As you know, I use the lenses to make my pendants. It's a bit of a pity to break up a set but at the same time, it's of no real use anymore. Even with a few lenses missing it will still be interesting to me.

Speaking of pendants, those of you who were holding your breath for me to make a pendant for a giveaway....exhale! This week is my blogiversary so I'll be posting a giveaway to celebrate. Stay tuned!

Friday flowers

It's Friday - YAY!! Here's the lovely begonia growing out on our back verandah.

Have a lovely weekend!!

ps, I've passed on all the cuddles and pats in comments to Molly from yesterday.

She says thank you :-)

You break it, you buy it

As you know, it's been a year since we bought Molly's Maison and almost a year since I began blogging. I was thinking how we tend to show the "before's" only when there's a fabulous "after" to show as well. I'm still not brave enough to show the bathroom - I reckon that'll happen when there's a new bathroom on it's merry way.
So, am I being realistic if I'm only showing the good bits? Does anyone really want to see the bad bits?
When I walk around the house I see all sorts of future projects waiting patiently for us. The external weatherboards are in reasonable condition but there are a few bits that will definitely need attention.
Here is one part...

Hmm, not a pretty sight. This hole at the end of one of our verandahs was helped along by Lyndon's DIY house inspection. We were checking whether there was much rot in the timber and whoops!! off it came.
 Ahem...nothing to see here...let's move on...
You see, buying Molly's Maison only took us a few days. I saw her on the net on a Monday night. We booked to view the next day. Talked about it that night (she already had an offer) and booked to look around again on the Wednesday night so Lyn could climb into the roof and have a closer look. Put in an offer on Thursday night and agreed to on Friday while I was conveniently at the pub with a group of girlfriends. Woo hoo, open the champagne!!
Anyway, we love it, even with the odd bit dropping off!
I'd better finish off with a pretty picture...
Our little girl this morning...

"Mamma, why are we outside in the cold taking silly photos of bits of the house? My bottom is freezing".

Coming and going

While on the other side of the world spring is in full swing, here in Australia we are heading through autumn into winter. I am tidying up the garden and getting ready for spring to come along with hundreds of bulbs I have planted (I've almost got the job done). These are my very rustic looking sunflower heads that flowered over summer. I've mulched their stems and the heads will be heading of to my Dad to feed to his birds (I'll keep a handful to plant again this year). I tried a sunflower seed yesterday and it tasted great.

I just loved the dried up textures and so thought, "they need their photo taken". Lyn thought I was mad, but then he often has that thought...

Have a great week!

Fabulous fern frond for a Friday + Friday lovelies

The first new fronds are appearing on our manfern we planted a short time ago and of course I had to take a photo. Here is the garden when we first planted it. I'll take a more recent pic once I've done the weeding :)

I am participating in "Friday lovelies" over at Joyce's blog, I Love Pretty Little Things where she is providing links to pretty photos from other bloggers. I think the fern frond is very pretty, beautiful in fact.

Have a good Friday and even better weekend bloggy friends!!

Storage - a mini project

It has been so long since I have posted anything remotely reno related. We've been in save mode so it has all had to go temporarily on hold. We hope to get back to it very soon and will start by completing the reno on my art/sewing/jewellery studio = my room!

On the weekend I busied myself with a mini-project - the storage. With 32 pigeon holes in my wall unit I have been trying to find a few storage solutions. I found these water hyacinth cubes at Officeworks that fit in the space really well. I wasn't keen on the natural colour so decided to spray them pale blue.

What do you think? I am happy with the results and am thinking of trying another colour - perhaps limey green?

For those of you who haven't seen, this is the wall unit that Lyndon and I built from scratch. Here is the beginnings of the process. Okay, so we didn't make the doors, they came from Bunnings, but we did everything else. Boy, that was challenging at times!

I'm not sure what to do about lighting. Above is a light I found at the tip-shop (sorry about bad pic) and funnily, I purchased it about a week or so before we bought the house. I thought I'd get it so we could buy a house to match! I just love the colour of the glass shade. Master of the tools (Lyn) rewired it and I think I might use it for the time being but I'm not sure I'll get enough light out of it. Maybe a couple of nice lamps will do the trick?

SO, any ideas what other colour might be nice for my storage? Do you like the limey-green idea? FYI the walls will be pale blue and white as well :)

ps. thanks for your birthday wishes for Rachael - she's read them all :)

Cheerio!!

Autumn scenes + Birthday wishes

I popped into the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens today for a quick look at the autumn trees. The sunlight through the leaves was amazing. It is a beautiful, still autumn day.

It is also my sister Rachael's birthday. She is home with a bad cold so that's not much fun.

Happy Birthday Rachael!! xx