Holidaying in Whangerei, New Zealand

I was lucky enough to have a week long break in the North Island of New Zealand at the start of December. As well as being a beautiful place, the houses were gorgeous! There wasn't a street that wasn't filled with cute, mod beach houses or low line farmhouses. I didn't get to take as many photos as I would have liked, but here's some of what I saw.

Pinky & Kitty support Movember

The girls are getting behind the mad month of fuzzy faces and itchy top lips. Pester your bloke to make an appointment with his doctor, or sponsor someone partaking in facial manscaping for the month on November.

Movember Australia website.

Croydon South homes for sale.

Whilst doing my weekly trawl through the real estate website, I stumbled across some rather nice houses in the Croydon South area. This is a neighboring suburb to me.

• Blue Mist Drive. Cute weatherboard with a feature chimney and a lovely retro kitchen that looks like an original.
  

• Longview Rd. Red brick split level house with cathedral ceilings. lots of timber and a fantastic swimming pool with cabana. And look at those mosaic tiles in the bathroom *swoon*
  

• Mimosa Court. This house is my favourite. If we weren't in the midst of renovating and landscaping our own house, I would try to convince the mister to sell our house so that we could buy this one. I love everything about it (except maybe the curtains, but that's fixable.)I think it will be snapped up rather quickly. I can imagine it furnished with some lovely 60's furniture and fittings or contemporary pieces and large modern artworks. And oh, what I could do with that garden.......
  

All images are from realestate.com.au

Callum View

I stumbled across this gorgeous time capsule house in Heathmont last month. I love everything about it, from the scrolly house name to the painted wall flower to the immaculate front garden.

I'm not sitting in front of the computer all day!

I have managed to get out and about, despite the lack of sunshine and the constant deluge of rain!
I took a drive around the streets today and captured a few gems.
Enjoy!


Well, what do you know! The house in the lower picture is actually for sale. Details here.

Day tripping on the edge of the Yarra Valley.

Actually, it's not really a day trip for me, more of a 15 minute drive up the road.

Back in April, the Robin Boyd foundation held an open day of some significant Boyd designed houses. As I'm not a member of the Boyd Foundation, I had no idea that this was on and only found out about it after reading it over at Modernist Australia. My disappointment at missing this event turned to surprise when I read the suburbs that these houses were situated. Lilydale, Ringwood East, Warrandyte and Research. Ringwood East is the suburb next door to mine and it turns out that the Patrick Hegarty house is around the corner from a friend of mine. When I drove past the other day I was going to take a photo, but the weather had other ideas. And the Stanley Blott house in Lilydale is actually in Chirnside Park on the cusp of Lilydale. And it's only 15 minutes up the road.
I drove up there yesterday (I say up as it's high on top of the hill, overlooking the Yarra Valley and Dandenong Ranges) and managed to get a few photos of not only the Stanley Blott house, but some other wonderful houses that were built sometime in the 60's or 70's. The whole area is a real mishmash of houses, with a lot of redbrick 70's and 80's houses, some flat-roofed styles from the 50's and 60's and the odd McMansion springing up.
I didn't go searching for the homes in Warrandyte or Research as both of those areas are heavily treed and I doubt they would be visible from the roadside.

Seeing the light!

When we bought our house it had been recently renovated and new fittings like carpet, timber venetian blinds and lights were all in place. The lights were nice, but kind of generic and cheap oyster lights. There were 7 of these lights throughout the house, all requiring 2 globes. The larger spiral energy saving globes didn't fit, so I had to hunt around for the compact ones before they became readily available. Also, the upturned design of the light meant that it was a great spot for flies and moths to die, leaving a lovely dark shadow on the glass part of the light fitting.

I convinced The Bloke to change them all to batten fix lights so that I could change the shades as I desired. I thought that this would be a simple task, but unfortunately the heat from the lights had damaged the plaster and large pieces had to be replaced. So, the lounge room is still a work in progress, but the hallway is done.
I found a spaghetti light on Ebay that is the same as one I have hanging in my front entrance. After we removed the wiring and constructed a clear acrylic hanging plate for it, we strung it up from a batten fix lamp cord.
Then we replaced the temporary light shade that I had put up on the brick feature wall in the kitchen. When we moved in, it had a rather garish, colonial looking coach light in gold with amber glass (sorry, I didn't take photos of it).
Now it has a retro glass and timber sconce that I found at a salvage yard, cleaned up and gave a new coat of paint.

The bathroom needs new lights but that will wait until we do a complete renovation of the bathroom. As we still need to finish landscaping the front yard and building a new garage, I think that will be some time away.

Pinky & Flo

Pinky & Flo
Originally uploaded by Joyflea

Just what every modern home wants/needs!

We picked these up at The Mill Market, Ballarat. I can't bring myself to put them outside in the rain!

Eye candy for the famished!

A couple of months ago, I stumbled upon The Soda Tree in Monstrose, at the base of The Dandenongs. I had a quick look around the attached collectibles store, Atomic Artefacts then vowed that I would come back another day with the kids to sample the fare.
I had a free afternoon last week, so decided to take the girls for an afternoon treat, as it was gloomy and overcast and I'd been stuck at home all day.
This great cafe is housed in a rambling old building (with dwelling attached to the back) and is filled to the brim with cool table settings, vases, lamps, Tretchikoff and various other kitsch art and what I thought was a stroke of brilliance, Little Golden Book covers housing the menu.
We chose from the cake selection and whilst I had coffee, the girls had hot chocolate with marshmallows.
The staff were all lovely and I would like to return to this place on a less than overcast day and take better photos. But for the time being, these shots will give you and idea of the fun vibe the owners have created. If you're ever in Montrose, drop in and grab yourself a bite and maybe a vintage goodie.

Rebuilding

We took a trip to Marysville on Sunday. It was my first visit since Black Saturday. There were quite a few tourists visiting and the bakery was doing a roaring trade. You can see the strain though. It's like there is that unspoken question on every visitor's lips. "How are you doing?" But not in the lighthearted greeting kind of way, but the imploring way, that 12 months on, there are still some people living in caravans about to endure a 2nd winter.
I was surprised to see some buildings survived, like the Tower Motel, the Cumberland Day spa (or was that rebuilt?) and the timber tavern near the park. (I remember seeing the documentary about the man that stayed and defended that property.)
The town felt foreign, all shiny and new. But you could still feel the ghost of old Marysville. The impressive trees, the stream beside the footpath, the diagonal carparks in Murchison street. You can see that new supermarket from Murchison St, because the foreground buildings are no longer. The trees are re sprouting and the gardens that weren't completely decimated provide splashes of colour.
I visited the block where Mrs. Cuzens house stood. There is a bit of garden, some plastic chairs and a rotary clothes line. It made me sad to see it gone, but I knew that there was little hope of it surviving as it was weatherboard and right in the firing line. At least I know that Mrs. Cuzens is safe.
I will go back again soon. I'd like to visit Bruno's sculpture garden as do the girls. The garden is growing back and the sculptures are being repaired. And life will go on.

Eye Candy

Some lovely Mid-Century gems in the Croydon/Croydon Hills area.
And this last picture is some unusual sculptures outside a fairly non-descript house in Chirnside Park. They certainly stand out against the white wall!

door decal

door decal
Originally uploaded by Joyflea

I found a door in hard rubbish (a council roadside clearout for non-Aussies) and after much wrangling, got it into my car and safely home without breaking the glass. When time was on my side, I stripped it back and with the bloke's help, repainted and rehung it. I was worried about the fact that it wasn't safety glass and as we have already had one child hospitalised from running through a glass door, I didn't want a repeat of that. I decided to design a decal that could be applied to the door in frosted vinyl, so that if the door did get broken, the vinyl would hold the glass in place. I searched the web for inspiration and was going to go for a traditional retro design, when the bloke suggested I use one of my sketches. We scanned it into CorelDraw and then he cut it out using a vinyl sign cutter. (He works in the industry, so that's a bonus!)
I love the finished product, and I'm sure our bookkeeper will be pleased with the outcome as well.
Because this is the door to our office. She comes to our place once a week to do the bookkeeping and she is seriously allergic to cats. And of course, the office is the cat's favourite room.
Not any more.