At any given moment, if you were to pop around to our house unannounced, there would probably be piles of washing waiting to be folded and put away, overflowing the green chairs in our hallway. As you stepped over the plastic toys and pushed passed the jolly-jumper hanging from the door frame and waded through the various baby-bibs cultivating dribble and milk and browning banana and finally made it to the playroom, your feet would probably crunch over a thick layer of dry Weetbix crumbs. Madeleine likes to crush her own Weetbix each morning before the milk goes on and, as much as I’d like you to think otherwise, I do not vacuum every day.

If you looked inside my handbag on any given day you might find, nestled in with the purse and keys, a couple of broken crayons, a half-empty container of bubble liquid, a sippy cup, yesterday’s gummed-up rusk in a zip-lock bag, and about a thousand used tissues.

The sheer amount of stuff involved in modern parenting staggers me, and accepting at least some of that stuff into my life and home was one of the most difficult transitions I had to make as a parent. (When I lived alone, I would actually take pleasure in adjusting a book on a table until the seemingly ‘casually-put-down’ angle was just right. Yes, I am that person.) As someone who likes everything to have a purpose and a place, and as someone whose home is also her workplace, cumulative kid-detritus can quickly feel overwhelming.

While I was pregnant with Madeleine I had plenty of noble ideas about children in “the olden days” not needing all the STUFF that our consumer society deemed necessary today, and that I would make up in interactive play for what we limited in toys and things. But as any parent could have told me, stuff creeps in. And some of it, while not strictly necessary, does actually make your life easier. Parenting two small children while working, and on extremely limited sleep, is tough. It is tempting to take the easy way, to let the stuff in because it saves five minutes here or buys 10 minutes of peace there. I’m not going to feel guilty about that.

But not all stuff makes life easier. Some stuff just gets in the way. In the way of creativity, of clear-thinking, of mental health, of the path to the kitchen. And some stuff might be good stuff but when combined with about a billion other small pieces of “good stuff” it becomes bad stuff. Claustrophobic, messy, over-crowding, unwelcome stuff.

Last week was not a good week around our place. For various reasons were were all stretched, capacity-wise, and tempers began to fray. By Friday afternoon, my subconscious had somehow centred the entirety of my own unravelling temper on all the stuff in our house. It was driving me crazy. WE HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF I CAN’T BREATHE IN THIS HOUSE. And so I started on a paring-back rampage.

It was cathartic in a way that probably should have been predictable. I worked until late that night on the playroom, sorting out toys to give away or throw away, putting some in a cupboard out of rotation, and bringing others out. At the end of it I’d removed two giant garbage-bags worth of toys and other bits and pieces from the room, and Madeleine’s previously overflowing toy-box was only one third full. When she came down in the morning, she was thrilled. There were her favourite toys, easy to find. Here were some “new” toys she’d never discovered because they’d been buried under all that stuff. Harry had his own little cart in which to store his toys, and Madeleine quickly cottoned on to putting Harry’s toys away whenever they were dropped.

That afternoon, Madeleine lined up her two dolls in chairs next to Harry, pulled a collection of books from the shelves, and proceeded to “read” to all three babies. I hid in the kitchen, sipping a cup of tea while leaning on the bench, and listened to the stories. Later we pulled out the paints, one of Madeleine’s favourite activities, and it was approximately 78 percent less stressful than usual for me because with the room so much cleaner and more organised, the combination of two-year-old and brightly coloured paints didn’t seem anywhere near as chaotic.

Not once did she ask where all her stuff had gone.

Little things in my home…

This pensive cowboy sits outside his restaurant and on my kitchen bench. I found his photograph in a bric-a-brac shop in Aspen, Colorado, when I was staying up there for a fiction writer’s course (called Aspen Summer Words – if you ever get the opportunity take it – it was amazing!).

I almost didn’t share the cowboy today because the whole purpose of this series is to tell the stories behind the little things in my home. Like this. Or this. Or this. And I don’t know the story of this cowboy. Nor have I created a story for him since bringing him home. But I am so deeply drawn to this picture, and I don’t even know why. I never tire of looking at it, or thinking about it, and wondering what is his story? What is the story of this new town?

“Little Things” is an occasional series about the stories behind some of the little things you’ll find around my home. Are there stories behind the little things in your home? I’d love you to tell me about them! Or if you’d like to join in and write a post like this of your own, don’t forget to share a link to it so I can read it.

Ours was a chilly and sometimes wet weekend, tailor-made for staying home. For jaffles and baking and craft and family dance-parties. Madeleine hosted her very first slumber party, with one of her cousins, and you have never seen a two-year-old more excited. She quite literally jumped for joy at the prospect of it, and the reality sent her into a frenzy that was so extreme she could barely contain herself. At one point as we sat around the table having dinner with her aunty and uncle and two cousins, already an hour past her bedtime, Madeleine repeatedly kissed me on the lips. Not for any reason, except, UNCONTAINABLE EXCITEMENT.

It is on weekends like this that our house comes into its own. When squeals of laughter bounce off the walls and little feet thump-thump-thump down the hallways. When the kitchen smells of toasted cheese and chocolate cake, and tiny fingers reach up to trace circles in spilled flour on the bench.

Half-wilted flowers grace an old jar on the dining table: they were carried home in sweaty palms by my beautiful daughter and niece after a coffee-run with Mr B, and thrust at me with so much pride.

There are many things I love about my home and, of course, many things I would change and many things we have yet to do. That’s what happens when nesting and budgeting go hand in hand, I guess. But the thing I absolutely love most about my home, towering above everything else, is having a place from which to welcome the people we love. Even with no pictures on the walls, and so much left to do, my house feels like a home because I am able to make others feel at home here too.

Do you ever read design blog Design Sponge? It’s a favourite of mine. One of the regular features, called “Spaces,” opens up beautiful homes from around the world. In each post, the home-owners (or renters) are invited to share something they love about their home, or their favourite thing to do or place to be within their home. I find it really interesting to read this. We are all so different, and yet there are definite themes that emerge.

What about you? What do you love most about your home? What do you like to do most in your home?

Photo credits: all images of “home notes” are used here with kind permission from Grace Bonney at Design Sponge. See the homes they come from at (from top) 1 // 2 // 3 // 4 // 5, or click on the photos themselves. All other photos are either mine or licensed for unlimited use under Creative Commons. They do not relate to the homes in the comments.

It is dark when I wake up, and Harry and I spend our winter mornings together on the rug of the lounge room floor in the gentle quiet of the predawn. I draw the curtains to let the day in but outside, the stars are still bright. Harry wiggles and squeals. “Dad dad dad dad dad,” he says. I kiss his impossibly soft cheeks. “Say Mummy!” I tell him. “Dad dad dad.” The door is closed to keep the heat from escaping. Through it I can just hear the soft click that means the kettle has boiled and I ease my way off the floor, feeling ancient, and shuffle into the kitchen to make tea. “DAD DAD DAD DAD” Harry yells cheerfully at my retreating form.

I love these early mornings and guard them jealously. Sometimes on a weekend, Mr B will offer to get up with Harry to give me some more sleep. It is tempting. I am sorely tired, and I haven’t had a true, decent night’s sleep in more than two years. Not one night. But these mornings are worth even more than sleep. So I drag my body out of bed and hold Harry’s chubby little hot-water-bottle-body close as we climb down the stairs. Flip the kettle on. Ease Harry onto his mat on the floor. Tickle his ribs. “Dad dad dad dad.” “Say Mummy!” And so another day begins.

It is so rare that I am still, in life, ever. Still of body or of mind. I multitask obsessively. I can’t even relax doing one thing: I’ll draw or craft or write while watching TV. I’ve never been good at meditating, I’m one of those people guilty of composing shopping lists and having imaginary conversations with people at work while supposedly entering a guided meditatively-zen state at the end of a yoga class.

But these winter mornings teach me to be present in a way that meditation never has. I sit on the floor and smile at Harry. There are books and magazines and my phone and my computer nearby and they call to me, but I have learned that the best mornings happen when I leave all those distractions closed. It’s just me and Harry and that cup of tea.

I know I’m not the only one finding the pace of life almost insane these days. It’s such a cliche to talk about the progress of time but have you realised that this year is already more than half over? Wasn’t it just New Years? Just last month? Life tilts in a dizzying chaos, and any tasks I put off can languish neglected for months that feel like mere days. It’s as though the rush and roar of our planet and its moon hurtling around the sun can actually be heard and felt, and in the cacophony of that cosmic journey we all have to yell and scream and jump up and down just to be heard. Even to hear ourselves.

But in the still, dark morning, the planets pause. The world hovers. Venus hangs like a jewel outside my window while the dawn waits to happen. My legs are crossed on the rug beside Harry (“Dad dad dad dad”), my fingers are laced around the Pantone colour mug I have chosen to match the mood of my waking (orange or yellow for energy, blue for creativity, sage green for calm), and it is perfect peace. Dawn can wait.

{All photographs licensed for unrestricted use under Creative Commons}

Little things in my home…

Inside this snow globe is a sculpture of my old house. If you look closely, you can see the No. 10 number-plate gleaming proudly beside the door.

This was the first home that I ever owned and lived in, and it was glorious. Old carved-oak staircases winding up and dividing in two and winding some more. Hallways with stairs that go up two and down two again for no apparent reason. A Harry Potter-esque cupboard under the stairs. French doors, stained glass windows and a rickety upstairs balcony. There were tatty Persian carpets over the floorboards, left behind by the previous owner, and a truly hideous Medieval-style painting in vomit-tinted hues hanging over the fireplace in the dining room, that we kept up because it made us laugh.

The house was also icy and draughty in winter, and oppressively hot and prone to letting bugs inside in summer. It was dusty all the time, no matter how often you cleaned and vacuumed. The downstairs bathroom was too frightening to use (unless you were really desperate), and whenever planes took off or landed in nearby Sydney Airport, all the windows rattled and all conversations had to be put on pause.

Outside, we turned the little back courtyard into a garden with winding pathways and vegetables and flowering plants and vines. There was space for a table and chairs, and we would sit out there together on warm summer nights with a glass of wine to hand, and listen to the live music wafting across from the Warren View pub, just down the road. Until a plane flew over, blocking out all other sounds. Then, we would wave because, seriously, those planes were so close we were sure the passengers could see us.

Before we moved into this house, I lived out of our car for three months. Which is to say I didn’t sleep in the car (there wasn’t room – after a while I couldn’t even drive the car because there was so much stuff in it), I just kept my things (and Mr B’s things, and Emily’s and Meg’s things) in it while moving from place to place: hotels, hostels, short-term accommodations, while working every day an hour away in Sydney’s west, and waiting. Waiting to buy a house, waiting for settlement so we could move into the house, waiting for Mr B to finally move down from Queensland, where he was still working. Waiting because I had crossed the world – again – and moved from New York to Australia to start a proper life with the man I loved and here I was with all my belongings in plastic bags (suitcases had long since stopped fitting in the car), alone, treading emotional water, and searching for home.

We only lived in that house for nine months. But in that time we hosted birthday parties and BBQs, my book was published, we got engaged, we planted vegetables (we harvested the vegetables, we ate the vegetables), we got married (in the back yard, witnessed by 40 of our closest friends and about 400 air passengers en route to some holiday or another), the house overflowed with summer house-guests, we rescued a cat. We loved we argued we laughed we planned we painted we explored we wove stories of us. I started to learn how to cook.

So much has changed since we lived at No. 10 (three more interstate moves! two babies!), and often I feel like the me that lived inside that house was somebody else, somebody I read about inside a book. Could all this really have happened only three years ago?

Just before we moved, I had this snow globe made so that we could take it with us. It sits on the bookshelf of our family room now, where more often than not mess and chaos and all things children reign. And that seems fitting, because No. 10 was the first house I lived in that felt like a family home, since leaving the one I grew up in. It was while living in this house and spending so much time with Emily that I first began to think that maybe, just maybe, I might like to be a mother after all…

“Little Things” is an occasional series about the stories behind some of the little things you’ll find around my home. Are there stories behind the little things in your home? I’d love you to tell me about them! Or if you’d like to join in and write a post like this of your own, don’t forget to share a link to it so I can read it.

Subdued but happy describes the mood around here today. We are all in post-party fallout mode, after Madeleine had not one but two big birthday parties in a row on the weekend, followed by another mini-party this morning since it was her actual birthday and her Nanna and Pa were leaving to go back to Sydney.

I am still trying to come to terms with what this milestone means to me, as a mother. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll see I wrote a little mini-blog-post about it to go with the photo above, last night.

More about that later. While I gather my thoughts – and energies and emotions – here are some gentle things you can do the next time you are in the same kind of subdued-but-happy mood.

1. Subscribe to Peeky Me, a craft-with-your-kids post-subscription service with a project, materials and instructions in every box (seen via Sunday Collector)

2. Hang a painting in your home. I love these bluebird woodcut sculptures so much. Like the modern home’s trio of ducks (seen via Swiss Miss)

3. Switch out processed sugar for fruit. We have eaten our own weights in sugar this weekend. And I had to make and decorate TWO cakes and both of them lacked… well… most of what you’d want in a birthday cake. I suppose it’s a parenting rite of passage to botch the novelty birthday cake. Next time, this cake!

4. Join Pippit, a new app-driven social media platform that’s kind of like Instagram and Pinterest and blogs all rolled into one. You can just follow along what other people are creating, or share your own (blogs, photos, whatever). If you want to find me, my username is naomibulger

5. Share something with somebody who wants the stuff you no longer want or need

6. Reorganise a space in your home. I always feel better and clearer-of-head when I remove the clutter and find a place for everything. I kind of like this idea, but then, I wonder if it would just end up becoming a dumping ground in our house

7. Tell the world anything

8. Read something funny and lovely and completely pointless, just for fun. Like this (I actually related to kind of ‘urban mystery’ experience, it happens to me all the time. Usually without the resolution)

9. Kick-start your creativity. This Inspiration Information online course with Pip Lincolne (of Meet Me at Mikes) starts today. You can still join. We are on a post-party budget so I can’t do it this time around, but it is on the top of my wish list for the coming months

10. Get a pot plant. This hanging succulent garden is calling my name but in the meantime, a humble pot plant would make me quite happy

11. Paint your own happy faces on wooden spoons

12. This Book Was a Tree looks amazing. I really want to get it and use it with my children. Have you read it?

What does your workspace look like? Do you like it clean and organised, or do you thrive on creative chaos?

I love those pictures of great writers sitting at their antique desks, all slumped and drowning under mountains of paper, with pictures in scraps pinned all over the walls, and old coffee cups, stacks of yellowed airmail correspondence bound in old string, desiccated red wine in dirty glasses, dusty armchairs, and dying, drying flowers… and they are invariably writing one or another of the world’s literary masterpieces, you know? That would drive me CRAZY. Which is perhaps one reason why I haven’t written any of the world’s literary masterpieces lately. I can’t even start to work until my desk is clear and my office tidy.

I’m the same in the rest of my living and working space. I can’t stand it when the house gets too messy: suddenly everything feels like it’s crowding in on top of me, I feel out of control and claustrophobic. Which seems a rather melodramatic sentence when I write it out like that, but it’s true. That’s just me.  First world problems, I know!

Anyway, all this is a lead-up to explain why things might be looking a little different on this website lately, if you’ve happened to have popped in to take a look. I’ve been having an autumn clean. I felt like my blog was starting to get a bit cluttered, a bit old and tired. I was uninspired. Like a dingy, messy old office, my blog needed a fresh coat of paint and some creative storage solutions. Some white space to make it feel clean and fresh. And some nice pictures on the walls to inspire me when the fog of creative block descends.

What do you think? Do you like it? I renamed the blog “Naomi Loves,” because this space is all about the things I love. I painted a new header in bright patterns and colours, because they make me happy. My enormously talented friend Brandi Bernoskie tweaked these things to make it all work. I’ve made it much easier for you to subscribe to receive updates via email, if that’s your thing, with a simple box on the sidebar. And there is some exciting content in the works, not the least of which that book I was telling you about!

Now, tell me about your workspace (online or offline). How do you make it somewhere you want to be?

ps. Photos are old Instagram ones (remember when we all went beserk with the filters and the frames after it first came out?) of my home office in Adelaide. That was the most amazing workspace. I wish there was a way to replicate it everywhere I go!

A couple of months ago, our lovely friend Pascale gave Madeleine this simple wooden toy, that her own almost 15-year-old daughter (who happens to share the same birthday as Madeleine) had played with when she was little.

Already, that made it a special and rather lovely gift.

I wasn’t sure how safe it would be to give Madeleine marbles but, during this heatwave I struggled to find enough things to keep her entertained inside day after day, so I pulled it out one afternoon.

Instant hit, my friends! Seems the tactile pleasure of cold, coloured glass in the hand, and of watching something make its way along tunnel or tracks, is timeless. I’ve long had a thing for marbles, ever since my father gave me three he had kept from his childhood. They became the key symbolic component of my novella Airmail.

It was so lovely to see Madeleine develop a fascination for these pretty little glass beauties, too. Of course, she wasn’t exactly happy when it was time to pack the toy away.

“Little Things” is an occasional series about the stories behind some of the little things you’ll find around my home. Are there stories behind the little things in your home? I’d love you to tell me about them! Or if you’d like to join in and write a post like this of your own, don’t forget to share a link to it so I can read it.

ps. Another reader of this blog, Ailsa from Topaz Magpie, wrote the sweetest things about Airmail last week. You can read her words here, if you’re interested.

ps2. If you’d like a copy of Airmail I’d be happy to send one to you for free. More details on this page.

A blank canvas

This is not really a “before and after” story, since there’s till a long way to go: we’re more at the “before and three-quarters” stage. That is to say, our home is a blank canvas. The bones are complete, and we are all moved in, but a lot of the character is still to come. There are very few paintings on the wall, or cushions on the couches, or plants under sunny windows. You never know. Perhaps I’ll write a proper “after” story of this house to include all those things, one day.

Ours wasn’t a big renovation per se. We weren’t adding or removing any rooms, it was more of a cosmetic update. New bathrooms and kitchens, fresh paint on the walls. Pulling up the old carpet to expose the original floorboards. That kind of thing. Simple and affordable, yes?

But of course we managed to trip over every cliche you’ve ever heard of to come with renovating a house that is more than a century old. The work took twice as long as we had anticipated, and almost twice as much as we had budgeted. There were problems with builders and tradesmen and even now, more than eight months after we started, we are still waiting on some little jobs while other small problems require fixes.

So you can blame the cliches for the blank canvas state of our home right now. Essentially our entire decorating and pulling-together budget (and a hefty sum over and above that) was spent, instead, on scope-creep that we probably should have anticipated. You can read the story of all that happening (and see some scary photos of the work in progress) here. Actual walls made out of straw, anyone?

And now for today’s reveal: the lounge / dining room

This is what it looked like before we started. Can you believe Madeleine wasn’t even walking at that point? What a little no-haired cutie!

Now, here is what we did to those two rooms and the hall:

* Removed the hideous decals from the walls and windows
* Painted the walls, doors and ceilings
* Replaced the light fittings
* Replaced the locks, door handles, light switches and power points
* Removed the carpet
* Failed to rescue the original floorboards, replaced them with new boards
* Discovered the floor joists underneath were rotten, so replaced them too
* Replaced the window dressings
* Re-tiled both fireplaces
* Removed the mouldy cement water-features from the light well
* Painted the light well
* Installed a decking in the light well at floor level with the inside floor

And this is what it looked like last Friday (somewhat uncharacteristically tidy because Madeleine was at daycare).

Lesson 1: Creating light

Look how gloomy and dismal these rooms were in the “before” photographs. Yet I had every (working) light in the house on when I took them. When we were choosing new lights for these rooms, we kept telling each other “The house is really dark, so we will need a lot of lights with decent wattage.”

Turns out, a lick of white paint (or three or four – it took extra coats to cover that horrible green on the walls AND ceiling) and some fresh, light floorboards can completely brighten up a space. I took these “after” photographs with just the aid of natural light and I can’t believe how much brighter the room looks (we used “Antique White USA” paint throughout, if you’re interested).

Lesson 2: The illusion of space

We learned the same lesson when it came to space. This is not a big house, and when we started the renovation, we would tell our friends, “The rooms are very small, it’s just a cottage.” But we were amazed at just how much space there seemed to be in the same rooms, once the walls had been painted and the floorboards put in place.

For this reason, we have both curtailed our natural desire for big, bold, splashes of colour. There are not feature walls anywhere in our house, of either paint or wallpaper. The curtains are fairly neutral and unobtrusive. We kept everything simple and fresh to give the existing light and space room to play.

Lesson 3: Introducing personality

The plan, of course, was to bring the colour and character in with the accessories. Artwork on the walls. Cushions and throws and a feature arm-chair or two. Plants in pots and stands and hanging from ceilings. A really great rug. All that will have to come later, when the budget recovers from Phase 1.

Being forced to wait for all those things does have its advantages. Most importantly, living in the house before properly decorating it gives us time to see how things work for our family, specifically. I think we’ll be making different decorating decisions now than we would have before we moved in.

Lesson 4: Toddler proofing

I’m a firm believer that you can still have a nice-looking home while keeping it safe for the little ones. We don’t have any sharp or breakable items down low. In fact at the moment all we have are books, but I do want to add some other items, like globes and wooden ornaments, that look good but are still kid-safe. There’s rubber around the hearth tiles to protect the children from sharp edges, safety glass in the windows, and child-proof plugs in all the power points. A consultant from Kidsafe came through the whole house to help us ensure it was safe.

We have a “no eating on the couch” rule, and no craft or messy games are allowed in here. It works without being too oppressive, because we have a play room for all that (more in a later post).

What’s next?

ARTWORK: Clearly we need some art on those blank walls. But how many pieces? How big? We still haven’t decided. We have some lovely canvases and prints resting on the floor in Emily’s room right now, some of them quite large (like this one, which is 1.5 x 1.5 metres) but neither of us can decide where to put them or whether they will suit the space.

Apparently there are some rules to hanging artwork that help pull a room together subtly. Can anyone tell me about these? I’ve heard the paintings are supposed to be hung at eye level. But what part of the painting should be at eye level? And whose eyes are the measure of the level? (I’m short). Isn’t there a rule about maintaining the same height in the middle of each work? Do you do that no matter what the size of the painting? What if (as in our case) there are paintings or mirrors above the fire-places, which force them to be quite high (certainly above my eye level): do we maintain that same height around the rooms, or go lower? It’s all very confusing.

FURNITURE: We’d love to find a low, mid-century sideboard / radiogram (like this) to sit along the hallway in the lounge room, to open up that space a bit more. Even better if it was made of rosewood to match the dining table. We are keeping our eyes peeled locally (and saving our pennies).

We also want some other side tables, large pot plants, table lamps (I love these!), those sorts of things. But the ideas we had before living in the room don’t seem quite right now that we’re here. Decisions, decisions.

THE FLOOR: I think our floor rug needs to be twice the size of the one we have here, to give the room a greater sense of luxury and space. We both really love the colours and designs in this one.

SEATING: Those couches were new and while we like the look of them and are happy with the neutral tones (the plan being to brighten things up with cushions et al), they have actually turned out to be quite impractical. They are too tall, for one thing, so short little me struggles to breastfeed on them because my feet don’t touch the floor properly! Also, those little buttons that give the cushions dimension easily come loose (one has already fallen off) and dig into you if you like to curl your feet under you as I do. Finally, they are so heavy that even with padding under the legs, they have already damaged our brand new and rather expensive floor. Never mind. First world problems, Naomi!

DINING: The dining table and chairs were a splurge. They are mid-century Brazilian Rosewood pieces, although we saved a bit by taking the chairs in original condition – one of these (much later) days we will have them renovated and reupholstered. The table extends out to seat more people, which is perfect for bigger gatherings without over crowding the fairly small room the rest of the time.

Question: what kinds of table coverings suit this kind of furniture? We love the table so we don’t want to cover it completely with a table cloth, but we do need place mats and coasters to protect it. I think the cork place mats look kind of tacky – at least the ones I’ve seen – but the idea of adding to my laundry pile with cloth place mats is less than appealing. Any tips? Also, I really need to buy a beautiful, big fruit bowl (I love the look of these but am not sure about the size – mine needs to be HUGE). At the moment, that fruit is sitting in a Tupperware salad container.

LIGHT WELL: We love that the decking out here makes this space totally accessible. It’s no longer damp or gloomy or dirty, so it’s a lovely little contained place for the children to have supervised play while we’re at the table. But because it is such an integral part of the dining room, we also need to decorate it nicely, to incorporate that space into the rest of the house. Mr B wants some kind of artwork out there (he likes mosaics but I’m not keen). I like the idea of a vertical garden but we’re not sure if there will be enough light to maintain it. Mr B makes the good point that if the plants became sick or scrappy, it would look really awful. Another idea is to commission some kind of street-art style painting, or perhaps invest in some vintage outdoor signage. I’d love your ideas!

HALL: There’s nothing there right now. I’m still thinking an Eames Hang It All coat rack would be nice, although I’m now leaning towards the neutral rather than multi-coloured version. That, and some kind of shoe-rack, an umbrella-stand, and other practical accoutrements. I’m yet to find the ones I like best.

Well, there you have it folks, our lounge/dining area in its “blank canvas” state. Despite the challenges, we really love this part of our new home. It’s especially nice to have a “grown up” lounge area, since the kids have their play room out the back. I’ll invite you into some of our other rooms in subsequent posts on this blog.

Little things in my home…

In the lead-up to our first Valentine’s Day as a couple, Mr B and I were living on opposite sides of the world. I wanted to do something for him, but when you are separated by thousands of kilometres, your most romantic dinners together happen over Skype. Which is to say, not very romantic.

Then as I was walking my dog along West Houston, I stopped to look through some tables of antiques and bric-a-brac and came across this old ship’s compass, still in its original box. The box was held together with tongues and grooves, rather than nails, and with little lips to make the compass ‘float’. I posted the compass back to Mr B in Australia, with a message along the lines of “now you will always know how to find me.”

Now it sits among the books in our family room where the two children play. Those years in New York feel like a million years ago, not four. My mind boggles at how much has changed in that time.

The compass, however, still points north.

::  ::  ::

“Little Things” is an occasional series about the stories behind some of the little things you’ll find around my home. Are there stories behind the little things in your home? I’d love you to tell me about them! Or if you’d like to join in and write a post like this of your own, don’t forget to share a link to it so I can read it.