home improvement DIY.

Posted on August 16, 2012 by Emmy Liddell

i am learning a lot about my time living in apartments. apartment living is awesome fun & i miss it a lot. i miss the community, the knowledge that there is someone just next door. i miss how easy it is to heat or cool an apartment. i miss the location of apartment living … so convenient, & for us on our favourite beach in the whole wide world !

one thing that i have been reflecting on recently is that when i was living in apartments i never really had any ‘buy in’ for staying there long term. this meant my furniture was very haphazard & i essentially only acquired what i desperately needed & what fit the (teeny weeny) space. in our old complex we had a saying … “less than less is more”. every council clean up we would all basically put our entire apartment on the side of the road and then start rebuilding. thanks to ikea & op shops it was easy to have this flexibility to change our apartment as our needs changed every six months or so.

now that we are in a house, i am realising more and more how much i dislike our furniture & how desperate i am to put some hard yards in to make it look amazing. after all, we are going to be here for a looooooong time ! i want every item in our house to be an item that i absolutely love. this means it will be a long process, but i am sure the rewards will be great !!

in the meantime, i am going to make do with what we have. so, this brings me to my little DIY that i whipped up the other day. here is a total eyesore that just (& I mean JUST) fit into our little apartment …

isn’t it horrible? i really should paint it white, but at the moment i have a lot on my plate so i will just have to wait. a friend of mine suggested making a little curtain to hide some of the mess. so that’s exactly what i did ! here’s how it goes …

i chose the fabric.

i lay the fabric out to decide in what order i would like them.

i cut. i sewed & voila !

while this has been a vast improvement to our TV cabinet, i must admit i am not 100% in love. the floral material needs a bit of neon pink or neon yellow & perhaps the background colour should be white rather than black. nevertheless, it will absolutely do for now !

what little home improvements have you been up to lately?

bits + pieces.

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Emmy Liddell

we have recently moved from a teeny tiny shoebox apartment into a house. it has been one of the biggest decisions we have made as a family and so far it is the best. we are not used to all this roooooooooooom ! we hardly have any furniture to fill the space ! a nice problem to have a friend of ours came around last week & did a bit of shuffling of furniture so the space is working for us really well now. i have loads of DIYs to do & lots of bit + pieces i want to pick up from op shops, garage sales, side of the road etc … but i’m happy for this to be a slow process so that every item we pick up we absolutely love.

i have been taking some advice from this lady on how to make your house a home. she also gives a few tips in this post on how to photograph your home. so here are a few bit + pieces from around the place for you to enjoy ! i hope to do a house tour one day …. but that idea might just stay in the pipeline for the moment.

i love the queen. she is one amazing lady ! this figurine was given to us by a friend for the diamond jubilee year celebration. her hand waves and is powered by a solar panel on her handbag. too kitsch. too cute. i love.

roses are in this week ! best part of winter.

fridge art work. a must.

the owl looking wise.

my beautiful beautiful carafe that has just had a work out due to our kettle breaking.

so there you have it ! a few little bits. more pieces to come.

susie homemaker.

Posted on May 31, 2012 by Emmy Liddell

lately i have been a real ‘susie homemaker’. it has been so much fun ! a lot in our little world has changed to help me jump on the homemaker bandwagon …

when we got married i didn’t really have much direction in how i wanted our place to look … renting can be so hard because you never really feel settled. i think i just thought ‘anything will do, we’ll be out of here before we know it’. in hindsight, this was a bad attitude … it meant that we just collected stuff that was functional & that fit into the space of a shoebox rather than collect things we love.

i also didn’t get a chance to ‘nest’ when joey was born because i went into labour the day i left work (things are always on the move in my world !), nor with the baby because i had joey around my feet 24/7.

since we have moved, it finally feels like i have the space and the head space to actually start collecting things i love for our home. i am sure that things will constantly be changing and improved around the place & i am totally happy with that ! it means that we’ll get a lot of creative stimulation, i get the benefit of frequenting op shops, and we will grow with the space as we grow as a family. yeah !

here are my latest finds from the glorious world of op shops …

the beloved new green couch*, the blue dress (just like my grandmothers <3 ), the pink blanky …

aperture for when peeps come over & i want our rest room to look fancy ..

fav pyrex dishes & blanky …

retro pink cutlery … sorry mark !!

the sweetest vintage toy corvette cars that i ever did see !

so fun hey?! just loving living the dream.

i have a few more items that are on my ‘look out for’ list … if i can’t find them in the next little while i’ll have to try etsy.

* the night the green couch was delivered we had some friends over for dinner. they could not believe that it only cost me $30 & it was so hilarious that now everything i purchase is compared to ‘the cost of a couch’. my friend called me the next day to say she was so inspired by my op shopping that she visited vinnies & found four cushions that she had been looking for (& had been told were sold out of every store in Australia) for ‘the cost of half a couch’. how ’bout that! love it.

op shop op shop op shop …

Posted on May 10, 2012 by Emmy Liddell

one thing that i am really enjoying at the moment is decorating our house. it is something that i did (to a very limited extent) in our unit, and now have a lot more freedom with loads more space. it is really interesting to see how my style has changed over the years. for example, when we first got married, i wanted every piece of furniture in dark wood. now, i am trying to change everything over to white ! it may be that i am more confident in who i am and therefore i am more certain of what i like and dislike rather than following trends. i also think it is a result of having more time now to think about such things – being a mum who is at home rather than a full-time worker. our home space is my office so i am in desperate need of it looking good & feeling good.

since we are living on a budget (like the rest of the world !) i have been skipping around to all the local op shops (thrift stores for you north american peeps). i have always loved op shopping so needing to fill a space is an excellent excuse for me to make a trip or two a week ! here are some finds from my most recent trips:

The Entrance Cabinet:

Guess who fits inside?

One of my best days this year (tupperware & prue acton no less !!):

Blankets:

i plan on re-covering the chairs in white vinyl (LOVE vinyl with kids … wipe on, wipe off & it’s clean !). one of the blankets i will keep, the other is a gift for a special lady in my life (who will it be?!). my entrance display cabinet makes me smile every single time i walk in the front door. i have had fun changing it around, and i can’t wait for more installations to come !

as i start to complete each room, i will keep you posted on how i’m going & what i’m doing. i am getting a few hints & tips from this blog (i’m thinking of perhaps doing her e-course as a reward for finishing this semester of study) as well as this friend … so i am confident that as our home evolves it will have our mark on it & look amazing too !