around my house & the 10 IKEA lifestyle book giveaway winners

Greetings all.
Thanks for the animal stories in the comments from the last post, boy, losing animals & pets can really leave your childhood with some dark memories!! 

I'm on a mission around the house, fixing & doing all those things i've happily put off so far these holidays.  The family car is at the mechanic so it's a home day, i've turned out my wardrobe & chest of drawers, done up bags for charity (shoes, clothes) & washed the dog.  Olive, our new fish is settling in nicely, we had a BBQ lunch & i've started on the Christmas decorations.

Santa brought me a high powered staple gun, much more powerful than my original & easier on the carpal tunnel syndrome too!!  It punched the mexican oil cloth into the table bottom like silk!!  I picked up these chrome legged tables from a local shop which was closing down, got both (coffee & dining table) for $80.  Oil Cloth is from Beach Vintage (thanks Simone!!)

 Pretty happy with the corners too,

 our son's room is emerging with red & white accents.  I've featured his white leather Little Nest e-chair & ottomon before & check it out, still spotless (Wendy)!!  We need more of those super cheap & effective IKEA round rugs too, they hide all mannor of carpet sins.

 Pretty happy with the finish.  His 2003 handmedown Designer's Guild toy box is next for the red & white oil cloth makeover!!  Oh & some art on his walls, they are bare & boring, thus not in view.

 Oh before you freak out that our children have televisions in their bedrooms, they only get limited viewing after homework (they're very studious) & they are the most social & healthy children on earth (state level cross country runners).  They also read before they go to sleep, not watch television.  They tend to congregate in one room & watch something together, it's really sweet.  With one living space in the house (as i grabbed the formal lounge/ dining area for my business studio) in a 4 bedroom house with 6 people, i like to think they each have their own little sanctuary.  They usually watch documentaries, bless their hearts.  We rarely find more than one television on at any time either.  They certainly don't abuse the luxury or electricity use + we spend plenty of quality time with them as a family, like dinner at the dining table every night without a television on & never EVER in the mornings, goodness no.  Ok??   

 Like his red IKEA Lack desk & Little Nest Woody chair for year 2 homework??  If you have children, these IKEA storage tub systems are fantastic!! 

 Next stop - the bedroom of our 9y.o. twin girls.  They share a dining table as their desk & this pink spotty oilcloth has upgraded it to girlie!!  Yes, they really keep it this tidy too.  Love the Kikki-K stationery sets & IKEA lamps, easy splashes of colour.

 For our eldest i hung her Christmas gifts of Ivy Designs scalloped bunting & a Typo Bird canvas - looking like a real highschooler's room now.

 She still loves this Little Nest replica Arne Jacobsen chair designed for children!!

Thanks for hanging in there with a trip around my house, now for the lucky 10 TEN T E N winners of the IKEA Beloved Homes lifestyle book, value $29.95 each . . . 

 congratulations . . . in the random order they were picked by my blind folded children . . .

Deb: Let’s Moerk About
Tina: Rubies Place

Sarah: Molly’s Maison

Chantel: Chantel Vincent Art

Kerry: Tranquil Townhouse

Carmel: Make Mine Mid Century

Catherine: Pencils & Pins

Jacinta: Model Mumma

Jane: Tea with Janey

& lucky last  . . . Brenda: Hoo You Lookin’ At . . . perfect, she's building a house this year!!  Thanks for sponsoring the giveaway IKEA & One Green Bean.

Thanks winners, if you could please email me a.s.a.p. with your full name, postal address, mobile phone number & a pre-release copy of the book will be sent via courier.  Thanks for entering the giveaway, if you missed out, next time you're at IKEA, sign up to the IKEA Family Programme & you can pick up a copy for only $19.95 - due for release late January 2011.  There will be more in the series, stay tuned.  Love Posie
PS love a good giveaway - two family passes for Disney's Tangled movie tickets are up for grabs on this post - drawn on 9th January, with a chance to win $500 over at Nuffnang!!  Good luck!!EDIT: sorry about the updates, trying to get the names to sit nicely one under the other!!  Come on blogger, line they up for me!!

oh no, we lost the roof in the storm . . .

Greetings all,
In all this wild & windy stormy weather, the children were stuck inside & we lost the roof off the house . . . the GingerBreadHouse that is!!  It remained untouched for long enough, then suddenly the children had a penchant for gingerbread.  The house smells glorious!!  Should take a week to get through the rest.

 Today the boy's bed was finally ready to collect from Harvey Norman.  I think this style will last him well into his late teens, i'm especially thrilled i managed to knock a further $90 off the sale price!!

 After years of ensemble base & mattress beds, i chose wooden beds for everyone, with slat bases so i can FINALLY vacuum all the way under . . . but my son clearly has other ideas on how to use the space.

 Love his Ooshka by The Red Thread.

 The room is coming together, but i think the Dr Suess mobile might have to go & put some pictures up on the wall??

& yes, he's still under the bed putting the ramp for his Skull Fortress together - i think he'll sleep there tonight!! 
Poor bloke inherited some marks on the carpet from his twin sisters (former tenants of this room) so what a blessing those $12 IKEA round rugs are!!  There is more work to do on the room, like adding an oilcloth covering on the thrifted retro coffee table & the Designer's Guild wooden trunk at the end of his bed.  Stay tuned for more boy's room renovations soon, with my live in handyman - handsome soldier who i've just tallyed up . . . has 16 weeks leave.  Yippee.  Love Posie

& posie has fallen off her trusty workaholic steed at the last hurdle . . .

Greetings all,
This will be the last post on the children's school holiday tidy up, redecorate & relocate for now.  The furniture hasn't arrived & i'm at a stalemate with how i felt at 3a.m. when i left my son's room like this, with a migraine - this was as good as it was going to get for the boy for now.

Two of my favourite things in the world - a trusty Dyson vacuum & super stylish Little Nest mini-e Chair & Ottoman.  FYI Sam from Little Nest hasn't asked me to plug her products, i just thoroughly believe in promoting what & who you love!!  'tis how we mums in business roll.  The detail, quality & design are amazing, keepsakes for sure!!

 So while this workaholic mummy isn't quite finished - curtains need to be made, furniture chosen/ delivered/ assembled . . . & i desperately need to rest my hands.  I have carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands, i sleep in metal hand splints (yeah baby, sexy as, no wonder my husband has spent less than 20 days at home this year) & scrubbing walls & sorting a billion Lego pieces has left me in agony.  Basically when i was 28 & pregnant with my 4th child, my carpal tunnel would leave me numb, unable to hang out nappies in the morning or pick up my twin toddlers, it was painful.  Surgery is an option, but i'd rather play princess & stop when they hurt for now.  Something to watch you crafty handmade types - i have the hands of an 80y.o. leather factory worker, i blame 6 years of scribbling notes at University & hand quilting & changing half a million cloth nappies - all repetative strain acts, hmmm, how do you get compensation or sue yourself??

So good time for a break & trip to Sydney to meet up with my husband (on his way home from Brisbane) spend more time with my elderly parents, visit friends & IKEA.  I'm not kidding, sometimes it hurts to hold the steering wheel when my carpal tunnel is messing with me.

  Does anything beat white leather & walnut 1960's style??

While blogger is messing with my images, i'll leave it here.  Seeing the boy is the last child, he has been lumped with all the toys from his siblings collective childhood.  I could cull more but he genuinely still plays with everything in turn, why ditch them now??  Anyway, this is all inside his wardrobe, who else is going to see them when the doors are shut?? 

Any one else have a wardrobe full of those giant black school art folios folders, they are so heavy with sharp corners & no child can lift them!!??  Owww, i have scrapes down my shins to prove it from 6 of the bloody folders.
So as i tidy up the boxes in the garage, pack for Sydney & lug 4 garbage bags of goods to charity, i bid you a lovely weekend.  I will be having dinner with my husband on Saturday night, in a real restaurant with make up & heels on, ahhhhhh, love Posie

& it's Giddy Up by Little Nest winning the race . . .

Greetings all,

So it's day 2 of the psycho clean & the giant puzzle of moving 4 children around 3 bedrooms.  By midnight i was in the garage smashing open the crate (i said psycho) to reveal a pink Giddy Up chair by Little Nest, to surprise the girls in the morning.  So happy i woke up before them so i could hear them squeal with delight when they opened their eyes!!

 I met the gorgeous Samantha Firestone from Little Nest at the Sydney Magnolia Square launch & bought the Arne Jacobsen replica children's size chair in red for my eldest daughter.  I've been repressing the dream of also owning a Giddy Up since, until last month when i thought, bugger it, she's discontinuing the pink, i want one!!  Thanks Sam, we love her & guess what the girls have named her . . . Samantha, ahhhh. 
I had to take these shots quickly as the children have been playing on the Giddy Up all day, they're running around in knickers & it's not that kind of creepy blog!!  One child has warned she WILL be sleeping on it tonight, hmmm . . .

The Little Bert wire chairs are also from Little Nest & fit perfectly under this IKEA coffee table which is perfect for a doll's house.  I even transferred the Djeco wall stickers from room to room (my husband will cringe, he doesn't understand why all the walls can't be bare??!!)  My twins will be in this room, which is slowly coming together.  They have a pink, red & white colour scheme.  I'm not obsessed with white furniture but it's such no brainer & easy to compliment with colour.  I'll source a desk this weekend which the girls can share as the move into senior primary school next year, i know there is a lot more homework. 
Next stop tomorrow, the boy's room, it's going to be my favourite.  When all their new beds arrive in the next couple of weeks, i'll reveal the finished products & you can start paying me millions for my decorating advice, he he.  Love Posie

& the bedroom makeovers are off & racing . . .

Greetings all,

For those of you who might not have school age children yet, we school mummies tend to go a bit postal on the children's bedrooms in the school holidays.  More than just a good clean, it's a "don't talk to me OR look at what is in the garbage bags" frantic situation.  These school holidays i'm quite literally turning out the bedrooms as if we were moving (we will be moving in the next 3-12 months) & to add a new degree of difficulty - just for fun i'm roatating all 4 children into different rooms.  What else would you do when your husband is away for a week??

 My secret weapon to keep the children away from their rooms while i psycho clean & to avoid the irrating "i'm hungry" moan, is to put out a picnic spread.

 Really annoyed these images are not grouping & are all spread out BLOGGER (??!!) anyway, you can see where i'm going - the first room is evolving & attracting silly children (FYI neither of these two are in this particular room, this is our eldest daughter's room with a red & blue theme, i said evolving!!)  There are still electronics to plug in, pictures to hang & a book shelving unit to collect, which will be perfect for the French wooden doll's house, as she said "it's a nice memory from my childhood".  

I love love love the chess board, shall take a close up image later, the pieces are Alice in Wonderland, it makes playing chess even more of a pleasure. 

Oh, now what's on that pallet in the garage??  I have new chairs from Little Nest for the children's 'play area' of their bedrooms, i can not wait to unload these, one by one as i complete the rooms.  So hope the new bunks for the twins arrive soon, we've also decided to get the big & little ones new beds too, so their rooms won't be 'perfect' for a little while longer.  Back to it, there are two children dispersed right now, who will sleep on the lounge tonight, good incentive to finish their rooms for a head start on those twins & all their bits & pieces tomorrow.  Love Posie

My Creative Space 'tween bedroom makeover'

Greetings all,

As promised . . . the bedroom make over for my eldest daughter while she was away on camp last week. 11 is a hard age to cater for in many aspects of mother-daughter relationships, but seeing she has grown up among fabric, design, colour & nonstop sewing, she loves my work & I know her taste.  I knew she’d love this combination of blues in a patchwork quilt, it's just simple 15cm squares - 10 rows across, 12 rows down. 
Please enjoy some before & after shots of her bed & windows . . .

All i had to add was some wall art stickers from Handmade Market, letters from Typo, blue fabrics from Posie.   

Then to pretty up the window with some Posie bunting, simple flat curtain thumb tacked above the frame made from the excess sheeting from Lincraft which was on the back of the quilt & ribbon from Tres Divin.  The pom pom curtain was from Freedom ages ago.

You might spy many Amy Butler prints, from her original Gypsy Caravan range to the latest Love series.  I've been a huge fan of Amy Butler since the beginning.

This amazing Arne Jacobsen replica chair from Little Nest, i picked it up from the gorgeous Samantha at Magnolia Square in Sydney last year.  The blankets are Ikea & Laura Ashley from 10-15 years ago, they do not die!!

After all that, i think this prawn baguette with shallots, mayo & avocado was the perfect treat for a mother's job well done. 

I do have some sewing confessions. I put up with little hitches when sewing professionally, I don’t mind 'sewing housekeeping' like spooling bobbins, breaking needles, pressing fabric – when I’m being paid. Alas, like mechanics working on their own cars . . . I get huffy when making things for family & audibly moan when my bobbin runs out of thread.  I go through kilometres of thread each week, literally, I sew A LOT & in proportion, many bobbins. So I pre-spool about 10 bobbins for each machine at a time. Only when I finish the 10th bobbin, a little piece of me dies & I surprise myself with how frustrated i get.  I'm the most patient person on earth!!
What has sparked this outcry?? After quilting this large patchwork piece for my daughter, my last bobbin ran out of thread with no more than 10cm of stitching to do. 10cm & i was finished!! I knew it was running low & watched closely through the clear lid, stitch by stitch & convinced myself the bobbin would make it, cheered it on, sigh, no.  So I sat & spooled 10 fresh bobbins in off white (my multipurpose colour of choice) while rolling my eyes. Please, someone out there, design an uber bobbin, forget about tension, size & mechanics, just humour me that it’s possible!!
I’ve tried over filling bobbins – do not try this, it ruins the top stitching & simply does not work.  You'll have to unload it onto another bobbin or two, time wasted & annoyance gained.  On my industrial machine I can spool bobbins while I continue sewing, yes really, they are separate entities. Only I get hypnotised by watching bobbins fill with thread, so my sewing goes haywire.  So good luck if you can do it simultaneously!! I bet you can also pat your head & rub your tummy at the same time?? Happy Creative Spacing this week, check out more at Kootoyoo, thanks Kirsty, a delightful hostess.  Love Posie