Home to me

Home to me is somewhere i can relax and read a book.......i love books and magazines about interiors, gardens and homes......


I love flowers in the home, nothing gives me greater joy than to pick a bunch of fresh flowers out of my garden and bring them inside....they instantly brighten a room, as we come into autumn the hydrangeas are changing colours and i love them like this....the ones above are originally white and this is the colour they change to.....white is my favourite colour in flowers....


These blue hydrangeas also started out as white and now they are blue........isn't nature amazing!!


Collections on my desk.....where do i write may you ask welllll actually i have another desk as well.......i love surrounding myself with unusual objects and things i am attracted to.....i love glass cloches and this one in front has a smaller one inside and inside this one is a birds nest.....


I have collected old china for a number of years in fact this is the first thing i ever started with and i love to put old plates on the wall....


I love birds nests and have a whole collection of them......this one here is made out of branches of an old silver birch tree .... i love the rawness of it.....and the egg i am not sure if that is real.....


I love reflections through mirrors......if you look closely you will see the blue hydrangeas in the mirror.

On the bed is pillows made from old lace and antique lace....some i made myself and some i brought......this is the girlie side of me!!


These two fellows are telling each other a secret.......these bears have been handmade by a bear artist.....i love their size and the way you can get them to show expression.....


My dressing table showing another view of the bed .....there is those reflections in the mirror again.......this is an old oak wing mirrored dressing table and when i brought it the stain was almost black....i stripped it down in our lounge during the evenings because we didn;t have a garage you can imagine my horror when i came in the lounge the next morning and saw all the dust that had settled everywhere!!! we live and we learn!!


My daughters rocking chair......she is now a young adult with a daughter of her own and will soon take this chair to have in her daughters room.....if you look closely you will see on the seat scratches....to me this is history because when she was little she had to actually climb up onto the chair to get on and these scratches are from her shoes, her as a young child is brought all back to me in flashes when i look upon this chair......some would look at this and want to sand it down but to me that is the memories of her life......


The dining room with the baltic pine dresser which has my collection of old and new china and interesting bits and pieces....beside it is a fruit picking ladder made by the husband of my friend whose house i showed you in the beginning.....he made all sorts of furniture and sold it......he was a very clever man.....and is sadly missed by many ...... for his talent and for the wonderful person he was.....


Another view and again those hydrangeas this time they have faded out to white with a hint of green in them......if you leave them in the water until the water is gone they will actually dry and you can use them as dried flowers.....


Yes i collected old baskets and have them above my cabinets in the kitchen....


My newly covered wing chair with a slipcover.....i am so pleased how this turned out.....behind it is a old school cupboard which would have been used in a class room to hold the school books, it even has a number on it written in white paint...... it is one of my favourite pieces of furniture....

Here is an extract by Alexandra Stoddard from her book called Creating a Beautiful Home.....
Perfection halts the creative process. It is the enemy of spontaneity and serendipity, surely two of the most glorious gifts of life.
There is too much emphasis on nit picking neatness on creating rooms that are nothing more than still lifes, but where is the living taking place?
We may celebrate the daily moments of life when we throw an extra log on a roaring fire, light a scented candle, open a window, move a chair over to the light and sip a glass of chardonnay, prepare a snack, read the paper, or write a letter with a fountain pen, but the soot, the scratches, the crumbs, the ring on the table the mess on the floor, the ink on the chintz, the wrinkles, the work these are all part of the romance of everyday living.

Perfection on the other hand, chills the mystery and leaves us frozen in space. Perfectionists miss it all, i consider myself someone who likes things done right, but a broken glass or a scratch doesn't send me into depression.
A bed can be a beautiful still life when not in use but pillowcases do get wrinkled and yes ripped, my old pine writing desk has several ink stains on the surface, some from my own pens, without these my desk wouldn't have a soul.
It is in fact the untidiness and the clutter of our cozy messes that we make our presence felt and that after all is what homes are all about...