A London Saturday...in pictures...

It is raining here today...again...It has been raining for most of the week, yet for some unknown reason, apparently parts of England are in the grip of a drought...we have hosepipe bans and everything...


Despite loving nothing better than hibernating at home on a rainy weekend day, I had a few reasons to be out and about this Saturday...so I brought my camera with me so capture my day in and around a rainy London-town...

No underground trains at my end of the District Line this weekend, so the day started with waiting for a bus in Kew to take me to Richmond for more transport options...

...waiting for the overground train at Richmond...

...approaching Festival Hall from Waterloo...

First call for the day...sitting in on a London Philharmonic Orchestra rehearsal at Festival Hall...

...we watched the rehearsal for this evening's performance (Tchaikovsky 4 and Mozart Piano Concerto No. 1)...followed by a glass of champagne in Skylon...

...looking out at this rainy, but lovely view...

Braving the wind and rain while crossing the Thames...

...then back onto the Tube for the trip north-west to Ladbroke Grove...

...where you experience a little more of the gritty, urban side of London...

...and where I quickly popped to Golborne Road to collect some Annie Sloan paint and wax that had been on order from when I attended the painting workshop a few weeks ago...

...then it was back on the Tube and then a bus to help me on my way home...a short walk across Kew Green, and then the chance to dry-off and warm up a little at home!

I hope you are all enjoying your weekends...rainy and otherwise!

The pull of home...

I think for anyone who has emigrated from the land of their birth, there are always certain days during which you always feel a strong pull of 'home'. For me, ANZAC Day (25 April) is one of them.


ANZAC Day is the day which commemorates the contribution of the Australian and New Zealand forces to World War 1...it is the anniversary of the day in 1915 during which a large contingent of young men from those countries landed at Gallipoli (Turkey) as part of the allies offensive. It is also the day that many of those lives were lost...


Growing up in Australia, ANZAC Day was always a day which had strong resonance. Being such a small country, most people had fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers who had been involved in various conflicts. From the dawn service and commemorative march, to the more secular tradition of 'two-up' at the pub, ANZAC day permeates many traditions as the nation remembers.


My grandfather fought in the middle east during World War 2 for the Australian Infantry Forces. This is also the man, who thanks to his birth in England, paved the way for my entry into this country, and ultimately the route to becoming a British citizen myself. Through sad, and partly still unknown reasons, he emigrated to Australia as a 12 year old boy. So, a day such as today seems to take on extra meaning as the two strands of my heritage coalesce into one...


So whilst far away from the events that recall and honour the contribution of my home country to a land and way of life that is free...

...at the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them...lest we forget...

Sewing for a first birthday gift...

 

Next Sunday afternoon I am off to a sweet little girl's first birthday party...so today I embellished this little t-shirt as her gift. This is such a quick and easy way to appliqué and create a personalised gift.

Before starting the appliqué, I satin-stitched a small circle onto one of the fabrics to form the centre of the flower. I had thought about using a button, but didn't have any that provided a nice contrast with the fabric that I had chosen from my stash.

Then I drew the two sections of the flower onto vlisofix (also known as bond-a-web). This is essentially double-sided fusible interfacing. You draw/trace your pattern onto the 'paper'-side of the interfacing, and then iron it onto the reverse side of your fabric.

Then it is simply a matter of cutting out around your shape...

... peel off the remaining paper section....

...turn it over and position it onto your fabric (the t-shirt in my case), and iron into place.

Then you just use some embroidery thread to blanket-stitch around the shape - this helps to secure the appliqué and provide the edge with a nice finish. I used matching DMC embroidery thread, using two strands for the embroidery.

and voilà...a close-up of the completed product. Now just to hope that Scout (or more to the point, her mum) likes it!

I hope your are all enjoying your weekend...the sunshine has made a long-overdue appearance here in London (after a week of unseasonably cold weather and periods of torrential rain)...

...but here is a glimpse of twilight from Southbank on Friday night (taken in between the showers). I was here twice last week - firstly to see She Stoops to Conquer at the National Theatre on Wednesday (an excellent production - if you're London-based it is well worth a visit), and then on Friday night to see the Vocal Orchestra as part of the Udderbelly Festival...but it is the sights like this one above that is always such a timely reminder of how fortunate I am to live in such an amazing city!

Kitchen love...

As is my habit, I caught up on all of my favourite Australian home design magazines whilst I was in Sydney over Easter. One Sydney home, featured in Australian Home Beautiful, was particularly lovely...

Image via Bree Oliver

I have long been a fan of white kitchens - I've just always imagined a future kitchen of mine with dark granite or wooden benchtops. Well, after seeing the kitchen in this lovely home, I have to say that I am truly converted to carrera marble benchtops.

Isn't it simply lovely? I love it all - the simple elegance of the door pulls, the design of the faucet, the belfast sink, the beadboard wall trim, the contrast with the dark wood floors, and not to mention the lovely flow of space from kitchen through to the courtyard. All of the images come courtesy of the blog of Bree Oliver who was the designer/stylist for this renovation. The whole of the property was beautiful - it is just a shame I can't find any digital images of the other rooms to share...

Learning how to paint furniture...properly...

Image via chocolate creative

Despite the lack of updates, the budget-focused bedroom mini-makeover that I planned in January has been progressing (very, very) slowly...

Here is a reminder of the mood board for what I'm hoping to do to the room (given the usual constraints of living in a rental and being unable to change the wall colour).

Whilst I was in Australia in January I picked up a beautiful new old-white textured quilt cover - I have to buy my quilt covers in Australia as I have a queen-size quilt, and that is a size that is just not stocked in the UK. In keeping in line with the budget, I was able to purchase this at less than half price in the sale for only $79 - a price with which was quite impressed. I've also managed to find some reasonably priced stockists of ticking (for the bed valance) and toile fabric (for the European pillow covers). I just need to calculate how much fabric I require and then I can get busy making...

The only new furniture item I'm planning to purchase for the room are two new (old) bedside cabinets. I've managed to find one at a good price (i.e. under £10) on ebay, and am still looking for a second of similar height/dimensions. The plan has always been to paint/re-paint the cabinets, and so to that end, I attended an Annie Sloan Chalk Paint  furniture painting workshop this week.

The workshop was held at the beautiful Phoenix on Golborne which, unsurprisingly, is in Golborne Road, near Notting Hill in London. You may remember that I attempted a furniture makeover last summer when I repainted the little glass-fronted cabinet that I had also sourced on ebay - I only too clearly remember the days of anxiety with my sitting room floor completely covered in drop cloths and living in perpetual fear that I was going to knock over a tin of paint. Whilst I am reasonably pleased with the finished product, I found the actual painting of the cabinet quite tiresome, due to the number of coats I needed to add to ensure good coverage.

Thanks to the blog-world I had been reading a lot about Annie Sloan Chalk paints, and thought that this would be something I'd like to try for a future project...and in an effort to have some semblance of knowing what I was doing, I decided to sign-up for a Annie Sloan furniture painting workshop. These are held in a range of locations that stock the Annie Sloan Chalk paints - and the closest to me was Jess's lovely shop in Golborne Road.

So, for four hours, I and four other lovely ladies, were led through a whole range of painting techniques by Jess. From distressing and waxing, to crackling, decoupage and gilding...some of which I had never thought I'd use, but have now discovered a whole possibility of options for which I might like to use them for future projects. It helps that Jess's store is also a beautiful emporium of antique and restored furniture and vintage pieces, so it was not hard to gaze around and find some inspiration. Jess also provided some very helpful tips of other places in London and its surrounds (besides ebay) to source furniture - so now I have a new list of car boot sales and antique markets to visit during weekends over the summer.

Here are some pictures from the Phoenix on Golborne website...

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And finally, a few of the lovely images of Jess's shop from the Phoenix on Golborne website for some inspiration for you all...

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Now to get busy painting...

And back to the blog...

...and to London after a lovely 10 days in Australia...and all my threats about the weather must have worked, as it was simply beautiful whilst I was there. So many times I heard people commenting that it was like the "summer they didn't have".

Below are a few pictures from my phone as proof! As the purpose of this trip was to attend my PhD graduation, I flew firstly into Adelaide, to be welcomed by a sunny day with 32 degree weather. After dropping my bag at the apartment, I went first to the university to see my supervisors. I took the scenic route along North Terrace as I have always loved the architecture of the buildings...

Example a - The Art Gallery

Example b - The University of Adelaide

After the meeting, the tiredness was starting to take effect so I took myself off to a cafe for a cup of restorative coffee  and a peruse of an Australian design magazine (I do have to say that Australia has a much better standard of coffee provision than the UK).

I just adore this verandah...

My mother flew down from Sydney at lunchtime and we took the tram out to Glenelg for some old-fashioned fish and chips at the beach...

See? Definitely hot and sunny!

The graduation went well, we had a lovely lunch afterwards with my supervisors, and then it was on the plane back to Sydney for a week at home with family.

And some further proof that the Sydney weather was also beautiful...

So, as I promised my sister, I will now officially stop disparaging the Australian weather (for the time being anyway...). As an alternative, I am now being disparaging about the time it took to pass through Border Control at Heathrow on Tuesday morning - I stood in one of those cattle-corralling type queues, that had 16 rows full of people...and took well over an hour and a half to finally get to the desk. This is not something that you appreciate after having being flying for 23 hours....heaven only knows how they are going to cope with the volume of visitors to this country during the Olympics!