Mrs Howard and fabric envy

I was about to do a post featuring some of the stunning rooms I've been studying in detail from Phoebe Howard's new book "The Joy of Decorating" which I bought on Amazon recently and have been devouring over the weekend. I highly recommend it, not just for the sheer perfection of the rooms she designs, but the advice and information she gives about decorating too is worth every penny.

I think she really is my all time favourite designer, and while they are many others I adore and admire the work of and whose rooms I love, I think when it comes to my home and kind of look and feel I ultimately want, nothing beats her classic style for me.

Oh ok, here's a taste.......

All images Phoebe Howard

I have also been doing my head in trying to pick fabrics over the weekend too. I still have things to finish in all our bedrooms, the kid's bathroom blind, and the living areas. I just keep going round in circles and getting more confused. I have an identity crisis when it comes to my style at the moment which is why I'm studying books to try to reconnect with my inner decorating voice and trust my instincts. Hard to do when you're 7 months pregnant I've discovered. I'm currently on a mission to "pretty" up my house, no doubt part of the pregnancy nesting hormone, but I feel things aren't pretty, colourful, classic, traditional or feminine enough and I'm trying to soften the look.

Which leads me to the this post because I just got this email from Sherry at Design Indulgence blog, and this is the kind of thing that gives me complete America envy and why there's no excuse for everybody in the US not to have a gorgeous looking house! It's so accessible and inexpensive.

Images from Design Indulgence blog.

Then I see photos like this, from a regular retail fabric shop in Atlanta called Lewis and Sheron, and it kills me that you can just go to a shop and have this kind of huge choice available to buy then and there and for about $25/m on average. You could decorate a room in about 5 minutes and on budget then get on with your life! You don't even have to know anything about decorating, have good taste or a sense of style or any clue at all, because it's all done for you. Fabulous, current, contemporary, on trend, coordinating, reasonably priced fabrics by the dozen. You could be colour blind not go wrong!

How amazing would that be if we could shop like this here! Imagine how much you could achieve in a day if this was possible! My mind boggles. I could get back the past 1000+ hours spent on the internet, in fabric shops and showrooms, driving all over Sydney and surfing all over the globe looking for pretty, coordinating fabrics for our house if I could have access to this kind of choice in one spot.

Anyway, back to Phoebe Howard tomorrow.

Computers - a necessary evil

Hello again everyone. Thank you all for your kind, encouraging and thoughtful messages of concern and support for me, Dad and the family over the past few weeks. It's been a very worrying time to say the least, and completely unexpected. What was supposed to be a 3-5 day hospital stay for Dad, for a relatively simple back operation turned into a four week intensive care stay, emergency surgery and so many post surgery complications it was unbelievable.

However, he is now finally back home and recuperating. It will be a long and slow process of recovery, but he has the most amazing fighting spirit and will get there.

Now to our little life. I'm getting more gigantic and more cumbersome by the day. I am really struggling with the sheer physical exhaustion of this pregnancy, not just because I have a 2 and 5 year old to look after, but because I just turned 43 and this old body ain't what it used to be. By mid afternoon I just can't put one foot in front of the other any more and have to lie down, just to take a load off.  I also suffer terribly from a thing called Pubic Symphisis which is basically a very painful and constant grinding of the pelvic bones which can separate during pregnancy due to the relaxing of the ligaments in preparation for birth. I've suffered from it every time. It's a nightmare walking, sitting, lying down, turning over in bed and pretty much any movement, so makes things very tiring and frustrating. Can't believe I have another 11 weeks to go! God give me strength!

We had a nice short break in Noosa for my birthday and took my grandmother and my husband's mum with us, who was visiting from the UK. I've never been pregnant in warm weather and always been rugged up in winter clothes at this stage, so bearing my bulging belly was a first and took some courage, but felt to nice to be weightless and free in the water. 

Me in all my glory! 

An afternoon boat trip on the river.

Some birthday balloons and pressies await.

The kids unwrapping my presents for me!

Now to the house which I have neglected for the past month or so and actually enjoyed the break from worrying about it. I have been in a rut trying to finish the rooms, one of the reasons is because I am struggling trying to work out where to put my desk and computer. They are such a necessary evil, just like TVs, but you can't deny that we need and use them daily. So there doesn't seem much point putting them in a cupboard or hiding them away, when sometimes we spend hours at them. They are ugly though and all the cords, wires, printers etc just spoil a beautifully decorated room, but I'm determined to find a way to incorporate them. I would love to have a dedicated office like some of these though.

........then I could include a craft area and just spread out with all my creative accoutrements and not have to worry about the mess. We did have a spare room, but it's now set to become a nursery!

I wish I had used more foresight when designing the house, so that I could have had a built in desk and shelves etc, even in a cupboard or nook somewhere or under the stairs like those in these images. A corner of the kitchen would have been perfect, but we were a bit starved for room there so it wasn't really an option.

So now all I have room for is a corner of the living room, where I am going to trade my large, modern white Freedom desk for something more furniture like and less obvious. Problem is the iMac is so enormous, it's hard to make it inconspicuous. I have tried it in the library (dark blue room), but we spend our nights there watching TV and generally eating dinner on our laps, so I don't want to be there all day too. So it's going to have to go back to the living room, which isn't ideal but no other option.

If I can make a nice and pretty little area look like these, it hopefully will blend in.

I think the key is not having officey looking furniture, so that the space just blends in with the rest of the room. ie no big office chair, more subtle filing cabinets (or none if possible), a pretty lamp and accessories, and set up the printer with wireless connection so it can go in the hall cupboard.

Now here are some images of big iMacs that look pretty good to me as part of the decorative living space. Maybe I can make it work. The trick is hiding all the other messy bits and pieces like cords and cables, power points, adapters, power boards, printers etc.

I've just ordered a couple of white bamboo chairs, so maybe one could be a desk chair. I do love how they look. 

The other option is getting an armoire or cabinet with doors that can be closed so that the whole mess can be hidden away when I'm not using the computer or when we have visitors.

Where do you keep your computer? Any ideas or tips?

I'll let you know how it progresses.  Plus I've almost finished Charlie's and Poppy's bedrooms and will hopefully be able to show you in the next few weeks. My stencils finally arrived, so I have to work out where to use them. Goodness, this is a long and drawn out process......thanks for being so patient!

Images from my Pinterest pages.