Emerald Wave

Sounds nice doesn't it? It's the colour of our new wall. Fitting giving our proximity to the beach and it's waves, on some days there are parts of the ocean that look like this colour. It is so beautiful where we live. At first I was a little startled by the 'brightness' of our new wall. The prior soft green colour was soothing and whilst it didn't match in with our new splashback the new matching colour being more vibrant and a strong colour was at first a little worrying. But once we completed the entire wall I quickly fell in love with it. The wall now has a couple of important additions - photos of our gorgeous boys. This image is just a portion of the wall, its a very big high wall that takes pride of place in the middle of our home.

Replacing the old with the new

When I found our new home in Perth (Chris had never seen it person until we moved in) I was able to visualise what I didn't like in the house in its improved state. I knew that the hosue was right but there was aspects to it that we needed to put our stamp on it. It only took us a couple of months before we got fed up with trying to operate in a tiny and disfunctional kitchen and trying to keep the floor clean. White tiles + 2 busy and messy little boys = hopeless to keep clean.

As a result we set out on the task to update the floor and kitchen, a costly task. After collecting a few quotes and inspecting a few showrooms we decided on Granite Transformations to redo the kitchen (they use as much of the old carcass as possible and enhanced this as well as built some new cabinetry) we also decided on Vinyl planking floors which looks like timber. Vinyl planking is durable and easy to maintain as opposed to its more expensive options such as the laminate or timber. Use Granite transformations and vinyl meant we could afford to update both features of the house that bother us the most.

This is the result of lots of dust and mess:

Before (before we bought the place so not our items in the kitchen or anything):

After (most renovations completed we just need to paint the walls):

As you can see we had a builder also come in and knock out the interior kitchen walls and plaster the brick walls.

Fresh, clean, bright. Much more 'us'.

Grow my pretty

My herbs are growing. I'm one proud gardener! This is the pot of herbs I planted seedlings in (Basil and Chives) a week or so ago...nothing to see but soil.

This morning I found the following...

The Chives have not sprouted yet, they should be along the back of the pot, I'm not sure if this means I didn't do such a good job at planting or if I might find something tomorrow. The Chives were about 2mm deeper to sew than the basil so here's hoping.

Meanwhile, the weeds have also grown, better do some gardening in the coming days.



Strawberries, Blueberries and Herbs...oh my

I'm most excited to finally be starting a vegetable/fruit garden. It has been a long time dream of mine to be able to pick more fresh things to eat from our very own garden. Before the move we had a healthy stash of about 4-5 different herbs at home which we picked on a daily basis to add to our meals. This time I want more than just herbs. As I learn about Perth and gardening here I will keep adding to our little garden...but for now this is just our humble start.

This is a photo of the Strawberry and Blueberry plants, I've got some seedlings of Basil and Chives in the pot beside which I'm hoping sprout up in the next fortnight!