this past week

I'm back. Perhaps not as refreshed as I was hoping. The dreaded lurgy has struck me down over the weekend, after Mr M contracted 'man flu' last week he oh-so-generously passed it along to me it seems. Ugh. My head only feels like a small bowling ball now.

So what did I get up to in my projected-productive week of hibernation? Well...I started making the monster amount of pocket folds needed for our invitations, we finally got our act together for our tax (exciting I know, but it was on the list so a tick is a tick), we went and looked at wedding rings at the jewellers (highway robbery), I stuck 80 labels on 80 bottles for a little wedding project I have up my sleeve, I tidied up my sewing room and put some excess fabric on Craftumi for sale, had a visit to the local hospital emergency room with Mr M care of a nasty piece of metal in his eye (he's fine now), asked my Nan to make her famous rum balls for our dessert buffet, finally found some shoes for my Golden Delights and finally got the fabric needed for my bridesmaids and my wedding dress.

Oh - and I got this bad boy (girl?) in the post...

Glorious, no? I am well smitten. But I just have to figure out how to get it to 'talk' to my big boy Mac and get all my photos on both computers. Epic Gen Y failure.

Do I feel more organised? A little bit. Have I ticked off some things from my mammoth to-do list? A few. Am I still feeling 'whelmed'? Yes. But that's ok. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

How has your week been? Are you feeling organised and ready for a Spring clean? I don't know about organised, but I sure feel a de-clutter coming on!

Image by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

the curtains that weren't...

I started writing this post and realised this whole curtain saga was reeeeally lengthy. So, to cut a long story short here's part one, and I'll be back next week with part two!

The dining room is basically a big bare box with a table plonked in the middle of it. As described in the farmhouse floor plan it was a later addition to the original house, it used to be the back veranda but was walled in to create this sunroom type arrangement (seeing as though we have this big dining table we use it as a dining room, although our kitchen is big enough to fit a table and chairs in there for dining). The room has massive non-standard sized windows, which I was worried would cost a fortune to have curtains custom made for, mainly because I wanted them to hang really wide to make the whole wall seem like a window. Anyway, here's what I'm working with...

I wanted the curtains to be heavy backed also to keep the heat in, which would mean they would weigh a bit, which would mean I'd need some serious hardware to hold them up and the dining room extension is made out of crummy fibro sheeting type stuff. Boo. I wanted linen-like fabric to tie in with the lounge room (has white curtains with wheat coloured couches). The seagrass rug in the dining room is also a new addition, from Freedom. Basically the curtain saga went like this...

• Want loads of fabric to possibly make curtains. 
• Bought thermal curtain fabric backing at Spotlight for a small fortune in hope of finding perfect curtain fabric sometime in near future.
• Thought these looked pretty good and loved the linen look fabric in the light beige colour, hate tab top curtains though, were miles too long (could easily hem) and possibly not wide enough. Might have to forgo extra wide curtain look.
• Perhaps I could cut off the tabs, fold over the fabric, sew on some curtain tape from Spotlight and use their curtain tracks to create custom Ikea-hacked curtains? Yes yes. Excellent plan! Am genius.
• Sent Mum to Ikea to purchase curtains on next Melbourne trip.
• Got curtains. Realised that brackets that come with them will not be strong enough to hold hefty weight once I sewed on (expensive) backing fabric I had previously purchased. 
• Decide that the look of exposed curtain tracks is not the go anyway (one's in lounge and bedroom have pelmets hiding this). Perhaps a nice classy curtain rod would be the go? Yes. 
• Decide these are lovely in white. Then realise they aren't long enough for our widey-wide windows. Doh. 
• Discover that Ikea has this nifty jigger. Interesting prospect. Send Mum again on Ikea mission. None of the right curtain rod lengths in stock. Mum goes back and forth to Ikea/Melbourne over space of five weeks until they get the right combination in stock. Yes, she is awesome. 
• Finally get curtain rods and curtains together for a meeting. Decide I will have to get over my tab top phobia. At this point I am beyond caring. 
• Also decide that the backing might make us roast even more in our cosy lounge room. Scrap the backing idea. Can't find receipt to return expensive backing fabric. Consider selling it on ebay. Weighs a ton. Bugger it.
• Right, we're going to put the brackets up. But into this crummy fibro sheeting stuff not sure if it's going to fall apart/crumble so need to get fancy butterfly screws....(and chaos ensues on the dining room table as you can see).

Stay tuned for round 2 of Emma vs. Curtains...

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

store feature: the vintage shed of tyabb

Down a quiet country road down by the Mornington peninsula sits a shed. Not just any shed though. Oh no, this shed is full to the rafters with stuff. Big stuff, small stuff, old stuff, new stuff. Stuff which may seem useless to one person and beyond value to the next. The Vintage Shed at Tyabb is like any other vintage or antique shop you've ever been fond of...only on steroids. The only thing I can liken it to is the Camberwell market, except without the 5am alarm and wrestling an MLC schoolgirl for a pair of vintage boots.

Here is what you are greeted with at The Shed's entrance...

I know. They sure know a way to a girls heart. Wine barrel + industrial chair + wicker trunk + amazing vintage lights + other bits and bobs = Emma having minor heart failure before even entering. But I did recover and ended up having the longest snoop around in history in there. Let's explore...

First up I came across these old industrial school chairs and fell in love. I could see them in a kids room or play room at a craft table. There were loads of enamelware, which I love as I am a little obsessed with vintage Australiana of the 1930's and 40's. I find there is lots of French/American/British farmhouse style but Australian farmhouse is definitely a style of it's own - enamelware like these pots and jugs fit perfectly.

The Vintage Shed is basically run as a giant co-op, with people holding different stalls (about 3 x 4 metres) and I am assuming giving a commission to sell their goods there. This enables The Shed to take on a truly eclectic feel, with each vendor decorating, arranging and showcasing their wares uniquely. Seriously, it's like stepping into a visual merchandising graduation exhibition, eye candy galore!

What really surprised me was how much things change and are constantly evolving. I was only at The Vintage Shed a few weeks ago with Mr M and already there seemed to be a huge turnover in stock. Items for sale are very 'on trend' also, like this botanical print, wooden spools and rulers = academia industrial. The little red lift-top desk would be perfect for a little person to sit and colour at, storing their pencils and crayons inside. Love the colour.

This beauty immediately caught our eye on our previous visit - a big farmhouse style table in oak. It was still sitting waiting patiently...for it's new owners. Yep, sold. Bummer. The little white paint chippy cupboard to the right there also took my fancy as a shabby bedside table...

There were loads of old rustic wooden ladders, industrial numbers and letters from old petrol stations and I spotted this wardrobe which reminded me of mine (you can see that makeover here). I'm also lusting after a big white and blue enamel bread bin. Yes please.

Everyone needs some ruby slippers right? Apparently my mum had one of those humungus Emmaljunga style prams for my brother in the 70's. Can you imagine lugging it around in your car and through shopping centres these days?!

You can pretty much find anything and everything your little vintage-obsessed heart desires at The Vintage Shed. I could seriously furnish my whole house from there, but I was very refrained and only bought wedding related items. I ended up walking away with four vintage chairs (one of these one's below we found in the shed when we moved to Brindabella). I wonder what I'll do with them - I feel a wedding project a'brewing!

The Vintage Shed is at 93 Mornington-Tyabb Road, Tyabb and is open Thursday to Sunday from 10am-5pm.


Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

lamp make-over via spray paint

Remember when I showed you my lamp I scored at the op shop? Sure you remember, here it is. Well, after sitting on our hall table for the longest time in all its forest green glory (I hope you can 'hear' sarcasm in my typing), I decided enough was enough. This little green monster needed some help.

Having never painted anything of the ceramic variety I was a bit lost. According to the most helpful lady at Bunnings I needed to just clean down the lamp, give it a light sand, a wipe with a cloth to get all the dust off and two coats of different types of paint - Dulux Quickdry Undercoat and Dulux Quickdry Vivid White to give it the gloss finish I was after.  There was a cheaper generic brand available but I thought I'd better go with the quality choice. This after all was going to be one luxe lamp. I armed myself with some trusty blue painter's tape also to tape off the top fitting I didn't want to get paint in. 

So on the lawn I went with my cardboard box to contain the spray, my lamp, my sandpaper, my two spray paint cans and my old rag (formally known as Mr M's farmer work jeans). After a quick sand with fine sandpaper and a wipe down a'spraying I did go. Like Sherry says: 'If you are a'sprayin', your arm is a'swayin'!' Amen sister, keep it moving.

I knew the undercoat primer wasn't going to be glossy like how I wanted, and yet I still panicked and thought 'Oh my goodness what have I done, this is going to be a horrible mess with this dull hideous paint job!' I quickly reassured myself (y'know in my head, talking to myself) that this lamp as it was screamed ugly so I really had nothing to lose. Oh and I also quickly realised the lamp needed to stand on top of the box rather than in it in order for me to spray the bottom of the lamp. Genius.

I let the undercoat primer dry for a few hours, in the midst of which some misty rain descended upon Brindabella and I was madly running about with a half painted lamp to get it under the back porch. Crisis averted. Once dry, and thanks to a break in the weather, I went for the top spray coat of the gloss white.

And oo la la! Gloss white lamp at your service. Enter me doing a happy dance with Tessa on the lawn. Ooooh yeah. Straight from the pages of Belle I told Mr M. His reply? 'Belle who?'

One lampshade from Freedom later in a rustic linen later and hey presto, instant hallway appeal teamed with my vintage typewriter, a milk bottle, a peony and our hall table which we picked up at a local market shortly after moving into the ramshackle farmhouse. It's made from 100+ year old recycled floorboards and it has become quite the favourite around here. Now all my favourites can hang out together in the hall. 

Any DIY projects going on over at your place? Lamp make-over stories? I love a good rags to riches tale. 


Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

made for walkin'

I have been on the Etsy-prowl for awhile now for some vintage cowboy boots. Boots I can wear in winter over jeans and tights, or with high waisted full skirts in summer. The trick was though to find a pair which had that perfect worn-in, beautiful colouring of leather. And I think I have found just that.

Is it just me or does the scene from the first ever episode of Friends pop into your head whenever you talk about boots? Rachel walks out on her Mr Potato Head marriage to Barry, telling her Daddy in the process that she 'maybe' doesn't need his money...then proceeds to buy a smoking pair of boots on Daddy's credit card.

"They're my new, 'I don't need a job, I don't need my parents, I've got great boots' boots!" 

Just me? Ok.

Tessa seemed to think I was wanting her to perform for me (or I had food in them-there-pockets) so promptly plonked herself in front of me...

...which caused the off-leash workers Lily and Pippa to come and investigate also...

So for the safety of my camera sitting precariously on the tripod and tails a'wagging violently, I called the shoot a wrap. The ramshackle farmhouse will hopefully be getting a lick of paint this winter so I'm trying to utilise its flaking appearance whilst I can for some rustic images!

I'm fairly besotted with my boots and am toe tapping my way to the nearest ho-down or hitchin' rail...I think this is going to be a beautiful and long-lasting relationship with many adventures for my boots and I.

Have you got a favourite vintage item in your wardrobe?


Boots from MoMoDeluxe
Skirt from Ananya 
Belt from Supre
Shirt from Target


Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella

hanging home

Our kitchen is less than beautiful. You have seen glimpses of it here (and here as well) but the general gist is that it is full of mission brown cupboards, horrible spackle-textured benchtops and cabinetry that screams 1987. But it's very functional. Honestly, I wouldn't change anything about the layout or how the kitchen actually works, it is all just cosmetic things that I would tweek. Here is the farmhouse kitchen in all it's cluttered glory, just a regular Sunday afternoon here at Brindabella...

As you can see I really cleaned up for these photos, a totally 'styled' shoot *cough cough* I'm just keeping things realistic, right? Well, as you can see the farmhouse kitchen does indeed sport some lovely dark, dark cabinetry (see our pantry cupboard on the left). I'd love to take a sledgehammer to this cupboard and put in a beautiful dresser to house all my 'display worthy' ceramic kitchen items. You can probably tell by the original existing chimney breast that once upon a time there was probably an old combustion Aga in the space which now houses the stove, the oven and the weird hidey-hole above the oven which generally just collects junk. You can also probably tell we have lovely high ceilings and crown moulding. Bonus. Like I said, the bare bones are there, it's all just cosmetic. The wallspace (or chimneyspace?) above the stove and oven was crying out for me to decorate it. After some consideration about a collection of little kitchen prints like these I finally found the perfect solution...

Which brings me to the lovely stack of mystery items sitting over near the sink. On a recent jaunt to Melbourne I came across some seriously dirt cheap metal letters (at Supply and Demand on High St in Armadale in case you were wondering). Originally they were $39 each, reduced to $29 each and then on sale for 50% off. At $15 per letter I couldn't not buy them, and concluded that 'HOME' was the most appropriate word to be spelt out across the room which is at the heart of our home. And all for $60 instead of the original price which would've set me back $160, a hundred bucks in my pocket has me doing a happy dance (yes I'm a cheap skate). So 'home' they came with me (haha) and after a mini-meltdown by me that they weren't going to fit across the chimney breast as I had envisaged, I spaced them out on the floor to realise they would in fact fit, just a bit squishier than I originally intended. Phew.

Oh yeah and don't even mention the bright red and yellow extension lead running across our kitchen to the bedrooms. As I type we are missing half the power to the house so have been running leads everywhere so I can dry my hair in the bathroom and have a bedside light. Glamorous.

We decided that we would put up the H and the E first, butted up flush against the very edge of the chimney breast corner. The letters are made from metal but are actually hollow, with holes for picture hooks in the back. At first I thought I could just use a heap of 3M velcro removable strips as a less than permanent solution, but as you can see that was fairly impossible as there is no real flat surface on the back of the letters.

So a-picture-hooking we would go. Mr M got to work on his ladder, carefully measuring and marking with a pencil on the wall where the picture hooks had to be hammered, whilst I madly flailed by arms, paced and barked instructed from the sidelines.

With the H up we went for the E, but turns out the letters are not all uniform shape (the E being 2cm higher than the H) so we had a bit of fiddling about with hammering in a few different holes. Once the H and the E were up we measured exactly half way between them, but the O and the M are obviously a lot different widths (the M wider by about 15cms). After a quick arithmetic lesson we sorted out where the holes needed to be hammered and hoped for the best...

After a lot of standing back, head tilting and a few adjustments we think we got it fairly right. No letter obviously standing out as too high, too low, too close, too wonky? Personally I love it, it has given the farmhouse kitchen the little aesthetic lift that it needed, until we do something a bit more drastic like new cupboards and benchtops.

And after all that hard ladder holding and passing of picture hooks by me, and hammering and measuring by Mr M, we did do a happy dance around the kitchen like fools singing this...

Yes we are idiots. Other than that it was a totally uneventful and lazy weekend, which was more than lovely. Sounds like some others were up to the same...head over to Lou's place to check it out.

Photos by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella 

wordless wednesday: on the commemorative tea towel band wagon (and will not be shamed!)

Playing along with Faith, Hope & a whole lotta Love.

Awesome tea towel by Taylors Type. 

nesting + baby birds

I am a notorious gift giver. You name an occasion and I will give you a gift to celebrate it! Mr M thinks this is bizarre and unneccessary, setting a precedence of sorts, but I just love to give people things that might make them smile wider. Christmas morning is such fun to see my loved ones open what I especially chose for them.

So when my eldest sister announced she was expecting her third bambino I hot footed it to Etsy (where else?) to snag a baby bird or nest related gift to commemorate the announcement. She already has two precious little girls who are referred to by her and her husband as their 'chickadees'. As she seems to be filling her nest I thought this print by Tracey Lizotte fitted the bill nicely. I had it framed with a wide white mat and in a birch colour to match the tones of the nest. I wrote a message on the backing board and sent it off yesterday to the expectant parents, hopefully to hang in their home as a sort of  family portrait.

Do you buy gifts for every occasion - big or small? I love selecting the perfect gift to suit the intended recipient, with love and meaning behind it.

Image by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella.

local crafty knick knacks

I don't mean to bang on about the joys of living near some major towns now that we have moved home to Gippsland, but seriously - when we lived at Ythanbrae the hour and a half round trip just to get to the nearest crummy town with an equally crummy Target (Target Country no less, the horror), was doing my head in for just general supplies. Let alone craft supplies.

Now whenever I go to nearby Warragul (our nearest 'big' town) I stop in almost every time at Yarragon, a smaller town on the way. You see, Yarragon has the sweetest little patchwork, quilting, fabric and craft store. It's down a little laneway and is full to the brim with oh so many fat quarters, lace trims, cute buttons and delicious craft books just begging for me to take them home. I always go in there 'just for a look' and come out with an armload of things. Not for any specific purpose or project. Just some pretty things that caught my eye, and just because I can. How indulgent is that?!

My most recent loot included some fat quarters of pretty girly fabric I am thinking of making into a cot quilt for some impending babies in my circles (and hope like hell someone has a girl?!) I also scored some vintage wooden buttons, some resin roses and swallows to make into bobby pins and a lovely Scandinavian book featuring lots of home projects and embroidery. Hence the pretty shades of embroidery thread. I don't even embroider! That's how 'retail blind' I was. 

 

I'm looking forward to sitting down in front of the fire to attempt some embroidery and cross-stitch this week. I've also vowed to really get knitting this winter (same as last winter, and the winter before...), so we'll see how that goes. Perseverance is not my strong suit.

Now just to sort out the mess of my sewing room and I will have somewhere to put all of this...bringing more in is definitely not helping to clear the clutter! 

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella.


P.S. As much as I like the 'civilisation' here I do miss the quiet of living in the middle of a 1200 acre property with a five kilometre long driveway. You win some, you lose some I guess.

the things you find: oppy adventures

My lovely (almost) sister-in-law is an op shop wonder woman. Her kids are always impeccably dressed and suitably entertained with all manner of goodies from the local op shops - vintage toys, hand knitted cardigans and hardly worn shoes abound at their house. Since moving back home to Gippsland (and therefore being a bit closer to a lot more towns to shop in) I have been popping in to the local St Vinnies, Salvos or church op shop just to see what is on offer...and I have been pleasantly surprised. Behold...

Recently I have picked up some chairs in the exact spindle-back shape which I love (ala Tina's country kitchen). It came with a table which I didn't want, just the chairs so the lovely op shop man sold me four chairs for $30 and I happily loaded them into my chair pleased as punch. Two are painted white and two are stained a fairly unappealling orangey-wood colour, hoping to sand them all back and re-paint white.

I also snared three little glass bottles for $3, a gold photo frame for $1.50 and a stack of clothbound books for $3 each. I am slowly but surely growing my collection of vintage books, to start with we used them in our engagement photos, and then I thought I'd like them as table centrepieces for our wedding but I am still undecided about that. I have found some great ones for 50 cents a book - yay! These ones at $3 per book are definitely the upper limit of the book budget. No matter what I use them for they look pretty sitting in our built-in bookshelf in the loungeroom or stacked on a chair somewhere in a corner of the farmhouse.

And the lampbase, oh the lampbase! When I came across the lampbase I may have let out an audible shriek, and no the emerald green colour was not the reason. It is the exact 'ginger jar' shape that I had been swooning over, like one from White Port which appears to no longer be stocked. Plans are afoot for a little spray paint and new shade makeover for old emerald green lampy.

Tessa seems excited about it all too, out for her morning galavant about in the garden. Off the garden naughty puppy!

What about you? Are you an avid op shop scourer? Found anything interesting lately?

Images by Emma Durkin for Cinderella at Brindabella.

a hunting we will go: camberwell market and beyond

Hello! Well I am well and truly tuckered out from my trip to the big smoke this past weekend. I basically ran around like a headless chook as per usual trying to get all my errands done, things purchased, lists ticked off whilst I am within cooee of an Ikea, Freedom, Target, any sort of big chain store really. 

Unfortunately I didn't make it to Finders Keepers, I quite simply ran flat out of time. I did however go to Portobello Bride's wedding market which was amazing. Seriously, amazing. It was like I had stepped into what I have envisaged for our wedding day. I didn't take any snaps as I was fully focused on absorbing all the yumminess from not behind a camera, but I am hoping there will be some photos up soon on the Portobello Bride blog.

I also got to sift through lots of great stalls at the Camberwell market, one which held this little gem. A perfectly delightful and cute little box camera. I am so in love with it, I have it sitting on our bookshelves in the loungeroom and just like to pick it up and hold it, it fits so nicely in your hands. What a brilliant prop! Plus the (somewhat shady) stallholder assured me that with a bit of oil it would still work, I'd love to try. There were heaps of other nice things at the market, some frames, books, great vintage toys as well as some fairly amazing suitcases and typewriters. I quite possibly had the best coffee I've ever had also at Carpark Cafe in Camberwell, there I said it. That's a big call! 

I got heaps of other things whilst I was in Melbourne too, mainly for the ramshackle farmhouse and a few wedding related things. Some burlap fabric, rough twine, lace trim, a new quilting ruler, storage boxes for fabric, two rugs for the lounge and dining room, curtains for the dining room, big metal letters for the kitchen, this jug which I've been meaning to pick up at Ikea forever, a rubbish bin for my sewing room (glamorous aren't I?!) and it seems a million other things all crammed into my car. Most definitely am broke, but most definitely am inspired and ready to get some serious projects underway! Stay tuned for updates about all of those products mentioned...

Hope your weekend was sunny and bright :) 

bottles + jars

Jars + bottles galore! Oh and I'm loving having window sills in our new house for photography!

Just incase you were wondering what 140 jars and 80 bottles looked like...here they are in all their glorious clean glass glory! Top of my hairbrained-bride-ideas was what we were going to give as a favour to our guests, given that our whole wedding will be based around the farm, our rural location and lifestyle with a sense of home and harvest I thought it only fitting we give away some sort of food product. Mr M's lovely mum makes the best (I'm not kidding, it is the best) raspberry jam, and I really want to involve my future in-laws in the planning of our wedding as I think they are so often excluded and it's all about the bride. 

Jam jar favour inspiration, with burlap and twine wrapped lids

So decision made that I want to give jam, but after initially putting out a call to all my sisters/brothers/sisters-in-law to start collected 250ml IXL jars I realised that we kind of need to start making this jam now - if not yesterday! Berries will most likely not be ready by our wedding date, plus I didn't want a mad rush doing things leading up to the wedding. Mr M's mum assured me I could most definitely make the jam and keep until December. Right. So, upon calculation of one jam jar per guest we figured out we needed....THIRTY KILOGRAMS OF BERRIES!! Holy mackerel. With current berry prices pushing $10-$12/kilo I was starting to think this was just not a possibility within the realms of my budget. Sad bridezilla. 

Signature drinks inspiration, I'm thinking some sort of champagne/guava cocktail?

Enter super-Dad. You see my dad works in mysterious ways, ask no secrets, tell no lies kind of man. So after hearing me sulking in the office at work one day about my berry of a problem he put his thinking cap on. Two days later 30 kilograms exactly of delicious blueberries arrive at my office. Yup. Super-dad. Working in the produce industry has finally paid off! They came 'off the back' of a truck from a local berry farm one of our truck drivers frequents, we gave them potatoes, he gave us blueberries which he couldn't sell in the fresh market, but are fine for jammin'! After several phone calls to glass wholesalers and putting on a bit of a sob story so I didn't have to buy an actual truckload of jars I got 140 jars of about 150ml capacity. Perfection. Oh and just because I had to make it up to a certain amount I also got some little bottles which we are going to use in our pre-dinner cocktail hours with a 'signature Matt+Emma drink' (what that drink is yet I don't know...) Think red and white striped straws, custom sticker labels, little drink flags, roaming canapes, wine barrel bar tables, hay bales and a brick firepit and you get the idea.

So stay tuned for one hell of a batch of blueberry jam!!

P.S. If you are looking for jars or bottles, I got mine from Cospak who were super helpful and easy to deal with, only the don't post to regional areas and are only open from 9am-3pm so my sister couldn't pick them up as she works then, Mr M's brother doesn't have a car and Mr M's best mate was in Sydney for work!! So politely asked said best mate's girlfriend who was the champion of all champions and went and got them for me on Friday. Thanks Tracey!!!

a very brindabella christmas

To say that I was excited to finally have a Christmas tree in our home was an understatement. If you can remember in previous years I have had to make do with a few spraypainted gumtree branches in a vase for a Christmas tree of sorts, mainly due to a severe lack of space in the cottage where we used to live. But this year? Oh no this year we live in a full-blown, proper, adult size house!

I wanted our Christmas decorations to be homely and feel like they suited us, so burlap was definitely on the cards (come on, we're potato farmers!) as well as lots of natural linens to go with our new curtains and couches in the lounge, kraft paper and bakers twine for the gift wrapping and a few pops of traditional red.

The stockings are made from burlap with a little linen tag which reads 'love' and are stamped in red with our initials: Emma, Matt and of course Tessa! The bunting banner is made from natural and red linen with a cream crocheted edge and reads 'peace'. I re-purposed our traditional wreath (which you may remember from last years Christmas at the cottage) to hang above our highly attractive old oil heater which I affectionately call 'The Vulcan'. This blast from the past heater is hopefully going to be ripped out and we want to re-instate an open fire if possible. We will have to get the chimney checked, but fingers crossed by next Christmas we will have a much prettier scene once we come up with a solution for those hideous bricks and tiles in front.

Our Christmas tree I decided to put in the corner of the dining room, so we can see it from the couch at night with the twinkling lights on. I was a bit worried that it might dry out and die quickly from being in this room with the giant windows but with the crazy wintery weather we've been having this has hardly been a problem!

The tree itself we bought off the local soccer club which sell them as a fundraiser each year. Can't wait to get some new curtains for this room and give it a lick of paint!

The decorations were all mostly Etsy sourced - natural twine and red crochet stars which I would have loved to make myself (note to self: learn to crochet in 2011), I am in love with the burlap, white and linen ragged balls and there are also some clay tags in there somewhere reading 'ho ho ho' and 'sleigh bells'. The white baubles I bought locally and the very crooked angel is an Etsy find, which I love as it is made out of a corn husk. Clever and agricultural! Perfect for us. Now if only it would sit straight on the tree...



My three French hens were also vintage Etsy finds (and are actually quails but hey), after Christmas they are going to either stay on the mantle or fly away over to the built-in bookshelf on the opposite lounge room wall. I painted the backing board of a wooden picture frame that we already had with chalkboard paint, in the process covering my engagement ring with black goo! Add some candles, some whtie peonies in one of Mr M's Dad's old milk bottles and there is our very first Christmas here at Brindabella.

Merry Christmas!