Tales From the Box

I have a dirty little secret. I wish I could quilt. Yes, you heard right. Quilt.

Anyone who knows me is probably laughing right now. For a few reasons. Firstly, I’m not crafty or even particularly creative. All of my creative ideas I pretty much steal from other sources and maybe tweak a little bit. Secondly, I tend to get obsessively enthusiastic about a new project or hobby, then get bored with it really quickly and drop it like a hot potato.

So when I set up the sewing machine several months ago, I was totally realistic with myself. I assumed I would have a bit of fun for a month or so, then never go back to it again. I made a few drawstring bags and some toys for the Widg, and I quite enjoyed it. Then we were having some visitors throughout December and January so I packed the sewing machine away to make the Box a bit more child-friendly. It was at this point that I thought to myself “I’ll probably never set it up again”.

But I actually found myself itching to get back into it. I’ve been trawling blogs looking for projects to sew and getting all excited about it.

I won’t give away my ideas just yet (I’d be terribly embarrassed if I shared the goss now, only to chicken out and not do it). But I will show you my first attempt for 2011: a mug rug!

A what? (I hear you ask). A mug rug. Essentially a coaster, but a bit bigger. For holding a cup of hot something and a couple of biscuits.

These things are all over the net – just google “mug rug” and you’ll see them everywhere.

(from a cuppa and a catch up)

(from pin. sew. press.)

They’re really just a mini quilt, which is why I love them. I get to make lots of little quilts, which satisfy my urge to make something, but they’re not a huge project (like a real, full-size quilt) that I would quickly get bored with and lose interest.

I’m pretty happy with my first attempts (I made 3 actually), although I recognise that there is a lot of room for improvement. I hope to make many more, and get better with each one.

Not sure why, but I have a thing for armchairs.

(I can’t remember where I got this image from, so if it’s yours, or you know where it comes from, please let me know and I will happily credit the source).

(from Apartment Therapy)

(from Apartment Therapy)

I don’t quite understand this weird obsession myself, but there it is. I particularly like Mid-century/scandi armchairs. But then who doesn’t?

(from Apartment Therapy)

I don’t have a lot of random extra space at the Box to add more armchairs, but one day I hope to have a larger house with plenty of opportunity for gratuitous armchair placement.

(from Danbury Upholsterers)

(from St Leger & Viney)

(from Ikea)

I love this Ikea Stockholm one (above). It’s way too pricey for my budget (odd for Ikea, I know).

(from Orson & Blake)

I have this one (below) in the Widg’s room.

(from Ikea)

It’s been great for middle of the night feedings and story time.

Well, that’s all I have to blog about regarding armchairs. I just like ‘em.

We have added to the landing strip. For a while now, I have wanted to add some hooks to the front entry area of the house, so that there would be less clutter and a more organised zone for keeping my handbag, shopping bags, and those random things that seem to accumulate at the front door. You know, coats and scarves in winter, a few pairs of thongs in summer, that sort of thing.

So we bought a nice set of hooks from Bunnings and the husband hung it on the wall opposite the lack shelf.

I am quite pleased with the result. It keeps things neat and tidy without actually having to put stuff away. Always a bonus.

Seven lovely years ago today my awesome husband and I said “I do”. I asked him this morning if he was feeling itchy. Lucky for me he said no.

Thank you, my love, for 7 wonderful, fun, happy, exciting, silly, shiny years of marriage (plus the 6 years before that). I can’t wait to grow old with you.

xx

There is a serious lack of photo’s displayed at the Box. We have plenty of artwork – framed prints (mostly Brett Whiteley‘s) and the like. But we actually don’t have any photographs displayed. I mean pics of loved ones, holiday snaps, that sort of thing. Not even a wedding photo. We have the wedding album displayed on a shelf, but not actually any individual pics.

(from Desire to Inspire)

I do have plans to change this, but it’s one of those things that never really makes it to the top of the to-do list. And although I haven’t actually gotten around to choosing, framing and hanging any photo’s, you know I have already come up with a bazillion ideas on how it will look when I finally do.

(from Apartment Therapy)

I love the idea of mismatched frames – different sizes but all the same colour, or same size but different materials. I like the not-too-neat-ness of it all, that the pictures or frames aren’t all samey, but there is a common element to the collection.

(from Apartment Therapy)

I also love the idea of hanging them in a non-symmetrical manner, so that they don’t line up. Having said that, there’s something quite calming about symmetry in your home.

(from Apartment Therapy)

The way these frames (below) are hung all the way to the ceiling is pretty awesome (especially since this house has no architraves, like ours).

(from Desire to Inspire)

I also like the idea of playing with colour in the actual frames. Of course this will depend on what room I hang the frames in. Some rooms of the house lend themselves to colour more than others.

(from Desire to Inspire)

And then I have also toyed with the idea of not actually hanging the frames directly on the walls at all, but of having really narrow shelves on the walls and then sitting the frames on the shelves.

(from Desire to Inspire)

Whichever way I decide to go, we have many many photo’s to choose from: pics of friends and family, of the Widg, of places and events. At the moment they are all living happily on our computers or online. Eventually I will have to get them blown up and printed. Where’s that to-do list?

It’s only a small start, but I have begun decorating the Box for Christmas.

We always love Christmas here at the Box, but this year is going to be particularly awesome, with the little man celebrating his first.

There will be a real tree still to put up, and various other decorations, and I love every bit of it. I’m so excited I could burst!

So when we were designing the renovations to the Box, we needed somewhere clever to put a laundry. There wasn’t a lot of free space (as with everything about the house) so we had to be smart about where we put things, and how much space we could allocate to the different areas and uses of the house.

We ended up deciding on using underneath the staircase for the laundry. It’s only a small space, as you can imagine (about the size of a cupboard. Actually, it is a cupboard). But it serves its purpose. There is a washing machine, a dryer and a sink, plus a bit of room for storing cloths, detergents and the like.

As I said, it serves its purpose. However, if we had more space, I would love to have an actual room dedicated to the laundry.

(from Apartment Therapy)

I would love some space to hang things while they dry, somewhere to store clean linens and towels (we don’t have a dedicated linen closet either), somewhere to leave the ironing board set up, and even a bench top to use for folding large items like towels and bed sheets.

(from Apartment Therapy)

But for now, a cupboard is what I have. It’s okay, it works. But one day…

Yes. You read that right. A landing strip. Not the long stretch of tarmac that a plane lands on. But the area located somewhere near the entrance of your home where you dump stuff.

Most people have an accidental landing strip. The kitchen bench, the sideboard in the living room, even a chair in your bedroom. It’s that place where, when you walk in the door, you drop your keys, handbag, phone, jacket, or whatever else you discard upon entering your abode.

And then there are those people with fancy houses and fancy landing strips to match. These people usually live in magazine-land and have fairies that clean and polish their houses at night while the residents sleep.

(from Apartment Therapy)

(from Apartment Therapy)

Well, it always bothered me to have the accidental landing strip – probably because our house (and our use of it) lends itself to several of these drop zones. We would casually drop stuff wherever we happened to walk, and then this would inevitably lead to me running around picking stuff up and putting it away on a regular basis. Rather than this, I decided that one central area would serve us better (and limit my tidying-up time).

So I set about setting up the perfect landing strip. We have quite a large entrance at the Box, so I had plenty of space to work with. We simply moved a Lack shelf (previously used above the TV in the lounge room) and mounted it at about table height. Then on the shelf I just put a container for keys and small bits and pieces and a jar for random coins (they always seem to accumulate). I make sure there is empty space on the shelf for dumping the mail when we bring it in, or for putting things there that I need to take with me when I go out next.

There’s also a chair for my handbag, and there’s usually a few pairs of shoes or thongs under the chair. In winter there are often a few scarves or a jacket or two thrown on the chair as well.

I have added a few decorative items to pretty it up a bit and we hung some artworks to fill the space on the wall above the shelf.

I have plans to hang some hooks on the wall opposite the shelf – these will be used to hang shopping bags, scarves, jackets, etc. And I will probably put a basket under the hooks for chucking shoes into (just so it doesn’t look too messy).

So that’s a landing strip. A place where you “land” when you get home. (Ok, I didn’t make up the name, I’m just trying to explain the concept.)

During our trips to China in 2005 and 2006, the husband and I began collecting chopsticks from the various cities and towns we visited. Basically, they were a cheap souvenir that we could easily purchase from anywhere in the country, and they wouldn’t take up too much room in the luggage on the way home.

Our collection has turned into a bit of a novelty at home: every time we have an asian dish for dinner, there’s a little moment where we carefully select which set of chopsticks we will eat with for that meal. It’s goofy but it’s just a thing we do.

So the chopsticks are currently sitting in a container on the kitchen counter, which looks fine. But I have always hoped that I would magically come up with some other genius idea for displaying them. Well, it seems that someone has done the thinking for me.

(from The Kitchn)

I saw this brilliant idea over at The Kitchn (Apartment Therapy) and I am sure we could implement something similar at the Box. Even if we don’t screw the little eyelet things directly into the wall, maybe into a plank of wood which then gets mounted on the wall. Or onto a flat surface that you could then frame? We’ll see.