Our Southern State is seriously underrated!

We went for a little trip last month. Just a week.

South Australia really has some stunning scenery. We hit the Fleurieu Peninsula, Barossa Valley, Flinders Ranges and topped it off Cage diving with Great White sharks in Port Lincoln. Quite the whirlwind.

I thought I’d share some nice spots & shots if you choose to do a little road trip of your own.

We stayed at Collingrove Homestead in Angaston (which is somewhere around the Barossa Valley.)

Riddled with history. No ghosts (I was hoping for clanging keys and the like). The original owner came over from England back in the 1800’s and built the house in the English style to make his wife feel at as home as possible. Because of the tremendous contribution the owners and land provided to the are, the government have ensured that it’s been brought back to its original state after a few years of abandonment.

This room had a prince stay in it back in the day.

This family ended up owning 14 million acres of land which has since been sold off over the years.  It’s no wonder they needed their own petrol pump.

I just loved it everywhere I looked.

We caught a cab to ‘Appellation’ for dinner at The Louise. It’s renowned for its exceptional food. And it was superb. SU-PERB I tell you! We did the chef’s tasting menu. It was the first time A had tasted Lamb’s Tongue. I’ve never seen it on a menu before but growing up with my father's love of it, we often had it on sandwiches for lunch. The whole meal was the best I’ve had in a very long time and it gave us a great opportunity to taste test some of SA's great wines.

Driving from the Barossa to the Flinders Ranges is great. The landscape changes from rich greens into reds, purples and pinks. Kangaroos and emu’s dart about. It was baby lamb season. They are the cutest things snuggled into the grass – so small that all you could see was the tips of their heads. If you have children and plan to go, do it this time of year.

Those little lambs are a sight to see.

The old stone homes are everywhere and I didn’t tire of admiring them, or the crazy amount of cool old clapped out cars.

We had big intentions of doing the walk to Wilpena Pound but time did not permit. Next visit. We stayed in one of Rawnsley Park Stations Eco Villas which has glorious views over the ranges. On the other side of these ranges pictured is Wilpena Pound.

Wine and cheese was provided in our room to enjoy the sunset – which we happily did. The roof above the bed opens to clear glass so you can ‘sleep under the stars’.

This was the way out from Wilpena on the way down to Port Lincoln. Wilpena Pound in the background there. 'A' knows how to use the landscape thing on the camera. Fancy.

Shark diving was tops. They are enormously enormous. So much fun. They drop the bate right in front of the cage so you see the sharks mouth open, eyes roll back and their jaw protrude onto the bate.  It’s not at all scary but very invigorating – we felt 200% safe in the cage. There were about 5 sharkes cruising around when we were down. Very cool. Most definitely worth the drive to Port Lincoln.

The cage is pretty big and so is that gap. A smaller shark swam up slowly between myself and the guy next to me and nudged the cage just below the gap. If i were a shark - i would've aimed better. Thank goodness he wasn't that smart because i'm sure his head would've fit through it. The largest shark of the day was a monster at 5.5m long.

We enjoyed Oysters at Coffin Bay on the last day of the season at Oyterbeds Restaurant. Coffin Bay, 30mins out of Lincoln is very quaint and have super cool old beach shacks right on the water's edge.

We pub hopped in Adelaide down lane ways into the warmth of Art Deco hotels and that was the trip done and dusted.

There's more to SA than the Barossa.

Black Bathrooms

I like black. Since we renovated upstairs and I painted the bathroom cupboard black, I had visions of the downstairs bathroom being painted black - the visions are still there.

I googled images this morning in an effort to convince 'A' that a black bathroom is in fact for everyone ..... do you think this cuts the mustard? Because this is kind of how I want it all to roll out .... colour wise grey and black and stone.

Not every inch of the place'll be black. Just the main wall and shower unit.

A deep grey wall and black vanity & mirror is another option which I really like too.

Will I have the guts to do this or will I just fall back on grey and white? 
I know what A will say.

"Would you buy a house with a black bathroom.....?"

Building is Commencing - Stable door find.

Our builder commences in 2 weeks to build in underneath the house.

With the tweaking of plans a weekly occurance (by retentive me) we're good to go. It's hard to change bathroom layouts when the slab and plumbing have already been put in.

5 years brings new/better/more affordable and more convenient ideas. Let's hope anyway.

I've had a win this week. I found the external laundry door.

This is it.

It's an old dutch door (stable door). $160 Demo yard. Woo! This type of bargain brings me so much joy. Particulary after signing off on the windows and doors for the rest of the house. Wooden framed = exy.

I was having one quoted to be made and to have something this sturdy, with this kind of glass and this detail - it'd be over $1000 and that's money i'f prefer to use for better tiles in the bathroom. On the back side of the bottom door, it has nicer detailing for inside. I'm most pleased.

I'm intending on using this entrance for any garden dirty feet work - a small version mud room, so in order to keep the dog out and still capture a breeze it's a great option for us.

A good mix

Look at this picture from back in 1949.

Two of my loves. Rattan Cane furniture and Seagrass (Honan) matting all together in one place. 

My first ever post on this blog was about honan matting which you can revisit here. I love the smell of it.

This is Ralph Lauren's home.

Note the height of those ceilings in the first picture. Beautiful.

Seagrass matting and cane|bamboo|rattan is a very good mix.

old school desk

I was going through a USB to make space for interesting things like tax. Riveting stuff. I came across these pic's of our old school desk which I had in the sunroom for a short while. It’s now under the television holding the dvd player and whatever that thing’s called that allows me to watch chanel GEM. A friend had taken this shots.

You could sit at the desk and see out onto the front balcony and catch the bay breezes.

'A' found this desk dumped on the street outside our local state school many years ago. Nice little bit of local history.

The chair is one of my favourite pieces. It desperately needs to be recovered, but I’m not in a rush because I’d recover it in the same neutral linen fabric anyway.

That’s all I have to say. Not terribly interesting really, other than a photo wall makes a lovely backdrop for a desk…

'The Bob' - a brief history

I’ve been threatening, promising, vocalising, whatever you’d like to call it, to cut my hair into a bob for about 5 years.

It was going to happen when I was 30. It didn’t. And then this year, I did the canvas with my girlfriends on styles and it was decided that yes – it would happen this month. It hasn’t.

I find myself googling ‘the bob’  and ‘finger waves’ often (I loved Tilly Devine’s on last year’s Underbelly show).  My subconscious is still living in the 1920’s. Finger waves are so gorgeous don’t you think? Insert the lovely Coco Chanel.

And Tilly -  I doubt she's happy with this photo of herself. Hair looks great though.

I came across this website that talks about when ‘the bob’came into trend. So interesting – have a read and if you can’t be bothererd this is it in a nutshell:

Bob’s came into vogue in the 1920’s (Coco Chanel had a bit to do with it catching on)

Hairdressers of the time were only familiar with curling layers of long hair into elegant upstyles – cutting it off wasn’t their forte. So women had to visit barbers to get the chop. This annoyed the men no end forcing them to line up behind the women

Men divorced women over the bob! Honestly. What a stupid reason, particularly if your bob looked like this one.

In New York City 2000 heads per day were being ‘bobbed’ in the early 1920’s. 2000!

There was outrage in 1925 when the Shingle Bob was introduced (worn by the flapper gals, it’s a concave super short tapered cut shown in the bottom of this advert below) because parents claimed they couldn’t tell their offspring from boy to girl from the back.

Queen Mary was NOT a fan. So she requested that women conceal their cut with hair additions at court functions. A lot of women saved their cut locks in order to add them back on for particular social engagements.

Queen Mary looks like she has a bob in this picture i think...

Very interesting indeed. There’s a bob fan page I stumbled across would you believe? Oh, and the bob is the reason the bobby pin was invented. Ha-ha. There you have it. I often wondered that myself.

Admire some modern bobs of today if you're toying with this very idea yourself.

 

(p.s. katie's bob is the style 'we' (the girls) decided on for moi... )

A change is good as a holiday … or say they say.

Crystal Head Vodka

On Wednesday night a package wrapped in newspaper sat on the kitchen bench with a card and bunch of flowers next to it. It was from B – our 5-month old staffy to say thank you. Isn’t he thoughtful?

B had an accident out at my brothers property – nothing electric fence, snake, cow or cattle dog related. He jumped on a table and fell off again and fractured his knee. Orthopedic surgery (with castration thrown in) and an emotional 2 weeks later, he’s healing – but is beginning to get a bit crazy from his confinement. I’d been flying solo for the ordeal and the first week. So when B asked A to buy me a present, I guess A thought it was a nice gesture, plus we manage B's finances.

This is what was underneath the newspaper.

A bottle of Crystal Head Vodka. Yay.

I’d hoped to pick some up when in the States and then forget when leaving NY (and my bags were bursting at the seams). Now Australia stock it! Dan Ackroyd (who you gonna call... Ghostbusters..) is the master mind behind it. Isn’t the bottle fab?

 

I have this mixed media art work I did back in school which I threw in  an el cheapo frame last year when I decided orange was needed in the house – it’s collecting dust somewhere in the office now. This pic's a bit weird, i had to crop it but you get the jist of it.

Once the vodka's been consumed, I might reframe and throw a water plant in the skull and unite them whilst listening to Death Metal.

Great gift idea for the vodka lover. The bottle is, quite simply, a cracker.

Prawn Cocktails and an Art Deco Lounge

Easter reminds me of prawn cocktails on Good Friday. Yum!

Recipe courtesy of Exclusively Food

No Easter Eggs for me this year. I've treated myself to an Art Deco Cane Lounge instead.

She needs a clean, coat and new cushion covers. I've located a light olive green fabric from Fab Outdoor Fabrics but can't commit just yet. Need to be sure on this one.

These are the two options with black or same colour piping. We have alot of palm trees surrounding this verandah so I want it to disappear amongst them.

Now you know what i'll be thinking about over Easter.

Have fun and Stay Safe!x

What $17.5million looks like

I still have a major crush on Palm Springs and trawl Real Estate a little too often. It's a bit of a trip when you do a search result on a real estate website and it gives you the option to go up to $25,000,000. Which of course I did so I could see what I will never, ever have.

$17,500,000 will buy you this:

 

 It has 7 different quites and houses plus multiple outdoor living areas, rock spas, hiking trails. It even has a rock house!

 

Here's the link - there's a load more pic's to see ... It''s on 73acres. I did think $17.5m would look different actually. I'm sure it's far more spectacular than the photos portray though. I love the use of greens with the stone

I think I lived in Palm Springs in a past life - I'm too besotted with it to not have.