To paint or not to paint

Picked up these three frames on the weekend with the intention of painting them all the same brightish colour for the Child's room. Trouble is, I feel guilty at the thought of destroying old photos and I appreciate the worn, knocked-about quality of these pictures as they are. They have a history and are a link to a past, albeit one that's unknown. That would all be wiped out with a paintbrush and new prints.

The bottom one doesn't bother me as that just contains a collection of photocopied bits and pieces from a magazine but the other two are photos of a wedding and a school class. Both were precious enough to someone to frame.

Trouble is, my home is not a museum and I have no place for them as they are. Besides, they're dirty and spotted with mildew. Which just makes them sadder as they've clearly been neglected for a long time.

Fifteen dollars for the three seemed a bargain on Sunday but now I wish I'd just picked up something characterless at Ikea. To paint or not to paint. That is the question...

When doves spy

I have a little desk in front of a window, which is where I work (when I'm not sprawled over the dining room table). In front of that window is a Lilly Pilly tree we planted about 8 years ago. In that Lilly Pilly tree are two spotted turtle doves who've made their home there recently. The nests, which look little more than a few twigs each, are about two metres away from where I sit. Clearly, spotted turtle doves aren't the engineers of the bird world.

If the window is open, they become nervous and eventually fly away for a while. If closed, though, they will sit there cooing for hours.

Our garden isn't big. In fact it's small. But the pleasures it brings are immense.

Mission accomplished

The stripes are finished. Took 3.5 days due to various mishaps. The art is still to be hung, which is another project as old frames have been bought and need to be painted before we can start fiddling with arrangements. We're tossing up between lime green and coral for the frames to give the room a bit of zing. The Child will hand down her Solomon-like decision soon.

Here, the area above the picture rail has been painted and the old stripes obliterated with a couple of coats of Whisper White.

The lines of the old stripes were easy to see (yes!), so made placement of the masking tape easy. Mishap one: ran out of masking tape on a public holiday.

Newman's Eye half strength goes on to form the stripes. Mishap two: the far right wall didn't work out. At all. When the masking tape was removed so were large swathes of every coat of paint the wall has ever seen since it was built in 1926. Peeled the lot back like an over-ripe orange until I reached bare wall. Looked more like a Tuscan outhouse or turn-of-the-century Surry Hills slum. Quite fetching and an effect that turns up in a lot of photo shoots but not quite what we were aiming for. A Fail, as the Child would say. So that wall is now a solid blue.

I like to think of it as the return of the feature wall.

Works for me and, more importantly, the Child who loves her new room. Operation stripes declared a success. Mission accomplished.

The big sleep

It's all about the prep for the Easter-Anzac weekend today so that we can enjoy lie-ins, a visit to the Archibald, shopping at the markets and an afternoon movie.

And, of course, hot-cross buns. x

Operation stripes

Painting of the Child's room begins today. The colours have been chosen and all the furniture pushed to the middle of the room and covered.

First step will be painting over the old stripes with the white paint. I have all my fingers and toes crossed that the lines of the old stripes will still be visible underneath so that all I have to do is run masking tape along them and paint the blue stripes on.

If not, I'll have to measure the stripes again. Please no.

Modern vintage

Arrived home earlier this morning after taking the Child to the airport for her first unaccompanied minor flight to New Zealand to visit cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents to find a familiar-looking package on the doormat. Another gem had landed from the Book Depository.

I've been semi-collecting the decorating titles published by Ryland, Peters & Small for some years now as there's a similar aesthetic running through them that appeals to me. The latest, Modern Vintage Style by Emily Chalmers of Caravan fame, has some shots/houses I haven't seen before, such as this knitted iMac cover.

Then there are bursts of general prettiness I love, such as the wattle against this blue/grey wall. The flowers are actually fake mimosa, according to the book, but I'm choosing to ignore that.

Just the thing to take my mind off the Child flying by herself across the Pacific. For a minute.

Country break

The bulk of last week was spent at a country property with friends and a pile of our kids. Roaring fires and marshmallow toasting by night, swims in the river by day and visits by a local kelpie puppy at all hours who just wanted to hang out with the children made this, our second visit to the property, just as great as the first.

When we visited last year, the Husband and an army of children picked bucket loads of oranges that grow wild along the Patterson River. Well, he shook the trees while kids gathered the fallen ones and took an occasional tonk on the head if they didn't get out of the way quickly enough. This resulted in my first attempt at marmalade - and I was smitten. This time round, the oranges weren't ready, of course, so we reluctantly left them on the trees.

There's a dairy farm next door and the farmer welcomes visitors with open arms to the milking sessions, lets the kids feed the calves with bottles and the two piglets with any scraps we bring. The whole experience is a bit like indoor camping in an Enid Blyton story set in Australia. There was even steamed golden syrup pudding one night. Lashings of it. Someone had also brought marmalade she made from last trip's oranges, which was smeared over buttery toast on the mornings we weren't doing bacon and eggs.

When I went to upload the photos on our return, I realised there weren't any. I had been too busy in the moment to think of picking up the camera. What I hadn't been too busy to do was stop in Morpeth on the way home and pick up some blood orange marmalade from the Morpeth Sourdough Bakery.

My only regret is I didn't buy 15 jars of the stuff because, being only Monday morning, our second morning back, the jar is already half empty. That's how good it is. Just like the country break itself.