:: A House Update & A Giveaway Winner! ::

A fair bit has been going on in our little cottage since I last time talked about it. The last time I posted photos of our house it was when I was on a huge cleaning mission in an attempt to make this house feel a little prettier. It's no secret that I'm not a fan of the colour scheme the previous owners used on our house. The outside colours are a yellow-cream, dark red, and dark green. This is a lovely heritage colour scheme when done properly, but it hasn't worked so well on our house. On the inside we had a lovely mish-mash of colours - yellow, red, blue, dark teal, brown - so pretty!

In the last six months we've slowly made some changes around here - one of those being new paint inside! We've also finished grassing our backyard, our new roof is almost complete, and our bathroom renovation starts in a few weeks! Exciting times in the Lavender household! I suppose it will come as no surprise that the colour we chose for our interior is green. I'm kind of predictable. But, it's a lovely grey-based green and is actually the same colour my parents have in their house. Their house has been that colour since before they bought it back in 1993 and the colour hasn't dated yet which is a great sign that it is a perfect for colour for houses as old as ours (95 years old!).

See the lovely red trims? (The walls in the before photo were actually a yellow-cream colour)

The house feels so much bigger now - cleaner too! I can't wait to show you bathroom before and afters in a few months.

I also have a giveaway winner to announce - congratulations to the lovely Felicia!

PS. The colours we used were Pale Vellum (the green) and Clotted Cream (the trims/doors).

:: Storage - Before and After ::

I own a lot of stationery. A lot. What I don't own is a lot of space to put it. Up until just recently most of my stationery was stored in a chest of drawers, which made it very difficult to see what was at the bottom of all those piles of paper and all those envelopes!

And then Mr LG found something wonderful. Something cute. Something stationery-related. And best of all, something I could use for storage!

An old library cart! eBay is a wonderful place to find cute and quirky pieces of furniture and I'm so glad Mr LG found this gem. We sent it off to be powder coated as soon as possible and I couldn't wait to start using it!

I haven't finished putting all my stuff in the little hidey holes, but I love the way it looks so far!

Have you found any gems like this on eBay, or similar websites? Our antique dining table and chairs are also from eBay, as well as a cute little antique decorative chair. It's amazing what you can find if you're willing to spend the time searching for it.

:: Backyard Demolition - Part Two ::

At the end of last year Mr LG and I bought the cutest little house. It was propped up on stilts and made entirely out of wood. The polished floorboards gleamed with possibilities and everywhere we looked we saw endless potential. After a few weeks the rose-tinted glasses came off and as we looked around we still saw the potential, but also the work we needed to put into the house so we could turn it into our home. We have made some minor changes here and there, but so far the biggest change has been our backyard.

About a month ago I told you all about our jungle. I'm so excited so show you what it looks like now!

Step One:

Step Two:

Step Three:

Step Four:

We finally have a blank canvas to work with! We can't get over how big our backyard actually is. The amount of sun that filters into the house now is incredible. Once again our rose coloured glasses are back on as we stand on our back deck and stare at the potential in front of us.

Obviously the first step is to fill in the holes left by the trees, and to attempt to flatten the yard a little (it slopes up on the sides), and then a fence on the right-hand side to even up the yard. We'd also like to cover the fence at the back because it's a little mismatched (some wood, some corrugated plastic, some big rocks to plug up holes). We also have plans for grass, and lots of it. I'd like a few raised planter boxes so I can start a vegie and herb garden, and we can now put up a clothesline and have the clothes dry without being covered by leaves!

What would your dream backyard have in it? We'd like an old pizza oven one day so we can have friends and family over to eat home-made wood-fired pizza on the back deck.

:: Our Kitchen ::

Despite the fact that our kitchen looks a little '90s country cottage' it is currently my favourite room in our house. Most people will spend a fair portion of their day doing something in their kitchen - whether they're whipping up an amazing meal, or boiling water for a much needed cup of coffee. Mr LG and are lucky enough to have a fairly large kitchen, especially considering the age of our house, as most old houses in our area have small galley-style kitchens.

We are currently using the 'normal' white oven seen in the right-hand side of the picture above. Eventually we will use the beautiful green oven seen on the left. The green oven was given to us by my parents when they redid their kitchen. It is one of the oldest working ovens in my state. Everything takes twice as long to cook in it, but I am absolutely in love with it.

The previous owners has this oven area converted in a cupboard for storage space. We used the cupboard for a few months before we decided to pull it apart and use the space for it's original purpose.

Mmm ... pancakes ... Can you tell I like the colour green?

We have a lot of plans for our kitchen. The entrance to the kitchen is currently the size of a normal doorway. We would like to open the wall up with an arch to create more airflow, light and openness to the room. The walls are in need of a good paint and all the door handles need to be replaced. We would also like to get a nice big island in the middle of the room. I have seen a lot of kitchens that have white cupboards lately and I really like that look. I'm not sure if it will suit our kitchen though. What do you think?

Thank you all for the decor inspiration ideas you gave me in my last post! I now have some great eye candy material.

Have a great weekend!

:: Backyard Demolition ::

This weekend was a busy one! Mr LG and I had our family and friends over to help us demolish our backyard. The previous owners of our house were a little ... free-range, shall we say. They let the backyard become a jungle. Observe exhibits A and B.

Mr LG and I have already had a good crack at cleaning up the backyard and we filled a huge skip full of debris, but we decided to call on a little help this time. The majority of my brothers and sisters came around with their partners (save for the ones that were unwell) and a few friends came 'round too. This is what our backyard looked like before everyone started venting their pent-up anger on it:

Some of our trees are quite tall and will need to be removed by professionals because they sit too close to the house, the fences, and our neighbours house! We can't afford to fix someone else's house right now! Here are the boys, hard at work.


Our backyard now looks like this:

There is still a lot of work to be done, but our backyard looks 100 times better than it did before. For starters, you can see our back fence from our back deck now! We plan to knock down all the trees and put proper grass down so we can start fresh, but that's a story for another day.