The ABC of wallpaper

In preparation for the birth of our second child, we need to move from occupying the middle bedroom in our house to the front bedroom/study/storage room and hired a painter to paint the rooms. For the baby's room, we wanted to wallpaper one wall but as I soon discovered, the choice of wallpaper is quite limited: it's either Winnie the Pooh or saccharin-style wall decals. 

Before I resigned myself to painting the wall, I found Australian costume/production designer and Oscar award winner, Catherine Martin, has designed a simple yet stylish collection of wallpaper. Our pre-requisite for the wallpaper was that it had to be able to transition from the room of a baby to toddler to young child and not be too cutesy yet still display a sense of whimsy. 

Martin's wallpaper is stocked at Porters Paints and after viewing her designs including "circus silhouettes" in red, we ordered "alphabet city" in green which ticked all of the boxes 

When we we asked our painter if he could hang the wallpaper, he smiled and said he hadn't hung wallpaper since the 1970s and gave us tips on how to hang it. Talking to my mum she said it had been more than 30 years since she'd hung wallpaper and were people still using it. Besides in restaurants and boutiques, have you hung wallpaper at home? 

Come September

I've just watched the trailer to "The September Issue" the new documentary about Vogue editor in chief, Anna Wintour, which is showing at the Melbourne International Film & Festival. Wintour is most famous for always being photograhed behind dark glasses and producing what is still considered a fashion bible to many. On the trailer, she comes across as quick witted and sharp of tongue and clearly knows her market. Is it worth seeing?

Warming to Winter

It's been a long time between posts and I've been burrowing down over these past few winter months. I'm on holiday this week - at home - and doing all of those pesky things I've meant to do this year - and lucky for me, the weather is gorgeous.

What I love about winter is steaming hot chocolate. On a sunny yet cold afternoon yesterday, I was on a mission to find a hot chocolate and came upon a small store in Smith Street, Collingwood. I wandered in looking for hot chocolate and discovered Thibault Fregoni - French-born, Melbourne based, chocolatier known as Monsieur Truffe and his glorious chocolate store.

His chocolate is lovingly made on site mostly using dark chocolate but includes a range of milk chocolate. Whilst I waited for my hot chocolate to be made - which was delicious - I eyed the 70% dark chocolate range of bars that included roasted almonds, orange peel and pistachio nuts. I ended up buying the 70% couverture chocolate with specks of dark caramel - I'm definitely going to savour this with a cup of hot chocolate. http://monsieurtruffe.wordpress.com/

Marvellous Mildura

I spent my Easter break and a few days extra in Mildura, a town about 1hour flight from Melbourne or a seven hours drive. It's known for orange orchards, grapevines and the Murray River - one of the longest river's in Australia. The weather during this time of the year is always gorgeous - it even got to 29C.
The very famous Italian-Australian, Stefano De Pieri , has a renowned restaurant, Stefano's, located in the cellar of the Grand Hotel. We had an intimate dinner in a very rustic setting and were served a seven-course degustation. His food is simple Italian with a focus on fresh local ingredients. Melburnians fly to Mildura for the weekend just to dine at his restaurant - it truly is that good. He also has a Cafe/Bakery and adjoining gallery as well as his own range of food products and Italian-style wines. http://www.stefano.com.au/
We saw a great exhibition in Stefano's gallery by Philip Hunter which were studies for his paintings. The colours are very earthy and the imagery at first looks like landscapes but they twist and mould into different shapes that sometimes look like marine life. http://tiny.cc/03nUz

Autumn leaves

Autumn has set in. The leaves have turned from green to yellow to deep red. It's my favourite time of the year - maybe because I was born in May, married in April and had my daughter in May. Crisp mornings with clean air that when you breathe it in, it fills your lungs with a sense of purity and feeling truly alive. Then we're blessed with early evenings with the scent of wood burning fires and beautiful pink skies that I never tire of.

Knitted niceties

On the weekend I went along to the Malvern Town Hall for the Magnolia Square craft market http://www.magnoliasquare.blogspot.com/ I picked up a gorgeous ecru-coloured cotton pram blanket for a girlfriend's newborn, Lola. The cotton is non-dyed and hand knitted by women in Zimbabwe. The label, Grasshoppers, is run by twin-sisters who are Zimbabwe-born and now Sydney based.

Profits are directed back into the business to grow and develop it for the women working in Zimbabwe, along with it providing an income for some of the poorest in the world. http://www.grasshoppersjumpers.com.au/about.html

Hand drawn handbags

I'm still listening to the lovely sounds of Shrift and currently tuned into their luscious version of the Beach Boys "God only knows". http://www.myspace.com/shriftspace
I'm also very fond of Marimekko and just perused their website to find gorgeous hand drawn pop-art graphics in their new range of bags. http://www.marisnewbags.com/