Finally

Those stools, I had nearly written off, arrived today.

T.H Brown and Sons 1960s bar stools

T.H Brown was a South Australian furniture company establised in the early 1900s.

I like that they fit neatly under the island bench and do not take up valuable floor space. They are also in pristine condition for chairs of this vintage. I have an extra chair which I will be able to use on the deck where we have the kitchen servery.

After waiting almost three months, I can safely say they were well worth the wait. Phew!

Believers

The believers in the household have made their written requests. We posted them yesterday.

Letters to Santa

So sweet and innocent. However, the contents of these simple white envelopes reveal requests for WMDs (weapons of mass destruction aka Star Wars clone guns).  Oh the contradictions of life!

Do you ever wonder, like me, how many of these clog up the global mail system? Next year we might email.

An epic voyage

Melbourne may as well be on another planet as far as I’m concerned.

This is my tirade about the “in transit” bar stools for our kitchen. We are approaching the third month waiting for the courier to deliver these stools from Melbourne to Brisbane. And my low expectations have not saved me from, the word I hate using, disappointment...

I spoke to my mate Chris about his recent courier experience because he purchased two exquisite Robin Day plywood chairs from England. Some unexpected money came his way and what else does one do but splurge for one’s modernist chair collection?

I asked Chris how long the chairs took to arrive from overseas. He said it took one week from London to Brisbane. One week. From London to Brisbane. How does that work when I can’t get four spindly bar stools up from Melbourne?

Robin Day Plywood Armchair 1951

image from

http://designmuseum.org/designinbritain/robin-lucienne-day

That’s one bad, bad courier I used.

On the bright side, I’ve been told my stools are now in Queensland, languishing somewhere in Beenleigh (45 minutes away) to be delivered tomorrow. Ha! I’ll believe it when I see it.

Homemade wreath

Queensland Silver Wattle Christmas wreath on our front door.

I always try to make my own Christmas wreath. Mostly because I am cheap eco-friendly. No, really I am cheap.

Now that we live in a new area, there is different foliage to experiment with. I was toying with the idea of using natives like the grevilleas in our garden, but then I remembered the lovely wattle tree on the street (this was incidentally inspired by a post on wreaths by Anna Spiro on her blog Absolutely Beautiful Things).

Boo Radley's footpath has the most glorious Queensland Silver Wattle tree which I have kindly trimmed back for him. The foliage is an amazing silver grey colour which I think looks good against the white lattice door.

I love that it is simple, wild and rustic. I'm not sure how it will dry but I figure if it starts to look uber ugly or we have guests coming around, I can replace it with Boo's endless supply of fresh wattle branches.

Do you think Boo will mind?

It's beginning to

feel a lot like Christmas because it has been so hot and humid around here.

And I also succumbed to the nagging of little ones and dug out the Christmas decorations. I let the boys decorate the tree. There are a lot of decorations on the same branch and clusters of gold baubles in the one area. We really do have a lot of daggy stuff on that plastic tribute to pine. The boys are happy with it, which is the main thing.

Notice the cluster of gold baubles

I am happy that I sneaked a little bit of Danish into the Christmas decor. Some stainless steel angels dangling from some twigs on the dining table is my contribution.

Four stainless steel Georg Jensen archangels on some tree branches found from our backyard.