Spring Garden Collages

Today I've got some collages of my Spring garden for you, my dear friends.

Spring is undoubtedly a beatiful season, also a very busy one for me as well.

I enjoy being in the garden, it's such a pleasure especially with the gentle refreshing breeze bringing the heavenly scents of roses to my nose.

 I hope you enjoyed these collages, have a lovely week, everyone. Catch you later. 

Spring Tablescape

G'day, dear readers and friends, how are you all doing? Hope everyone is well and enjoying your season. I want to say thanks to those of you who e-mailed me and wanted to know if I'm alright. You really are a lovely bunch. Yes, I am well, I've just been really busy. Thank you so much for your concern and care.
Spring is here and has been here for a while for us, here are some photos of the Spring tablesetting I did a while back.

I picked some flowers and herbs from our garden and used them as napkin rings for the natural linen napkins. I also added a personalised/initial lettered placecard which I made.

Looking from different angles

This wire basket came out for photo opportunities as well .........

Hope you enjoy your season wherever you are. I'd better go and fertilize and tidy up my garden enjoy my day. The garden is calling my name. Till next time.
P.S. This is the dining table we've been waiting for, right size, right style! It's been with us for a while now. Yay!

Small Transformation on the Kitchen Counter

Hello, friends, today I've got some photos to show you. It's some small changes I made on my kitchen counter. I enjoy changing things up a bit sometimes. I made some clay tags ( I used Magic Clay which dried and became very airy and light ) and transforming to chalk board from a metal board I've had for a while. I simply painted it with black chalk board paint.
The black and white really pop in this space!

I also got an inexpensive glass jar and filled it with rolled oats.
I took more photos while playing with bits and pieces from the linen closet.

I white-washed the basket which I got for a few dollars.
It looks much better now.

I pulled out a whole lot of linen napkins and filled the basket with them, I love the way they look.

The bread box that's been hidden in the pantry got to come out as well.

After all that was done, I got the persimmons out to pose for me, do you know what persimmons are? They are a kind of delicious orange coloured fruit. Apparently the new variety is crunchy and sweet, and they are an improved variety, I love munching on them for a healthy snack. Don't they look beautiful too?

Alrighty, have a wonderful rest of the week, friends. 

Roses in Winter

Hi, how are you all doing? Hope you are having a good week.
Some ladies have asked me why I still have roses in the middle of winter.
The reason is our winter is reasonably mild and there's been sunshine even though there has been dark and cloudy rainy days.
I think the combination of sunshine and water is a pretty good recipe for flowers.

I have been bringing them in for the vases.

Things are still green outside, not as many flowers though.

I've been blessed with all these roses. This one below is called China Doll, I have it as a Tree Rose. It always has multiple blooms on each single branch , never just single flower or two.

You can see it clearer here.

Some more photos, hope you like them.........

Till next time! Have a great week!

Anzac Biscuits

I've been baking Anzac (stands for Australia and New Zealand Army Corp) biscuits numerous times this last month.
My kids simply love them and consume them at lightning speed.
Fortunately they are so easy to make.
So I thought I would share the recipe here,
this recipe is taken out of one of the Women's Weekly's mini cookbooks named "Biscuits and Slices".

Anzac Biscuits

For better result, use traditional rolled oats rather than quick-cook rolled oats.

1 cup (90g) rolled oats
1 cup (150g) plain flour
1/2 cup (110g) sugar
3/4 cup (65g) desiccated coconut  (I don't use this as someone in my family doesn't like it)
125 g butter
1 tablespoon golden syrup
1 teaspoon bicarb soda
2 tablespoon boiling water

Combine oats, flour, sugar and coconut (if using) in large bowl.
Combine butter and golder syrup in a small saucepan, stir over heat until butter is melted.
Combine soda and water, add to butter mixture; stir into dry ingredients while mixture is still warm.
Place heaped tablespoons of mixture on oven tray lined with baking paper, 5cm apart, press down lightly.
Bake in a slow oven (160C) for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.
Stand biscuits 5 minutes to cool on tray to give time for biscuits to solidify.

Enjoy!

A bouquet for a family

It's been raining cats and dogs here, it's really good because we need the rain so much.
Yesterday there was a break from the rain and I gathered these roses from the garden as part of our gifts for a family as we were invited over for dinner.
The Perfumed Perfections (purply/mauve ones) are showing off their colour and fragrance to the fullest at the moment, and since the lady of that family loves purple, I thought they would be perfect for her.
I mixed in peach and pink roses to make the bouquet more interesting and here are some photos to show you.
The joint forces of fragrances nearly knocked me out!

There's something special about the colour purple, especially on roses.

Here's the more peachy side..................

And here's the more purply side..............

I pulled out my little collection of heirloom doilies from my mum and started looking through them.

I keep them in those round boxes which used to be for cup and saucer sets.

Look, a purple crocheted doily, perfect!

It's still raining now as I write, I'd better go get some more roses in before the rain damages them.

We have company tonight.

Have a lovely lovely weekend, won't you? Bye for now.

Befores and Afters

Hi, dear friends, how are you doing? Hope you have a great start to the week.
Blogger was down from time to time last week and when it was back up, I lost some of your comments on the last post, even though I could still read them in my inbox. So if you left a comment and they are not in the last post, thanks for taking your precious time to leave the comments, it's always a pleasure for me to read them.
Today I want to share some BEFORE and AFTER photos from my file. We've been living in our house for 10 years now and over the years the decor has gone through quite a bit of tweaking and changes. There have been significant changes just in the living room alone. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. The upholstery was dark when the kids were little.

Before

After 1

After 2

Before

After 1

After 2

After 1

After 2

Before

After

Before (I couldn't find a before photo without Christmas decorations)

After 1

After 2

Now

Now

Wow! We've come a long way. I think everything looks and feels so much fresher and better after white paint, don't you?

Have a fantastic week, everyone.