Archive for Home & Decor

pinterest soap scum tip – does it work?

July 29, 2012 Home & Decor No comments

So.

Does anyone else hate soap scum marks on the shower screen glass as much as I do?

I HATE IT. I hate that when people come over, they think I’m some slob who never scrubs the shower screen.

This is mostly, of course, because I am a slob who very rarely scrubs the shower screen.

I actually don’t mind most aspects of cleaning the bathroom, but scrubbing the shower is something I just hate doing. And then, boy, don’t you know it, the soap scum marks just build and build and build.

A while ago, I saw this trick on Pinterest being highly popular:

the MAGIC trick

The instructions?

Basically, combine equal parts vinegar and BLUE Dawn branded dishwashing detergent in a spray bottle. Spray on your soap scummed shower screen. Let sit for a while. Wipe off. NO SCRUBBING.

And apparently it works MAGICALLY.

I googled around and found that everyone who had tried it was RAVING about it, but everyone had stayed true to the BLUE Dawn dishwashing liquid.

In Australia, I don’t think Dawn is available (actually I’ve never really looked, I’m not a cleaning product aisle pundit), but it didn’t seem familier. And all I had at home was this:

Trix Dishwashing Detergent

So it would have to do!

Instructions:

1. Heat 1 cup white vinegar in microwave (I did 40 seconds)

2. Combine with 1 cub dishwashing detergent

3. Stir gently to combine

4. Pour into spray bottle (I used an old Ajax Spray and Wipe bottle)

5. Spray onto shower screen

6. Walk away and pray it works

7. 5 minutes later, wipe down with a wet rag (I used a microfibre cloth)

After that, I sprayed the screen with some water from the shower.

And *drumroll*… THE VERDICT?

IT ACTUALLY WORKED! Some bits where the soap scum was especially thick and cruddy needed a 2nd spray and wipe, but man oh man, where has this trick been ALL MY LIFE?! I even dried the glass immediately with paper towels, and oh MY, the difference is insane.

NO ELBOW GREASE. ZERO SCRUBBING.

Just sparkling clean glass just like in a hotel.

For those of you that are wondering JUST how bad the glass was in my bathroom… well S and I ACTUALLY use soap, so… it wasn’t good. Let’s just say it was bad enough that I refused to take a BEFORE shot. :)

Go try it! BEST TIP EVE! Thanks, Pinterest, it’s nice to know this vinegar+dishwashing detergent trick works without DAWN!

backyard blitz: staining the fence

July 6, 2012 Home & Decor No comments

I never thought I would ever utter the words “I’m going to paint the fence”. I’m just not THAT KINDA GIRL, if you know what I mean. I truly admire ladies who can gung-ho-like wield power tools, be excited about heavy labour, and get dirty willingly, but I’m not.

Occasionally thought, I get in THE MODE where I want to prove that I’m not just a frilly girl who won’t get her hands dirty. The deck makeover was one such example. And when I decided the outdoor setting needed a makeover. Truthfully though, these moments are few and far between.

On New Year’s Eve, I decided in 34 degree heat that I was going to paint our backyard fence. Yes. Craziness. The thing is, I read all these home improvement blogs where people seem to effortlessly, NAY, MAGICALLY transform their homes. They make projects seem to ridonkulously easy. And then it makes me fret about not being more pro-active about jobs around the house. And then I make snap decisions like I’M GOING TO PAINT THE FENCE IN A DAY FLAT.

Forgetting, of course, that I’m not that kinda gal.

So anyway, I painted the fence.

*cue applause*…

And then I never blogged about it. For 6 months.

Why did I decide to paint the fence? Well, I hate that we have a nicely painted house, a beautiful white picket fence, and then raw ugly wood fence. It just didn’t fit.

So I went out to Bunnings and bought a can of this:

feast and watson decking stain for painting a fence

Merrrrrrbau!

Speaking of Bunnings, I really think they need to have loyalty cards. S and I would so be on a trip to somewhere exotic if they had something like FlyBuys. We always buy way too much stuff when we’re in there. The thought that we could be HANDY is just too addictive to ignore and resist, and so we always fill the trolley with things we will NEVER use like nail guns, special sand papers, and garden soil. Ha.

So I happily carted it home, and got to work.

In 34 degree heat.

Uh huh.

After 2 hours, the fence looked like this.

oh. my. goodness.

Not even a third of the way through.

See my teeny tiny Azalea bushes? I really hope they grow to be beautiful. If not, I’ll seriously be upset at my black thumb.

As for technique, well I didn’t use any. I was basically covering the ledge of the planter area with a piece of plastic to protect from drips, and then slapping that stain on with a big brush. I figure that with a few summers of adding to the stain, it will deepen and become a gorgeously stained fence. I actually have no idea what I’m talking about, but hey, the fence looked pretty good after 1 coat!

After a light lunch, lots of glaring at S (he offered to help but I wanted this to be MY I-AM-NOT-A-SISSY PROJECT), and mopping away of sweat, I got to it again. Blasting the boom box. Some light swearing and muttering. Lots of deck stain all over my arms, fingers and legs. And face. That S gleefully pointed out. Growl.

2 hours later, it looked like this:

I’m not going to lie to you, at this stage I nearly gave up. I hear you scoff at me. HOW WEAK. 4 HOURS OF PAINTING AND SHE’S GIVING UP?

Listen. I KNOW. I never claimed to be particularly resilient. Or strong. Or handy! All I know is, it was 34 degrees, that fence seemed to have grown longer over the afternoon, my brush was starting to moult, and I was GRUMPY!

Anyway.

I didn’t give up.

Several hours more later, and after checking for bits I’d missed, we have THIS BEAUTIFUL LOOK. I particularly love that the stain was dark, but still allows the knots and lovely wood marks to come through.

HELLO MY PRETTY!

Huge improvement. The yard looks that little bit more complete. The azalea’s POP against the darker colour. And the bonus is I THINK I read somewhere that the stain would protect the wood for longer so our fence becomes more hardy. I could be wrong. But will keep believing it so I can feel like I made a difference.

Have you ever tackled a seemingly easy and quick job to have it completely whup you in the behind? Tell me about it! Comfort me with the thought that not everyone finds these jobs super easy and quick and are able WHIP THEM UP AND BLOG WITH AMAZING PHOTOS.

happiness at home

April 23, 2012 Home & Decor, Lifestyle No comments
our new iron

Today I spent my first day home in 7 days of craziness that seriously kicked my butt. It was a much needed day of hiding from the world, resting up that ever tantrummy spine of mine, and getting some things done domestically. Oh gosh, that domestic stuf that keeps eluding my natural instincts…

Anyways. Thought I’d share some things that make me very happy when I walk past them in this house we’re slowly moulding into our forever home.

my bust/necklace holder

When I first brought this gorgeous lady home, S was slightly appalled. His raised eyebrow and “that’s not for the public areas of our house is it?” questions led me to the belief that he didn’t like her very much. I LOVE her though, and she has pride of place on my dresser, and helps me keep some of my necklaces handy. Pretty, AND useful!

my elephant!

A few months ago I posted a picture of this elephant statue I coveted. Imagine my joyous surprise when Anita already HAD it in her car as my Christmas present! Sometimes it’s a bit scary how twinsy we are. In fact, IN FACT when I showed her my wedding invite prototypes last week, it turned out she had bought the exact same paper with the exact same floral patterns for hers. From a different paper shop, on a different occasion. Oh, dear.

Anyway.

I love this elephant, and I love that when I kick back on my little arm chair in my reading nook in my office, I now have something cute to rest my drink on.

Hang on.

Did I say kick back on my arm chair in my reading nook?

That has only happened once.

Sigh.

Anyway.

our new iron

Okay, those of you who know me in real life can go and faint right now, or at least express some worry that I may have been abducted and had my personality switched over. Yup, it’s no secret I HATE ironing. Well, hate is a strong word. S prefers to profess that domestic duties are not my forte, and I’m generally a bit of a princess about things that involve assembling an unwieldy piece of equipment such as an ironing board.

The first time I ironed a shirt for S (it took 2.5 years of solid romancing to get to fine I’ll iron ONE shirt for you stage in our relationship), I nearly cried. Wrinkles! They are IMPOSSIBLE to remove! And buttons! And don’t even get me started on sleeves! And how are you meant to iron the REST of the shirt without creasing the bits you’ve already painstakingly completed?! That one shirt took me 22 minutes to iron. Over time, I managed to get it down to 13 minutes per shirt, but that’s still pretty pathetic.

In November, my mum came to visit and bought S a new iron. I say she bought S a new iron, because it’s patently clear to both her and me that I am NOT the ironer in the house. Poor S, he thought it was shoes when he saw the wrapped up box. Ha!

And can I just tell you, there are very few gadgets that have converted me to liking anything domestic like this. I actually offer to iron S’ shirts sometimes, because it is such a kick-butt iron. It laughs in the face of wrinkles and just glides over ANYTHING I want to iron and SO easily! And I was worried about it being heavy but WHO KNEW, it actually is much less tiring to iron now because it glides so gracefully. And I can now smugly boast that I can iron a shirt in just 6 minutes now. Still not great, but a huge improvement considering it’s not like I’ve worked on my TECHNIQUE or anything!

Now, I actually kind of like doing the occasional iron for S. (I don’t buy anything that requires ironing, and the few things that do… well S does them for me because he’s a good ironer who doesn’t wreck things!) It feels like a very loving act because through it, I get to notice what buttons are coming lose, if his clothes need replacing, and threadbare patches and holes that need to be fixed. Mostly, it informs me when I need to go shopping for more clothes for him. HA.

And yes, I can’t believe I just talked about an iron for 3 paragraphs either.

You may leave now.

Happy house things. What do you have in your home that makes you smile?

 

diy dinosaur bookends

January 8, 2012 Home & Decor 10 comments
wielding a saw!

Last week, Anita and I decided to take a little day off to do some crafty fun. She’d seen this nifty little tutorial online on how to make bookends out of some dollar store plastic animals and plastic photoframes, and once she showed it to me, I got a wee bit excited as well.

Surprisingly, it was pretty hard to find plastic animals that were suitable – we hit up the Reject Shop, as well as several asian variety stores, and settled on some dinosaur toys from Kmart. Instead of photoframes, we got point of sale signage plastic holders, so that there was no slant in them.

We tried several methods of cutting them up in half. They didn’t cut well at all with sharp scissors, so we went for the next option in our arsenal:

wielding a saw!

nyahahahahahaa!

A little bit of overkill? Perhaps. But it was fun.

In hindsight, doing that with shorts and no protective shoes on was probably not a good idea.

Moving on!

We soon realised that a sharp box cutter worked MUCH better to slice through the animals cleanly.

that's MUCH easier!

plastic animal bookends diy

see? much easier.

You will have to ignore the “bloodstain” on my hand. It was actually some 24 hr lipstick I’d tried on 2 days before. Yes, I bought it because its staying power is evidently impressive! (You can buy it too!)

Whilst I worked hard on the slicing and dicing, Anita busied herself with completely useful exercises, such as making a mutant managerie.

very very helpful.

After cutting them all up, we stuck them onto their plastic frames. It was hard to get them to stick, even superglue was pretty useless. The hot glue gun didn’t work at ALL, though we did have a fun time playing with it. In the end though, Gorilla glue did the trick.

Anita magically becoming helpful when it's not manual labour.

drying in the sun!

To be fair, Anita’s skillset is the fiddly stuff (like gluing these animals on delicately). I have no such claims to such skills. Once they’d dried, we took them to the very official spray-painting station in my backyard to get made over.

spraypainting home made bookends

official. spraypainting. station.

Anita went for silver, and I went for (surprise surprise!) GOLD.

And yes, S did come home and ask why the garden rocks were metallic. He wasn’t impressed.

We used plastic spray paint primer, let it dry for 40 minutes, and then 2 light and thin coats of our colour of choice.

Annnnnnnd, TA-DA!

finished products! our own metallic zoo!

pwetty!

indoors under nice light...

in use...

And yes. I am aware that my bookend bodies don’t match. And that has everything to do with the fact that I LIKE mutant animals and NOTHING to do with the fact that we may have botched a few of the first specimens, OKAY?

Good.

Now that’s sorted, one last gorgeous photo of our wonderfully productive day!

TA-DA!

simple home improvements

October 6, 2011 Home & Decor No comments
tea/coffee station in kitchen - enamel tea and coffee canisters

Sometimes it’s the little things that make all the difference. S and I have lived in this house for a year now, and yet it still feels like it’s not quite become enough of a complete home yet.

An example – our tea/coffee station has been a veritable mess of kettle cords, toaster parking area, random things strewn around, for AGES. And now, with a simple purchase, it has become a joy to behold and made this part of the kitchen SO MUCH more usable.

tea/coffee station in kitchen - enamel tea and coffee canisters

see?

Whilst my mum was in town last week, she also bought S a new iron – see, the iron we had was a $30 one I bought when I first moved to Australia 11 years ago. Uh huh. Apparently, according to the ironer in the house (S!), it was the world’s crappiest iron. So my mummy decided a great gift would be one of a household appliance for him.

Cue one happy ironing man.

new iron

in his Geelong teeshirt, NO LESS.

It’s a good Phillips one, generates more steam than I knew irons were capable of, and cuts his ironing time hugely. Of course, I know all this from being a very keen observer, as I myself do not iron. My relationship with ironing is such that when S does his ironing, I look at him holding my crumpled garment with imploring eyes. AND IT WORKS. Ladies, take note!

Yup, definitely the simple home improvements and a man who irons that makes my day.

5 happy things

September 20, 2011 Cooking, Home & Decor, Lifestyle, Love One comment
a dozen long stemmed roses

It was an incredibly busy weekend, which left me pretty exhausted, but so filled with happy moments that it was hard to begrudge it or deem it unworthwhile.

To start with, Friday night was a gathering of friends to celebrate Lys & Etienne moving in together, and it was nice to catch up with everyone, particularly my girls.

catchup with friends

rawking the animal print and happy smiles!

S also keeps upping the “perfect boyfriend” bar by sending me a little “romance is alive” gift after I had a bit of a melt down about being 30 and frumpy (shh, i know, i know, but let me have my moments!). I saw a quote a friend posted on facebook that was something to the tune of “Women aren’t made to be understood, they’re made to be loved” and I’m super lucky S gets this down pat every time. Instead of trying to fix my (totally non issue) problems, he just lets me rave and rant and then shows me he adores me anyway. LOVE.

a dozen long stemmed roses

long stemmed, and gorgeous.

After performing for the first time in months on Saturday night, S and I also spent Sunday in the garden, enjoying the great weather and the fact that we can start working on the house together again now that spring seems to be officially here. I did pretty useless things given my physical limitations, but did manage to pot my gorgeous new azaleas for right by the front door. Aren’t they pretty and welcoming?

potted azaleas in bloomAnd as I did this, S, to my utter awe and amazement (see above re “perfect boyfriend”) – pulled up ALL the grass and soil in the backyard with a spade, then re-soiled with over 20 bags of soil, and then reseeded it all. It took him over 9 hours of solid work, and he never stopped. And now, we have what is looking like a lush and healthy backyard that will be some very pretty lawn soon (hopefully!).

regrassing the backyard garden

that cherry blossom is just about to bloom too!

Lastly, we did what we always do for the week ahead – prep our lunches. It’s a soothing 1-2 hour activity that we adore doing together. Except this week I also made a bunch of asian boxes for me – rice covered in sambal eggplant tomato and mushrooms, stir fried vegetables and grilled pork belly. Oh, heaven that’s gonna last me all week long.

pork belly on rice for packed lunchbox

i had one today for lunch and it. was. good.

So yes, it was a good weekend. Did you have a nice one what with the incredible weather? Any particularly good moments? Somehow the sun being out seems to correlate with good things happening, or at least a better mindset to view everything in a better light, don’t you think?

super clever food serving dish

September 14, 2011 Cooking, Home & Decor No comments
SERVING GADGET FOR DINNER PARTIES

S and I LOVE to entertain, and there’s nothing I like better than cooking up a feast of multiple dishes for a whole bunch of people. Watching people feed hungrily on things you’ve spent the day whipping up seems like such a great way to spend an evening to me.

When we moved, we bought a square dining table. Great for dinner party conversations and very good for the kind of many-plates-of-shared-food banquet I tend towards. Not so great for when you want a second helping from a serving bowl all the way across the table.

The last time I was in Singapore, I saw these brilliant things.

SERVING GADGET FOR DINNER PARTIESBasically they’re extremely large (about a metre across) rotating lazy susans with dish serving bowls BUILT RIGHT IN. All you do is fill the serving sections with food, and plonk the entire thing in the middle of your table. And then rotate merrily between your guests. No standing up and pretending you want to offer everyone else food when all you really want to do is start stuffing your face. No awkward “pass the plate” moments. And definitely no more elbowing someone accidentally in a bid to reach eagerly for the sweet potato mash.

My heart stopped, and I would have just bought one on the spot if not for the slightly hideous designs they had and the inability to cart them to Australia.

My question to you – have you seen these anywhere here, and do they come in prettier designs? I NEED to know!

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