Colours & Designs

Here is GOM sitting up at the table on Sunday, before the guests arrived.
Dont you just love the way that shrub is growing out of the middle of his head!?

Little Longface Jumeau.

Look what I got in the mail yesterday! My lovely cousin, S who crocheted the little outfit for me, sent me the lovely little handmade doll she specially ordered for me! So of course, I dressed her immediately, & here she stands waiting for her bed to be made. O, S, you have made me so happy!!

My thoughts have been on colours & designs after reading about Mission Brown Windows on Suse's Pea Soup of the Day blogspot.

It reminded me of the now totally unPC colour, 'Nigger Brown' which no longer exists! We had been talking of colours & how the fashions change so dramatically from year to year.

Not only 'fashions' in clothes, but furniture, carpets , wood stains, colour schemes for houses, etc. I remember purple being 'big' about 34 years ago, & if you didnt have a purlple beadspread in brocade, you were seriously out of touch! And the oranges of the 80's!.

Our current kitchen has burnt orange bench tops, which is probably the reason I know about it so well! This house was built in 1983, which was the year we arrived to live in Australia, & I like to think of fate, & how, little did we know it, but our future home was being built as we arrived.

I would dearly love to change those benchtops, & renovate the kitchen, but now that we are paupers- er I mean pensioners, we wont be doing that.

Which brings me to another aspect of colour & design. I am a 'safe girl' as far as colour schemes for houses go. I like neutral backgrounds & colourful decorations,- ie cushions, quilts, curtains etc.

There are so many design aspects about this house, that I would love to change. Though the kitchen is large by most standards, it is not a well planned layout, & I always say you can tell a man designed it. A man who never did any cooking, or baking, or meal preparation. The pantry has deeeep cupboards, which are dark, & so you never can reach the things at the back. On occasions, when we have a 'springclean' we discover all sorts of forgotten treasures hidden away in the dark, deep recesses of that pantry. Some of them have legs & furry looking coats.. haha, who knows what they used to be?? No not actual animals, but I suspect some sort of snack stashed away for a 'special treat', only to be forgotten! And though there are many cupboards, they are inaccessible, in corners, & some are too high for the average woman to reach. I wish Lotto, or the universe, or whatever, would grant us some monies for a 'refit'.

There are old brown coloured tiles in the walls behind the benches, which make the kitchen a little darker. There used to be brown lino on the floor, but the dishwasher died messily, one day, & ruined said floor covering. Lucky us! Insurance saw that we got a nice new floor in a light colour of my choice. But Insurance didnt run to replacing the benchtops, & the resultant raw cutout, under the bench edge, to fit the new dishwasher into the recess, did not please Meggie at all!! Insurance seemed pleased though- they dont have to live with it, & I am sure it saved them squillions.

And on, to the windows. They are sliding windows, which is ok, but! with all these bitching little panes!! No man ever thought about cleaning the damn things! They are floor to ceiling almost, so a hideous task to clean. But they do let the light in nicely, & give us a great view, as we are situated quite high on a hill.

The bathroom is another area which could do with a good reno. The floor tiles are dark, & so gloomy, with deep grout... and obviously designed by another man, who never had to mop a floor in his life. And those bloody louvre doors on the vanity!! And the Pantry!! No matter what you do, they never look clean.

We have a 3-way bathroom, which has a bath as well as a shower. I think the bath has been used abut 5 times since we came here 8 years ago. I read a wonderful article in a magazine about how to turn it into a storage area. We dont have a handy man in the family- it used to be me, but my days of that are long gone.

And the toilet is so small you have to turn around before shutting the door! I dont see why it is so small, there was plenty of space for a larger 'closet'. Man strikes again?

But in spite of all my moans about this house, I love it! I fell in love with it when I first came to see it. It does leave a lot to be desired, but somehow it is home, & when I think about having to sell & move, I feel a bit sick. We have been here the longest we have ever stayed in one house, & I still love it. I love how we have got the back yard now, & even though the Garden Vandal keeps ripping out my herbs, & we need to get the fence garden tidier, I still love it.

We ripped out the whole messy front garden, hacked down privet, & all the other nasties. Discovered there were steps in one garden. Redid all the retaining walls in another- with a little 'help' from the previously-posted-about Thieving Tinker Irishmen. So we feel we have invested quite a lot of ourselves here, & though I might grizzle about some aspects, I still call it home, & consider myself very lucky to have it!

And when I think of others less fortunate, I feel ashamed for my 'wants', & wishes.