When Home is... Not an Old Desk

I spent half-an-hour fighting with a piece of furniture this morning. I never thought I could feel so angry with an inanimate object but when I stood with the intention of going to get a hammer to smash open the stuck drawer I realised the battle was over and I had to walk away.

This desk has been with Stuart and me throughout our entire relationship. It was his childhood desk and before that belonged to one of his uncles. It’s not an heirloom piece with the veneer increasingly chipping away, the ink stains and the many engravings Stuart made with a compass when he was 13. When both uncles visited a couple of years ago they spotted it.

‘What are you doing with that old thing?’ said one.

‘I can’t believe Germaine has let you keep it,’ said the other.

We laughed. It is awful but until now has been very practical.

It can fit into small spaces: hallways in previous apartments and a room barely two metres wide in this house. Fitting perfectly under the window in our study / laundry / utility room it has always been a piece of furniture we keep meaning to replace but never get around to.

Not any longer. The relationship is definitely over now. I could deal with the shabby appearance but I can’t deal with its unpredictability.

Last week I couldn’t find my Dictaphone even though I knew it was in the drawer. I had to leave the house with a notepad instead to interview Paula Cowan, the owner of environmentally-friendly cleaning and personal care products, Solution Living. She was very patient with my stilted questions as I wrote down everything she said.

The next day I found the Dictaphone, right at the back of the drawer, under crepe paper. I have no idea how crepe paper got in there and what it was ever used for.

Anyway, I had no such concerns this morning of finding my Dictaphone on my way out to interview author of Eating for Two and cookbook editor Kathleen Gandy. Sadly, the drawer had other ideas. It was completely jammed shut and no amount of pulling, rattling and screaming at the stupid thing would open it. It can’t be the crepe paper as I’ve thrown that away.

Just like I’m planning to throw away something else... I may miss the Smurf wrapping paper Stuart lined his drawers with when he was 10, but as I can’t open them anymore it doesn’t really matter.

****

On the upside, my note-taking skills are improving and I will be posting the interviews with Paula and Kathleen soon. Once I find a desk.

When Home is... Old Plates

It started when we dug up a broken piece of a plate in the back garden late last year. The pale blue floral pattern captivated me and I couldn’t help but wonder which owner it belonged to. It looked old, the pattern delicate, but surely it wasn’t a plate of John and Elizabeth Liddell’s?



Or was it? After all, they had seven children back in the 1890s so I imagine there were many broken plates over the many years they lived here. The kitchen/scullery would have been out the back, near where we dug up this piece of china, but who knows.

It could just as easily been from the owners who lived here in the 1990s and, from what I can work out from old plans, added the back living / kitchen room. After our recent renovation I have realised how many bits of rubbish – nails, screws, cigarette butts – can inadvertently end up buried under the rose bushes and gardenias... Yet, I like to think of this broken plate as a link from the present back to where it all began. The first family who called this house home.

When I found this bit of china I had already been thinking that we needed new dinner plates. Ours were all white and increasingly becoming chipped and crazed. I hadn’t been able to decide on the style of dinner set I wanted but now I knew.

While it was pure fantasy to try and find the exact match for this dug up piece of china, I knew I wanted old, English style plates and serving bowls.



It didn’t take long to start my new collection... finding a couple of blue and white china plates at the markets one weekend, some green ones at the same market another weekend. And once you start a collection it’s hard to stop really, isn’t it?

Collections run in our family and when my mother turned 40 she decided that for her party she would ask everyone to bring a plate. Not a plate of food but a plate. A plate of her friend’s choice, she would display on the lounge room wall. I think some of her friends were dubious, worried about whether they would find one she would like, one that would match the others but that wasn’t the point.

It had to be a plate her friend loved. Perhaps it was one they already owned or one they found at a garage sale or junk shop. That way it would become a plate representing that person. Instead of a wall of photos of her closest friends, she would have a wall of plates.

What none of us anticipated was how much those plates would come to act like photos. It’s amazing what a pattern, colour choice and age of a plate can tell you about someone’s personality. To this day I can stand in front of those plates and know the story behind each one.

It’s these stories behind objects that make them feel so precious. When I brought home a stack of old, slightly crazed, square dessert plates with a faded gold border and little green flowers painted around the sides a few months ago, I washed them and left them to dry on the side of the sink.

While talking to my sister on the phone, I noticed the children kept coming perilously close to them. Our conversation was punctuated with me shouting across the room ‘Watch those plates!’



My sister laughed, wondering how much I had paid for them to make me so nervous.But it wasn’t the fact they cost me $1.50 each (!) that made me nervous. It was the fact that I was already attaching myself to the story behind them; the morning spent fossicking at the market and finding them stacked unlovingly in a plastic tub was just the beginning of our life together. I was already imaging the future meals with friends and family when they would make their appearance. But what about the life they already had?



How did they end up as someone’s rubbish when once they would have looked quite grand? They may have been a part of someone’s wedding china. China only brought out for Christmas or birthdays for a family long, long ago.

A family like the family who first lived here.

And now a family like ours.

When Home is… Through a Window

It was the bay window that did it.

At the end of the year, after a variety of builders all came back to us with pretty much the same – huge – quote to add a bathroom and bedroom upstairs, we realised our renovation dream (or nightmare) would stay just that.

Instead we decided to redo the bathroom and repaint. The house is now in need of some general maintenance and there were no more excuses to put it off. The New Year holiday period for us was spent inside bathroom and tile shops, trying to work out which toilet roll holder would work best with our towel rails. (The Oxford, it seems.)

But then we happened to visit a restoration yard and happened to accidentally lean against what turned out to be a beautiful, curved, multi-paned bay window. A window we could use in our kitchen/family room to create a much needed dining area; one that could have a bench seat built in underneath and become the focal point of the room.

It was love at first sight for both of us: not a pane of glass broken or a piece of rotting timber in sight despite its 100-year age. It once had curtains blocking off the outside world as all the curtain hooks remain. There is also a piece of old newspaper stuck to a pane with yellowed sticky tape. Aside from that evidence there are no other clues to suggest its former home. I wonder, was it the window in a formal living room? Or perhaps the master bedroom?

The owner of the restoration yard had forgotten they even had it until we almost knocked it over and because it’s curved rather than square or angled, found it hard to imagine the era of house it has come out of.

It doesn’t really matter; it’s history will now evolve with our home and our family.

And so our general house maintenance has come to include the installation of this window and bench… Will it add value? Who knows. I doubt I’ll ever want to sell the house now anyway.

When Home is... a book inscription

“To Sybil & Geoff,
With best wishes for future happiness.
From Tom & Claire”

I’ve been thinking a lot about Sybil & Geoff as well as Tom & Claire for the last couple of months. It’s a bit odd really as I don’t know either couple at all.

All I do know is that Tom & Claire gave Sybil & Geoff a 1954 edition of the book The American woman’s new encyclopedia of home decorating and somehow it turned up in my sister’s vintage store Retrospections. My sister sells a lot of second hand books, but most don’t have inscriptions inside. If only all second-hand books did have inscriptions though. I doubt I’d ever buy a new book again.

Today, what would be a funny read about being a 1950s housewife is so much more with that inscription inside. Who were Sybil and Geoff? Was this an engagement or wedding present? How did Sybil feel about being given a book about home decorating? And poor Geoff. I can’t imagine that was an exciting present for him back in 1954. Or 2011 either.

Fifty-six years have passed since Tom and Claire bought that book. Did it sit on Sybil and Geoff’s bookshelves for the duration of a long marriage or a very short one? Who made the decision to give it away? Perhaps they are no longer here and all their books were boxed up and given away by one of their children. I wonder if their marriage even produced children.

Did they emigrate to Australia? I’m guessing they were American given the title of the book. I think the Australian women of the 1950s had their own home decorating guides. Or perhaps the book was found at an American market long ago and brought to Australia by another owner...

And as for Tom and Claire, were they close friends of Sybil and Geoff? I do find it interesting that Claire has written Sybil’s name first while signing her own after her husband’s. I’m guessing they were already married and that Tom definitely didn’t go shopping for Sybil and Geoff’s present, let alone write the inscription.

Perhaps they weren't that close - Claire's signoff is a bit cold really. Not 'love' or even 'best wishes'. 'From' is close to 'Yours sincerely'. Perhaps Tom and Geoff were work colleagues and the wives didn't really know each other? Or perhaps Claire was just a tad formal and thought Sybil's house could do with an injection of style.

It’s a mystery and I’ve never even read the book. Unfortunately my sister sold it quite quickly. I’m guessing Sybil & Geoff and Tom & Claire had a lot to do with its appeal. And I hope for their sake it has ended up in a happy home.

When Home is... an old Armchair

If you had to give a piece of furniture in your home a name or personality, what would you choose? What piece of furniture is imposing enough to be singled out?

For Pip Robb, owner of Armchair store, it would – obviously – be an armchair. In her life as an interior designer she found herself constantly searching for armchairs for clients; a statement piece for their homes.



Never able to find the right armchair in the right fabric she would often end up finding old armchairs and have them restored and reupholstered. Having always loved armchairs and buying her first one as a design college student, it wasn’t long before she realised she wanted to open up a store based around this particular piece of furniture.



Three years ago she opened Armchair and today remains passionate about chairs from all different eras. ‘Often it’s the shape of the chair I love; shape can be truly beautiful.’



Finding the chairs involves trips into the country, auctions and second-hand stores. It might take a while before the right fabric comes along to give the chair a second life in a new home; ‘I get quite attached to them as they are around for a while. I don’t recover them straight away until I know what personality the chair is.’



Pip likes to give her chairs a completely new life so a fussy chair might end up in a plainer fabric while a retro chair may be given a floral makeover. ‘I’ve recently bought a chair for myself and it’s still in its original vinyl. I adore its shape, it’s very round, retro and vintage with gorgeous lines. I can’t upholster it until I find the right fabric and that may be a while. I want this chair to stay forever so I will probably end up choosing a plain colour to make it more versatile.’

Once the chair is in its new fabric, Pip is ready to name it. ‘All our chairs have names. I started by giving them numbers and it seemed wrong. They have too much of a personality to just be a number.’

As well as thinking about the new life the chairs are given, Pip is constantly reminded of their old life and their original homes. ‘When the chairs first come in they all have a different smell. Some smell like mothballs while others might smell like lavender. Some have scuff marks on the legs; others are filled with horse hair. I’m always thinking about who the previous owners were and the rooms the chairs have sat in for years.’



‘One chair came in all torn with writing all over it; it had been in a uni student's home and I wondered about all the things it had seen and been through. Another chair had a plaque with a person’s name on the bottom of its leg. It had come from a nursing home and obviously its owner had brought it from their home when they moved in. I couldn’t upholster it for a long time and eventually I took the plaque off as I had to take away its old life completely before I could give it a new one.’

After being reupholstered, Pip feels that the chairs really do have another chance with another family. ‘People get so excited and passionate about the chairs so it’s nice to think it’s going to be loved in a new home.’



Customers will also come back to tell Pip about how the chair is enjoying its new home. ‘A husband and wife came in to buy a chair for their living room soon after they married. A year later they were back, pregnant and looking for a chair to use in the nursery. Once the baby was born they came back to introduce me. I love that the chairs and this store are becoming part of a family story and history.’

For Pip and her partner Andrew, it is objects that create their sense of home and continue a family story. ‘We’re renting but it feels like home because it’s the objects we have that say home to us. We’ve inherited most of our objects from our parents. I have a bookcase I grew up with and Andrew has an armchair given to him by his grandparents.



I have a collection of jugs I use every day – for flowers or to serve on the table – and that reminds me of my mother and grandmother. I still use a bowl my mum used for serving salads when I was a child. You need lots of those things around to remind you of where you came from.’

And there is still that armchair waiting for its chosen fabric.



For more information about Armchair, visit the website here.

Armchair
401-405 Pacific Hwy
Crows Nest, NSW

Opening Hours
Monday - Friday
10:00am - 6:00pm

Saturday - Sunday
10:30am - 4:30pm

All images ©Pip Robb

When Home is... a Candle in a Teacup

Only recently I was writing about my love of bacon and the smell of it sizzling in the frypan but what I didn’t mention was not really loving the smell that lingers in the house well after breakfast has ended.

Just the other week we cooked sausages for dinner (well to be honest we have sausages every week thanks to certain limited palates in our house) and one of us – perhaps it was me – forgot to wipe down the stovetop afterwards. The next day the house smelled of old sausages and grease. Even after cleaning the stove the smell unpleasantly lingered.

It was time to burn my scented candle. I’d been avoiding using it though, as it’s a candle made in a very old sundae glass and looked almost too good to use. Jen, who I interviewed recently about her handmade vintage handbags, also makes candles in old vessels – glasses, vases, teacups, ramekins – and happens to sell them at my sister’s shop Retrospections.



I love the idea of finding another way to use old objects that were once part of a set and are now lost or alone. They get another chance of life in another home.

Perhaps no one will drink champagne or tea out of them anymore but they will still make people happy.

Jen originally came up with the idea of making candles in teacups because of her obsession with collecting them. She says; ‘I needed to start coming up with different ways to use them around my house as there are only so many cups you can justify keeping for the purpose of tea drinking alone!’



‘I had seen people using teacups for growing herbs and flowers which got me thinking about different ways they could be used for display around the house. I have always loved candles so it hit me that they would be the perfect vessel for candles.’

She chose the vanilla scent because of the ‘homely’ feeling it creates. ‘Vanilla reminds me of baking which I find very comforting.’

It’s certainly a lot more comforting than the smell of bacon or sausage fat the day after, I have to say.


Photos © Jennie Smith

When Home is... creating a world for your family

Magazine editor, writer and cookbook author Jenny Rosenstrach’s definition of home hasn’t changed since she was a child: ‘It's the place you go "where they have to take you in." And I realize I'm butchering Robert Frost there, but it's the place I can be my worst self, my best self (hopefully more of the latter) and I'll still be loved unconditionally.’

Jenny had been editing food and features on magazines Real Simple and Cookie until last year when she co-authored the upcoming cookbook Time For Dinner and began the website Dinner A Love Story. Working full-time with two young children led to Jenny making a deal with herself: ‘I would only continue to work full time if I was able to put a meal on the table for my family more often than not.’



And she did, splitting the dinner duties ‘down the middle’ with her husband Andy. How she and her husband continue to do this for their family is chronicled on the website.

So, why did the evening meal become the most important time of the day for this family? ‘The short answer: It's the only time ALL day when I actually sit down and look into my children's faces. And I think it's probably the only time all day long when THEY sit down and look at my face. We're focusing on each other. That's the biggest thing.’



‘Other nice dividends: they are willing to trying different foods because they are so used to us introducing new things, they share stories about their day they wouldn't otherwise, it's something so naturally part of the day that to not do it at this point would be weird. That's ultimately what I want it to be. So when they're teenagers their bodies will just be programmed to return to the dinner table at 6:30pm no matter how annoyed at me they are.’

The kitchen is very much the centre of the family’s lives. When Jenny thinks of ‘home’ it’s the ‘four square feet in the kitchen where all five of us (including our Boston Terrier) seem to be standing on top of each other. Sometimes I wonder why we even bother having other rooms in this house? Wait...I just answered my own question. For when they're teenagers.’

While working on lifestyle magazines didn’t change Jenny’s basic definition of ‘home’, it did change the aesthetic of it; ‘I feel certain I would be $2000 richer and not have marble countertops if I hadn't edited 8 trillion stories showing family kitchens with marble countertops at Cookie!’

Having children has probably contributed the most to decorating and home organisation decisions. A mantra Jenny learned at Real Simple is one she still follows today: ‘Control the controllable’. In the kitchen she has a desk and bulletin board, known amongst the family as ‘Command Central’ where all the organising and scheduling gets done.



‘I think this space is important to me because it gives me the illusion of control. I am powerless to control the leak in the ceiling, the dog getting sick, the recess drama – but I can at least make sure the class lists are somewhere I can always find them!’

All parents know that cooking dinner while hungry children wait is one of the hardest times of the day. To avoid more stress, when her children were younger, Jenny used the ‘Babysitter in a Box’: ‘a carefully curated container of kitchen gear and foods (think rice maracas made out of tupperware bowls) that kept them busy making a pretend meal while I made the real meal.’

Today, she has the ‘OK shelf’: ‘an easy-to-access shelf containing a bunch of kitchen-related bowls and pourers that my daughters don’t have to ask me to use. (The answer will always be “OK.”) Every item on the OK shelf is either non-breakable or so cheap (hello Ikea tea set!) that it matters little if they chip it.’



But Jenny’s hidden dollhouse idea is perhaps one of the most fun ways of keeping children entertained in a small space.

‘Last year, I found my six-year-old lying on her stomach in front of a row of my favorite magazines — all opened to stories about decorating. Her paper dolls were hopping from one “room” to the next, lounging on teak patio chairs, cooking on Viking stoves, and cooing with babies sleeping inside Netto cribs. In other words, Abby had constructed her own two-dimensional, temporary, composite dreamhouse.’



‘We set to work tearing out pictures of rooms from Ikea and CB2 catalogs and old issues of magazines. Once she had her favourites, I used blue painters tape to affix each “room” inside an accessible kitchen cabinet door. Then I used the tape to outline each room. Turns out Abby wants nothing to do with me while she gets lost in fantasy land, but I still love that she’s right there underfoot while I’m making dinner.’



And, as most parents would agree, the best thing about this dollhouse is: ‘When she’s done, I close the door. All gone.’



For me though, what really makes Jenny’s home a ‘home’ is her Recipe Cupboard Door.



‘This idea just came to me. Before I renovated my kitchen I used to put recipes on stickies inside the cabinet door because I hated hunching over a cookbook. A recipe door seemed to be just the right height for recipe referencing. When I pitched the idea for Cookie they let me pick an illustrator to execute the vision. I was lucky enough to get Gina Triplett, who is part of the incredible design team Gina and Matt.’

‘The only tricky part was figuring out which recipes were deserving of such an honour. Ultimately, to qualify for “cabinet door” treatment, we decided the recipe needed to be both steeped in family history and, of course, be delicious. The line-up: one recipe from each of our grandmothers; Rosa’s Mud Cake which my best friend’s mum served at every one of my best friend’s birthday parties when I was little; and a recipe made by Aunt Patty the first time I met my husband’s family in 1992.’



‘Now we have a private living memorial to those who have influenced me in the kitchen and my kids will grow up with a certain reverence for these dishes.’

There are some other ways Jenny and Andy keep the family connected. Originally buying a chalkboard for the kitchen wall because it looked pretty, Jenny now realises the family can’t live without it.



‘At first I used it as a way to remind my babysitter of playdates and activities, but now it’s more like my calendar and a reminder for the kids that screams, “Look how much fun you’re going to have this week!!!” When it’s not updated, I hear about it. I’m even expected to write up an itinerary for the weekend and, in the summer, include the weather report.’

Jenny and Andy also like to leave notes for the girls on napkins in their lunchboxes, although she has a warning to parents who have not yet started packing lunches. ‘Do not start with the napkin note – you are only setting yourself up for failure. And setting yourself up for disappointed kids when you can't think of anything cute or creative to say beyond "I have run out of things to say to you." Which I'm always tempted to do, yet somehow don't think they will appreciate the irony.’

Creating a sense of family through their home has evolved naturally for Jenny and Andy and will continue to do so as their daughters grow; ‘We never sat down and decided these things. Like everyone we borrow from people who have done it before us. Our friend Jay took each of his three kids on a one-on-one vacation after each one turned six. I didn't even have kids when I heard about that ritual and I thought that is something we're going to do. I just loved the idea.’

‘But the thing about kids is you don't have to make elaborate rituals for everyone to have fun. They are so naturally joyful about things that we just follow their cues. Once my husband forgot to bring home a present from a business trip for them, but he did have an unopened pack of gum. You would've thought we gave them Malibu Barbie. Now, it's the only thing we ever bring back as a souvenir!’



To visit Dinner A Love Story and for more information about Jenny’s book Time for Dinner, click here.

All photos © Jenny Rosenstrach

When Home is... Desire

I was up late last night, reading about a new form of porn: ‘yuppie pornography’. As Harvard English Professor Marjorie Garber writes, in the introduction of her book Sex and Real Estate, ‘What do college students talk about with their roommates? Sex. Twenty years later, what do they talk about with their friends and associates? Real estate. And with the same gleam in their eyes.’

Her book is quite fascinating, exploring cultural roles of the house as lover, mother, body or self, fantasy, trophy, history or escape.

Although, it’s unsettling too. For someone about to embark on a major renovation, I finally decided to put this book down and turn out the light after finishing the following passage...

‘Seen through a haze of plaster dust and plumbing parts, catalogues and swatches, the house of our dreams is never quite possessed, never perfect, never finished. “Keep the romance in your marriage” urges the tabloids, “keep love alive”. And so it is in the relationship between us and our houses, those “other persons” in our lives. This mutual and constant courtship, this ongoing relationship, imperfectly commodified and imperfectly consummated, is what produces both the anxiety and the enjoyment of owning a home. The keynote of much home design today is not character, not values, but desire. And desire, by its very nature, cannot be satisfied. It points always onward, toward the next redecoration, the next renovation, the next house.’

I gingerly picked up the book as I ate my sandwich earlier today unsure of what else I would find. Ahhh, thank goodness for romance. It will trump my unsatisfied desire, I’m sure:

‘The house and all that it symbolises is the repository of histories, memories, fantasies, self-images, aspirations and dreams. That is why our romance with houses is – in every sense – such a consuming passion.’

Sex and Real Estate
By Marjorie Garber, Pantheon
First published, 2000

At Home with… Interior Designer Anita Kaushal

I have very few interior decorating books. I have flipped through many but find they end up being more about styling or architecture rather than stories about making a home. Magazines have long-filled my need for stories. I love looking at pictures of houses but love it more when I can also read about the people who live there.

Recently, thanks to Anita Kaushal, I have changed my mind. With 15 years experience in interiors, Anita has designed products, transformed homes, written for The Observer, The Guardian, Junior, Cookie and London Magazine, and authored and styled books that have been translated into five languages. It is her interiors book Family Lifestyle Home, that has been the first such book to spark my imagination; a book that I keep wanting to return to.



As Anita says in the book’s introduction, ‘There have been countless books on raising children and on decorating, but here I consider both together. It is a kind of manual or recipe book, a collection of ideas based on the heartfelt philosophy that it is possible to create a home that is both beautiful and nurturing.’

So how did she come to write such a book?

‘From as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed playing around with the space I have lived in and take great pride in making it look good for me. As a couple my husband and I moved each time our careers progressed. Then in 1999, I decided to leave a very successful career in sales to start my own mail-order business based around mixing interior finds from the international designer and the local artisan; from products for a couple of pounds next to those for thousands.’

‘At the time it was quite groundbreaking and well received because I then went on-line and opened a flagship store in London’s Westbourne Grove. It was here I began to get interior commissions.’

‘The birth of my second child and more interiors projects changed my focus so I sold off the mail-order business and at the same time decided to write a book on stylish, comfortable family living and design homes with a heartbeat.’



It was after having children that Anita felt her home was ‘more alive because of mixing the children’s style with my own.’ She felt her design choices had widened rather than disappeared. ‘My hand blown lamp next to my daughter’s brightly coloured plastic ponies just worked.’



It was such realisations that led to the idea behind Family Lifestyle Home. ‘In my book I wanted to show that we don’t need to treat the home as them and us, but to enjoy the process of seeing the family as a unified whole. I think as well as the clever design ideas in the book, what makes it different is my true belief that home is not simply about how we decorate but how we choose to live in that space; reading, music, shared meals; a sense of lightness of being.’



Anita has lived in all sorts of homes: large, small, modern, traditional and she says, ‘each has felt a certain way partly because of its innate energy field and partly because of where I have been in my life at the point in time.’

She has also designed and consulted on many more. ‘What unifies them has nothing to do with geography or size and everything to do with the sense of comfort and happiness that comes from the people who share them and how they feel about themselves and their homes.’



Has she a favourite? ‘My flat in Westbourne Grove has been my favorite because although it was a small flat, it was a very happy time in my life – I had my business, my baby, fell pregnant and the area has such a village feel and good vibe – life just felt good.’

‘From an aesthetic prospective, it was great making a smaller space as impactful as a larger one. We then moved to the suburbs into the most stunning Victorian house and whilst it looked perfect, it was always dark and cold.’

‘The home I live in now is right where I want to be and that is partly the energy and light and partly my own understanding of what makes a house a home. It is a beautiful space and one that is all the better for sharing with family.’



Since having a family of her own, Anita still surrounds herself with the beautiful things she did pre-children, the only change being ‘I do have to spend more time tidying up!’

But, she has also happily learnt ‘to live in the house and really enjoy the space regardless of breakages and spills. It’s there to be enjoyed. It’s a home not a museum and it needs to work for you long after the guests have gone – I don’t worry about impressing others – if I like it, I will just do it.’

Most liberating has been getting her children involved with the decorating decisions so the family lives in ‘a home that resonates with our personalities… I don’t suppose it would have occurred to me to have a swing in my kitchen had it not been for the children, but the house is so much better for having it and all the other children’s things.’



It’s no surprise then that Anita’s kitchen is her favourite room in the house, ‘it is where family and friends come together and it is a very happy place which looks out onto the garden. First thing in the morning when everyone is asleep I go down to the kitchen, make a fresh coffee and plan my day. It is heavenly to start the morning without any noise.’



For more information about Anita Kaushal, visit her website here.

All photos © Anita Kaushal

When Home is Sundays...

At Home with Marnie Goding of Elk Accessories

Marnie Goding and her husband Adam are the couple behind the Elk accessories label. Running their own successful business also means working long hours – most weeks six days – and travelling to source new materials and emerging trends regularly.



The result of all this time away from home is that their home has become a refuge: their ‘Sunday House’.

‘Sunday for us is our day off. We make sure we always have time to ourselves on this last day of the week to recuperate and gather our wits. I am a winter girl and our house, even though it’s tiny, is very cosy. My favourite place is the lounge, it is open plan with the kitchen combined and a big open fire in the middle. We call it our perfect Sunday house!’



The couple built the house 10 years ago with the help of Adam’s father and uncle. ‘It took ages but was worth the wait. It is a small, white weatherboard cottage in inner Melbourne. The living spaces overlook a small courtyard which we have planted with ornamental cherry trees and magnolias.’



Originally built as an investment, Marnie and Adam gave themselves a time frame of five years before they moved again. ‘Needless to say after 10 years we are still here. It is hard to imagine leaving now - we just couldn’t imagine being anywhere better. As it was built for investment purposes we didn't go into the detail I would now if we were building again so 10 years on we need to make some changes. Our feelings changed from a business to an emotional attachment. There has been a lot happen in our little house and other than more family members coming along we will be here for a while yet!’

It is not just the physical building that gives Marnie her sense of home, but rather a combination of elements, ‘Our house is not formal and is full of photos and souvenirs from our travels. It means that anyone who visits feels a part of our home; they can sit with their feet up and become part of our environment. It is so important for us that guests feel comfortable and not like they are intruding. Nothing is precious in our home either so we always welcome dogs and kids!’



Their Elk Winter 2010 collection is called ‘Sunday’ and the idea for it came from spending a weekend at a friend’s ‘Sunday House’ in the country. Says Marnie: ‘The perfect day is spent beside the fire with the weekend papers and yummy breakfast; you can’t get any better than that!’

Overall, Marnie and Adam’s aesthetic at home and in their designs is about comfort and practicality. ‘We never design anything that is impractical and makes everyone feel comfortable but stylish. I suppose this is the same with our home, it is practical yet comfortable and little bit stylish!’



As city dwellers, Marnie feels that their designs and ideas are influenced by the ‘culture and community that surrounds home’.

‘We like to have fun with what we make and typically we consider the type of people who live around us - we ask would they wear what we are making? We have a great local following and a loyal fan base so we design with them in mind. The area we live in is not flashy but full of creative people with a great food scene and emerging music community.’



For more information about Elk Accessories and to view their collection (the latest being Away We Go Spring / Summer range), visit here

Elk Accessories
395 Plenty road,
Preston
Victoria 3072
Australia

Monday - Friday 10am -6pm
Saturday: 10am - 4pm

All pictures © Marnie Goding

When Home is... a Workshop

‘A workshop is the foundation for home improvements’, a March 1956 copy of Australian House & Garden tells me. Yes, it’s the same magazine that talked about expanding living areas into garage spaces and such articles make me realise that back in the 50s it would have been hard to get a job as a handyman. It seems that DIY really did stand for ‘Do-It-Yourself’ back then.

And it feels like everyone would have had the skills – and the workshop – to refurbish the bathroom, make a fireplace surround, build their own back fence and chairs (!) all in the same month.

But the DIY project that stood out for me the most in this issue was step-by-step instructions for making your own cocktail table:

‘Want to make your own cocktail table quickly and easily? Here’s one you’ll have little trouble with, modern as tomorrow, very inexpensive and fitted with a tricky feature you’ll like – a top that is automatically self-dusting. Crumbs and dust will drop right through for the sweeper to pick up below.’

I like the idea of regular cocktail parties at friends’ homes. It seems very glamorous and grown up yet I don’t know anyone who entertains this way anymore. Amongst our friends, brunch is as adventurous as we seem to get at this stage of our lives.

Anyway, back to DIY. The instruction that stood out for me was: ‘To attach the table to the brass legs, your husband can drill holes through the brass rod for thin screws.’

Obviously husbands took care of DIY AND the use of any power tool back then. If my husband and I existed together in the 1950s, our house would be falling down around us. While my husband is fantastic in many ways, one of those ways is certainly not while holding a power tool.

He cooks, cleans, shops for groceries and gets up to the children in the middle of the night but when it comes to DIY we’ve had some disasters. Most notably, a very crooked towel rail in the bathroom which seems to be sloping more as time goes on.

Yes, he can put Ikea furniture together but I don’t fancy his chances with the cocktail table. Perhaps it all comes down to the state of our back shed. Today, it’s certainly not any ‘foundation for home improvements’ and definitely not with all those cobwebs growing across the doorway.



B&W picture taken from Australian House and Garden magazine, March 1956