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These are a few...

A Carlota faz 8 anos para o mês. Olhem as coisas lindas que me passam pela cabeça... Agora, tenho que organizar as ideias e começar a planear a festinha!










My daughter Carlota is turning 8 next month. These are a few of the ideias that travel through my head... now I have to sit down and organize them!

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Toasting Marshmallows

A cold autumn evening was the perfect opportunity to try out one of our fireplaces.  And toasting marshmallows on sticks proved to be an activity that everyone was keen to join in.

The kids are sitting on the floor partly because the grate is very small and they needed to get close, and partly because the room still doesn't have much furniture.

Although an outdoor campfire is a more authentic place to toast marshmallows, we were happy to shelter from the rain and chilly air.

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Little house on the prairie

Estes últimos dias, no pouco tempo que me sobra, tenho andado a navegar na net à procura de uma casinha de madeira para as minhas meninas brincarem no jardim. Acho que é o sonho de qualquer criança!... Mas, digo-vos, não é fácil! Para além de serem muito caras, a oferta é muito pouca e ainda não consegui encontrar o que gostaria...

Gostaria mesmo era de construir uma casinha como esta, adaptada ao nosso pequeno jardim. Os pormenores são deliciosos! Passo os dias a sonhar e a imaginar a Carlota e a Conchinha a brincarem, todas felizes, no seu pequeno espaço!...

Vejam mais pormenores aqui. E para a minha amiga que também quer construir uma casinha de madeira no seu jardim, dedico esta música.

P.S.: quem souber onde se encontram casinhas de madeira à venda, diga-me, por favor!





Copyright: mikodesign.blogspot.com



These last few days, on the spare time that I have left, I've been wandering in the net, looking for a wooden playhouse for my little girls. I think that a playhouse is the dream of every child! But, I can tell you: finding one is not an easy task, at least here in Portugal! They are very expensive and the ones that that I like and found on the net are from foreign companies that don't ship internationally...

I would really love to build a playhouse like the one on the photos. I adore all the details and I spend my days dreaming of Carlota and Conchinha playing in their little nest...


See more here. And, to my dear friend who wants to build a wooden house for her little girl, I dedicate this music.

P.S.: anyone who knows where to find beautiful wooden playhouses, please tell me!

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Autumn Rain


Rain! whose soft architectural hands have power to cut stones, and chisel to shapes of grandeur the very mountains. ~Henry Ward Beecher

After the long, hot summer these late autumn rains are sheer delight. Nothing is more reassuring than lying awake in the middle of the night listening to the rain drumming on the roof.

Thanks to the rain of the past few days, some of the vegetable seeds I dry-sowed last weekend are starting to germinate and my new citrus trees look very happy indeed.

This cool, wet weather makes me feel like nesting. I have the urge to knit, but don't know where to buy yarn in Adelaide (apart from Spotlight). I'd love to find one of those cosy, over-crowded little family-run stores where anwers to my questions are supplied along with yarn and patterns. I also feel like baking and sleeping and curling up in front of an open fire with a book.

What do you enjoy doing on cold, wet days?
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In the wardrobe

Hoje voltou a chuva... A Carlota levou este casaquinho para a escola.

Um bom dia para todos.



The rain is back... Carlota took this coat to school.

I wish you all a nice day.


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Neighbours


I baked the orange cake for Mr Marco and Violet but it came out a bit burnt around the edges - the perils of working with a new (to me) oven.

The kids devoured the cake but I have promised myself I'll try again on Friday, when I don't have to work.

After meeting Mr Marco and Violet I have been thinking a lot about neighbours, and how important they are.

In Sydney, I lived in the same suburban red brick house my whole childhood. I knew almost everyone for streets around. Every day during the school holidays the kids would congregate in a nearby cul-de-sac and play street cricket or any number of games that we made up, including the pole game and brandings (don't ask!)

In summer we would all head for somebody's backyard swimming pool where we would play Marco Polo unsupervised - fortunately above ground swimming pools are usually pretty shallow. We were expected to play outdoors unless it was raining. Late afternoon the mothers would call out "tea-time' and we would all head home to eat, dirty and happy.

Later in Melbourne, my husband and I had wonderful neighbours. In particular, Sue-next-door (to distinguish her from Sue-two-doors-up and Sue-across-the-road) and I raised our children together until I moved to Adelaide in 2008. Sue-next-door's daughter Kate-next-door (to differentiate her from me), was my daughter's best friend from babyhood and they still write, ring and text each other regularly.

I hope that we will become friends with our neighbours here in Adelaide. It is difficult with so many mothers working (including me) to have that easy give-and-take that existed in the past. However, I am sure we will build relationships over time.

What do your neighbours mean to you?

image is from www.tripodgirl.com

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Mr Marco and the Oranges


I think I am really going to like my Italian neighbours.

Just as I popped my head over the back fence last week and introduced myself to Violet, a couple of days ago her husband Mr Marco poked his head over and introduced himself to me.

He told me he likes what I am doing with the garden. This is high praise from a man who has been growing backyard fruit and vegetables for over 56 years.

His speech was hard to understand - the combination of a strong accent and some slurring (a stroke maybe?), but like his wife he said my garden was once full of fruit trees that were cut down when the house was renovated.

He said a friend gives him a very good fertiliser for lemons and he will give me some next time he has any.

This morning he put a metal hook over the fence and hung a big bag of oranges from it that he had just picked from his tree. Soon after his big smiling face came over too, and I thanked him.

I think I might make an orange cake and take it around there. What do you think?
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Beautiful storage

Já vos tinha dito que a minha casa é muito pequena? Pois é, e eu sou da opinião de que quanto mais pequena for uma casa, maior a necessidade de estar sempre arrumada. Qualquer coisa fora do sítio torna logo o espaço ainda mais pequeno e confuso... Quem "sofre" com isso é a minha família, pois eu ando sempre a arrumar tudo (e a pedir-lhes para arrumarem!), para me poder sentir bem.

É engraçado como nós mudamos com o tempo... Nunca fui uma pessoa particularmente organizada mas, hoje em dia, não vivo sem organização - em casa e no trabalho. E sinto isso principalmente desde que comecei a viver sozinha. Talvez também tenha a ver com o facto de sempre ter vivido em casas muito grandes, onde podemos desarrumar com mais à vontade do que nos pequenos apartamentos onde passei a viver...

Assim, é dos temas a que normalmente presto mais atenção nas revistas e sites de decoração. Na realidade, hoje em dia praticamente todas as pessoas vivem em espaços mais pequenos do que desejariam. Vejam aqui algumas boas ideias de arrumação, da autoria da Martha Stewart:





Copyright: Martha Stewart


Have I already told you that my house is a small one? Well, it is, and I think that the smaller the house, the bigger the necessity for having it cleaned and organized. Anything out of place makes the space look even smaller and messy... My family suffers with me always tidying up and asking them to keep things in their places!

It's funny how we change over time... I was never a particularly organized person until I moved from my parents home and started living on my own. Maybe that has also to do with the fact that I always lived in big houses, where being messy is easier...

So, storage and organization of small spaces is one of the things that I always look for when I read a decor magazine or site. I guess nowadays everybody lives in small places so I leave you with some great ideas by Martha Stewart.


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Saturday Musings, 22 May 2010


celebrating: my new (very bare) vegetable patch. It's compact but should work well. I am going to try a four bed rotating system based on the one recommended by Peter Cundall in my favourite gardening book, The Practical Australian Gardener.

This week I planted three new citrus trees: a Washington Navel orange; a Tahitian lime; and an Emperor mandarin; so I am also celebrating that there is no fruit fly in Adelaide.

thinking: that I am going to have sore muscles tomorrow from all the digging I have been doing in the garden

planning: to sleep in tomorrow morning, and have an early night tonight

reading: the Diggers' Club catalogue, but strangely not feeling like buying anything at present

eating: mixed berry and ginger crumble with cream
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As babetes da Conchinha









One happy baby!


Tenham um dia muito feliz!


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Growing Garlic

Earlier this week my little boy and I planted out two rows of garlic. Applying the principle that in a small suburban garden every inch of space should be used, we planted the garlic in the strips of dirt in front of two low box hedges just outside our back door. We used Australian garlic purchased at our local supermarket.

Before planting I consulted several gardening books about when and how to grow garlic, and here is the information that I gleaned.

When to plant: There is much conflicting information on when to plant garlic, with various sources advising from late summer to mid winter. The most common advice is to plant in the autumn when soil temperatures are cooling. However, an adage I came across several times was "plant garlic on the shortest day of the year and harvest on the longest".

Soil Preparation: Garlic likes slightly alkaline (limed) soil and grows plumper cloves if given a top dressing of blood and bone. If you have a worm farm, diluted worm juice can be watered on throughout the growing season.

How to plant: Break the 'head' into separate cloves. Plant the cloves pointy side up about 7 cm or 3 inches apart.

When to harvest: The garlic 'scapes' or greens can be harvested as soon as they grow. If you want to harvest the whole bulbs for storage, wait until the tops begin to yellow and the garlic develops a papery outer layer, then dig up and hang to dry. For a traditional farmhouse look, you can braid the stems and hang the garlic in your kitchen.


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Cleaning Out the Fridge

When I was growing up we had a magic fridge. It was always spotless. There were never any spills or strange smelly things up the back.

Imagine my shock on leaving home to discover that my fridge did not stay clean all by itself. Someone (me) had to clean it for it to remain as pristine as my mother's always was.

Theoretically, we should all clean out our fridges once a week, just before grocery shopping. Well, even better would be to maintain our fridges daily so that they don't need weekly cleaning, but I'm not organised enough for that, and I suspect most other people aren't either.

Last week the state of my fridge was so dire that I took all the food and shelves and cleaned everything. I washed all the shelves, discarded anything that looked inedible or old, and wiped out the interior with homemade spray cleaner.

The image below is, of course, an 'after' shot. No one needs to be inflicted with the sight of my fridge before it was cleaned, least of all my lovely Mum, who reads this blog and knows what a grot I can be.

If only my fridge still looked like this!

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Sewing basket

A minha caixinha de costura Cath Kidston, com um tecido antigo da Laura Ashley ao fundo...

Tenham um óptimo dia de sol!



My Cath Kidston sweing bastket with a vintage Laura Ashley fabric in the background... Have a nice sunny day!



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Mantelpiece Decorating

Having seen the fabulously creative ways that other bloggers decorate their mantelpieces, I am almost ashamed to show mine. I don't so much decorate as display a few of my treasured possessions in a way that is meaningful for my family and me.

In the picture below you can see the fireplace in our formal living room. There are photos from my brother's wedding and mine. The three little girls on the right are my nieces and the baby in the oval frame is my Mum. My husband bought the vase on the left in China and many years ago his father bought the vase on the right in China too. So as you can see, my mantel brings my family together. One day we will buy a mirror or painting for the wall over this fireplace, but it's not a priority at the moment.

The fireplace below shares the same chimney as the one above and is in our dining room. The photo on the left is my husband as a little boy and the one on the right is my brother and me when we were about 3 or 4. I did the daffodils cross stitch and the glass vase in front was a gift from my husband when we were visiting my parents in Toowoon Bay, NSW several years ago. I bought the two little pink candle holders in a Melbourne op shop.

The fireplace below is in our main bedroom and is really very minimally decorated at this stage. However, the fireplace itself is so pretty that not much decorating is needed. I sewed the cross stitch sampler and the other items were either thrifted, bought inexpensively, or, in the case of the green candles, found out the front of a neighbour's house during a hard waste collection.





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Yellow Roses on Red Gingham

I know they're a touch garish in a French-bistro-circa-1975 kind of way, yet I rather like the combination of of yellow roses on red gingham. They smell divine and make me smile every time I walk past.

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Decluttering Books


Of all the things I find hard to declutter, books are the very hardest. I am deeply attached to my books.

However, we have limited space for bookcases and limited funds to pay for them, so I am going to have to donate some of my (hundreds of) books.

Our red house in Melbourne had fabulous storage. There was a wall of bookcases with cupboards underneath in the Family room and each of the kids' rooms had long built-in desks with bookshelves above. We gave most of our freestanding bookcases to friends and charities because we no longer needed them.

The house we rented for our first 18 months in Adelaide had almost no storage so most of our books lived in boxes for 18 months. We have now bought two tall bookcases for our new house but at least half the books are still in boxes.

While rationally I know that I will never read all these books again there is the chance that I might. I love knowing that my library is at hand should I think about something in a book or remember a quote and need to be able to find it. I know I could use the internet but books are just better. And they feel good. And I love my collection of old second-hand books that are filled with other people's memories as well as my own.

I now have a box of books that I am planning to give to the Salvos - if only I can bring myself to part from them.

What possessions do you find hardest to declutter or give away?


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Ironing board covers

Procuro a criatividade em todas as peças da casa. Hoje em dia, as coisas bonitas estão cada vez mais acessíveis. Vejam as capas para tábuas de engomar que encontrei à venda...

Adivinhem qual é a minha!



























I search for creativity in all the things I have at home. Nowadays, beautiful things are more and more acessible. Look at the iron board covers that I found...

Guess which one is mine!


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Meeting Violet

strawberry seedling


Violet is an elderly Italian lady who lives in the house that backs onto our (new) red house. Having admired the fruit trees that I can see in her garden, I poked my head over the fence this afternoon and introduced myself.

When I told Violet that we moved here from Melbourne she said that she likes Melbourne: she visited there in 1953 just after she got married.

Violet told me that she has lived in her house for over 50 years. She used to be great friends with the lady who lived in my house and they had a gate between their homes so they could pop in and out and visit each other. However, the next owners of my house didn't like the gate and put up the high metal fence that is there now.

Many years ago my own garden was full of fruit trees, Violet says. There were figs and olives, oranges and plums, but they were mostly cut down when the house was renovated and the garden professionally landscaped. When I told her that I was hoping to plant some more fruit trees she smiled.

Violet's garden is the kind that we expect from the older generation of Italian migrants, with many fruit trees and a large vegetable patch. She said she has plums for jam and green apples for apple cake.

Sadly, one of her plum trees died over the summer. Violet explained that she and her husband are pensioners and can no longer afford the water needed to keep her trees alive. They have a water tank but it was empty long before our hot summer ended.

According to Violet they once had a much larger vegetable garden but her husband can no longer do the work required. Even so, their vegetable patch is much bigger than most that I have seen.

It is a great tragedy that folk like Violet and her husband cannot afford to water trees that they have nurtured for over 50 years. At a time when we are being encouraged to cut our food miles and live sustainably gardens such as theirs should be encouraged.

So much seems to have been lost in Violet's lifetime: the kind of neighbourliness that meant you could drop in on a friend any time without an invitation; the kind of thriftiness that quietly grew as much as possible at home and that tended the earth with love so that it would provide year after year.

I hope that we can all make small steps to ensure that that world is not lost forever.

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