Back to school...

Back to work yesterday. So sad. I love holidays. So much fun stuff to do and no stress - except maybe on my credit card. But seriously, I had a really productive holiday!

I painted the hallway - it is now a nice beige instead of yellow - phew, just got the lounge/dining to go now

Before 

After

I hunted down some old drawers and turned them into underbed storage. See the start of the project here.

 Loving it!

I cooked delicious macaroons from here

I started exercising again - very necessary as a result of the macaroons, ouch

I started sanding back a set of drawers to use as bedside tables

I finished painting the bedroom door which A hung - a door? For the bedroom? How novel!

I caught up with my lovely, talented teacher friend who has been busily making all sorts of lovely things for a local craft market - can't wait to see the final products

I tried really hard to convince A I'd make an awesome house-fiancee rather than returning to work - to no avail.

10 weeks until the next lot. And may they come quickly!

On the storage space warpath

Ever noticed how the amount of stuff you have expands to fill (or overfill) the space you have? For 4 of the last 5 years we lived in a 1 bedroom apartment and everything fit just fine into the bedroom cupboards and the one small linen closet. Now, after just 8 months in a 3 bedroom home we've filled the storage spaces and the garage is catching up! So in the name of using my holidays wisely (i.e. not spending the whole time oggling bouquets and bridesmaid dresses) I've been on the storage space warpath! 


My first win - spotting an easy way to convert old drawers to under-bed storage here. 


Then giving up on ebay and similar sites I headed to Revolve. Amongst the toilet bowls, bicycles and window frames I found exactly what I needed a set of 5 drawers the right height to fit under the bed even after adding the castors. Not only that, they were $20 in total and have really cute little handles. Incidentally, had I been looking for a piano I also would have come away happy - seriously who takes a piano to the tip?


I've removed the white paint, sanded, stained and varnished and attached the wheels. Just two jobs to go - getting some new screws for the handles and lining the inside.

Stay tuned for final pictures soon!

The wedding plans so far...

So far we have a date - the 6th of November - chosen mostly because A thinks that getting a public holiday (Melbourne Cup) around our wedding anniversaries will be great. Never mind that we don't live in Melbourne - we might one day! 


We have a church and reception venue. I have a dress, or I have one ordered. Hopefully I'll get it sometime in May. We have a photographer and a DJ. I have two lovely bridesmaids. A has two awesome groomsmen (who are sure to give him hell at his bucks but get him home safely all the same). 


Things still to do - save the dates, invitations, flowers, BM dresses, suits for the boys, favours, hair and makeup, gifts for parents, cars, accomodation pre and post wedding, honeymoon...oh, and rings. 

The plan was to get A a wedding band with a similar mokume gane pattern and mine would fit around the engagement ring. Apparently though getting the engagement ring made was a bit of a ordeal so not too sure what we'll do just yet.

What's in a name?

2009 was a good year. We bought our first house and the boy, let's call him A, gave me a beautiful sparkly rock on top of the worlds largest rock (Mt Augustus in WA for those of you wondering). It was all very exciting!  So began my slight obsession with wedding and renovating/decorating blogs. There is some amazingly inspiring stuff out there. I'm thinking the awesomeness of Young House Love, Vintage Modern Home, West Aussie Wedding and the honesty of 99 + Forever. There are more but these have been my staples over the last couple of months.


So here I am about to embark on my first ever blog detailing our wedding plans, home improvement efforts and anything else that happens to be on my mind. Hopefully you'll chime in and let me know what you think about our progress and ideas. I'm terrible at making decisions so having other opinions will hopefully help me out with this - example - I spent about a month wanting to start writing this but couldn't decide on a name! Which brings me to the title of this post. I finally decided on 'Ie love', 'Ie' means 'house' in Japanese. I teach Japanese and reckon most things about Japan are pretty tops so I like that there's a salute to that in the name. Also our house, a 1979 ex-govie, quite frankly needs a bit of love! 


So I'll leave you with a picture of the-house-that-needs-some-love and get to work on it...