Urban Jungle Bloggers: Plant Shelfie

Hi and welcome to my latest post for Urban Jungle Bloggers! The theme this month is Plant Shelfie. I'd just shifted this vintage wooden ladder into a new sunny position, mainly so the plants which live on it could catch a few rays and stop growing leggy, and it was a good chance to get out my camera and take a few shots for this post.

The maidenhair fern at the top is one of my favourite houseplants, even though it reminds me a lot of Sideshow Bob. It needs repotting and after that I'll probably shift it to a less sunny position, this is just a temporary holiday for it!

Here are two of my favourite lady face planters. They are called Rapunzel and Mrs Blossom. Rapunzel is growing a single long strand of string of hearts... I wonder if it will ever sprout a second string? Mrs Blossom is hatless right now, but she quite often likes to wear a camellia or other large bloom on her head. 

There is also a succulent, some goldfish plant, and a couple of cyclamens on their off season. This little corner is very calm and relaxing to sit in, basking in the evening sun surrounded by greenery.

I've also got some plants on the kitchen wall opposite. (This kitchen shelf was the subject of my very first plant shelfie, a year ago!)

Here's some more string of hearts, trailing past a little cup of succulents. 

This dried hydrangea has been here a while! Soon I'll have fresh new hydrangea flowers to bring inside.

That's it for today. Soon it will be time to decorate for Christmas - the vintage ladder is in the spot I normally put the Christmas tree, so it will need to be shifted again! Unless I just throw tinsel over it that is... could be a fun option!

Urban Jungle Bloggers: My Plant Gang

Welcome to my Urban Jungle Bloggers post for May! The theme this month is My Plant Gang. I have quite a collection of pot plants, but I usually spread them throughout the house or group them in little vignettes. I hadn't actually thought of putting them all together in a gang until I got this month's suggestion, and now I have to ask myself why on earth I didn't think of it earlier :)

I decided to group them all together on top of my vintage china cabinet. It didn't take too long to arrange, perhaps because all my potted lovelies were so happy to be there enjoying each others' company? I added a few little decorative accents... some crochet stones, candles, twine and scissors. And because the cyclamen aren't all flowering yet, I added some sprigs of lavatera to enhance the one cyclamen bloom that is out.

I love the contrasting textures... smooth plant leaves, textured plant leaves. Stone and fibre, glass and wax. Wood and thread. But the colour palette keeps it all harmonious.

I had to put my tiniest plant with the rest of the gang... this little pot is only an inch high! 

The first flower on my gorgeous butterfly cyclamen - it already smells beautiful.

I love the striped leaves on the zebra plant but the new leaves have a lot of white on them. It has been in this not-very-bright position for a couple of months, I may need to try it in a sunnier spot for a while.

I also love the purple-grey leaves of this succulent.

And my new favourite, chain of hearts, keeping cozy in its crochet jacket!

I absolutely love my plant gang together, but there are some empty spaces around the house now. Guess that means I need to go visit the garden centre!

Urban Jungle Bloggers is hosted by Judith at JOELIX.com and Igor at Happy Interior Blog. You can find out more and participate yourself at urbanjunglebloggers.com.

Styling the Seasons and Urban Jungle Bloggers - April 2015

This month I've decided to combine my entry for Styling the Seasons and Urban Jungle Bloggers. I hope it's not against the rules, but since it's Easter and that would have been my theme regardless, it seemed a bit much to recreate the same thing twice for different posts. So here is my hall table, bedecked with eggs and flowers and lights in celebration of Easter and autumn.

 Styling the Seasons is a vignette created to show what this month means to me. April in NZ is autumn, the end of Daylight Savings time and Easter. The Easter part is obvious - I've put up my decorated Easter egg tree! This is one semi-commercial trend I really enjoy... why should a decorated tree be just for Christmas? Especially when eggs are the perfect size and shape for decorating.

 It might be autumn but I'm still in denial a little bit, and as long as the dahlias are still flowering I'll keep pretending it's summer! One thing I can't deny is the end of Daylight Savings time this weekend. Longer nights call for more lights, so I fashioned a wreath of sorts from a bamboo circlet wrapped with ribbon and my string of beaded fairy lights. (Side note: aren't we lucky to live in a time of great advancement in decorative lighting options? Fairy lights, solar lights, flameless candles, waterproof candles, LEDs, battery powered lights... it almost makes long dark evenings fun!)

The theme for Urban Jungle Bloggers this month is Happy Green Easter. I've brought in my lovely pink cyclamen, whose blossom co-ordinates most beautifully with the pink foil Easter eggs!

 I had my niece and nephew over for an Easter egg hunt yesterday. They had a blast running round the garden with baskets, finding chocolate eggs. They didn't find these ones though... Greedy Rabbit and I are pleased about that :)

 These Easter eggs are ones I decorated a couple of years ago. I shared the tutorial here if you'd like to make some of your own! It's not too late... I for one won't be taking this lot down until I've had a good few weeks' enjoyment out of them.

 Urban Jungle Bloggers is hosted by Judith at JOELIX.com and Igor at Happy Interior Blog. Find out more at urbanjunglebloggers.com. 

Styling The Seasons is hosted by Katy at Apartment Apothecary and Charlotte at Lotts and Lots. Find out more by searching the hashtag #stylingtheseasons on social media.

Styling the Seasons - March 2015

Hello, and welcome back to Styling the Seasons for March! This is a monthly styling challenge hosted by Katy at Apartment Apothecary and Charlotte at Lotts and Lots.

This month I've created a relaxing little corner on my deck. In New Zealand, March is late summer/early autumn. The weather is usually hot but you have that creeping feeling that the gorgeous weather won't last all that much longer, and so some advantage needs to be taken. (Also, the angle of the sun has shifted a little bit, and this corner is now a bit shadier... that's appreciated on a summer's afternoon!)

I made myself a refreshing basil and raspberry mojito drink. You can find the recipe here, just leave out the booze if you're drinking at home alone on your deck at lunch time... or leave it in, I won't tell! Just don't forget the mint.

My calibrachoas are doing really well - they are perfect deck plants! They have flowered nonstop since about October. I have three and I'm going to make a real effort to look after them over winter so they will hopefully bounce back again next year.

It might be summer but I still want a soft blanket for padding, or pulling over my bare feet if a breeze comes up. My Summertime Patchwork Quilt blanket is perfect, nice and lightweight but warm. This is exactly what I imagined using it for when I made it. I also have pillows for snuggling and a hat to pull over my eyes while I take a nap!

Well, the wind came up, the garland fell down and my set was photobombed by the cat. Hey, that's late summer for you... I still sat back in my chair and drank my mojito! Here's to a few more weeks of happy sunny days before the dreaded daylight savings kicks in. Cheers!

Styling the Seasons February 2015

 Hello there! Well, it's February (a week into it, oops) so I'm joining in again this month with Styling The Seasons, hosted by Katy at Apartment Apothecary and Charlotte at Lotts and Lots. Each month we are invited to style a surface in our home reflecting that month and season, and since it's February I've gone with my kitchen shelf. Late summer for me means hot, sunny afternoons and evenings, and lots of produce to harvest in my garden. I'm busy chopping, packaging, preserving and freezing, so I want nice things to look at in the kitchen while I do that!

 I have four sets of curtains in the kitchen/dining room and they are all different shades of green. It wasn't exactly intentional but I ended up loving the matching-yet-mismatching look of it!

 

This is the first time that I've used yellow as a feature colour deliberately! It's not normally among my favourite colours, but I found the rose patterned plate a few weeks ago at a market and decided to use it as the basis for my display. I don't know if I'm a yellow convert now, but it does add a nice pop here!

 I found some pink trim in my suitcase of vintage trims. It's very soft and was probably used for trimming flannel nighties. I'm going to make sure I edge a pair of pyjama pants with it before winter!

I love the delicate fronds of this maidenhair fern. It's right at home in its little enamel pot.

Hope you like my little shelfie this month. It's bright pretty colours are definitely lifting my heart and making my kitchen chores a little more bearable!

Christmas decorating

 Hi again friends! Christmas draws nearer and I thought I'd show you some of my decorating this year. Settle in because this post is picture heavy! Normally I'd break it into two posts but I've pretty much run out of time - I'm travelling tomorrow so if I don't get it done now it won't happen...

 My Christmas tree this year is in the dining area. I kept the tree fairly pale and vintage inspired. It has silver balls with the occasional pearl pink or gold one, and a few more detailed ornaments. The lights are those LED ones that are super bright but also blue tinged, so I coloured them with pink nail polish. (You can see more about the technique on this post.)

 This is an ornament I made back in November. It's a tiny bottlebrush tree in a salt shaker, with glass glitter instead of salt.

 Here's another glass bottle tree. I made four in total, with slightly different trims on the lid.

 I have a couple of these little clip on birds.

I wanted white ornaments with pastel polka dots but couldn't find anything like that. I couldn't even find white ornaments to paint dots on, so I had to spray paint some coloured ones. It was a bit of a performance but I love how they turned out. I only made four in the end so not enough to do the whole tree... maybe next year I'll do some more!

I had time this year to do a bit of Christmas baking. This is shortbread, dipped in pink tinted white chocolate and chopped pistachios and dried cranberries. Simple but delicious and looks pretty and festive, I think. I've also made a syrup for cocktails with raspberries and basil leaves, and I tried a little bit out as a tea... delicious and perfectly summery!

 I also made this summery garland to hang in the window. A lot of Christmas decorations are winter themed, and sometimes that's ok. But since it is summer here, I'd like to acknowledge that and a flowery garland is the perfect way to do it! The garland is off Trade Me (party supplies section) and I've hung glass jars of flowers and various ornaments I've either made or been given. (The rest of my polka dot ornaments are here!) Below are some close ups of some of the ornaments.

 Here's my kitchen shelf in it's latest fit out...

 I love these bottle brush trees in teacups! Bottle brush trees are actually really hard to come across in New Zealand. I read sometimes on American blogs about how they go into chain stores and buy big bags of them... not so here! I actually found it really hard to go through with glueing the pearls onto the trees because you know... so hard to get more! But I did it in the end and I'm really happy with how they turned out. I also found some tiny glass baubles to put in the cups, and this tree topper which looks vintage but is just a really cheap one that the glitter is flaking off.

 On the top shelf I have some more Christmas tree ornaments and tiny baubles, and I put some rosemary in glass candle holders. I wanted some greenery somewhere and this puts out more of a traditional Christmas vibe.

Last but not least, this is the table in the hallway. I started up a small Christmas village and it's slowly being taken over by cards. Every year I plan to make some glitter houses for a village but once again it hasn't happened, but I like the eclectic look here too!

Hope you've enjoyed this tour. Now it's time for me to start to pack and get organised as I'm going to visit my family for a few days over Christmas. The weather forecast is fantastic and I'm looking forward to some long summer days relaxing with family and friends, before I come home and get stuck into the garden and other projects. Merry Christmas, to those who celebrate it, and I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. xxx