Or maybe I should say house dreaming…I love this one for two main reasons: First, the elevation! Having different levels and outlooks in a house is something I dream of, and I have a major weakness for any house on the high side of the street with steps leading up the entry. But aside from the elevation, this house has a very pretty face, and I like that it’s partly obscured by trees.

And here is reason number two: this fabulous room with the timber-lined pitched ceiling, dormer and circular windows, and french doors leading to the garden. If I had the chance to build only one room onto an existing house of mine, it would be a little something like this.

You can see the french doors are actually on both sides of this room, and yet it doesn’t look as though it lacks privacy. I like the central fireplace flanked by bookshelves. But the beauty of this room is the ceiling line and those upper windows facing the trees. Can you imagine this same room but with a flat ceiling? Not remotely as nice.

In the main bedroom the balcony and view across the treetops is amazing and must be wonderful for the lucky person who sleeps here!

I really like changes in levels in a house, and here the steps define the dining area which opens onto the large terrace. Wouldn’t this be a great house in summer, with those doors all open leading to the pool?

The white-painted pergola across the back areas of the house (which is actually the North-facing side of the house) really adds something beautiful doesn’t it? Even though there don’t seem to be any plants growing over it, and it doesn’t provide any shade, I think it smooths the transition from the house to the garden so that it works better overall.

This is such a great entertainer’s yard but also so great for kids. With that said, yes, I do see a very unobtrusive glass fence around the pool!

And, of course, the essential floorplan:

Have a great weekend,

Naomi xx

Hello All! Things have been really busy here and I’ve been feeling guilty about not taking photos of what I’ve been doing and posting them on the blog. I really admire other bloggers who seem to always have the camera at the ready and who find the time to keep up to date and post every day! So I thought I’d share some progress made in a client’s living room instead of my daily happenings.

This casual living room off the kitchen is part of a more comprehensive house redecoration, and the client loves ‘Hamptons’ style using blues, white and greens. We used brighter colours in this room and more subtle versions of those colours in adjoining rooms. Above is the room before. It was pretty sparse. We moved the long basket hamper to another room and got rid of the sofa. Below are some quick snaps I took of the room in progress. We still need a big palm tree for the blue and white Chinese planter in the corner and a couple of other bits and pieces.

The client wasn’t a huge fan of the existing floor tiles in this room but we couldn’t replace them, so most of them were covered with a big sisal rug, with another blue and white striped rug layered over the top to define the sitting area.

I wanted to accessorize the coffee table and the whole home with a mix of new pieces and vintage finds. The round cream pot on the kitchen bench I found at an op shop, and the green Chinoiserie vase on the coffee table I bought on ebay. I like to use little accents of silver and brass in accessories, and of course there are a lot of shells throughout the house, and loads of wonderful coffee table books!

This room opens onto the garden, which was landscaped before I came on board. It’s a gorgeous mix of magnolias, box hedging, climbing jasmine and gardenias.

I’ve been busy house-hunting and have a few more houses to share, hopefully this week!

Naomi xx

I’ve been looking at houses online ahead of the weekend and dreaming of a bedroom with a view, a pitched ceiling and a fireplace- just like my all-time number one favourite bedroom (above), decorated by Michael Smith and belonging to Cindy Crawford. I’m starting to come to the conclusion that I may need to build a house!

Another favourite also happens to be by the same decorator:

I picture this as my country house bedroom! Just love all the layering of fabric and pattern, and the blues. I really am itching to get started on a new project…

See you next week,

Naomi xx

What’s not to love about this kitchen? The wide-planked timber floors, the marble benchtops and endless views across the water.

In the entry foyer the timber mouldings and chandelier give a sense of formality, but the large panes of glass framing the doorway and the pocket sliding doors into the adjoining rooms are both more contemporary. Doesn’t that pooch make the whole shot feel more casual and homely?

This deck is one of my favourite things in the house- imagine having your evening drink out here every night! But it’s not just the view that gets me, it’s the woodwork and the timber-lined ceiling.

Another look at the fabulous kitchen, with its simple shaker-style doors and nickel drawer pulls.

I love wooden floors in bathrooms- a lot of people are afraid of them and worry they will get damaged by the water, but actually if sealed properly they work fine, and they lend some real continuity to this house.

What lucky children to have views like this from their bedrooms! Love the corner windows and window seats to capitalise on that outlook, rather than a conventional window centred on the side walls.

Does anyone know what the commute to the city is like from the Mornington Peninsula? It does look like a dream lifestyle but I admit I don’t know that area well.

Have a great Thursday,

Naomi xx

Symmetry reigns here (above), and these are my colours- greys and blues, with lots of natural textures thrown in. I love the dark grey walls, the nickel wall lamps, the books, the casual chunky sisal rug. I’m even partial to the display of a bit of taxidermy, animal horns and skulls, but this is something that should be practiced in moderation people!

The other side of the room shows the hit of yellow and the modern abstract artworks. My boys would love it if I used framed pictures of Lego figures as artwork!

A very modern Scandinavian-style dining area in the open-plan kitchen at the back of the house. You can only just see it, but the stairwell coming down into this space is also the office and is lined with Hicks hexagonal wallpaper. The thing I really like about this house is though it’s small, it has colour and pattern used in every space, which can sometimes look as though someone has tried to use every single fabric and colour they like in a space that’s too small to house them all. Here it makes every corner interesting and homely as well as stylish.

Look at all the pattern in the red and grey master bedroom- and the wall of mismatched artworks – it’s fun, warm and cosy.

The twin bedroom above and below made me stop because it’s basically the same scheme I had been planning for one of my boy’s bedrooms in our next house- I’d even bought the same fabrics! The bedhead fabric is one I had used in a recent job and loved it so much I needed to use it at home too. I love, love the dark grey/blue walls. Notice how in the magazine photo above they placed a mirror in between the beds to reflect the green greyhound painting opposite, but it’s absent from the room normally (below).

I’m hoping to get to at least one open house tomorrow, hope you all have a great weekend!

Naomi xx

The magazine came out a couple of days ago, but it wasn’t until today that I managed a trip to the newsagent to pick up a few copies of the current issue (May/June) of Australian Country, which features the home of some clients for whom I had the pleasure of working last year. This is as good a reason as any I think to get back onto this blog! It’s very exciting to see this lovely home in print. Below are a few of the pics from the magazine, but pick up a copy to see the whole spread. I’ll also be adding some extra photos not seen in the magazine to my Portfolio page.

Because of my hiatus I have a whole lot of thoughts and photos I’ve been saving up and will need to share to stay sane! So I promise I won’t disappear for another three months…

Naomi xx

To my readers of this blog and to my clients of 2012, thank you for your support this year. I’m so thankful for the wonderful people who have chosen me to help them with their homes and who have supported my business. Most of all, I’m thankful for my family and their health and happiness, which is the greatest blessing I can ask for. To my readers, your emails and comments mean so much to me and I look forward to a New Year full of new challenges, new projects and, I hope, a new house to decorate and share with you all!

I’ll be taking some time off but will be back in January sometime…

I wish you a very Merry Christmas and New Year full of joy and happiness.

Naomi xxx

First of all I want to say in follow up to yesterday’s post on the horrific shooting in America last week, Thank You to all of you who emailed me with your own expressions of outrage and grief. We are all devastated by this event and your heartfelt messages encouraging an appreciation of the goodness in people all around us and a focus on enjoying the time we have with our loved ones were truly beautiful.

It’s now officially the beginning of the Christmas holidays, and I’m so happy to have the kids at home! They get so tired at the end of the term and I think we are all looking forward to some quiet time together at home. I’m hoping to have the time over the break to do some much-needed updating of my blog, and to organise some more photography of my projects for my new website. I am aware that this blog is woefully in need of some improvement so please bear with me!

In the spirit of a fresh start for the New Year I’ve been cleaning up my desktop and looking back over jobs from this year. For one living room project my clients came to me with a bare room with only a pale modular sofa and a tv on an entertainment unit. They wanted colour, softness, an eclectic, international feel and colours that would please two small daughters. We needed a great rug as a starting off point, and ultimately purchased the soft wool beauty above.

But it took a little bit of searching to land here. The clients had liked the patchwork rug in Josh and Jenna’s house on tv show The Block:

I went to look at this rug but although the colours were nice, they were very muted and not quite right. There are a lot of ‘over dyed’ rugs – where vintage rugs are cut up and sewn together as a patchwork then the whole thing is dyed again – out there, and I looked at several options.

At the end of the day, we dismissed them because they were just too thin and rough to be used as a comfortable playing surface. What we needed was a plush cut pile wool or something similar that was thick and soft. I also wanted to find some great colour. The next find was plush and had the colour, but I thought it was a little subtle for what we were looking for:

And then there was this- cute pattern than reminded me of bird footprints, but too much black for a little girls’ play area:

This blue runner didn’t fit the brief but I would have loved it for me!

Then came a great harlequin pattern, but again too much black and not ‘young’ enough:

But then, the perfect rug:

Great ‘happy’ colours including lots of pink and purple, soft and thick and gorgeous pattern. Love it!

So the rug was a done deal but we still needed to cater to the man in the family and also provide a bit of that eclectic contrast in styles that the clients were looking for. A masculine leather armchair was the perfect fit.

We also included some Moroccan leather pouffes for fun and for seating for the girls, pulling colours from the rug.

This silver side table provides a hint of shiny texture and a break from all the colour.

And then, my favourite part, accessories!

And lastly, a basket for toys. We also needed a bit of black as a visual weight in a room with so much feminine colour. This one came from Freedom:

Have a great weekend All and may the force be with you if you plan to hit the shops!

Naomi x

Naomi xx

How are your preparations for Christmas coming along? With less than a week to go I am definitely feeling that the countdown has begun! All my presents are wrapped and ready but I haven’t thought much about food yet and I have a mountain of washing to get through. In an attempt to stay a couple of days ahead of the pack I stopped by Costco today to do the Christmas shopping; it was crazy! I can only imagine that the weekend will be much worse, so my advice would be to get there early or steer clear altogether people!

But my main focus this week is finishing up with clients so that I can take a bit of a holiday in January. I took a carload of cushions, rugs and mirrors to a client’s beautiful home this morning, where the floors have been stripped of carpet and sanded, and the painters have just finished painting in a warm light neutral with crisp white trims.

The old wingback armchairs were scored by my client at auction and were recovered in a grey/blue and green stripe. We still have a chandelier to hang and a chaise that’s getting recovered in the floral fabric from my last post – my upholsterer tells me it will be done by Monday – talk about cutting it close to the Christmas Day deadline!

I took this pic because I was struck by how festive our blue Madeline Weinrib runner looks paired with the newly-painted red front door (though I know you can’t really see the red here). Two big arched multi-paned mirrors are going above the chunky rustic table to the left, echoing the shape of the arched front doorway.

This week is a little bit mad, but it’s great to see long-planned schemes come together and bits and pieces finally going into clients’ homes.  Seeing clients happy at the completion of a job really is the best part.

Naomi xx