Live Breathe Decor

In between trade fairs and lots of shopping (but not much spending sadly), my darling sister, my little girl and I did a lot of walking around the inner-eastern suburbs of Sydney. One of my favourite things to do in any city or town is to walk around looking at people’s houses and gardens, and Sydney is jam-packed full of gorgeous houses and interesting architecture, not just on the Harbour but everywhere you look. I have long held a dream of renovating an old three-story terrace house somewhere, and loved the look of the one above. It reminded me of New York, the way the lower level is below the street. You can walk along and look into people’s kitchens (yes, I am a sticky-beak by nature.

This is an apartment building in the same area as my sister’s (above). We liked the look of it, especially the little sunny balcony lined with potted geraniums which you can sort of see on the third floor.

Another lovely terrace house (above) - and my sister and little girl.

A couple of years ago I helped my sister inspect apartments when she was buying her first home. The runner-up apartment that we nicknamed ‘Frenchie’ because of the wrought-iron front gates and gorgeous french-style overgrown internal courtyards was in the the block above. It was so cute but only had a half-kitchen (no oven) so didn’t make the cut.

Another gorgeous terrace house - I seem to love any building with ivy creeping all over it. It used to be a garden shop but was recently sold to a lucky young family.

I seem to visit this junk shop in Surrey Hills whenever I am in Sydney. On this trip I bought a stack of crusty old leather books but there were other things that caught my eye that I couldn’t buy.

Like these old paintings - especially the bottom one which I considered adding to my ‘nautical’ art collection.

And this antique mounted fan coral from New Guinea - it was huge and sadly had a huge price tag to match.

I’m not sure what these old cans were for but I thought they’d make great rustic candle hurricanes for outdoors.

Stuff galore - love this kind of thing!

Couldn’t resist taking a pic of this iconic cityscape as we walked towards Kings Cross.

Another thing I loved but couldn’t buy: classic beech and pale-blue leather vintage chairs (above).

One of Sydney’s many beautiful giant fig trees. Oh how I’d love a garden with a (scaled down) tree like this!

I could picture living in this beautiful tree-lined street. Can you believe this is inner-city?? It is home to this gorgeous little stone school, which has twin columned entrances on either side marked ‘boys’ and ‘girls’. And it got cuter - around the corner is another little entance marked ‘infants’. And this is where we’d live:

Just beyond those trees (above) is the Harbour.

I love a coloured door. This blue and yellow colour scheme caught my eye, and the moulding above the door has such an impact.

And more dreaming…that this renovation project was mine..