Displaying posts from July, 2012

A beautiful little house perched on a garden allotment in Groningen in The Netherlands. A wonderful getaway on a tiny lot in a communal setting. Don’t pop a portable shed or generic lock up on it. No. Create something as special as the eccentric gardens that surround it. Garden house, summerhouse, shed and hide-away. A marvellous mini villa by Haiko Meijer of Onix, perfect for architect and family.

On and on forever. Blue sea melts into blue sky. The perfect backdrop for this small but casually elegant seaside cottage at Palm Beach north of Sydney I recently found real estate stalking. As lovely as the home is, it is the deck and that view that just might clinch the deal for any prospective buyer. If they need a little more convincing then the stone wine cellar and bathroom are definitely a talking point. By no means large it is big on style and long on lingering drinking in that view. Imagine lying cosy in your bed and watching a storm roll in. Link here while it lasts.

I was poking around homelife, one of my favourite Australian websites that combines content from Inside Out and Country Style magazines, and came across two homes that really caught my attention. This first one is the home of stylist Jane Frosh and her family. It is a little bit of country with a very cool vintage industrial vibe that I always love. And holy smokes it’s got a caravan for guests (called Carrie) and a treehouse. (All photos by Sharyn Cairns)

Home #2 definitively has a country vibe. I love this because it also contains room after liveable room of coziness, and I adore the light fixtures that look like they’re made from vintage wire baskets. It’s the cottage that visitors never want to leave.

Saturdays are normally about helping readers with their design dilemmas. Today, instead, it is all about a wonderful retreat in an exotic location, full of creativity and it’s a reader’s home. Maureen Booth is a painter and print maker who lives just outside Granada, Spain in paradise….in a chicken coop. Well her guests actually live in the coop. This bijou building is an artist’s and writer’s retreat.

“Yes, it was a chicken coop. After that it was a dog kennel, then a painting studio, then it was a junk room for years  before we got around to enlarging it, re-roofing it and renovating it. Artists love it, both for the peace, the atmosphere and the five-meter-long workspace.”

Nothing grand, very honest, practical and wonderfully romantic. A reclaimed Spanish outbuilding with a view full of inspiration and a garden full of respite. El Gallinero.

With all of the interiors I am exposed to because of this blog, many times I find myself really enjoying the simple, neutral spaces that are soothing to the eye. Like these photos of a Parisian apartment via Norwegian magazine Interiør Magasinet. (Photos by Mikkel Russel)