i love your smile

unknown + weheartit

Ormiston House in Veranda Magazine

Well, it's turning out to be a big week for us.  We just found out that the Ormiston house has made the front cover of Veranda Magazine in Poland.  I thoroughly enjoyed working with Paul and Hayley on their beautiful home and am overjoyed by this wonderful article.  The morning of the photo shoot I gathered lots of flowers and foliage from my garden at home and arranged them at the house.  My favourite arrangement was the one I did on their dining table in a collection of Hayley's mismatched antique jugs and vases.

Thanks again must go to Catherine Shields and Simon Kenny for their continued interest in my work and their beautiful coverage of these lovely family homes I have had the pleasure of working in.

If you would like to see more images of Paul & Hayley's house head over to Content's website HERE...

and i wonder, do you remember me after all this time?

unknown

We grew up in the same neighborhood. We never hung out because our neighborhood groups never seemed to come together. I only knew you as one of the neighborhood boys. It wasn’t until high school that the way I saw you changed. I was a sophomore and you were a senior. I don’t know what it was. Your height? You always towered over everyone. Or how quiet you seemed when you were hanging out with your friends during break? I used to make my group of friends stand near your group, that way I could sneak glances at you. But I wasn't slick. You’d catch me staring and when our eyes would meet, my heart would skip a beat and my cheeks would burn. Then after months of always staring from a distance, I was in desperate need of a ride home because my sister had to go to ballet practice and I didn’t know which school bus went to my neighborhood. So, you offered. And the whole ride there, I stared out the window, paralyzed with fear. Fear of how I felt. Fear of saying something utterly ridiculous and ruining any tiny chance I had for you to notice me as more than that girl who lives in the same neighborhood. You asked me vague questions. Isn't your sister _____? What kind of music do you like? Is this radio station okay? When you dropped me off at my house, I quickly said 'thank you' and ran inside. We never talked again after that. Never acknowledged each other in the hallways or at break. It was like it never happened. But my feelings still remained.

You and my best friend had the same class. I would wait for her to get out so we could go to our next class together. I would make sure I never looked your way because I didn't want you to think I was waiting there because of you. One day, I was waiting and suddenly my best friend comes running out of class, grabs me and drags me away from everybody. She tells me that she has something to tell me but I can't freak out. At this point, I assume the worse. You know and you've told everybody that I'm a pathetic lower classmen who's in love with you. Was I that obvious? But my best friend tells me to relax; the news is good. She tells me you came up to her in class and asked about me. Were her and I best friends? Was I cool? What was I like? Did I have a boyfriend? I don't know how I didn't just drop dead right then and there and float off to heaven after hearing that.

I started noticing you notice me. I'd catch you staring at me more than you'd catch me staring at you. But still, I never did anything. And you never did anything. I was sure you asking about me meant there was some interest. I'd dream that one day you were going to come up to me in school, in front of everyone, and ask me out. Or you'd ring my doorbell and be there on my porch. It neared the end of the school year and I'd try desperately to muster any courage to talk to you but I couldn't. I was sixteen, not confident, and utterly in to you. I didn't want any other guy, period. Essentially, you were my Jake Ryan and I was Molly Ringwald, pining for you.

You graduated and I never saw you again. It's been 8 years and I still think about you. Sometimes I think I'm crazy to hold on to my feelings for you. When it comes down to it, I don't even know you. We talked once in all the years of existing around each other. So why do I still want you? Why do I still want to get to know you? Is it because there's the possibility of 'what if'? Is it because you're a fantasy I can sometimes revert to when I'm feeling sad and lonely? You have a hold on me that I've tried shaking for years.

And I wonder, do you remember me after all this time?

Gumdale House in AWW

Back in 2007, I was very excited when Sharnel & Perry Dollar asked me to help them with the interior of their new family home.  The latest issue of Australian Womans Weekly magazine features their alluring home.  It was lovely to look at the images and remember all the work which went into making it the special place that it is today.

Sharnel was a wonderful client to work with as she was very open to everything I suggested and recommended.  Catherine Shields & Simon Kenny's story certainly captures the ambience of the Dollar's beautiful family home.

it feels like we just got here

chicknamedhermia + unknown

Gym Time

Dakota and Elle Fanning at different times in their school's gym.

is it too late for me?

unknown

I've always been a free spirit. I am constantly looking for something fun and new. If I get bored or restricted, I run. I've never thought of myself as a slut/whore, but someone who likes to do what they want when they want with who they want. I rarely think about the consequences and like to go with what I feel at the time. I never go out looking for trouble, but trouble always seems to find me, and trouble always comes in the form of a boy. I have no problems attracting attention from the opposite sex. It's just that it's never the "right" attention. A typical night out would be my friends and I at a bar/club and a cute boy buying me drinks and dancing with me. For me, it's all about chemistry. It's either there or it's not. Unfortunately, the initial spark between myself and a male always just leads to sex and nothing more.

Looking back, I have been with many guys and unfortunately none of them have been meaningful. I never have usually hooked up with anyone for more than a month or so. When I do develop feelings, I try my best to hide them in fear of being rejected (because most guys don't want relationships). I have been told by several guys that I've been with that they like me because I'm a girl who just "likes to have fun." I am a fun and easy going person and that's what people like about me, but does this mean that I can't be in a relationship?

I am scared that I will never love or truly be loved. I have been in one relationship where I hurt my boyfriend of the time very badly. Perhaps this is karma. I was young, stupid, and selfish. I just turned 23. Recently, I have been feeling more alone than ever. I have great girl friends, but none of them seem to really understand what I feel. Guys that I'm attracted to and who I also in turn attract are always those who are never emotionally available. One guy that I was hooking up with for awhile that I started developing feelings for a couple years ago even told me that I am not "girlfriend material."

Perhaps I am evolving and I do want something more stable, because I've never been a part of something real. I know I stopped myself before from liking/loving someone because I have a fear of them leaving me or hurting me, but now I am even open to that possibility. Is it too late for me? Everyone already sees me as "the fun girl" so how do I change? How do I attract the right type of guys who are willing to love me for me?

-E

As Summer Fades...

As Summer draws to an end here in Australia we are heading away down to the beach for a few days to enjoy what remains of this warm balmy weather.  I hope you have a great weekend wherever you are, whatever you do...

xx

Anna

PS - My heart goes out to all of those in Christchurch who have been affected by the terrible earthquake.  What is happenning in this world of ours?xx

images via madison magazine

NY Cushions

For a bit of fun we picked up some I love NY tote bags when we were in NYC a few weeks ago to make into cushions for the shop.  We selected a few different fabrics to put onto the backs of them.  We only have 3 left...we should have bought more!

&hearts love is love ♥

unknown

Apple Tea Cake

Whilst I'm not a wonderful cook like others in my family, I don't mind cooking a lovely old fashioned cake every now and then.  One of my favourite cakes to cook is actually a lemon and coconut cake which is an old Woman's Weekly recipe.  However, I think my family may be a little bit 'over' my lemon cake so tonight I went in search of something new to cook.  I didn't have to search very far as I found a recipe I am going to try in the latest Real Living magazine.  My family and I are all heading away down to my cousin's beach house this weekend so I might just try my hand at this recipe tomorrow night.  I figure that if I post about it then maybe I will actually do it!!


PS.  Thank you all so much for the super kind comments you left me in my last post about my grandmother...Considering your interest in her, I might post more about her in the future.

how do you stop punishing yourself

weheartit

We've all been hurt. i'm just like everyone else. typical story of girl meets guy they get on amazingly. Guy has girlfriend, Guy cheats on Girlfriend with girl.
Girl and guy become best friends. Girl falls in love with guy. Guy promises to leave girlfriend for girl but it's all false promises. Girl gets hurt.

This happened to me. But i don't want to talk about that. I'm over him. What i want to know, now that i'm over him when do i get over what he did to me?

It's almost been a year now. a since i stopped thinking about the guy, josh. Its been almost a year since i met sam.

I met Sam one night through a friend, we spent the whole night together, drinking, laughing the usual. He was clear from the start, he didn't 'do' relationships.
I was ok with this. I still wanted Josh but it was becoming clearer and clearer as our friendship was fading more and more that it was never going to happen.
This continued to hurt, so i thought why not have some fun on the side with sam.

As i got to know Sam, we became closer and closer. We spent some amazing nights together, some full of passion and some where we would spend hours talking
and getting to know each other. I was growing to really like Sam and Josh barely ever thought about.

Sam and i talked about past relationships, he had no shame in telling me about how he's cheated and doesn't like being tied down.

I fell in love with Sam. By this point it'd already been admitted that he was in love with me and was just waiting for me to reciprocate the feeling before we
considered a relationship.

It was only about 2 months ago that i realised how much i loved Sam. It was the scariest relisation of my entire life. The only person i had ever loved like this was Josh
and that truly destroyed me, i never realised just how much until now.

Before i explain, i just want you to know that i know how utterly ridiculous i'm being but i just can't help it.

I simply cannot trust sam. and it's hurting me, not him, me. I keeping waiting for him to turn around and realise he doesn't want me, the same way josh did.

After we hang out i keep thinking, that's it we're over or we wont talk for months because that's how josh always treated me.

If Sam does anything slightly wrong, I get so emotional, i believe that its over and he's deliberately trying to hurt me and i sometimes cry for hours, over something which
turns out to be absolutely nothing. It's all because of josh, because i showed him everything and if he didn't like it and could discard it so easily why would anybody else want me.

This isn't meant to be a self pity story. i just want to know how do you stop punishing yourself, for what someone did to you?

I Love Her

This is my grandmother.  Her name is Ellie and this is what she was wearing when she came to visit me today at Black & Spiro.  She is one of the most stylish women I have ever met and I am so proud to call her my grandmother.  She has done so much for me in my life and I love her so much.

you are lovely

icanread

an alarming unhappiness

unknown

It started out as a fairytale. Even in hindsight, I won't deny that. We met online, though we were three thousand miles away, and tried to pretend we were just friends, but soon we were falling. I had started talking to him just two months before I was to head off to France for a seven-month contract, but I was starting to fall in love with him and the way he told me I was beautiful and that he loved talking about language with me; I wanted only him forever. I told him I liked him and I insisted that he either tell me his true feelings or lie and say I was disgusting and that he'd never want to be with me, because that would make it so much easier to get over him.

But he decided to tell the truth, even though he had just gotten over a big breakup - one that to this day he's not over - and of all fortuitous chances, I had a layover on my way to France in an airport four hours' drive away from him. He knew, and I wondered if he would come. I spent that first flight agonizing over the uncertainty, but giddy with a degree of sureness that he would be there.

And he was.

I lugged my bags and my guitar to the front of the airport, where he was waiting, for the hour-long layover I had between flights. His whole body was shaking, and he held my hand, leading me to a sunlit, secluded alcove under a big escalator where he laid down a blanket and gestured to the picnic he brought. He told me how much he liked me, and how much he would have regretted it if he hadn't come to meet me for the first time in person when he had the chance. I played him the song I had secretly written for him on my guitar, right there in the airport, with my back to the rest of the travelers, not even meeting his eyes because I didn't know how any of this worked.

He gave me my first kiss and waved to me as I re-entered security and made my flight just in time. That flight across the ocean really felt like I was flying, like I had sprouted wings and was high on the excitement of being wanted and feeling the potential of this perfect relationship whose start was so beautifully fresh. Then I was in France, and we talked every day online, he was charming and kind and supportive, and everyone I met was wowed by the romance of our story. Our story, I thought. I would tell it to people for the rest of our lives and it would be the sign that it was meant to be from the start. Imagine - my first love, this perfect!

He even came to visit me for a month over the winter holidays, three months after the airport. We overcame so many challenges in that brief period - my hostile roommate kicking us to the curb and leaving us to fend for ourselves, dirty replacement accommodations without heating or a functional bed frame, more rude people than I can count, the utterly insulting high prices of everything in Paris, my trip to the emergency room for a bad cut on broken glass... We survived all this, and he made me love him so much through it all. He was there for me every second, and I was grateful for that but also felt so guilty to be dragging him through my crazy life.

The day before he left, I said what I had been wanting to say for months. I said what he later told me he's not sure he can ever say to me. I don't regret it, because it's how I felt and how I still feel. Every good memory we had made during his stay - wandering Montmartre, kissing in the metro station, him lifting me up in the kitchen and smiling warmly at me, every ounce of desire he had for me that I returned - all those good things made me overlook the bad. But everything changed after that day, after that sunny morning on the mattress of the borrowed room we were in, when I told him I loved him as my heart raced and I lay pressed against him. Whether all the changes were due to my words or simply happenstance, I don't know.

But I cried so much after he left, I felt as if he had died or left me. He had a new job back home that left him no time or energy to keep in touch with me, and I felt completely alone. I moved into a new place, since I had been kicked out of the old one during his stay, and although everything there was good, great even, I couldn't feel relieved. I felt empty without him, and emptier still after realizing that I'd spent an entire month neglecting my own well-being while I tried to keep the two of us afloat in a country where he didn't know the language and didn't have the financial resources to help me out when I was in need. The good memories helped me remember how much I cared for him, and I tried to keep him aware of my affection by sending emails and offline messages, because we talked so infrequently.

I even came back to America for a little while, and we were able to talk on the phone again. But he was never the one to call, he felt too stressed about my being upset and my wanting to talk about the relationship and the need I have for there to be an end date for the long-distance part of all this (which there still isn't). And in his indifference, his unwillingness to take five minutes to send me an email or call to say goodnight, I have gained perspective. All the hurtful things he said without thinking, all the discrepancies between our needs and personal interests... And then he managed to say the thing that has been stewing painfully in my heart for the past four days: the crushing confession that he might not ever be able to love me.

I blame his ex-girlfriend. I blame his upbringing. I blame so much, and I had resolved this year to eliminate blame from my life. But the way he is, is not good for me. It's maintaining an alarming unhappiness in me that I need to get away from to feel whole again. Ending this will break my heart, and his too if I'm to believe him. The fairytale was so promising, so beautiful, so achingly beautiful that I don't want to give it up. Neither of us realized in the beginning that we were fools to think this would work. We gave it up by starting it in the first place.

A

Black & Spiro Today

Today we changed our front window display.  It was a little overdue I must admit.  The fresh blue, white, pink and yellow in the windows is nice for a change.  Our Max range of furniture is now available in a console table which we have placed into this display in yellow.  The nice thing about this furniture we are making is that it can be made in any colour and it only takes a few weeks to have it manufactured and delivered.

Isn't it hot today!!  I can't wait to go for a swim when I get home this afternoon...

you and me, everyday.

Friday Flowers

I took this photo at Dean & Deluca in New York a few weeks ago and thought it would be perfect to post today for Friday Flowers.  I just can't get New York out of my mind.  I think I am going to have return sooner rather than later...

Happy Weekend.  See you next week.

xx
Anna

i want us back

weheartit

You know there's not really much anyone can say... I've heard all the typical things you would say to someone- "it gets better", "give it time", "you deserve better" etc... To be honest nothing helps. Even if it's happened to you, we can't compare ourselves. Love between two people is different, so heart break between two people is different. How it feels to you is different. It's been a month and my wound still feels fresh, it still feels like i have a gaping hole in my chest. I still think about him everyday, every minute, every second and the scary thing is I actually believe that I will never get over him. He is and will always will be my first love, the one i fell so hard for I lost myself in the process and rotated my life around his.

I met him almost 3 years ago, we were an awful set up by two of our friends in an attempt to find me- the sad lonely one- a boy. He didn't seem like anything special and to be honest I wasn't looking for him to be anything other than my first kiss. At 15 I wasn't looking for anything else. I remember that night very clearly, the awkward eye contact and avoidance... but what i remember the most was the feeling that he was different than anyone I'd met before. For awhile after that night we talked, got to know each other, became more than friends, but being 15 and so naive our 'relationship' wasn't real. We broke up and didn't talk for 5 months. What he doesn't know is that I can remember every single time in those 5 months I saw him, I wasn't over him but I wasn't about to let him know that, so I pretended to live my life. The next time we talked to each other would be at a friends party and from then on, he was about to be everything to me.

I fell in love with him. I didn't even know what love was but I think I figured it out, that feeling took me awhile to name but I felt it.I still do. We shared everything, we shared the best parts of our teenage years, and now being forced into adulthood we've changed. He doesn't want me anymore, he said he needs to figure out who he is and I'm stopping him. I've blamed myself, i still do. I'm full of so much regret and guilt and it never goes away. We're still 'friends', we talk and I'm not going to lie and say we haven't had those nights before. The sad thing is I still love him and although i know you're supposed to distance yourself to try to move on, I can't, I'm holding on to him with everything i have. Our relationship lasted almost two years, but what we had, I know it will never leave me.You can call me naive and too young but to me love doesn't have an age restriction. I'm not over it, I don't know if I will be.

I just miss him so much, i miss everything. I hurt all the time, I break all the time, I want him all the time. He left me an empty shell, wounding me so much I physically hurt.I'm not sure what to do anymore. I lie in bed for hours just thinking, just hurting. I want him back. I want us back.

Teddy, i miss you.

-K

What is James Wearing

I have been checking out James Andrew's blog - What is James Wearing for a couple of years now, on and off {it's quite funny seeing his poses} so I was excited to see his apartment featured on New York Social Diary recently.  I love his bedroom {particularly the navy and white ikat covered armchair} and look inside his wardrobe...so many beautiful jackets and all so neatly lined up.  To see more pictures {including his shoe collection} and to read more about James head over to the NYSD HERE...

Brown Packages

The bounty of goods we purchased in New York has started to arrive.  Today we received our first deliveries.  One of the things we opened was the wonderful HUGE vintage one-off Chanel poster we purchased along with some colourful fabrics.  I was suprised to see these things arriving so quickly.  I am looking forward to the next delivery of special things we went to the other side of the earth to find for our clients and customers.

Even More Formal Pics

Dakota Fanning attends her winter formal, February 11, 2011.

you have no idea...

unknown