Interior Decorating

Photo from Absolutelybeautifulthings.blogspot.com

As you get older, the desire to create your own home or sanctuary, filled with your own pieces and decorated in your own personal taste becomes stronger and stronger.

I really enjoy the idea of being a home-maker. It's not to say that I would choose to be a stay-at-home Mum, but there is certainly a satisfaction in coming home to somewhere that feels safe, comfortable and completely 'you'.

So with my interest in interior decoration developing and my crazy passion for cookery books and Vogue Living style magazines, I guess you could say it's quite lucky I'm going to be moving out of home soon. My friend and I are aiming to move in together in January. We hope to live close to the Harbour Bridge - somewhere near Kirribilli or MacMahons Point. Sure we've both lived away from home before. In fact, we've both lived together before; we were Boarding Residents at the same school - so we know we'll have no problems getting along. But what we haven't done before is to create our own home to our own tastes with our own furniture.

And at this point I would like to introduce some of the blogs that I have recently discovered which are feeding my hunger for incredible interior decorating of our prospective home.

The first blog is called The Interiors Addict. It is amass with interviews by interior designers and decorators with incredible style and design flair. The photos are beautiful and while the furniture is probably well beyond my current first-home budget, I definitely take away lots of ideas from the blog.

The second blog is called Absolutely Beautiful Things and it's blogger, Anna Spiro, selects the most gorgeous, pretty and vibrant photos. It is totally inspiring.

A Stuart Membery sofa, decorated by Anna Spiro,
photo from her blog absolutelybeautifulthings.blogspot.com

The only concern I have about home-decorating is my fear of colour. If you commit to one colour scheme for a room, how long until you tire of it and need a change? Is it not better to add a splash of colour through pillows and throws, paintings and vases, and to stick to a neutral palate base? Clearly these kinds of worries are first world problems. I should be satisfied by the fact that I have a roof over my head and the ability to choose the colours of my walls. I totally get that and I am definitely wary that  this obsession with home decorating is superficial, but it sure is fun.

What colour could you never live with in your house?

Freshly Baked Bread

L-R: Blueberry bread and Olive, Rock Salt and Oregano Bread

Bread is one of those evil but delicious things that you shouldn't really eat too much of, but every time you're presented with a slice of beautiful artisan made loaf, you really can't resist. My favourite is a freshly baked olive bread with a bit of real butter. Yummo!

Today I was lucky enough to visit the Masterchef Live show as I had been given complimentary tickets. I didn't really know what to expect, but as Masterchef fans, I decided to bring my Mum along with me to check it out.

Held at the Horden Pavilion, the exhibition was enormous and covered two huge halls. There were demonstrations, cooking classes, exhibitors with stalls and pop-up cafes. Mum and I have never turned our hands at bread baking before, so we couldn't go past the Brasserie Bread bread-making course. I've made about a million cupcakes, slices and cakes, but bread has always been something I'm a bit scared of making - it seems fiddly and volatile. Under the amazing guidance of our baker Matt Brock, we spent an hour developing our bakery skills. The queues at the exhibition were ridiculous and we had to wait for an hour and a bit in order to get into this hands-on cooking demo, but it was definitely worth it!

The result of our bread-making course is the above photo, which took us an hour of kneading and 'throwing' the bread onto the table. It actually doesn't need any complicated ingredients, it just takes a while to work the bread and then let it rest. You're supposed to work the bread for two minutes, then let it rest for two minutes and continue that process for a total of 24 minutes. It's a really good way to let some aggression out, as the more ever the air you put into the bread, the more light and fluffy the bread will be. 

Apart from the cooking course we also watched a show; a cook-off between George Colombaris' sous-chef, called Josh, and Season Three Masterchef contestant Hayden Quinn. Hosted by George himself, the two competitors went head-to-head in a 'Mystery Box Challenge', with their key ingredients being a tomato, an avocado, a piece of sashimi-grade Tuna, some quail eggs and some asparagus. Both chefs managed to produce a really delicious looking starter in under seven minutes. That's pretty impressive - it usually takes me about seven minutes just to decide what I want to cook. Hayden put together a carpaccio with a spicy mayonnaise and an asian-style vinaigrette. Josh created an avocado puree with cubes of tuna and poached quail eggs. The son of Giovanni Pilu - owner of Pilu in Freshwater - was the judge and he chose Hayden as the clear winner. The show was actually being recorded to then be aired on TV, so there were production and camera crews everywhere. The Masterchef Katy Perry theme song played and it was just as if you were watching the show at home... although I guess that's probably why they decided to name the event Masterchef Live.


It was a great event - although there were possibly too many people - and to see some of my cooking idols, such as Kylie Kwong, Gary Mehigan and Giovanni Pilu in the flesh was very cool.

Nailing It.

Shellac nail polish

At the risk of sounding really vacuous, I think I'd like to write about nail polish. There's a lot of meaning attached to the whole nail-painting process. In my house it has always been associated with being overly indulgent. Something reserved for ladies of leisure. You see, whenever any chore or task hadn't been done, for example if dinner hadn't been cooked, my Mum would say "Geez it's not like I've been swanning around painting my nails!" Because of that, I now associate having my nails painted as being a bit of a guilty act - something I can't admit to doing or enjoying for fear of being labelled as lazy. Another gem is that if your nail polish lasts a long time then you're probably not doing enough chores around the house. For if you were doing lots of washing-up and sweeping, vacuuming, washing etc, your nail polish would chip within a few days. And at school we were always told that if you had chipped nail polish it meant you weren't looking after your appearance. "Chipped nails are for tramps," we learnt. Who would have thought a tiny little bottle full of colourful paint could bring with it so many negative connotations?

So today, when I decided to go to my local nail bar to try out the latest fad in nail laquer, Shellac, I was feeling a little bit naughty. All my friends have been raving about how 'you really just have to try Shellac - it's like you've got fake nails - the polish just won't chip.' Well all that sounds pretty good, but then it's also about double the price of a regular manicure. My curiosity got the better of me so I was happy to pay the $35 to give it a go.

The process took about half an hour and I had four coats of Shellac - a base coat, two coats of my colour of choice, and then a top coat - applied. In between each coat of paint I had to place my hand under a special UV light which dried the polish instantly.

My Shellac-coated nails

What makes Shellac so special is that takes no time to dry and you get no chips or nicks in it. It takes about 10 minutes to remove, but it will last for two weeks. The only problem with it is that they don't have a massive selection of different colours to choose from yet. I opted for a pink neutral colour and my nail technician told me that the colour I had chosen was their most popular. If you were going to an event and you wanted your nails a certain colour, you'd potentially be stuck with the shade for two weeks. Woah, now there's a first world problem if ever you heard one.

I only had my nails painted today, so I'll have to see how long it will last. What with all the housework and chores that I do... let's be honest, it's definitely going to last two weeks.