The last few weeks have flown by so quickly. Ive been fortunate enough to have spent them at Perisher skiing. Here are a few pics from our trip:

My parents have a chalet here:

Some of the family:

Ready to ski:

Perfect weather:

Havnt had much progress with the house. The next commitee meeting is not until the 16th September so will not know too much until then.

In the meantime i have had lots of fun shopping and have picked up some amazing furniture for the house...will post some of my purchases soon.

Interesting shower head....

Like many ladies in blogworld I love looking at real estate. These images come from a house in Crackenback ( near Thredbo) in the NSW Alpine region. Not sure if I like it but I was certainly intrigued by it, and I always wonder, how much did that cost?

Our little slice of Paris...

I have always been obsessed with the Ritz Carlton in Paris. I have never been there but for some reason the front of this luxury hotel appeals to me in so many ways. I love the grandeur of it, the lovely large windows, the pops of black, and the beautiful cream awnings. To me it just seems like the most romantic hotel in the world. ( I think Princess Diana also has something to do with my romantic obsession).

When it came to our wedding day i knew i wanted a photo in front of a building that reminded me of the Ritz Carlton. Now in Sydney this is quite a mean feat as we are such a young country and dont have many historic buildings ( compared to European cities). However i managed to find a little slice of Paris in the form of the Bvlgari building (Luck played a big part in this as my Husbands restaurant was just down the road from this building and only discovered it by accident when parking my car) and this is our Parisian inspired photo:

Outdoor Entertaining....

A huge thankyou to Ange at "chairup" for mentioning my blog. I absolutely love seeing all of Ange's DIY projects and she is a huge inspiration for me. Thankyou Ange!



I wanted to try and paint a picture for you on how the outdoor entertaining area will look. I am absolutely obsessed with outdoor living areas and when making up the plans for this house our main area of focus was on the outdoor entertaining area.



I cant wait to get the floorplans for the house and the landscape designers drawings because once i post these it will be alot easier to understand what im rambling on about.



In the meantime i will give you a little sampler:





All of the living areas of the house will open (with bifold doors) onto a deck which wraps its way down one side of the house all the way to the back where the golf course is ( this will make much more sense when you see the plans)



The deck will have three main zones:



1. In-built Jacuzzi area



2. Outdoor kitchen and dining area



3. Outdoor fireplace surrounded by lots and lots of oversized lounges









So the jacuzzi will be concealed in the decking abit like this one below. There are a few reasons we are doing this the main one being that it eliminates the need for a safety fence around it. Also it will be alot easier to maintain, being a holiday house we can just cover, lock and leave. Plus I just like how clean it looks:





Like this but our decking will continue all the way to the fence line and all the way around the house ( there will be no step-up)

I want a huge outdoor dining table like this:

And about 60% of the outdoor area will be open-air, just because the nights at the hunter are so beautiful and i want to be able to gaze at the stars....

I love the sheer size of this fireplace...ITS HUGE! and i love that its part of a wedding ceremony...

Interesting fire feature:

I love love love firepits, something like this on our open air deck would look nice maybe:

But i also like the traditional fireplace as well:

These images are all a bit mis-matched but hopefully it sort of paints an image.

I love how resorts (especially around pool areas) have lots of groupings of lounges. I want to recreate the resort style feel by having lots of little groupings of lounges all taking in different aspects of the view. I have so many lovely images from my summers in Croatia showing exactly the look i want to create and of course i cant find my memory card anywhere!

My Poms!

This is Mali (Pronounced Marli-croatian for little man) on the first night we brought him home. He was so tiny weighting only 450gms:

Mali now weighting a proud 1.6kg:

Cino is our little fatty, he eats absolutely everthing and has the most fur i have ever seen on a little dog:

Wouldnt mind having a house that looked like his:

Olivia ox

A Tour of The Vintage....

Welcome to The Vintage Resort located in the heart of the NSW Wine Country, The Hunter Valley: As you drive through the front gates a winding road leads you between rolling greens and rows of vines( thats Bimbagen Estate in the background-they hold lots of concerts there over the warmer months and we recently enjoyed a Diana Krall concert there):

Past the adorable stone chapel ( perfect for a romantic wedding):

And the multi-million dollar Chateau Elan which boasts one of the most amazing spas in the southern hemisphere:

The spa deck is the perfect place to enjoy a glass of Hunter Wine and watch the sun slowy fade:

The Clubhouse situated at the 18th Green makes the most amazing club sandwiches ever, and is the perfect place to spent a lazy Sunday:

This is my husband playing on the 3rd green, im actually standing at the back of our block so this will be our view from the rear deck (there is also a lovely lake to the right of this shot where kangaroos and ducks seem to migrate to):

My Husband Martin:

Me:

Hope you enjoyed the tour!

Seven things about me.....

Thankyou so much to the lovely Simone at Honeyandfizz who recently passed on an award to me. Here are seven things about me not many people know:



1. I cant cook, lucky for me that my husband is an amazing cook ( he used to own a restaurant and picked up many tips from his head chef who used to work for Tetsuya)



2.I come from a Croatian background. Both my parents are Croatian and so is my Husband. Up until i got married i used to go there every year for the european summer.



3. I love winter fashion so much more than summer fashion. I always have so much more fun putting together winter outfits, must have something to do with all the fur, boots, pompoms and scarves.



4.I have a huge tendancy to overpack. We go on lots of weekends away and after 2 years of marriage it still annoys my husband how much i take.



5.I absolutely adore snow skiing. My parents have a chalet in Perisher and i try to go as many times as i can during the snow season.



6. I have two beautiful pomeranians named cino and mali.



7. I really dont like talking on the phone.

WoodWick Candles

I am obsessed with candles and constantly looking out for new brands and fragrances. I was in Berry on the NSW South Coast recently when i found this absolute gem of a candle in one of the many beautiful boutiques there. I have to say this has been one of my favourite finds lately and i just to share it with everyone.

What makes this candle unique from the thousands on the market today is that it has a special wick which actually crackles like a real fire. I have my candle flickering next to me as i write this and if i close my eyes it really feels like im beside a wonderful roaring fire. Bliss! And of course i chose the fireside fragrance so its as close as i can get until i have my real fire place.

Hope everyone has had a wonderful weekend

So I have been missing in action lately and unfortunately not for a good reason...my youngest sister has been admitted into hospital with anorexia and we have all been by her side non stop for the past week. Its funny how only a few weeks ago i was so upset when i found out our house plans had been rejected, and now after the past week i realise how silly it is to let the little things in life bother you.

The plans for the house are coming along well. The architect has redrawn the floor plan to comply with the guidelines and i actually like the new layout better then our previous one. We are now just waiting on the landscape designer to redraw the landscape plans and we will be ready to submit our plans to the commitee. Hopefully we will have a better result second time around.

I cant wait for our holiday home to be finished, i think i will be a great place for our families to come and recover from the working week. I especially feel like it will be great for my sister to come there and relax once she has overcome her eating disorder.Nothing is better for the soul than spending a weekend away with your family!

Have a lovely weekend ox

I love love love when fairy lights are wrapped around the trunk of a tree,it really highlights the amazing and unique shape each tree has.Im happy just looking at theses pictures.

I would love to have a beautiful long meandering driveway lined with trees lit up like these. Imagine coming home to this every night:

I also love accent lighting and this look is so easy to achieve at home:

Living Room

Our living room is quite large so i will be sectioning it into zones such as a conversation area, tv area etc. I love watching tv on a huge, soft, sink in so you cant get up kinda lounge with a chaise so you can stretch out and relax. However around the fire i want to have setting arranged like this: As much as i love the modular L-Shaped chaise style lounge, i feel it is better suited to tv because when you sit on it next to someone you are not facing them, but facing the same way as them so i want to create a more intimate conversation area where the seating is facing across from each other (like the lounge room in the movie Its Complicated). I just feel this would be the perfect place to sit with a glass of wine on a cold night and have a fantastic chat. And i just adore theses chairs, beautiful, but i cant seem to find something similar, the closest i could find was at Coco Republic.

The Master Bedroom

So to distract myself from thinking too much about our plan delays i thought i would post some pictures of inspiration for our master bedroom.

I absolutely adore fireplaces and if i had my way every room in the house would have one, however a thing called my husband gets in the way and so after lots of negotiating we have settled on three fireplaces. One in the lounge room, one on the outdoor deck and one in the master bedroom which will be two-way and will have a bath on one side and the bed facing it from the other side. It will sort of be like this one however the bed will be in line with the fireplace so that the fire will be right at our feet when we are lying in bed.

Inspiration for our house
When you first walk in we will have a wine cellar, hopefully looking like this one, stretching the length of our foyer with a huge floating glass wall and a lockable door!

Once Upon A Time...

I thought we could build our dream holiday home. My husband loves golf and i love cold weather, fires and red wine, so when we went on a weekend away to the Hunter Valley back in our dating days, we knew we had found our dream destination for a weekender. We purchased a beautiful golf front block of land with views over a lake and the third green, and set about designing a WOW holiday home. However in all my excitement i forgot that what i may want does not always agree with what "The Commitee'' deems within their guidelines.
Let me back track and give you some info: The Vintage is a small developement of homes nestled in the Hunter Valley in the NSW wine region. The developement is based around a golf course designed by Greg Norman and is known for its strict building guidelines.
Today i received a call from the commitee and to cut a log story short, our plans which were submitted over a month ago have been rejected. Our home is too big, too high and has too many long walls? (interested to see how they will react to John Abrahims plans-he has purchased a block in the same street as ours and i cant see him building a small house!) so back to the drawing board and tonight i will be sitting here trying to reconfigure our original plans and watch the World Cup Soccer with my Husband and act like im very interested!