Summer Barbeques

So its Summer - and that feeling of total holiday mood is setting in - it definately hit us in Melbourne with yesterday being 36C! I have actually been entertaining since Christmas and been trying to convince the husband that we need a new BBQ - I went and checked out these lovely little Webers and decided I would love to cook on the flavour of a charcoal BBQ (and I think it would look cool out the front of our 1954 house) - but as we already have a perfectly good gas BBQ the option was to clean ours - OMG can I ask where some men get their BBQ licenses from! So after a day and a half bringing ours back to life I suggest to you all that you make sure your men are cleaning the Barbie and not just cooking on it! I had to toss up whether I would have been better off making a new purchase compared to the labour involved! Happy New Year everyone and I hope your BBQ is in good condition for tonight! Tip - if your keen I brought a Pizza Stone and cooked Ben O'Donoghue's Seafood Pizza and I was pretty impressed with my first attempt!

Family at Christmas

This is a beautiful note - one of the many in the lovely 3 week journey of David Eustace and his daughter Racheal which you can read at The Anthropologist - their journey takes them from Los Angeles to a little town called Eustace - with Christmas coming up and a couple of very special people in my life recovering back to health I found a little note like this to be very inspiring and welcomed.

Vintage Scrabble Jewellery

Scrabble Jewellery - how gorgeous - these lovely little pieces are made from vintage recycled wooden Scrabble tiles with decoupaged images - I love the little "Blythe Bonjour" girl! Available from Little Shop of - sweet little gifts - I wish the family would do this to their Scrabble game! Only kidding of course.....

Thank you Houses magazine

I buy every issue of Houses magazine as I am constantly renovating and I think this great mag has given me plenty of inspiration! So I was pretty excited to see AURA in the new issue 71 on sale now - this is our first appearance! Thank you

Lovely store

Yesterday I ventured over to South Melbourne to GAS one of my favourite places for a weekend breakfast - and as well as the delight of it not being packed like it usually is on Market days I also visited Pomegranate properly for the first time - I have quickly popped my head in before but didn't realise what a treasure trove it was. This delightful store, which is 10 years old this year, sits within a beautiful two storey Victorian building, and was full of lovely things that I would have been more than happy to take home! Including the ici et la deck chairs displayed all along the footpath, which did start to get me thinking in a holiday mood! I am definitely getting my deck chair out this weekend and in fact I think it needs a friend?

Simple but cool!

I know Havaianas are pretty popular - well they are super simple & cool and I wouldn't mind a pair of Metallic Grey Slims for Christmas - I do however think they would look great in metallic olive - i'm sure i've seen them in Olive and i'm going to keep searching! These guys are available on line from General Pants Company. 

More Kate Spade

While I am on the subject of Kate Spade - check out these shots of her newly revamped 5th Avenue store - now I find this totally inspiring - I would just LOVE an AURA shop and when people achieve amazing fit outs like this it just makes me want to get out there and open a store! I cant say much more - the creative team behind Kate Spade are legends! Read the article in Lonny Magazine

Kate Spade New York

I do love Kate Spade - just so bold and such fantastic branding! These are some of her Christmas publicity shots - called 20 days to make Merry!  Check out the website for some fun graphics that they have done on the shopping pages! Make sure you scroll over the products!

Come in Spinners!

Look at this - here is the lovely Shane Warne with his new "sexy" range of Spinners undies! I am very proud - well not of Shane really! But of my very talented girlfriend who part of the team behind the new Spinners range for Shane which is now available in Target if you want to get on down and check out his undies - so to speak!

How cute are these!

I was searching for Kris Kringle gifts (as you do at this time of year) and I found these animal D paper clips - so cute! Check out the whole range from Midori at Make Designed Objects they are just gorgeous! I am  definitely buying some of these for the family! $12.95 for 30 clips in this cute little box - there are also ducks, elephants, cows, hippos - whatever your into!

Tablelinen now online

Hi - recently we took shots of all of our tablelinen and we have just added them to our AURA online store. Selling in packs of 6 or 12 at pretty amazing prices - perfect gift's for Christmas (hello Kris Kringle!) - in various shades - napkins, placemats and tablerunners - if your keen take a look at www.aurahome.com.au

Crafty things

Yesterday my husband and I where out shopping and came across this gorgeous book for his mothers birthday - she loves abit of craft and this book is absolutely lovely.. I used to be abit crafty when I worked for Coats Patons years ago designing knitting patterns and yarn, but then as always we "run out of time". We got home and looked up Pip Lincolne's blog - Meet me at Mike's and its great - she is a legend and she has a store in Brunswick St Fitzroy we are going to check out - I think I feel abit of a crafty moment coming on - with the latest thing in homewares being to buy unique - one off - hand crafted items that are not mass produced, this is pretty hard in our industry as I guess if we are honest we do need to live off our "craft" ...but I am trying to achieve this in some of the beautiful products we buy out of India - they are hand-crafted in more of a contemporary way - which adds more of a personal feel and look - especially as each one is different! Check out Pip's Blog to get inspired.

Greek Inspiration

A girlfriend of mine asked if we wanted to go to Greece - hmm doesn't look too bad! I especially love the shot of the staircase and the bookshelf - very Greek Chic.. Check out more on Villa Nero - slightly pricy but we can all dream - especially on a Friday afternoon.