Babylonstoren

Having lived in this area for five years, I had the fabulous experience of visiting Babylonstoren for the first time the other day. I am still in awe when I think of the first time I walked those gardens and sat down to a beautiful brunch in The Green House. It has this "wow-factor" that is hard to put into words, one have to experience it for oneself. Really!

Babylonstoren is situated in the Drakenstein Valley between Franschhoek and Paarl, in the heart of the Cape Winelands.  There are many activities to keep you busy all day long, which includes The Garden, wine tasting, hiking up the koppie, bird watching, photographing every square inch of this beautiful property and of course, EATING....

I cannot insist enough the importance of experiencing this place for yourself; once you've been there, you'll know what I mean. Like my friend said; "it looks like they employed someone to go around all day, merchandising and decorating". It is just FABULOUS!

At Babel  

(pic source)

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The Garden

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You can view more pictures from others that visited this amazing place on gramfeed. Then head on over to my favourite local blogger Vasgevang, to see his posts about Babylonstoren, here, here and here.

And now for some pics of my own.....

Even the taps are beautiful... hehe..

Happy weekend!

Zucchini Restaurant

Gosh! I can't believe it's been so long since my last post! I've been pre-occupied with "stuff" and  haven't had a chance to write a post about anything. At the moment we have visitors from The Netherlands and we're getting around a bit with shopping and sight-seeing.  The past week was spent in the beautiful town of Wilderness on the Garden Route. On the road between Wilderness and Sedgefield is a small "village" of shops and restaurants called Timberlake.

We stopped there for lunch at a fabulous little restaurant called Zucchini.  The food is delicious, service is friendly and the setting is beautiful. Not to mention the décor of the restaurant, which I fell in love with instantly!

From the horse saddles used as seats on the barstools to the beautiful mosaic fire-place; it's all in the detail, and here you'll find lots of little details that makes you just love, Love, LOVE this place (and that's before you've even tried the delicious food)! Make sure to stop here if you're in the area; you won't be sorry!

Happy day!

Pretty pastels

Beautiful, simple images of pretty pastels for a bit of inspiration.....

Images source

Happy day!

Inspiration

More inspiration in shades of white and grey....

from here

                from here  

from here

from here 

Happy day!

I like it a lot

I can't believe it's the 4th of the month already! We've been busy with the kitchen and then had a busy weekend with Cheetah playing indoor hockey and then we were visiting friends on Sunday for a big get-together. We were quite happy that yesterday turned out to be a bit cooler than the sweltering heat we've had this last week. (Phew!)

Here are some images that inspired me over the last few days. I'm beginning to like the idea of white, grey and natural wood more and more; especially now the kitchen is (almost) done and the lighter tones with the bamboo look so divine! (I'll share with you later in the week)

image from here

from here 

from here 

image from here

from here 

 from here

image from here

These rooms are absolutely gorgeous and I am considering painting a few pieces of our furniture all white. I hope you get some inspiration from these too!

Have a happy week!

Anthropologie homeware

I like a colourful kitchen and these cute items are all from the Anthropologie on-line store:

(all pics borrowed from Anthropologie website)

 So pretty, no? There's something for everyone's taste at Anthropologie, which is why I love them so much!

Happy day!

Door make-over

I picked up this old door from a junk yard (my favourite place to find "treasures") for about 20.00 ZAR and knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. 

I removed the handles and hinges and gave it a good sanding. The solid panel at the bottom got three coats of chalkboard paint  and at the same time I brushed a few strokes of the same paint all around for special effect later.

Masking tape and newspaper blocked off the panels for the frame to be painted.

Voilà! What do you think?

paint swatches from here

I'm not quite sure if I want to leave the glass panel as is, or give it a coat of magnetic paint in a lovely pastel shade. I love all of these colours above, but will I find something similar in magnetic? I'll keep you posted!

Happy day!

Up-cycled frame

Remember the old picture frame that I gave a makeover and wrote about here?

I am putting it to real good use now that we have pretty flowers in abundance. Being on the wall beside our front door, it creates such a lovely, colourful welcome to guests and myself.

I have been busy with another make-over project which you can read about here on Monday..

Happy weekend!