Around the house: the lounge

It dawned on me the other day that we've been living in this little villa of ours for over three months and I have yet to share any pictures of the interior. Shame on me. Why don't I kick off a wee house tour with a look at the coziest room in the house: the lounge.

Part of me is sad that the landlords blocked up the original fire place. It would be so nice to cuddle up in front of a roaring fire on these chilly evenings. They thoughtfully picked out a lovely faux fire electric heater for us though, so it does sort of feel like a real fire (if I really use my imagination).

Slowly but surely, we've been collecting artwork to put on our walls. I've arranged and rearranged the collection we have thus far, but it doesn't seem quite right for hanging just yet. Just need one or two more pieces and then I can finally clear off the sideboard and admire all that lovely art up on the wall - where it should be. The two pieces on the left in the picture below were done by our neighbour in Regina. The colourful one is done in a technique called crosshatching which blows my mind every time I look at it...thousands of hand-drawn lines done oh so straight without any rulers! Crazy. Beautiful.

This little built-in cabinet has become our little work station. There is a spare room we'd intended to use as an office, but at the moment, the temperature doesn't rise above 10 degrees in that room so we don't really go in there too often. Most days, the laptop sits on this cabinet or in the kitchen...whichever is warmer. The painting was done by the daughter of TDSH's host family in Suriname - way back in 2000! I can't believe it's been that long since he lived there! It's nice to have this little reminder of that time in our house.

When you look at the view out the lounge window, you'd never guess that we live in the middle of a very dense residential area of Dunedin. Sheep graze on that hillside and there are horses just at the base of that hill. We also hear the occasional rooster in the mornings but I have yet to see one. Plenty of people keep chickens around here (one day we will too, I hope). It's hard to believe, but there's another subdivision just on the top of that hill as well...it's the ultimate farm folk/city folk town. Love it!

I'm almost embarrassed to show this corner of the room. A big, beautiful blank wall and not even a stitch of art on it. Shame on me. I MUST get something up there. One day soon...I promise.

Every room in our house can be closed off with doors. So much for open-plan living! To get from our bedroom to the toilet, you have to go through FIVE sets of doors. When it's this hard to heat a home, you really want to be able to close off rooms and heat only what you need. We've turned the doorway from the lounge to the kitchen into an art wall for Abner. When I first showed her the string and pegs and told her she could put up her artwork, she beamed! She feels so proud to have her art on display for everyone to see. I love having it up and seeing what she adds (I don't think she's taken anything down yet, so it's getting kind of full at the moment).

That's about it for the lounge. What room do you want to see next?