1st Annual BooMama Blog Tour of Homes

One of the Blogs that I visit regularly is BooMama. BooMama has had the great idea of a "tour of homes" where you get to see the homes of people from around the world that link to this blog. So I am joining in. I have tried to give the Queensland feel, even though we are in the middle of winter here.

Here is one of my favorite places, it is in the centre of our home next to the kitchen. This is our meals area, you can't actually see the dinner table, it is opposite the sideboard. This is one section of my photo gallery. I love having all the photos up and change them often. Another favorite is the airconditioning unit above- it is a necessity here in Queensland, I don't know how I would manage with out it. We only have this area and the family room airconditioned but it is enough as all our living is in this area. On hot nights we go for a quick swim before bed and that is usually enough to cool us down for sleep.




Here is my front door, leading to the hallway to the bedrooms; and to where I am standing, the formal lounge room. I love it that when I first enter I see all this. I don't let the kids play in here so it stays reasonably tidy. Our ceilings are 20Ft tall with opening windows at the top for ventilation. The pictures on the wall are from an old book of my Grandfathers published in 1852. We all loved the book and felt torn (excuse the pun) about what we did. We pulled the pages out and had 8 pages each (my Mother, Sister and I) framed and mounted. We now all get to enjoy the book every day.



Here is the formal lounge, with the dining room on the left. We have lived here for 5 years and have only used the dining room once...LOL we find that we do all our entertaining on the deck.

I took the ugly old curtains down; as they obstructed this wonderful view out to the mountains. You can just see our neighbor's roof through the trees and shrubs.

I have been fortunate enough to inherit many beautiful things from family. In this photo the desk is from my Father, the cream lounge from my Paternal Grandparents and the side table from my Maternal Grandparents. There are many other beautiful sentimental things throughout my home.

Here is the pool, the kids live in it 8-9 months of the year. (Read about their winter swim here!)

The drought has really knocked the garden about, a lot of the palm fronds have browned off, but the good news is that yesterday we got an inch of rain. The dams are down to 25% capacity and there is a lot of talk on the news about introducing recycled sewerage into the water system.

Here is our dining area of the deck, it is high up amongst the palms and bushes and is the most amazing place to sit and relax. You look through the palms down the length of the pool and get all the summer breezes. We have just had lights and a ceiling fan (keeps the flies away) installed. In the warmer months we almost live out here. Breakfast is a fry up (eggs, bacon and tomatoes) on the BBQ, lunch and dinner are also served here with a rest in between on the hammocks with lots of swimming and reading as well.

We have just renovated and extended the deck as we had a touch of dry rot in the old floorboards. We now have about 150sqM of deck and we enjoy every square cm of it. The only time we leave is right on dusk when the mosquitoes swarm for about 30 minutes.

Well here is my home, I hope you have enjoyed it as much as we love living here. We still sometimes say to each other " wow, this is our home!!!!" and feel so lucky to live here in Australia.