Tamarama's Architectural Landscape continued....

As an Interior Designer, I am always intrigued by how people interact, style and live within their home. So if there is anyone else out there who thinks this way, then the last post i did about 'Tamarama's Architectural landscape' must have been quite frustrating when i only showed the exterior shots of the beautiful homes of Tamarama.
Well, luckily, for my sake and yours, I have managed to find the interior shots for a couple of the homes I posted about. I must say, I was slightly surprised at the interior design/ layout & decoration of these homes, they were nothing like what I had expected. However they are still absolutely stunning, and if I had a spare 6 million, I would happily purchase anyone of these homes.


This Tamarama home reportedly sold in Dec 2011 for 6,450,000

No need for Artwork in this Tamarama Marine Drive property, each internal window was designed to frame the magical view of the ocean.

And Lastly, 

(all images courtesy of realestate.com.au)

Incorporated into each of these property designs, is the clever ways they have ensured privacy for the residence, without interrupting the stunning view of the Ocean and Tamarama gully.


Hope you've enjoyed peeking into these fabulous homes as much as I have.

xErica

Tamarama's Architectural landscape

Sunday morning, and the alarm set for 5.15am. My partner a keen surfer, aka a self confessed surf Junkie, was determined to be one of the early rise surfers enjoying the forecast summer swell at Tamarama. The energy he comes home with after being out and active so early in the morning, had me wanting to be a part of it. So at 5.30am we left the house with  a coffee, Pilates mat and surfboard, and headed off to Tama. In between attempting to do Pilates on the weathered sandstone headland, I decided to indulge a little in the home design and landscape of the area. 

Now, i know this post is quite off the topic of my more recent posts on Christmas, however i have always been fascinated with the architectural diversity of the Tamarama Gully, one of Sydney's Eastern Suburbs most beautiful beaches. 

Tamarama, of course, wasn't always so densely built up, pre 1887, Tamarama was a lush gully filled with cascading waterfalls, mass vegetation and a creek running through it to the beach. Then in the early 20th century building permission was granted for an amusement park. 'Wonderland City' was built into the untouched naturally beautiful Tamarama, based on the one in Coney Island, southern Brooklyn NYC. It was only a matter of years however before the public became slightly disinterested, and the park was dismantled, some say leaving quite destructive scars and weeds in the previously pristine landscape. I cant even imagine what it would've been like to have an amusement park at Tama today, but here is a photo of what 'Wonderland city' was like in its prime, and what it is now.

The homes around this area are absolutely magnificent. A lot of contemporary coastal architecture is now present, however a lot of the designs delve into varying styles of architecture and from a range of design periods. The one thing the newer builds have in common, thank goodness!! is the facades are designed to maximise the view points from as many internal rooms as possible, through the use of over sized picture windows and entire glass walls. They have also had to sensitively approach and incorporate solar shutters into the design, and other means to control and best make use of the extreme Australian sun and light flooding in. 

The visual appeal of the Tama landscape is the use of colour and variation in design. This is certainly not an area where you see the predictable use of red brick and tiled hip roof, which is fantastic and shows that home owners are wanting to make their design stance and create homes that represent them and enhance their environment.

I particularly love the Spanish mission inspired homes, with their rich terracotta patina render, covered entry porch and the large arched windows. 

Here are a few of my fav. designs around the Tamarama Gully. 

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend. The beach will be the best place to be today, 30 degrees today and a water temp is the ideal temp to refresh and cool down in.

  

x Erica

Christmas tree decorating

Coming up with a theme for your Christmas decorations isn’t always the easiest of decisions. There is an abundance of inspiration out there, and every time you think you have settled on a scheme, you see something even more fabulous.
When it came to deciding on our Christmas scheme, I turned to a past styling shoot where we used tiffany Blue bomboniere boxes with rattan place settings & a general coastal theme. All though I haven’t indulged too much into the coastal theme, I wanted to keep it fresh and use a tri colour scheme based on the extra tiffany blue boxes I had. The bonus of using miniature presents as your tree ornaments is, it gives the impression that there are even more gifts from ‘Santa’. These bomboniere boxes will later be used in the Christmas day table decorations and their purpose will be slightly more traditional. I will post the styled table setting centrepiece in a later post.

This year the scent of a real pine tree will fill our home, and will be adorned with shades of blue, silver and white, Quite a stretch from the colours that traditionally represent Christmas, however, I feel that over the years more and more people are experimenting with the creative process into Christmas decorating and coming up with schemes that represent their family, lifestyle or favourite colour. The process for our 2012 pine Christmas tree has been quite the quirky adventure, and required much innovation and generosity from unsuspecting people.

This year we were trying to stick to a relatively tight budget for Christmas decorations, so when buying the tree we opted against buying the stand, Instead innovation with a gardening pot was the alternative. Apparently placing the tree in a pot plant filled with sand would suffice, the only issue with this was, where to get enough sand to fill a 20L pot!
Well, as we live in bondi, we thought it would be fantastic to have a little bondi beach sand in the base, this wasn’t quite enough to fill the pot, so I received a tip off from a lovely woman at bunnings Rose Bay, that a man in Vaucluse was giving away free sand. Of all things!!

Now the tree was stable and well potted, it was time for the creative side of building 20 flat pack bomboniere boxes and tying white ribbon around them. I used a role of wrapping ribbon from the 2 dollar shop. The bomboniere boxes were from a wonderful website called www.favorsplus.com.au

Then late on Friday evening, with a beautiful bottle of red wine, and the sound of Andy River in the background, we began the process of transforming out lonely pine tree into something quite gorgeous. Below is out Christmas tree, however i ran out of silver baubles so the layers will continue.



                                             

This year I also had embroidered monogrammed stocking made. They are quite adorable and add that even more personal touch to our Christmas.

Hope you have enjoyed seeing the making of our 2012 Christmas tree. x

Christmas tree inspiration

The most beautiful time of the year is upon us again; hot summer days by the beach, evening BBQ's with Friends & an abundance of Christmas joy & spirit. My favourite part, however, is the lead up to  Christmas day. The shopping trips, menu planning, where are we having Christmas this year & with which side of the Family?? But the best part for me is the Festive season decorating; organising the tree, deciding on the colour scheme & the Christmas lunch/ dinner table settings.

I know quite a few people will already be well under way in their 2012 Christmas decorating, however we were a little late off the mark this year, and are slowly getting our tree decorated and looking fabulous.

When in need of a little Christmas inspiration and styling tips, I can’t think of anyone better to turn to, then Martha Stewart, the Queen of decorating & entertaining. Martha Stewart is one woman who has always inspired me, with her colourful history, and her passion for creating Beautiful homes and entertaining in style. I thought I would throw a little Martha Stewart Christmas tree decorating inspiration your way, with a selection of my favourite trees displaying enchanting embellishments, garlands & ornaments.

Gold, silver and a little winter wonderland

Traditional red, green & celestial ornaments

A scheme of red & white

A tree trimmed with all things winter. Snow flakes, Ice skates & white doves

Love the fresh, coastal colour scheme in shades of blue and crisp green

These decorating schemes are all so different, and quite far from the Traditional colours of red, green & tinsel. Decorating for Christmas is such a fun creative process, and I have had a blast & quite a funny adventure transforming our pine Christmas tree into its current state of fabulousness!