The Spring Buzz

Alright well Im pretty excited… so excited that I think I might wee myself.

Aside from the fact that I am shooting with Terence Bogue this weekend (who I absolutely adore – see post below about his latest exhibition), I am engaged to consult on the interiors for luxury townhouses in the upper-class Melbourne suburb of Brighton, and my first site visit is this Sunday. The film I acted in is released in 6 weeks (if editing goes to schedule) and Ive just applied to upgrade my Interior Design degree at Swinburne to a double degree in Design & Business. Not only that, but I fly out to Bali on Monday for my first holiday in over 5 years… and 1 week after I get back, I fly to Perth for my dad’s 50th birthday!

Its all crazy busy in this neck of the woods but as my mum would say, this family doesn’t have it any other way!

So I’m very excited and a little apprehensive about this design consult, it will be my first time working with this client and I’m not sure yet of the brief or extent of the works required (hope to have this all answered on Sunday). The upside is that the commission is hourly so if the scope changes, so can my fee! We have our first meeting on site on Sunday, where I’ll determine the extent of the brief, outputs and timeframe, and his own aspirations of course. The townhouses are aiming for market presence by late November/early December so it’s a short sharp response time (sigh – so strapped for time with bali and Perth in between!). I’m breaking it down to four stages with project control points so that we don’t get off track or blow budget; Site visit & client briefing, Research & Brief Development, Conceptualisation & Prelim Proposal, and Final Proposal.

It’s a very small piece of work for a development that is 9/10ths complete, but it is very exciting nonetheless! Its times like these that I am extremely grateful that I work in the architecture & design industry as well as study Interior Design, as I find myself every moment using more knowledge from my day to day work experiences than anything I have learnt in class! The hardest part is to not get too far ahead of myself, and keep out the million-odd ideas that are bustling for attention before I even see the site!

I’ll keep you updated as to how it goes. x

Quarter Century... and all that Jazz

Ok so Ive officially slipped out of the 18-24 bracket… and into the next quarter of my century.
Ladies and Gentlemen… I am 25!


At 25 you start thinking about getting a real job with a future, not waiting tables. You wonder how you are going to get a house. Should you start saving or something... how does one do that? You are happy and healthy, but maybe you party too much. You buy an iPhone then say why did I just spend so much money on a device that’s about to be outdated?. You start sucking at video games. You start dressing better and you don’t get as many traffic tickets. You try to grow a plant but it dies. You’re on the cusp of acting like a young adult, but still have frequent lapses of judgement (though thankfully less than before). You wish you could take back all those times you didn’t want to nap when you were a kid - because now you’re always some kind of tired. You watch the same movies you watched when you were younger and can finally see all the drug/sex/cult references as clear as day. You find yourself starting sentences with ‘The youth of today...’ and you start to groan when you stand up from kneeling. You start going to festivals ‘just for the music’. You find it harder to decipher the difference between boredom and hunger. You keep some people’s phone numbers in your phone just so you know not to answer when they call. You tend to say OMG, LOL, and WTF a lot less. Your insurance premiums, excess, and age-levy all go down...you can even rent a sports car! You start to convert the cost of all your shoes into a percentage of a deposit on a house/car/boat. You get a side of salad with your parmi at the pub, instead of chips. You now know there are more varieties of wine than ‘red and white’ and you buy bottles, not casks. And you can now maintain intelligent (and interesting!) conversations with your parents... And yet, you’re still despised by the 30-somethings every time you mention your age... Its a tough life...