We all dream of the perfect moment of home happiness. It takes place in an impeccable room, which is beautifully nestled inside a flawless house. A static moment hoped for at a distinct point in our fluid life. And so we mood board, Pinterest, plan, budget and spend our hard earned savings and hopes on a well-designed house that will deliver this perfection to us.

Breathability.
It’s a word we use to describe the goodness of our paint. It’s a word many people use to describe many things. And it is, perhaps, a word that is moving into the world of vaguely uncomfortable ‘speak’.

Next week my very good friend Steve is coming over for the day. We will laugh, tell stories, and ask about each other’s families – and actually listen for the response. Then Steve will leave and email me an invoice later in the week. Steve is not my therapist – he is my electrician. We have been together since he had one baby and a fledgling business. Now he has two school aged children and a growing and successful company.

Rhythms of childhood memories, as well as marks and fragments in later life - all form our unique views on how we feel about colour. Every life choice or expectation affects what we would like to live with.
And this is how you find your personal palette.

I believe personal story telling is at the heart of any home – and that a home should be a long and rambling poem of your life – and only your life.

What is Christmas about? – I think it’s mostly about love and beauty – at home. Both words have many meanings. Some are simply aesthetic visuals and others, a complex expression of what we would like the world to see.

From October, we want to treasure home in its truest sense – as a container for everything.
An almanac of our homes as the holder of our possessions, experiences, palettes, people and place. This stance on our home as an ongoing story, rather than a quickly curated chapter, is something that I think about a great deal. A real looseness and beauty of decorating as a marker of your life, rather than of trends or of others.

What is it that makes us itch to get a paint brush in hand? Ordering paint samples before we have moved in our books, pets and armchairs. Creating folders and scrap books of what it will feel and look like, as we wait for the interminable legal process to make it ours – all ours.

It is a wondrous thing to visit the home of Jean-Marc. Carefully, lovingly curated with possessions and stories in every room - in every corner of every room. Handmade pieces, sensitive arrangements and memory markers of people and places that they love.

When I was a child, my mother worked in a chocolate biscuit factory. Every week she would bring home a paper grocery bag full of broken biscuits. Delicious, discarded seconds. To a child , a chipped Tim Tam is still a Tim Tam (Kiwi bikkies – but you are missing out).

Here we all are. Back at school and many of us back at work - in our actual work environments - how strange it all is. What should feel normal perhaps feels slightly other wordly.

Helen Underwood is an extraordinary woman. Loving, intelligent, giving, independent and gutsy. Her home and bakery are also quite magical. One of the warmest, most relaxing homes that I have had the pleasure of visiting.

As we slip into the last few weeks of summer holidays, the world continues to twist and sway. Many of you have holidayed for the first time away from home in a long time. And then you get to come back home – one of life’s greatest pleasures and privileges.

Oh – what a wonderful day I had with Jeska and Dean. Pulling into their driveway was a rare experience of hand clapping joy. This beautiful and loved home set perfectly into an obviously deeply personal garden.