Bronnie Masefau Ideas Book Interview

Bronnie Masefau Ideas Book Interview

Wondering how to make more creative storage spaces in your home? Thinking about how to make your lounge room more comfortable and peaceful? Trying to recall a great place to meet friends for lunch? Wishing you could keep your kids occupied and out of your hair while you cook dinner? Interior Designer and Homemaker, Bronnie Masefau's Ideas Book is what you need! With this gorgeous little red book you'll be constantly inspired to improve your home and organise your life.

This beautiful handbag sized book contains interior design tips for all areas of the home from the kitchen and dining areas to bedrooms, bathrooms, lounge rooms and even laundry areas. Use the tips as inspiration to enhance your home.

Use the Ideas Book to keep details of your favourite restaurants, bloggers, shops that are great for gifts for friends or sell your favourite linen, websites that sell discounted shoes or personalised birthday invitations, music you hear on the radio that moves you or even butchers that sell the best Christmas ham. You'll wonder how you ever lived without it!

We each lead such busy lives and have so much information floating around our heads that it can be difficult to remember it all. The Ideas Book takes the pressure off and does the remembering for us. There's even a fold out envelope in the back cover to store your bits of paper and business cards.

"The purpose of this book is to inspire," explains Bronnie, "inspiration gives us the energy to create, and in creating we can transform a house into a home."

Bronnie is hoping women will make this Ideas Book their own. She'd love to see it stuffed with pages from magazines and swatches of favourite fabrics, and scribbled with birthday gift ideas, stores to re-visit and must-do-when-I-have-time lists. A piece of elastic holds everything securely in the book.

Bronnie's design philosophy is all about making houses homes. A functioning and relaxed family life is key. Even though she's a successful Interior Designer, she considers herself more of a homemaker. The hints and tips scattered throughout the Ideas Book reflect this message:
Small buckets of colouring pencils on the dining table can help take the stress out of preparing meals for mum and dad, as the children can keep themselves working on a masterpiece!
Put the laundry detergent into a beautiful old bowl and use a china cup to scoop it out.
Rather than have masses of toys lying around, place a bag of toys in the garage and rotate them as the children become bored.
When planning your bedroom use lamps that can be switched on or off from the comfort of your bed.
The lounge area should be family savvy and a welcome change from the busyness of life.

With Bronnie Masefau's little red Ideas Book in your handbag you'll be constantly inspired and organised enough to improve your home and your life in many ways.

Bronnie Masefauis the author of best selling home-making book, Australian Vintage Living, and her second book, Australian Vintage Living - Making Anywhere Home, is soon to be released.

Ideas Book
www.bronniemasefau.com.au
Author: Bronnie Masefau
Price: $24.95

Interview with Bronnie Masefau

Question: What originally inspired you to book the Ideas Book together?

Bronnie Masefau: When I put together the first book, Australian Vintage Living, I had so many wonderful comments from people that they were really enjoying the book and I thought that it really warranted having another little book that puts some of the messages from Australian Vintage Living into a formula that you can carry around in your bag and be able to take it to that next step. The Ideas Book is almost like another tool and the inspiration most probably came from the original, the first book, Australian Vintage Living.


Question: Where did you get the ideas used in the Ideas Book from?

Bronnie Masefau: Everyday life, for me! I have been in the industry now, for 20 years, and they're little things that when I am invited into a home, which is such a privilege, I help take their home to the next level and find their own vintage. All these little hints and tips come from a practical base and over the years I think through formulas for them.


Question: How does the Ideas Book help you recall a great place to meet friends for lunch?

Bronnie Masefau: Again, I find being a mum, a wife and on top of that, a business woman, I am constantly driving around and seeing places and thinking 'I'll return to that, when I get a minute'. Then, as we all know, you get that minute and you think 'I don't know what to do!' I'll have someone come in and say "Bronnie we'll look after the kids for the afternoon" and you think 'that would be lovely, there is so many wonderful things I'd like to do'! Then I find myself at the coffee place thinking 'what are all those things again and where were they?' That is why at the end of the book there is an address section, it also has prompters: comments and opening hours because so many places have odd opening hours. I felt it was really necessary to have prompters so you could write websites and opening hours.


Question: Can you please share with us a tip for the kitchen and the bathroom?

Bronnie Masefau: Sure! I always think that we have to activate the five senses and it's about the little things, in the kitchen. When you're doing the groceries- pick up a bunch of flowers! They don't need to be an expensive bunch of flowers; Aldi sells roses for $4.99. What you need to do is find out, of your local stores, when they get their fresh flowers in; I shop at Bridge Road Florists and they get their fresh flowers in on a Wednesday. If I'm picking up flowers on a Monday or a Tuesday I pick them up at other little florists, around my area, which might get their fresh batches in on a Monday or Tuesday. It is always great to have some fresh flowers out.

Also with the kitchen, I think it's great to always have fresh fruit out, on the bench and a bunch of fresh flowers. I know my kids really enjoy it. With fruit on the bench it inspired children to eat the fruit. The other thing I find about having the fresh flowers out is because we have a big dinning table and I always have fresh flowers out, on the table, we tend to all sit around. The kids are inspired to do their homework at the table and we all go and commune there, as such.

The bathroom, if you have younger kids you think that you should have all the toys out and the kids will play with them, the reality is that they don't so you're better to keep replenishing the toys; have a bunch of toys in the bathroom, a handful that they can really enjoy, then put the rest in another place (a bag in the garage) and rotate them. Many kids, especially younger ones, don't enjoy bathing and the replenishing of toys means that every time they go for a bath there is something new there, that they can admire.

The other thing for the bathroom is the fabulous bathmat! Sometimes it's a bit hard to find a really fun bathmat and bathmats really can lift the room. A great idea is, if you find beautiful old fabric trim it up, put toweling behind it (whether it's a towel you've purchased or toweling by the metre at Spotlight) and quilt them together, it is really basic. You just need to pin them altogether, in layers, then you do your cross section and then finish with a nice edge.