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I live in suburban Cape Town in a house I own. the shadow of Table Mountain passes over in the late afternoon. I am not a handyman or gardener, so my excuses for not having a manicured garden or freshly painted house are that we want a natural fynbos garden, and ant would be thieves will go to the fancy painted houses.

You can either have a garden OR a rottweiler. We have the latter.

Inside it looks like any shop in the Kruger Park. We have a pair of wooden cheetahs to welcome you at the front door. As yet there are no cubs.....

There is a fish eagle on top of the wall unit, and various other carvings in the lounge.

Mrs BB has made our bedroom into the elephant room, with some of her photos on the wall and other ele carvings about.

Mrs BB had a significant birthday recently and my dad bought her a bontebok skin, which is hanging in the lounge. I was at first horrified, but realised that bontebok are protected and are not hunted. To my relief there are no marks on it. I just hope it died of old age and that he was not conned.

Our children have all moved on from home, so we can do all this.

I thought Jay was weird, but looking at my post, I am not sure anymore

I have a house, ja, but I sleep mostly in the dogbox with "slippers" the Jack Russel.

WTM and Bishcamp, the question is what is your home like, NOT where do you sleep
Trust Mousketeers to get it wrong

Oh?

Ok.

It has a bar where I have all sorts of sentimental crap stored in. Mostly Kruger and wildlife stuff.

Lemme just post some pics then...

Nightviewing from the bar...



The wooden deck...



So when you guys gonna come visit me?

Ok just kidding...

My hideout... yes that is a signed Bles Bridges poster, ok? Sue me.

I live on a sugar cane farm, there are four houses a Park Home and a Lodge on the Farm. Yes, my garden is quite big and so is the house we live in which was built in 1964 by my parents. (I would much rather live in a smaller quaint little cottage!) The garden is about a Hectare in size, (takes about a day and a half to mow the lawn!!! YUKK) and has a 17 strand electric fence all around it, with one electric motor gate and one pedestrian gate which leads to the farm sheds and diesel tanks which are right next to the fence. (Its sad to have to live behind electric fences when one lives in the country).

The house is big, and I must admit I don’t like it at all – but it’s a house and I have tried to make it a home too. There are three cats and two dogs and they have certainly made it their home!

The house had four bedrooms but I have turned Willie’s, of ‘are there holes in rhino linings and spider bite on the bum and just had malaria fame’ into my office. I love my office….. its where my PC is and I have my pictures of the Sydney Olympics on the wall, and black and white ethnic curtains, and now two lovely pictures that two forumites, who shall remain nameless, took and sent to me. Thank you both. My view from my window in the office is of the garden, and there is a Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow bush outside it, which the birds love. The lesser striped swallows made a nest in the eves just outside the widow. Although I am a Virgo, and Virgo’s are meant to be tidy, my house is not very tidy at all…… in fact my Office has papers etc all over it, but I know where things are, so please don’t tidy it up!!!

So we are down to three bedrooms now, and three and a half bathrooms, (that half a bathroom, (guest loo) is a god send!)

The dinning room come lounge is open plan and badly laid out, as there is a fireplace in the lounge portion and the door is in the wrong place, and therefore you cant put chairs around the fire place to be able to sit around it!!!!!! Silly plan.!! We need to move the door, but we have a lovely sprung wooden floor, (which the termites are busy demolishing) and I really don’t think we have the workmen in this country to do a proper job of moving it, but if we could move the door we could sit round a fire in winter! All my chairs and sofa have throws over them as the cats think its there place to sleep, and the dogs think the side of the chairs make wonderful places to scratch themselves!!!

Off the lounge, through an arch, is a small room which we use all the time as a TV room. The kitchen is quite large, and it’s the one room in the house I changed a few years ago, and its much better now then it was. There is a scullery and a big walk in pantry, which is full of tinned food, dogs medicines and tick and flea stuff and junk!!!!! (no nice rows and rows of homemade jam and pickles etc that you would expect to find in a farm pantry!)

Most of the pictures hanging in my house are photographs that I took which I have had enlarged and framed. (Framing makes the pictures!) I have two pictures of Keunkenhoff Gardens, one of a sunset in Tasmania, a picture of a window and four other shop displays in Haweshead, a view over the harbour in Plokton, Scotland, a few Aussie scenes, one of buildings on the side of Lake Como, Pictures of Natures Valley. My favourite is the twins, at the age of about 10 feeding a goat in the fields around Olympia in Greece. Lots of flower pictures, (well they are in the guest loo and the bathrooms!) At least these pictures bring back memories of wonderful travels.

We have a fairly large verandah off our TV room and dining room, and we eat breakfast and lunch out there every day. (Well when the temperature is above freezing that is!) Our view from the verandah is of Phondo Mountain where the Queen Mothers Residence is and there are lovely cane fields in front.

I have a couple of pictures so will post those……….


Back of house or where you drive in.


Front of house with swimming pool


Verandah where we eat breakfast and lunch


View from verandah with young cane in the foreground

And one more for luck!!!! (I know it was said only four pics per post…… sorry Jose!)


A portion of the garden with the sheds in the background to your left

Exclusive preview of my house.


Same dude getting cold feet.


to be continued

That is what you call 'Gnome from Home'

The gnome is actually a candle, but I don't have the heart to light it. He lives all the up way here, the 3rd story of our house, in the loggia.



The loggia was a bedroom when we bought the house. Because we don't have an inch of earth around the house (we don't even have a back door) we planned a roofgarden or a loggia.




My other favourite part of the house is the kitchen.



At one end of the kitchen we have a large dining table and on the other side a small sitting area with a big couch, the telly and my desk.

My husband Mark and I live in a narrow, 3-story brick townhouse in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington DC, with a "peekaboo" view of the Washington Monument from our bedroom on the top floor (we can see it when the leaves fall off the trees in November-March but not the rest of the year). The top floor also has a bath with a large soaking tub and a skylight over it, which I dearly love, especially in the wintertime.

The main floor is in the middle and has a newish kitchen and one large room which is the dining-living area, with a fireplace (over which hang a mask we got in Tanzania, two aboriginal paintings we got in Australia, and a native American wedding vase...and three ceramic ellies on the mantle which we got in Cape Town).

Downstairs we have a tiny one-car garage, a laundry room, and a walk-out patio with a tiny postage-stamp sized garden around it, but no barbecue grill yet (maybe at the end of the season...I think we need to do some practice braai-ing before we get to Kruger in December). We both love to garden and unfortunately we have more garden than we do space. The patio is barely large enough for two lounge chairs and all of my tomato plants and herbs in containers (which the chipmunks and squirrels seem to love as much as I do). Here is our garden so you can see.



I love reading about where everyone else lives...Nico and Yvonne, I think you must live in a fairy tale it is so enchanting and cozy looking!

I live in a suburb called a "Garden City". It was build for all the men and their family who fought in the 2nd world war. The suburb resembles houses and gardens you get in England. Our house was build in 1947. Our property is just over 800sq m. We baught it 12 years ago and have done some major alterations inside the house. It had dark passages and the lounge you could not swing a cat in. So we knocked walls out and made the lounge and kitchen open plan.
The prevous owners build on to the house a sun room..(the sun room is now SO's bar) and another big bedroom with on-suite bathroom. We have got 4 bedrooms and 2 and a half bathrooms, a small study (SO says it is my study ) in it is the computer, fax machine and on the shelves is all the maps, bird and animal books.
We only have pictures of Lions, Leopards, Zebra's (oil paintings of the Zebra's) and some Raptors hanging on the walls.
We do see Table Mountain from my lounge..but not a great view because there is this huge trees on the pavements across the road so we only have a clear view of the cable station and mountain in winter when all the leaves are from the trees.
We have 3 Staffies and they are just the best! The male is my youngest, son of the oldest female staffie and the second oldest is a cross between a staffie and a pitbull. She is also such a lovely dog, good natured with people but fights with strange dogs. My male also wants to hump his mother thank goodness he is (nuted) and his mother and the other dog is spayed
View from the street...new wall build around the property


Lost all my trees and shrubs to build the wall
New garage build in front of old one

Our new braai room

Inside the braai room

I live in a little house with three bedrooms, kitchen, bathroom, lounge/dining room, laundry and study type room. It is on the stud farm I work on and only 500m from the foaling area. I have all my wildlife and Kruger things in the lounge/dining room so I am always surrounded by my beloved wildlife. I have a possum that lives in the roof but we have come to an agreement. He keeps relatively quiet and I leave him alone, however, every now and again he forgets our arrangement and I have to bash the ceiling with the broom to remind him.

Hi.

I live in a 3 bedroom Double Story Tuscan Home. It is in a secure complex. We have 1 automated garage, 3 Bathrooms, Lounge, Dining Room, Front garden with built-in braai, back garden has a huge tree full of birds. Our house has stunning finishes, views of Table Mountain, it is very close to the beach (1 minute). & Right across the road from all the shops & restraunts (Including the internet cafe ) Only me, my mom & my dog live there.