Romanticising Your Homelife

A Siren Song for International Women's day, guiding you to romanticise your home life and capture your mundane.

This newsletter is part of Siren Songs, for International Women’s Day, where I’ll be inspiring you to romanticise your home life. Because to have a home is a beautiful thing and to look back on the mundane parts of your day with a wistful nostalgia is something you can be grateful for in years to come.

If you’re wanting to see more of the Sirens Songs collaboration and IWD celebration please take a look at the following beautiful women’s Substacks:

Laura Durban

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Lyndsay Kaldor

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Claire Venus ✨

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Lauren Barber

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Laurita Gorman | Therapist SEP

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Emma Simpson

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Imagine in 10, 20, 30 years time sitting down with your children, grandchildren, or with a loved one and holding a beautiful photo album you printed back in 2025. Flicking through the pages that are a timestamp of you, your home, and your life. You are reminded of that ceramic mug you had that was your absolute favourite, your old cats favourite windowsill to perch on, the chaos and joy of family dinners with toddlers, those comfy knitted socks that you used to wear all the time but misplaced 10 years ago. Your loved one points to a photo of you in an old armchair, remember when we used to spend hours in that chair talking about all the things we were going to do and places we were going to go? Your grandchild points to another photo, what’s that? Oh love, that is what televisions used to look like! You are filled with nostalgia and joy because these are a collection of photos of your life. Not staged Instagram photos, or the 1000 photos you took on your holiday last year while you wore all of your favourite outfits and only visited aesthetic cafes. But your mundane life. The best bits. The bits you completely forgot about because you got so busy with other things. It’ll bring back memories of how your kitchen smelt when you cooked your favourite dinner, the bird that would visit the back porch every morning, the way your dog used to always rest their head on your lap when you sat on your favourite chair, and how there used to be endless handprints on the glass door where now there are none.

I started documenting my home life when we moved to Victoria in 2023, from Western Australia. I was very unwell with my second pregnancy, isolated from friends and family, and in a new town that we had never planned to live in (we were supposed to move to Tasmania). Whilst desperately missing photography, I decided to turn the camera on myself and document my pregnancy and time at home with my Son. Although I was very much living in the trenches, I thought that if I was to take beautiful photos of us at home it would give me a creative outlet and help me to look back on that time with more positivity - remembering the better times we had.
And it worked!
I had a lot of fun taking the photos and I now really treasure them.

The last 12 months have been very unstable for us as we have moved around a lot looking for somewhere to live. Because of this I stopped documenting a lot of it. I’m ready now though to capture home life again. My babies are growing up so fast and whilst it’s felt like life has been on pause for a long time, it is in fact still happening. And so, I’ll be restarting my romanticising home life series. But not only that, I’ll be bringing you along for the journey too, empowering you to document your own home life.

Although you could simply whip out your phone and snap a photo without a thought, I find it’s a lot more special to take just one or two with intention. Have a think about when the light is the nicest in that room, what’s the kids favourite book to read that you’ll be documenting, take a photo of your candlelit dinner on the night that you cook your favourite meal and include your kitchen in the background so you’ll always remember that teatowel your mother gifted you hanging on the stove.

And so, to kick things off, I’ve collated a collection of tips, tricks and examples to help you begin your romanticising journey.

The photos I’ve included aren’t all from my romanticising home life series though - if you want to see the complete series you can do so here.

( My children feature throughout my photos because they’re home with me all day, but you might have a pet goldfish, or a special houseplant, that makes regular features in your photos! )

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Light

Sometimes it’ll be the light that is the most important part of your photos. I find at home that I’m always noticing the way the light hits different parts of my home at different times of day. Sometimes there are rainbows on the walls and sometimes my kitchen is drenched in a warm golden glow. Noticing the light brings me a lot of joy so capturing it feels especially important.
You can also use the light to create a more romantic feel to your photo, whether it’s golden hour or a candlelit room. Salt lamps also create a beautiful warm glow.

Movement

Movement may not feature in your photos, but if you have children or pets, movement can make your photos feel more real. Let’s be honest, kids rarely stay still for long and to have a shot of of them zooming across the living room in a blur might just help you to remember how wild and fun it all was. Movement is a little touch that can add a whole lot of feeling to a photograph. If you’re using a camera you’ll adjust your shutter speed to create blur. If using a phone, you might want to turn off live photos, or take a screenshot of a video.

Colour and Edits

This started out as a creative challenge for me. I wanted to get to know my camera better, try out different styles and experiment with different edits. I encourage you to do the same. Whilst you might not be using a camera, the lightroom app on mobile is free and you can download a whole lot of presets online to help give your photos a different feel. VSCO is another editing app with some free presets. Whether it be adding some grain, making it look like a film photo, or pushing all of the colours to pop.
If you’re wanting to edit manually and create a romantic look, I recommend playing around with the following tools in lightroom:

• Grain - adding a touch makes for a more documentary style image

• Saturation - bring it down a little to mute the colours

• Clarity and Dehaze - these can soften your photo and make it seem as if it has a glow about it

• Exposure, Shadow, and White - use these to make your photo moodier or lighter and brighter

A note on Presets - If you decide to use a preset and it’s not quite right you can usually just adjust the exposure and it’ll help with the preset suiting the photo. If it’s really not working then the preset is probably emphasising the wrong colours in your photo and you’ll need to use a different preset.

Black and White

Most photos look good in black and white. There’s something about it and seeing as we draw on nostalgia and romanticism in this activity, black and white fits the brief. You might like to do all of your photos in black and white, or you might choose to do none. That’s totally up to you. Black and white can be fun to play with as you choose which parts of the photo to highlight and whether or not to add blur or grain.

Angles and Composition

Firstly, I want to to address your home. Honestly, for this challenge, if you have a pile of washing in the corner of the room, dirty windows, an overgrown garden, or dishes on the bench, it will add to the romantic feel of your photo. As much as having a clean home is a lovely thing, it’s not always realistic. We’re going for a realistic version of beautiful here. I’m about to be moving into a caravan with 2 little ones, you won’t be seeing a beautifully staged home in my photos any time soon.

It can help to create a romantic scene through the positioning of your phone or camera. Set it up so that the scene is looking through a window or a door, or has a blurry branch, vase of flowers, or candle in the foreground. These elements help you to tell a story. Coming from a lower, or straight on, angle will work better than a higher angle looking down.

Also, please make sure you are actually in at least some of the photos. These are memories for you.

Posing

If you want to get into romantic posing for self portraits a little more, I have a free guide available for download here.

But some basics include:

• Elongating parts of your body for a romantic look. Think tilting your chin up, lengthening your neck, and pointing your toe.

• If you’re in the photo with someone else, set up self timer and make the scene more candid. Dancing around the room with your partner or tickling your kids creates a heartfelt moment.

• Closing your eyes and looking towards the light is an easy winner.

Gear (use your phone)

If you are handy with a camera and you’ve got one, fantastic!

Want to take all of these photos on film, beautiful! I hope to do this at some stage too.

If all you have is a phone, Amazing!
You can do wonderful things with a phone and the quality of phone cameras is only getting better. Mine is 5 years old and can still capture a good photo. Use what you’ve got and don’t create excuses to not have these precious memories.

Here’s some phone photos I’ve taken. Just to show you that phones work, too!

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Are you ready to give it a go and create nostalgic photos for yourself? No photography skills or Instagramable house needed! Join me on March 10th where I’m launching a new monthly Romanticising Home Life Challenge* to give you all the inspiration and motivation to document the special moments of your home and life. All you have to do is make sure you have a (free) subscription to Georgia Garnett and keep an eye out on the chat on Monday. I’d love to see you there!

*This isn’t a competition to compete for the best photo, it’s a creative challenge and each photo you capture is meant to be special and meaningful to you.

Please, join me, in capturing and beautifying your mundane.

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Important Links

Romanticise Your Home Life Challenge (starts March 10th)

Free Romantic Posing Guide

My Romanticising Home Life Series

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