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18
Nov
2014

Tuesday Treat – Designer Maker

I am deep into redecoration mode right now. Despite the fact that we’ve had to put on hold on decorating my study, thanks to illness, I’m still thinking and planning everything in my head and keeping an eye on Pinterest and Twitter for inspiration. I’ve followed Designer Maker shop on Twitter for a while, but had a good look at their website and oh my word, I want it all!

I love the blue in this Clifton Lampshade by Sophie Richardson. It’s lovely and bright, which would be perfect in my study as I’ve got light paint for the walls and want to add pops of colour in different areas. I can’t wait to finish my study – all my stuff is all over the place right now! When it’s finished, I can stop spending my money on paint and buy some of the gorgeous things over on the Designer Maker Shop!

14
May
2014

#BEDM – Home Sweet Home

categories: Blog Everyday in May, Home & Garden

I’ve written a few posts about the ongoing changes we’re making to our home. It’s still a work in progress – does that ever change? The list of things we need to do is quite overwhelming and with a very depleted budget, we’re kind of stagnating and ignoring all the jobs. We’ll probably tackle the garden next, when we’ve got a few good weather weekends. We’ve spent soooooooo long on the garden that we want to just get some plants in and leave it the hell alone. It’s sucking out my will to live! We still only have one plant in it and it wasn’t something we put in. It’s much easier to make small, but noticeable changes to the house. For instance, we switched our lounge around a bit by bringing in the big wingback chair from my room and moving the bookcase out. It’s practically transformed the lounge. Love when that happens, and it didn’t cost a penny! Some of our other most recent changes have been born out of necessity.

This littls unassuming spice rack has made a massive difference in our teeny, tiny kitchen. Previous to this, our spices were just in the cupboard, taking up a lot of space and it wasn’t easy to find them. With the resurgence of cooking from scratch, being able to see what spices we’ve got, what we need to order and which ones are going out of date, has been essential. We desperately needed a better way to store our spices. So one Sunday, we headed to Yarnton Antiques, one of my favourite places, and spent about 15 minutes, looking and picking up these few things. That’s all the time it took and boy, where we pleased with our purchases! This little spice rack cost about £12. It looks like a chap put it together in his garage for his wife to store her spices and for that reason, it reminds me of my grandad, because that’s the kind of thing he’d have done for my nana. It’s absolutely perfect, fits in the kitchen a treat and is ideal for our little collection of spices.

We’ve also been looking for something to store our kindling in. We’ve had it in a basket, but this doesn’t work well, as you get bits all over the floor. Plus we wanted something fire resistant, as we keep it all quite close to the wood burner. We found this old bread tin, and again, it was really reasonable. I’ve wanted something like this for ages, but there’s just no room for it in our kitchen and we don’t eat that much bread, but the kindling fits in perfectly so we’ve got it in the lounge, ready for next winter.

We also spied this little unassuming box. I had a peek inside and found these old spoons. They were on sale for £2.50. It would have been a crime to leave them there, so they were added to the pile, knowing it’d take me about 10 minutes to clean them up when I got home.

It didn’t take long to get them clean. I used some silver polish and my silver cloth to get them spruced up and they are gorgeous! They’ve got some markings on the back, which is on my list to research to see if we’ve picked up something really ancient. Either way, we’ve got a lovely set of spoons for a really good bargain.

It’s not very often I can walk into a shop and find three things that I really want/need, find them within budget and agree with my OH that they’re the right thing. They’re just perfect for our little house!

Have you found any great things for your home recently? Any planting tips for the garden or good places to find antique bargains?

01
Feb
2014

Happy New Window Day!

categories: Home & Garden

Or, why we replaced the Edwardian windows in our house.

Have I said that our house is over 150 years old? Yep. Full of history. It’s one of the things that made us fall in love with it when we bought it. However, having an old house has it’s fair share of problems. The windows have been one of them. We’ve been replacing them over time but last week we finally replaced the last of the single paned windows (not strictly true, as we’ve got some left in the extension at the back, but that’s another story for another time). The problem with doing it slowly is that as we’ve replaced the others, the single pane windows would be soaking wet most of the day.

They weren’t original, but they were probably Edwardian. I know what you’re thinking – How could you?! Well, it was a pretty easy decision. They didn’t really work! They weren’t energy efficient, they didn’t keep any noise out and they were in a pretty sorry state. We did look into keeping and getting them restored, but we decided that it wasn’t the best option. It wouldn’t stop the crazy amounts of condensation (and I mean crazy. Pools of water on the window sill daily!) It wouldn’t have helped close the gaps between the window or undo all the water damage to the wooden frame. So we decided to let them go. Rippled glass and everything.

As you can see, they’re in a bit of a sorry state, but isn’t the glass beautiful?! I have to admit, I did feel a bit guilty when they started ripping it out. But since the new windows have been put in, it’s been quite the transformation.

The new windows are amazing. You know when it snows, and everything goes really, really quiet? It’s like that in our house now! The noise has been reduced sooooooo much, its unbelievable. Even Poppy is less disturbed by people walking by and traffic driving past. I haven’t noticed if it’s much warmer yet, as I’ve been running a bit of temperature since they’ve been put in, plus I’m not very good at telling whether it’s cold or not because I’m pretty much always cold! But the noise thing is worth the replacement alone. And we couldn’t have achieved that if we’d just restored them.

All I need to do now is organise a new blind and a net curtain that isn’t awful. We also replaced the window in the bedroom, which means I no longer hate everything in the bedroom, as I love the window! I still hate everything else, but the window makes us one step closer to making it the serene & calm room that I’m pinning about!

15
Jan
2014

A New Bedroom for the New Year

categories: Home & Garden

The other day I tweeted about how much I hate our bedroom. When we got the keys to our house, just under four years ago, we had a window of a week in which to do any redecorating before moving in. It was quite stressful and very, very cold. The downstairs was having a damp course put in, which meant there was no heating or hot water and we had a number of other jobs that needed doing before moving day. We had the carpet fitter arriving early on the Thursday before our stuff came on the Friday. We decided to do what we could to our bedroom in that short space of time and on our limited budget. It had lime green paint on wood chip wallpaper. Yep. Nightmare. We didn’t have time to strip the paper, repaper, wait for it to dry, before painting the walls with two coats of paint. So we painted over the lime green, onto the wood chip. Yep. Our bedroom still has wood chip wallpaper on it. Add into the mix, if you will, a burgundy wall, which we thought was a good idea as a feature wall. It took about five coats of paint. Feature walls can be a good idea, but never if they’re burgundy. Never. I will post a picture before we paint over it, if I can pluck up the courage.

While we’re not quite ready to redecorate it just yet, as we need to save some funds and sort out some storage issues, we will be decorating the bedroom this year. So you know that means? Pinterest time! It’s time to pin all the bedroom styles I like and want to emulate. I’ve started a board so will be adding to it over the next few months. Here are some of my favourites so far:

Via Red Online

Via sfgirlbybay

Via The Olde Barn

Via Brunch at Saks

There’s a definite theme running through all the images I’ve pinned so far. White walls, plain wooden floors, metal bed frame, lush fabrics. My only hope is that our bedroom looks at least half as good as these images I’ve found via Pinterest. It certainly can’t look any worse, that’s for certain!

What’s the worst decorating mistake you’ve ever made? Do you follow any great interior decorating boards on Pinterest? I’d love to know! I need lots of help!