Living Room Reveal

As promised, I am here today to reveal our new living room.  I have to admit that I forgot to take "before" pictures before we started, but I did take some "during" so that we can see how much we did.

To give you an idea, the whole house is covered in paintable, patterned wallpaper.  Luckily all rooms (except for the dining room) are neutral, albeit very dirty.  So, here goes.....

This is the view as you walk into the room.  You can just about see the fireplace & the two alcoves.

If you turn left you can see the window - the curtains that were left were very pink, very fussy with the fancy pelmet & absolutely dust & dirt ridden (I doubt that they had ever been cleaned!!!)

If you turn back towards the fireplace, this is what the skirting boards looked like in the right-hand alcove.

This was what the door looked like before we (well, Hubby!) got to work.

Are you ready for the big reveal?  Ok, here you go.....

The wallpaper is from B&Q, by K-2 & is called Arabella Graphite.  I absolutely loved it when I saw it.  We had originally planned to paint the rest of the walls white/cream as per parts of the flowers in the wallpaper, but Hubby talked me around to picking out the blue/green colour of the flowers & I'm so glad he did!!  The background of the wallpaper is grey, which matches our sofas really well as they are grey & black.  As you can see, we have also painted the fireplace surround & the skirting boards white, which has made a MASSIVE difference to the look & feel of the room.  It feels so much bigger!

You can't really see that clearly, but the wall lights in this picture were bought from B&Q at the bargain price of £3 each!  The black lamp was also in the sale & was £10.

We chose fully lined, black chenille curtains, which we got from B&M.  The leaves in the wallpaper are black & of course we have black in our sofas so we decided that this would all tie in nicely. You can't really see in this photo but the curtain pole has a glass "diamond" ball at either end, which goes very nicely with our lampshade, which has a nice "diamond" hanging from the bottom.

Here's a picture of one of our sofas, including Lucy (she fits in very well with the decor, no?!)

Finally, here's a picture of the door after having had its make-over:

Excuse the masking tape - it's on the other side of the door, which we haven't yet finished!

Over all, we're really pleased with it!  It feels like such a relaxing place to chill out in at the end of the day.  The only thing that we have left to do is put some pictures up on the walls - we have a few black photo frames from Ikea that will go really well, so these will hopefully go up this week.

Next up will be the dining room - we already have chosen the colour scheme, which was decided for us when we found a wallpaper that we liked in a Next clearance outlet for £3 per roll - bargain!!!  That will be a post for another time though.

In the meantime I'll leave you with a photo of my gorgeous girls in our new living room - growing up so fast!  Freya is now 4 & will be starting school in September (gulp!) & Abby turned 2 on Saturday.  Time really does fly.

xxx

Relocated (again!)

One of the joys of renting is that when an opportunity comes up to live in a lovely little village for only a fraction more of the cost then we are able to take it.

This is exactly what happened with us last year.  We had not been planning on moving, although we were finding living about 20 miles away from Hubby's parents a bit inconvenient.  We are very close to my Parents-in-Law &, although it only took 25 minutes by car to get there, we found that we were travelling up  down the motorway so often that it was becoming expensive in terms of petrol costs.

Sadly the In-Laws' elderly next-door neighbour passed away suddenly last July, leaving his house empty.  His son decided to rent the house out indefinitely & this opened the doorway to a new chapter for us.  As the elderly man had lived in the house for about 60 years the decor is very dated & needs a lot of updating.  Our landlord (the son) wanted to let the house to someone who would take care of the house & treasure it as their own &, as a result, we were offered the house at a much reduced monthly rent in comparison to other houses in the village.  Of course, we would have been MAD to turn this offer down - a bigger house, not much more a month & next door to the Parents-in-Law - this is the perfect set-up for us!

It was agreed last September that we would move into the house.  The kitchen was gutted & replaced before we moved in, as were the carpets (the man had a few dogs who were not completely house-trained) & we finally moved in the week before Christmas - I said we would have been mad to turn the offer down but I didn't say we weren't mad to move so close to Christmas!!!!

We've been here a month now & are loving the new village.  The girls have so much more room to play, Freya is settling into her new nursery well & we are saving soooo much money in fuel as we live that much closer to the shops, family etc.

As part of our rental agreement we are getting a reduced rent for the first year to cover the cost of redecorating.  We have wasted no time & I will be able to do our first room reveal soon!!!

I'm so excited about being able to make this house our own & establishing new routines & I really want to share it, so I hope that you'll come back again soon?

xxx

Crochet Christmas Presents - Bed Runner

This is my final crochet reveal.  My Mum asked my to make a cream "runner" to go over the end of her bed. She already has a throw that is folded & put over the end of the bed but she wanted a crocheted runner to go on top of that.

I looked through all of my Art of Crochet patterns & came across this one, which was actually for a table runner & was done in multi-coloured stripes.  I really liked the pattern though & it was another opportunity to do some different stitches so I decided to give it a go.

This was my favourite present to make as it was varied & seemed to come together really quickly.  My Mum loved it, which I'm really pleased about.

I'm sorry that the photos aren't great - this was a bit difficult to photograph & was too big to fit in one shot.

Now that I'm caught up on my crochet projects of 2012 I have lots to catch up on on the domestic front.

I'll be back!

xxx

Crochet Christmas Presents - Comfy Cushions

My "investment" in the Art of Crochet series really came in handy for all of the Christmas presents that I made.  The patterns for all of the cakes came from this magazine, as did the patterns for these cushions that I made for my mother-in-law.

MIL had been looking for some orange cushions for ages to go in her lounge, which is decorated in neutral creams & browns with accents of orange in her ornaments etc.  I decided that I would make her some.

I LOVE these cushions!

I did another Union Jack pattern using brown, cream & orange.  This one went down so well that I am actually in the process of making another one for their other sofa!!! ( I only made one)

I also made 2 orange cushions that have a ribbed pattern & buttons to fasten the cases.  I got the buttons from Hobbycraft & think that they go really well.

I've had a request from my Mum to make some more of these, but in cream/white, so I think that this pattern will come in handy again soon!  I was surprised at how quickly I was able to make these - I think each of the plain orange ones took a few evenings.

These cushions have taken their place in my In-Laws' lounge & they go really nicely.  The only problem now is that they are so well loved that we have to move them out of the way of the girls when we visit to prevent grubby hand-prints from getting on them!!!

xxx

Crochet Christmas Presents - Cute Bear Hats

I made two of these cute bear hats as Christmas presents, both for my nephews who were born last July & November.

I found the pattern online via Ravelry, I believe & they were really quick to make.  Again, they were very well received & both boys looked sooooo cute in their hats.

xxx

Crochet Christmas Presents - Anyone for Cake?

I said that I was going to do a catch-up on my finished crochet projects, so here's the first one:  Cupcakes & a selection of Cakes.

I made these for my twin nieces, who are 2.  They love playing with tea sets, so I thought this might be a nice thing for them to use in their play.  Of course, it was also the perfect excuse to make them, as I really wanted to try them out!!!!

Here's a closer look.......

An Apricot Danish

A slice of Victoria sponge with a strawberry on top

A rather fat Cherry Bakewell!

A slice of Battenberg

A Cream Slice

A Birthday Cupcake & a Cupcake with pink frosting & sliced strawberries

Cupcakes topped with frosting & smarties & frosting & a cherry

Over all, these were really fun to make & were greatly appreciated by the girls.

xxx

Baby Blanket #5

Happy (belated) New Year!

Our technical problems have now been fixed & I have lots to catch up on.

This post I actually tried to post at the end of November but was unable to.  It's the reveal of Baby Blanket #5 of 2012.  It was for a baby boy who was born in November.  I've known his mum since we were about 5 when we lived across the road from each other. We went to school together, went our separate ways for a while & were then reunited in Sixth Form.

For the purpose of making a blanket I was really pleased when she found out she was having a boy as I felt I could be a bit more adventurous with the pattern, seeing as the colours had already been decided (if that makes sense!) I got the pattern for this blanket from The Art of Crochet series & I'm really pleased with how it has turned out, despite the fact that the letters aren't really the same size! My favourite parts are the hearts though!

I have loads of crochet reveals to do, so will try & get caught up this week.

In the meantime, I hope that you are having a wonderful 2013 so far.

xxx