Bargain Hunting

In our quest to find some knick-knacks to update our newly-decorated living room we have been lucky enough to come across some wonderful bargains.

We're fortunate to live near a Shopping Outlet Village where clearance/factory reject items are sold for much lower prices.  It was in the Next Outlet shop that we found some fab things for our living room & also some others for our dining room, which is next on our list to decorate.

 I thought that this was a nice thing to have on our windowsill in the lounge as it picks out the lime green from our wallpaper.  It cost £4 at the Next Outlet.

We also saw these 2 short, black glass vases for £2 each.  They have a couple of minor scratches on them but nothing that it really obvious.  They are currently residing at either end of our mantelpiece.

These 2 bottles are currently in our dining room.  The heart one (a bit scratched, as you may be able to see in the photo) cost £1 & the "Do Something you Love Everyday" one cost £1.50.  I just really liked these & for the prices I couldn't resist!!!

My Mother-In-Law actually bought this for me for £3 in the Next Outlet.  This is also in our dining room on our windowsill & is bringing a little bit of happiness to the room!

We found some lovely wallpaper for our dining room at £3 per roll in Next as well (more on this another day).  The colours in it are purple & pink, so I wanted to use purple as the main accent colour.  I saw this massive vase behind the cash desk I HAD to ask whether it was being saved for anyone.  Luckily for me it wasn't, so I managed to snatch this up for £8 (originally £35).

This morning we took a little trip to our local Cash & Carry.  This shop is FANTASTIC, especially when it comes to plants - no doubt you'll hear more about it in the coming months as we get out into the garden!  When we got there we saw that they had cushions on offer - 4 for £5.  Low & behold they had the PERFECT colour to match the blue/turquoise in our wallpaper, so we now have a bit of colour on our sofas:

I also couldn't resist bringing home a few bunches of my favourites - carnations.  At 20p per bunch who was I to refuse?!!!

I have a vase on our living room windowsill & also some more carnations in the small vases on our fireplace.

Gorgeous!

xxx

Colourful Sunday

Well, we didn't have any of the snow that was predicted but it is very wet, windy & dark here in South Yorkshire today.

I have just dropped by quickly to bring a bit of colourful to this otherwise dreary day.

This whole tray cost £3.98 from the local Cash & Carry & will bring some much-needed colour to the garden.

xxx

Winter

On Monday night, along with most other people, we had another snow blizzard.  Luckily it wasn't too much & we only woke up to a powdery coating of snow everywhere on Tuesday morning.

Although it did continue to come down on & off throughout the morning, it had all melted away by the end of the day.

I think that they've predicted up to 4 inches over the weekend in some places so, wherever you are, I hope that you stay warm & have a lovely weekend.

xxx

2

Last weekend Abby turned 2 - 2?!!!  How did that happen?!  It seems like only yesterday that she was born.

We took Abby & Freya to a local soft-play centre, where they went mad for an hour or so.  When we came home Lee's parents came round for a little bit of lunch & then we were joined by Lee's brother, his wife & their family (twin girls who turned 2 back in November & their baby boy who was born last November).  The kids all had fun running around & playing with each other - it was nice to see as, although we only live 10 minutes apart, we don't actually see them very often.

So, with Abby's birthday out of the way, the next milestone for the girls will be in April when we find out if Freya has been accepted into the primary school of choice, which she is due to start in September (eek!!!)

 Excuse the blurriness - it was really to prove that she did have candles to blow out!!!

xxx

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