Hello again

Hello! I haven't blogged for a long time now, mainly because I have been crazy busy, but partly because I lost confidence a little that anyone would actually want to read what I have to say. However, I follow quite a number of bloggers via bloglovin' and also through social media, and seeing their creativity and enjoying sharing their lives from day to day is so inspiring it just motivated me to want to write in my blog again. Besides which I realised that even if no one really reads my blog, that is beside the point...blogging is a wonderful creative outlet and almost like keeping a diary in its therapeutic nature. So here I am again.

The first thing I want to share with you is our newly decorated living room, which I am completely in love with. In my last post I shared pictures of my living room and shared with you my reasons for our choice of decor.  Since then one major change took place, and that was a definite decision to stay in this home indefinitely.  As you know, moving into social housing wasn't the easiest thing for me, mainly because the house is so very tiny and I had to get rid of so many things that were meaninful to me, which, for a hoarder like myself was quite a wrench. But it was also difficult because I value character and history in a home, and these homes are really just featureless boxes, all designed to be low maintenance and identical. So many of the homes I love on instagram or Pinterest are period properties, and being bombarded with such beautiful homes so full of personality and quirkiness made me hanker for the same. Have you felt that way? Well, I moved into this house believing that it was a temporary means to an end, and that my beautiful stone cottage would one day soon become a reality. But in the past couple of years, our perspective on our home and lifestyle has changed so completely that even though a little cottage is now completely possible for us to attain, we have decided that's not what we want. Why?! I hear you cry......well, although I still love that dream of a cosy little stone building nestled on its own in a woodland somewhere, there are other things I have come to value more.  Chief among them is time. If we were to move we would have to get a mortgage, which would mean hubby could no longer continue to work part time. We have come to value our time with him so much, especially while the children are so young, and we realise it's a priveledge not many people have in today's world. Living in a smaller and relatively featureless home also gives me more time as a mum because it means so much less cleaning and maintenance, honestly I cannot believe how much easier my housework routine is here. All in all, since moving we feel as if the pace of our life has slowed right down and we feel more able to savour each bit of precious time with our kids. It has also meant that for the first time in a long time, our living expenses are so low that we have spare cash to actually enjoy ourselves a little. We had our first holiday abroad in seven years this year and it was wonderful. The reason I am sharing all this is because I'm sure there are some people out there who might feel as I did, that they covet that beautiful big period property that everyone else seems to have and enjoy, but for a change I want to say that I've had every kind of home you can imagine, and can honestly say that home really is wherever your heart is. It doesn't matter what type of property you live in, you can make it feel like your dream home. I really believe that.

As we are going to be here for some time, I wanted hubby to love our sitting room as much as I do, and pink and floral is not really his style! Also, the room felt a little like we had just brought a load of mismatched furniture in and attempted to squeeze it in wherever there was space, which is actually exactly what we did! We wanted to use the limited space a little better and make it feel more co-ordinated and 'intentional' if you catch my drift. Hubby likes lots of natural materials like oak and stone, and he favours a stronger, darker palette than I do. As a compromise we chose farrow and ball 'light grey' for the walls.

I was slightly concerned it may make the room feel even smaller to put a strong colour on the walls, but it actually just makes the room feel cosy. We got rid of our large armchair,sofa bed and larger pieces of storage furniture, which housed our collection of 600 DVD's. I have filed these in a large cd wallet instead and put the cases in the loft, which just saved tons of space. The living room doubled as our guest room with the sofa bed, but we decided that making the room useful for our daily family life had to be our priority, so we swapped to a gorgeous dfs/ sofa workshop corner sofa which has as much seating as the armchair and sofa put together, but takes up less floor space.


I reupholstered my precious tub chair which originally lived in my dads bachelor pad as a young chap, and was a favourite chair when I was a child.



I got an end of roll piece of fabric on eBay for £25 and used my staple gun and glue gun to replace the old pink fabric. Bit of a bargain I think! I decided to keep my little bureau as it is really a useful piece of furniture and I use it as our office, and decided to pick out the aqua colours of the drawers as an accent to the grey. I also created some new artwork for the walls, incorporating the accent colours ...more about my artwork in another post.

 But my favourite part of the room is hubby's handy work in the corner; previously our enormous 55 inch TV was the main focal point in the room which I really do not like, so hubby created a false 'inglenook' style fireplace for my little Dimplex stove complete with a beam that falls down to reveal all our media neatly tucked away out of sight.



I sewed a wall hanging with some fabulous map fabric we found and that hangs over the TV when it's not in use. Because the fireplace is in the corner of the room it just gives it that lovely quirkiness that I love so much rather than the generic, featureless room we started with.Finally, I made cushion covers in our accent colours from some remnants of beautiful Melin Tregwynt wool (it's a fabulous Welsh woolen mill just up the road from us) that I bought in the Mill shop, and crocheted a large cushion cover from some wool remnants I picked up.  What I love so much about our new living room is that it is a joint creative effort between hubby and I, filled with handmade items we collaborated on and created ourselves, it really feels like a piece of us and a meeting of our tastes. And when I sit on my ridiculously comfy sofa and look out the window at the birds in the cherry tree, fire going and fairy lights twinkling, I could easiliy be sat in the cottage of my dreams.

I read somewhere that the key to contentment is learning to want what you have rather than have what you want, and I believe this to be true. I hope you have enjoyed reading about our journey to making what we already have into something we really love. We have lots of plans for the rest of the house, I will keep you posted!

Steph xx

Styling the seasons, August

Well yes, I realise I'm absolutely pants at this blogging lark.....I have been silent for a good couple of months without even noticing. I've just been busy as always with schooling the girls and my many and varied hobbies! But I suddenly came over all creative this week and felt the need to write everything down, so here I am.


August is a special month to me so I wanted to reflect that in my 'Styling the Seasons' post. First, it is special because it is the month I got married. Next Friday the 14th is our wedding anniversary, it will be 11 years since we tied the knot. We always try to make an effort to do something lovely as a family and as a couple to remember that day, because at the risk of sounding cheesy, it truly was the best day of my life. Joe has been the best friend anyone could ask for and it's been the happiest 11 years. I included a little wooden heart he carved for me in my styled surface to represent our special day.

 Incidentally, the surface I chose to style is a little kitchen cart that the clever chap made for me out of scraps of wood he had in the garage (to me it's thoughtful acts of kindness like this that are the most romantic thing), and it has proved invaluable in my new, very tiny, kitchen as an extra work surface and storage space. Kitchen carts are a great idea if you are short of space, I added castors to mine so it could be moved out of the way when not needed. Anyway, I digress. ...


The second reason August will always be a memorable month for me is a sad one. On Tuesday, my lovely nan passed away quite suddenly. It was a shock as she was so full of life and I just imagined her going on forever. She died peacefully in her sleep. I feel overwhelming sadness, but at the same time I just feel so blessed that I was lucky enough to have a really close relationship with her and with my grandad, and as I get older I realise more and more how my grandparents played a real part in shaping who I am. I just felt that this month's post should be about my grandparents and what amazing people they all were. The tablecloth in the picture is particularly precious to me now as my nan embroidered half of it and then gave it to me to finish.

She is the one who taught me to sew and I used to love going to her little bungalow and sewing and knitting and crafting together. Everything in her and my grandad's bungalow was handmade by the two of them, from the furniture to the ornaments to the tools in grandad's shed. I try to take the same approach to my own home and fill it with things that have meaning because of the love and effort that went into them, or for the memories that are attached to them. The painting that you see in the corner of the photograph is actually one that grandad painted, it's a painting of the road to the Garth mountain in South Wales where I grew up, and I have many happy memories of walking to the top and flying my kite with my grandparents and my mum and dad and brothers as a child.

Grandad's ashes were scattered there and nan's will be too.

I added the little red teapot as it belonged to my other grandmother and she absolutely loved it. She got it in when living in Germany as a young woman and it was always a focal point in her kitchen. She and I had very similar taste and it's from her I get my love of nature and all things floral. The posy of flowers in the teapot are all from my garden, and i'm so thrilled that after only six months of work out there I have so many flowers for cutting already. None of my grandparents got to see this garden but I know if they had they would have loved it and been proud of my hard work. My knowledge of plants comes from my grandmother too, she loved her garden and a frothy, cottagey style of planting, which is what I always gravitate to.


So that's it. I hope my post this month has not seemed depressing to you but rather, as I intended, full of happy memories. I will be posting some pics of my new living room on Monday so be sure to come back then for a nose.


Stephanie xx

Hello! Ok, so I'm actually finding at the moment that I have so much going on in my head I can't seem to crystallise my thoughts enough to make a lot of sense in my blog, so as a result I keep putting off writing it.  I do have news I would like to share though, especially as I am mostly blogging about home making, as my news concerns my home. Currently we rent a big beautiful stone house in a pretty pembrokeshire village, and I would say it pretty much fulfils every criteria I have for my perfect home. We have 4 enormous bedrooms, a massive vaulted loft space, an ENORMOUS sitting room with windows making up one whole wall, a dining room with fireplace, a big kitchen diner with a range cooker and utility room, a pantry and two bathrooms. Add to that lots of period features like deep skirting boards, picture rails, original sash windows and panelled oak doors, a cast iron bath  and original fireplace in the bedroom, and a beautiful orchard and walled garden at the back and you have what I have always considered would be my perfect home. The cherry on top is that when we moved in the place was freshly renovated and actually belongs to friends who allowed us to have a lot of input into the choice of fitted kitchen, flooring etc and who gave us a very long lease. So, all things considered, I hoped to be here a long long time.  But recently, the hubby has been quite unwell and I've been worrying that he is struggling with his workload. This is an expensive home to run and I hate that he has to work so much in order for us to be here. He has also recently started his own business treating lawns for weeds etc and because he is in the throes of building that up he has had to keep on his old job in construction to pay the bills, basically working 2 jobs. To me, this is madness. I'm just not prepared to sacrifice our time with hubby in order to have pretty sash windows and an orchard.  So we have reached the difficult decision as a family to move on. At first we looked at other private rentals, but the idea is to slash our expenses as low as possible and exchange a luxury home for time together...private rental just wouldn't achieve that goal being so expensive. So instead we opted to join the list for a council house. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought we would do this; I hold my hands up and admit to being a total snob when it comes to social housing. But in actual fact, when I started to look I realised it's actually a pretty sweet option, the rent is super low, the houses well planned and built and energy efficient, and there is a level of security you can't get renting elsewhere. I have gradually begun to view this as an exciting challenge for our family, to make a warm welcoming home from something most would consider to be a sub standard house. But I truly believe a house is just a shell in which you live your life, and any place can feel wonderful if there is happiness and contentment among the ones living there.  So.... watch this space! I am super excited to blog about our new home once we find it, and share how we transform whatever we are given into something beautiful and appealing.  Any ideas about space efficient living and home makeovers are gratefully received!  With love
 Stephanie x

So today I took the kids swimming for the afternoon which I must admit I really didn't feel like doing today. It's getting decidedly autumnal outside, and while I adore this time of year I do believe it is best enjoyed kicking through the fallen leaves bundled up to the eyeballs in a big wooly jumper and hat,or indoors by a roaring fire with a mug of hot spiced apple juice. Most definitely not in a skimpy cozzie in a lukewarm swimming pool. But my girls disagreed, they couldn't think of anything more exciting for a Wednesday afternoon, so in the interests of earning mummy brownie points I stuffed our kit in a bag and off we went. Boy am I glad I did. Ella, my eldest, has been gradually becoming more comfortable in the water each week, and today for the first time she dunked herself under the water and swam quite a way on her own. Her little face was so overjoyed that she finally swam unaided I felt like I was going to burst with pride. Honestly if she had won an Olympic gold medal I could not have been more proud. And I taught her that. Such a wonderful feeling. 

Anyway, I wanted to share with you my boot sale finds from the weekend. It's been sooo long since I went to a boot sale, I've always been too exhausted after broken sleep with babies to drag myself out of bed early enough to get the really good stuff. So this weekend marked another little step towards being able to enjoy 'grown up' stuff again. Which did make me feel a little sad, because it brings home how quickly our baby girls are becoming big girls and I do miss having a baby around. Still, it was nice to feel that familiar thrill of rummaging amongst all the junk to find your one little piece of treasure. I do believe my enthusiasm rubbed off on my girls, they came home with a pink unicorn and a pair of mickey mouse roller skates,  items I do not know how we have lived without thus far. Although I only found a couple of treasures of my own I was chuffed with what I did get: a wonderful sanders teapot with a beautiful shabby chic design, and 2 Cecily Barker flower fairies books. I adore her illustrations. And I must admit I'm a bit of a magpie when it comes to vintage China.  There's nothing quite like the thrill of haggling for your desired item;

my heart skipped a beat when the lady apologetically asked me for £2.00 for my teapot. I do love a bargain. And I love the idea that I have rescued something that was once treasured by another person from ending up on the rubbish heap, instead to be treasured by me. I think there will definitely be a lot more boot sale trips coming up this winter! 

Off to my parents' tomorrow with the girls so will share what we've been up to when we return. Xx