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

Living Room tour

Check me out, another blog post already! I wanted to show you my new living room which has been almost done for a while but now is pretty much finished. I do have plans to paint one wall in a very pale, blue grey wash, but who knows how long it will take me to get around to that so I am showing you the room as it is and will post an update when I get round to painting.

I would describe my decorating style as cozy, and very 'country'. I have always put a lot of thought into colours and furniture placement, and the styling of surfaces. But somehow moving into this place for such 'grown up' reasons made those things seem somehow a little silly and insignificant. At the time my main consideration was simply to fit all the truly 'necessary' items into this tiny space. But gradually as I have relaxed and begun to enjoy this place as our home, I have just naturally begun to enjoy putting those little touches to the place that fill the house with your personality and make it feel like an extension of yourself, a place of comfort and happiness...'home'.

William Morris said that we should have nothing in our home "that we do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful", and I always try to follow that rule. I like to sit in a room and as I look around, be met with happy memories. The starting point for this living room was , as with the rest of the house, simple white walls, as the room was covered in grubby smears and marks so I just wanted it to feel clean. We chose to put oak effect laminate throughout our downstairs mainly for practicality (with two little girls being schooled at home and our little dog in and out of the garden our floors are in need of very regular mopping! ). Our sofa is actually a sofa - bed so the room doubles as a guest room. As it's bright red that more or less dictated the colours we would be using!

On the back of the sofa you can see a memory quilt I made out of the girls pram blankets they used as babies.  I did actually write a post about this quilt a while back. I love it because every time we snuggle up on the sofa together all those happy memories come flooding back. A memory quilt or blanket is such a great way to save those little baby things and use then rather than just keeping them in a bag in the attic. In this picture you can also see the wire chandelier I made and covered with fairy lights in the corner. In my opinion you can never have too many fairy lights! 

I had to get rid of a lot of my books when we moved, along with the actual bookcases. To make a home for my remaining books without intruding on the room too much we added a shelf that runs the whole length of the room above the sofa, which actually gives the illusion of extra length to the room. Being extremely nerdy I had to arrange the books according to colour which again just makes it look a lot more 'fluid' and gentle on the eye. I added a few of my favourite prints at eye level, I chose prints with a similar theme, all featuring roses as I wanted to tie them in with the prints on the soft furnishings and the colours on the sofa. 

I also used a couple of large mirrors in this room to try and bring in as much light as possible and that old trick of mirrors to try and make the illusion of size. 

In a small house storage is of paramount importance, so we have 2 good pieces of furniture from Laura Ashley which we intend to keep forever and which both provide lots of extra storage. One is a coffee table but we placed it against the wall under the tv as we wanted to keep the floorspace free. The lid lifts at the back with tons of storage inside and it has lots of tiny drawers at the front as well. The second is a large sideboard which I love as it also provides a lovely surface for styling with my precious nik naks....

I love to sit on the sofa and look at my treasures in this little corner. The square frame propped on top was found at a tip by my youngest brother,  who appreciates items because of their story, as I do. It contained a rather hideous painting which I immediately loved because at the back was the artists name and address dated 1954, along with a paper ticket from an exhibition the painting had been part of, and you could also see another painting that the artist had covered with the new hideous offering. I like to rescue things that were once loved and precious to someone but now they are gone or getting old are no longer of worth to anyone. It makes me happy that it is of value to another person again. Inside the frame I have hung some vintage lace and used little craft pegs to hang my own memories...pictures of grandparents, my children's first shoes, a rose from my husbands wedding buttonhole, a card from my mother and a label from a gift a close friend gave me after I threw her a 25th anniversary dinner. Such lovely memories. A memory frame like this is easy to make and a lovely way to decorate with things that otherwise might be tucked in a drawer somewhere. I also like the fact that you can ring in the changes and switch out the items depending on how you feel at the time.

The foxgloves painting above the sideboard is one of my own. I wanted to bring some colour to this corner as with all white walls you are sometimes in danger of it looking a little bland. But bright warm colours against a white backdrop really pop and can have more impact than colour used on the walls themselves. You can also see in this picture a beautiful Tiffany lamp made from scratch by my grandad. He was a clever chap and taught himself to lead glass and I just will treasure this lamp forever until it's time to pass it to my kids. Such a special thing to have in my home. 

You will notice in the corner of the picture a largish glass box on top of the sideboard. This houses 2 fire toads which are pets given to my daughters by one of my brothers. It does niggle me that I have to have this messing up my little vignette but this is a lived in home and I have to always remind myself that it can't look like a page from a magazine...its little things like this that make it ours and make it unique. 

I managed to squeeze my little electric 'log burner' in the corner, it's honestly the most realistic looking electric fire and an open fire is something I really miss so at least this gives us that cozy feeling in winter. I picked it up for £50 on ebay. Most of my furniture is second hand, I figure it's silly to pay more when you can pick up things that have so much life left in them for so cheap or for free. In fact the white armchair you just see the arm of in the previous picture is part of a set of two that I picked up for free on www.freecycle.org and they are in immaculate condition! Much less wasteful. You would not believe the stuff people throw away.  The print in this picture is Soul of the Rose by John William Waterhouse who is my absolute favourite artist. I love the pre Raphaelite brotherhood (not that he was a member but he was closely associated with it) and the arts and crafts movement and I love what they stood for, everything handmade and beautifully crafted with utmost care. I really try to emulate that in my home.

This ornament on the windowsill was made by me, it's rather 'rustic' ahem......but it represents our little family and I love it. It's made from air dry clay which is just the best thing ever and a great little activity with the kids.

So that's it, my tiny living room. I totally love it. I can't believe I found quite so much to say about it! Hope you enjoyed having a nose and I will post another room soon.  I hope it shows that no matter what your actual house is like, with a little thought you can make a home.

Stephanie xx