New bedroom blinds.

I'm very excited as, after many months of procrastinating, dithering and sample-ordering, I've just ordered new blinds for our bedroom!

As you can see,  we've got two large windows in our bedroom and we live on a terraced street, so we definitely need a window treatment that gives us privacy. The patterned voile blinds covering the bottom part of the windows are excellent, as they allow light in, while preventing anyone from peeking in. These are staying.

We're going to swap the curtains for blinds. There are two main reasons for this - firstly, one of these pairs of curtains is now hanging in Astrid's bedroom and I've (very) temporarily put up the old blue ones that were in her room (that used to be Torin's), in our room. So, we currently have one cream pair and one blue pair - it's certainly not pleasing on the eye!

The other reason is that I think the curtains look a little messy - I know they're plain and pretty inoffensive really, but I'm hankering after something with cleaner lines - perhaps something a little smarter and dare I say it, masculine?

I've really taken a long time over this decision and, after rejecting many samples, and looking at the prices of made to measure Roman blinds (!), I've decided to go with a very safe option. I've ordered the same blinds that I chose for Torin's bedroom (the one you can just about make out in the terrible picture below).

The new blinds will be cream, blackout, spring-loaded roller blinds. Although I would have preferred Roman blinds, as I think more fabric would help to create a slightly softer look, the new blinds will be smart, unfussy and streamlined. Hopefully, this will help the rest of the bedroom to follow suit - there is a reason the top picture is an old one - it's to do with the clothes currently drying in our room, the additional bookcase we've squeezed in between the chest of drawers and the windows, and the large amount of general rubbish that seems to congregate in our room so it is either out of the reach of the children, or doesn't seem to have a place elsewhere.

Hopefully the new blinds will be delivered within a week, so I'll be sure to post some pictures soon!

One man's junk . . .

This is the chest of drawers in Torin's room.

David's mum gave it to us when she was having a clear out and it's lived in most of the rooms in our house (and in my old room at my parents' room when we simply just didn't have room for it) since then. I was originally going to put it in Astrid's room, as the chest of drawers that I painted to go in Torin's old room was going to move in here with him (I've added a picture of the chest of drawers below as I don't think I've shown it to you before now). 

However, as you can see from the first picture, the space between his bed and the cupboard in this room is quite narrow, and the other piece of furniture just wouldn't fit.

So, Astrid now has the turquoise chest in her bedroom and Torin has this one. I don't know whether to paint it or leave it as it is. I rather like the duffed up nature of the wood, I may change the handles though - what do you think?

Also, the reason I called this post "One man's junk . . ." is because a while ago in LivingEtc, I saw a chest of drawers similar to this one and it was selling for about £650! I thought I'd cut out the picture, but I've searched high and low for it and it seems to have disappeared. If any of you know what I'm talking about, I'd love to know where it was from so I can compare them again.

I hate to block out the sun, but . . .

We finally moved the furniture around in the childrens' rooms this weekend, so Astrid is in her own room at last! She's sleeping pretty well in the cot, but she's definitely a babe who's aware of when it's light - a trip to Dunelm Mill to buy blackout fabric was needed. As it worked out nearly the same price, in the end I actually bought these blackout curtains - they're designed to be slotted onto the same curtain pole as a pair of eyelet curtains, and they actually work really well.

Image from here.

Hopefully I'll post a picture of Astrid's curtains tomorrow - I didn't get a chance to take one earlier and REALLY don't want to disturb her now. I've swapped the blue curtains that were in the room already (because the room belonged to Torin), for one of the pairs of curtains that we had in our room - the plan is that we'll soon be getting blinds in our bedroom.

At the moment poor Torin is making do with a blanket tied over his window as a makeshift curtain. This is actually one of the reasons we hadn't moved the children around sooner - Torin's bed was going to go underneath the window in his new bedroom and hanging over the window (and therefore within his reach) was a rather useless see-through woven roller blind with a long cord attached to it. I really didn't feel comfortable with Torin being able to reach the cord, so was really hesitant to put him in the room until we had something else to put up at the window. 

I initially thought of cutting down the curtains that were in his current room to try and avoid spending more money, but the window is quite wide and short (the recess is 120x88cm) and I thought curtains wouldn't look quite right in the room. I wanted the clean lines of a blind, but without the danger of a long cord, so I investigated spring-loaded roller blinds. After a bit of internet-trawling, I finally settled on a blackout, spring-loaded roller blind from Keeley's Blinds. They seemed pretty reasonable and say they'll deliver my made-to-measure blind within a week. Colourwise, I decided to go for a cream as I still haven't decided on what colour I want to paint Torin's room and so I needed something that would go with any colour scheme and also a colour that he wouldn't outgrow.

Image from here.

What do you think - boring or practical?

Some bright letters from Denmark.

Gosh it's been a while hasn't it! I've just got back from a week in Kent where we all had a lovely time visiting zoos, soft play centres and making three trips to Bluewater (!) Today saw us back to earth and life with two under three with a bump today as David went back to work and I spent a whole day doing washing and putting clothes away!

Before I went, we got a lovely little package through the post from our friend in Denmark - he sent these bright letters for Astrid's room. The roundness of the base of the S and the D means that they won't stay upright on a flat surface, so they'll have to be stuck onto the wall or her door so I'm looking forward to finding a space to put them!

Thanks Mads!

I'd also like to welcome my twelfth follower Anna who writes Craftiness for Beginners - very much looking forward to reading through her blog and getting ideas for craft projects - hi Anna and thanks for following!