Put a lid on it!

My, it has been a long time since I've been around here hasn't it! Thank you to all of you who have continued to stop by (it's lovely to see my page views top 10000!) even though I haven't given you anything new to read for ages! We've had a lot going on at chez Mellor recently - a mixture of good and bad really, but things are now settling down and so hopefully I'll be able to find my way back to posting regularly again.

Just to keep you in the loop, some happy things that have happened since I posted last are:

• Torin turned three! (details of his party will be up soon)
• Astrid is now eating solids, can sit up on her own, and cut her first tooth today!
• we have a new niece called Harriet and I'm very much looking forward to seeing her tomorrow!
• my brother did fabulously in his degree - he got a 1st in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bath!

It's Astrid eating solids that has lead to this post actually as I bought a very exciting (!) purchase today - a jug with a lid. I don't know about where you are, but here in the UK, the advice is that children under one should drink cooled boiled water in case the water passes through lead pipes. I'm pretty certain I stopped boiling water for Torin way before his first birthday, but I'm still trying to be good for Astrid. This is fine, but it's a real hassle trying to remember to boil the water in time for it to cool down in time for her to drink it with her meals. So, I decided it would be a good idea to get a jug with a lid that I can fill with boiling water in the morning and then give her water from it throughout the day.

Thinking about jugs with lids reminds me of a vivid image from my childhood - one of my parents' friends used to make squash in this tupperware jug and pour it for us straight from the fridge. This was a really novel idea to me as for some reason, we never did it at home. I love the fact that these jugs are now "vintage"! Actually, maybe that just means I'm getting old!

I ended up just getting this cheap purple plastic thing from The Range today. It's not particularly solid, in fact I'm surprised it survived Torin dropping it countless times as he trotted along in front of me as we searched through the shop! It'll do though. The black Soleil tag is actually a removable label.

Image from here.

I've had a little look and I think these are some of the best jugs around at the moment:

I really like the mid-century shape of this green jug from Bodum. It also comes in five other colours.

Image from here.

This sleek design by Georg Jensen is super cool!

Image from here.

I also really like the French simplicity of this fridge jug from The Orchard:

Image from here.

Honestly, one of these days I'll stop buying the first cheap thing I see in favour of one that I actually like and will keep forever!

Which jug do you prefer? Do you have your own favourite that you use for pouring cold summer drinks?

Yet more toy storage!

As the children's bedrooms still aren't sorted out (Astrid is still in with us and Torin is still in his current room), I've found that more and more of Astrid's toys are making it into our living room. Therefore, I've needed to put them in something separate, as the storage I use for Torin's toys is full to the brim! As we don't have room for a trusty Expedit or anything similar that could go against a wall, I find that we're always losing floor space to toy storage, and this is no good thing as we are limited in this area anyway! How to create more storage then, without losing more space - the answer was to put it underneath an existing piece of furniture.

I found this lovely striped laundry bin in Matalan the other day and it fits perfectly underneath the console table in the living room:

It'll be a while before Astrid can get toys out of anywhere by herself, so the fact that this is underneath a table won't be a problem. Neat, don't you think?

Have you noticed what David's done to his lamp?(!) He's put in a daylight bulb! I hate it as it sticks out of the end of the shade and looks awful! I suppose I'll have to live with it though, as I did buy it for him so he could have a task light for painting his miniatures and he needs the brighter light. Grr though!

Fabric choices for the bathroom blind.

I mentioned here that I was thinking about getting a blind for the window in our bathroom. Well, I've decided to definitely get one, and have had a quick look online for ones that would be suitable.

I was looking at John Lewis because I'd followed a link for sprung blinds that are suitable for children's rooms (more on this later on as I think I'll get one for Torin's new room). Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised by the range of reasonably priced ready-made blinds that they had on their website. Look at this blind made in Sanderson's Dandelion Clocks fabric - it starts at only £35 which I think is quite a bargain as that fabric normally costs about £35 per metre anyway!

I think the colours would go really well in my bathroom, as the room is mostly grey with accents of blue. I think perhaps though, that this design has become too popular - it seems to appear everywhere (I actually bought a card showing this print for my mum on Mothers' Day this year) and has also been around for quite a long time. I do like it very much though - what are your thoughts?

I also really like this print - it's John Lewis' own design called Mayflower in Mineral.

Again, it'll go really well in the room and at only £30, it's cheaper than the Sanderson blind. I'm a little torn, but at the moment, I'm leaning towards the John Lewis design.

At midnight on Monday, sitting at the end of Torin's bed with my hand on his back, trying to get him back to sleep I ordered some other fabric swatches to see what they look like in situ. The two blinds above come as ready-made blinds and so if I chose one of the fabrics below I'd have to make my own, but I just thought I'd look at a good range of patterns before I went for one of the easy options above. Which is your favourite?

All images from here.

New garden table.

You may have noticed that in the picture of the bottom of the garden that I showed you here, there are three chairs but no table. That's because after about six years of living outside, ours was totally kaput and it was time for a new one. After looking around several places and struggling to work out why it was almost the same price to buy just a new table in some places as it was to buy a table and four chairs in others, I ventured to the Swedish place once again.

Here's my lovely new MÄLARÖ table in place at the end of the garden. Torin helped me to put it together yesterday and we even saw some sun while we were working on it (although it was definitely not warm enough to sit around it when we had finished)!

I really like the contrast between the white painted finish of the table with its metal legs, and the weathered (ahem!) finish of the wooden chairs. Just got to paint that shed this summer and plant a few more plants and then this area will be finished. Can't wait for the warm weather - it'll be lovely to sit out here on balmy summer evenings.

In other news, Astrid rolled over for the first time on Friday! Here's a picture of her lying on her back after completing her gymnastics.

A transformation in the garden.

In one of the breaks in the rain today I managed to get outside and take a few quick snaps of the work that we did in the garden over the Easter weekend. My parents were visiting and with Torin's help, transformed the end of my garden!

This is what it looked like for ages:

And this is what they managed to do! I'm so grateful for all their hard work and I'm sure you'll agree, it looks really lovely now.

We had done some work in the interim - like smashing up that concrete slab and planting the apple trees to the left of the picture, but the work that my parents did this weekend has made such a difference! 

That stack of bricks to the right of the shed all came out of the earth underneath the concrete slab. I kept trying to push the spade into the earth and each time hit something solid - I must have pulled about thirty original Victorian bricks out of the ground - the ones with loads of holes in them - think I'll put them on Freecycle in case anyone wants them. I'm going keep a couple back though to turn into outdoor candle holders - can't find a picture of this anywhere, but you basically just put think candles in the holes and it looks really effective - I'll post a picture when I've tried it.