Going dotty?

I've realised lately that dots are popping up all over the place in my house. You may remember there's the taupe coloured  Kidstonesque tablecloth from Dunelm Mill that covers the high-chair cushions and the dining-room table:

We have some pretty and useful red and white polka dot tins in the kitchen that usually contain cookie cutters and Torin's treats. Do you also like the tiffin box my friends gave me for my birthday - lovely bright colours don't you think?

I also have this dotty baby changing bag that usually sits over the buggy handles in our living room (sigh) and I've also bought a length of this fabric to make a curtain to change a bookcase into a wardrobe in Astrid's bedroom.

My latest acquisition however, is this red spotty cover for my iPad. It was a birthday present from my grandmother and I love it. It's really well padded and as it's red, it sits really well in our living room when I'm not using it.

Other dotty things that have caught my eye lately are these cute pegs - a good way to make a mundane task more interesting!

Image from here.

And these amazing floor tiles - these would look so so good in our bathroom. At that price though, never gonna happen!

Image from here.

When is a pencil sharpener not a pencil sharpener?

I didn't manage to get the pic of Astrid's curtains today - sorry. I'll really try and take one tomorrow, though it may have Torin's cheesy grin in the middle of it as I don't seem to be able to pick up the camera at the moment without him leaping in front of it! 

So, what was I doing today? We spent most of this afternoon in Chapter Arts Cinema celebrating our friend Mark's birthday, which was lovely. He's just converted his loft space into a spare room / office, so we bought him something to adorn the new desk he'll be putting in there. We have one of these on the desk in our dining room, and I think it's really cool, so we got one for Mark too. The sustainably harvested Rubberwood is lovely and smooth and it's also a great talking point. 

Image from here.

Luckily Mark really liked it.

I remember seeing this desk tidy in Living Etc a while ago, where it was described as a "design classic". We got ours from John Lewis, but it's widely available and is made by Suck UK. I'd never looked at their website until now, but they've got some really quirky products for sale. My favourite item is this ornate cork pinboard:

Image from here.

At £40, you may be better off finding an old picture frame and inserting your own piece of cork into it, but you have to admit, this one is more interesting than your average notice board.

New lighting in the living room?

I've had a poorly boy here with me today - Torin's a bit under the weather and spent a large amount of the day lying down on our sofa in the space next to where I usually feed Astrid. Sitting there today I was gazing around my living room and dining room with my usual frustration of not having the time to be able to blitz the place as much as I want to and my eyes settled (as they often do) on the ceiling lights. 

Wasn't it nice of the previous owners to remove the strip lighting that was obviously in this room before he replaced it with this fixture! Not so nice of him however to not bother to fix the mess in the wallpaper that the removal of the strip lighting clearly made!

We have the same lights in the living room and the dining room, and whereas I don't mind it really, I don't think it really goes with the room very well and I don't think I would have chosen something like it myself. Like a lot of things in this house though (like the kitchen cabinets and the bathroom suite), they're too inoffensive to replace; although I think they sit too near to the ceiling - our rooms could take something lower as the ceilings are high. Also, I thought it would be a real hassle to remove them as I thought there would be a maze of wires in that thing. I have it good authority however, that the lights would be quite easy to replace. That got me thinking . . .

I think something like the KNAPPA from IKEA would do the trick nicely - what do you think?

Image from here.

Keeping a handle on it.

A few people contacted me yesterday asking for a close up of the handles we used on our new alcove cupboard. I realise that it's not very easy to see what they're like from the picture I posted, so I've included a zoomed in picture below.

I bought our handles from Rossiters in Cardifff, which is one of my favourite shops, but I think I've also seen them at Bombay Duck.

I really like to change handles on cupboards, especially if they are just plain wood to begin with  - it's such an easy and relatively cheap way to give a piece of furniture a new lease of life! 

I've put together a quick round up of some other lovely handles that have caught my attention recently for you - hope you like them!

Butterfly ceramic door knob from here.

Dove ceramic door knob from here.

White shell flower door knob from here.

White dragonfly wildlife knob from here.

Still no news on the baby front - guess my due date has come and gone. Hurry up little one!

A lovely shiny alcove cupboard.

Do you remember this picture from an August post? 

Well, it looks a little different now!

Paul, David's brother gave the cocktail cabinet a good home, and in return offered to build a tall alcove cupboard in its place, as he had done a similar project in his previous house. He finished the cupboard during last week and then David spent this weekend painting the wood and putting on the handles.

I'm so pleased with how it looks - it seems like it's always been there, and it's going to be so useful for us. At the moment all it has inside is some of the leftover wood, the IKEA standard lamp (for those of you who have read my to-do lists, I still haven't managed to get rid of this!), and our vacuum cleaner. When we've had a real think about how many hooks and shelves to put up in there, it should be able to contain the vacuum cleaner, our carpet shampooer, the iron and ironing board and a whole bunch of other stuff! Oh, it's going to be such a joy to walk into the kitchen and not see the vacuum cleaner in there, and to walk into our bedroom and not see the ironing board leaning up against our wardrobe! I love it when things have a place in which to be put away.

On another note, I think this is one of the few photos that I've taken recently that actually shows the true colour of the paint I've used in this room - do you like it?

The top shelf is up (at last)!

A while ago, I mentioned that I had this little mishap in my dining room while trying to arrange the books on our alcove shelves according to colour:

I'd forgotten that some of the books on the upper shelves were actually supporting the weight of the shelves above them, and therefore, when I tried to replace the books in their new order, the weight of them sent the top shelf crashing down onto the shelf below, pulling out the wall plugs as it fell. So, I was left with a shelf missing, and several large holes in the wall, right where I needed the shelf to be put back up.

This weekend, my Dad tackled the job for me (I keep being told I'm not allowed to go up ladders!) and used some Polyfilla putty to fill the holes, which dried like concrete. Once this was dry, he made quick work of putting up the top shelf (thanks Dad, again!). Then my sister-in-law put the books back up on the shelves in strict colour-coded order (thanks Bec!).

This is how the area looks now - I'm so pleased with it. I really think I'll never put books on a shelf again unless they're arranged by colour as it helps to make everything look so much neater!

Apologies again for the light in this picture - have been potty training Torin all day and haven't been able to take my eyes off him in order to take a photo during the daylight!

I'm so pleased with how well these rooms are coming together, and I'm so grateful for all the help that we had from our family at the weekend.

My new desk wall.

So, as promised, a little peek at some of the painting I managed to do at the weekend. It really is a little peek I'm afraid, as the rest of the room is just too messy for me to bring myself to photograph. The main reason for this is because I'm planning on painting the woodwork this weekend, and so I haven't put everything back in it's right place just yet, and the ladder and my painting tools are still in the room too.

I'm so pleased with the colour, and it's such a pleasure to sit at this desk and look at a clean, fresh wall that is actually finished! If you remember, it looked like this for a LONG time!

I promise that when the two rooms are completely finished, I'll have a big tidy up and then post some pictures on here. Hopefully this weekend will really help make that happen sooner!

The final big push . . .

I'm nearly there - over the last few months (!) I've been gradually getting my living room and dining room painted. Now I've only got one wall left to go, but it's this one:

I've left this wall until last deliberately, as it's just going to take ages to move everything out of the way so I can actually start painting. As you can see, I still haven't fixed the top alcove shelf on the right of the picture, but I figured I might as well leave it until I've actually painted that part of the wall.

The cocktail cabinet to the left of the picture will need to be emptied and moved before I can tackle that area. This is going to be quite a job in itself as although there's not much alcohol in it at the moment, it is full of glasses. We're currently selling the books on top of the cabinet on Ebay, so they're hopefully only temporarily there, but the books on the shelves are going to take ages to take down and put back up.

Perhaps if I stopped rambling about how long it's going to take, and actually got on with it, the room would be finished!

Can't stop looking at . . .

Each week, I'll be sharing with you something that has caught my eye. It may be a picture, blog, product or website.

This fabric from VillaNova would be perfect for the new curtains I really want in our living room and dining room.

The Garland fabric from their High Society collection, would go so well in my room in the Cherry colourway (take a look here for a reminder of my chosen paint colours). Wisteria and Olive would be another option - both are lovely and would complement the olive paint and red accessories that are already in the room. It's a shame that it's so expensive because I'm going to need a lot of fabric to replace the curtains we already have - we have high ceilings plus one large window and a back door that need curtains.

Here's a zoomed in version of the fabric so you can see the pattern repeat more easily:

Here's a version that's zoomed in even further so you can see the print in greater detail:

All images from here.

Under the stairs . . .

I've finally managed to do some more decorating in our dining room! The area under the stairs is now nearly finished - still need to paint the woodwork, but I'll do all of this in one go when I've finished with the emulsion.

Initially I wasn't sure whether to use the darker shade of green on both walls, but I'm really glad I did as it makes the area feel quite cosy.

I also love my new red cushion (it's quite a light red but looks more of a coral colour in this picture) - it was a birthday present from our lovely friends Andy and Anna (thank you guys).  I really like the way the red sits against the olive green.

Here's a little close up of what's on the shelf above the sofa:

I've got a few more walls to go (the ones with lots of shelves with lots of books on them) before I'll have finished in here, but it's slowly coming together. Hopefully I'll be able to share "after" pictures with you before too much longer.

A little decluttering is good for the soul (and the desk).

Since we moved our desk into the more prominent position of in front of the chimney breast in the dining room (rather than under the stairs), we've really tried to keep it tidy. This does not always happen!

Sometimes, our desk looks like this:

Most of the time however, our desk looks like this (on a good day!):

It was becoming clear that the desk was a magnet for papers, and that neither of us were in reality, going to stop putting letters and bills etc. there. Therefore, I decided to find something in which to put all the clutter that keeps accumulating there, and remembered that I had 2 sturdy boxes that came with our Orla Kiely bed linen sets. Perfect.

From now on, our desk will look like this (well, here's hoping!):

Red is the colour . . .

IKEA is great for many things isn't it? When it comes to furniture, I like to mix it up a bit and have a blend of old and new - I don't really like it when people kit out their homes in IKEA wholesale!

However, sometimes when it comes to little bits and bobs like kitchen storage or picture frames, for me, there tends to be limited competition.  I forgot to mention the other day that while I was at IKEA buying this storage for Torin's toys, I picked up the LÅGIS mouse mat - it only cost 40p!

Here it is on our desk in the dining room (yes, there are still splotches of tester paint on the wall in here - really need to get the painting finished, but probably shouldn't be climbing ladders are the moment!):

It's red, so it goes well with the other red accents in the dining and living rooms, and it's plain, so it helps to keep the surface of the desk looking (relatively) uncluttered. So, the great hunt for a new mousemat that I wrote about here, is complete. Job done.

PS. I don't think I've mentioned before how much I love the international keyboard viewer we have on our Mac - I can never remember the keyboard shortcuts for accents, and I can't work out how to insert symbols on blogger (is this possible?) so the keyboard viewer is brilliant. When I needed the accent for the name of the IKEA mousemat in this post, I simply chose to have a Swedish keyboard and the computer showed me which key I needed to press on the British keyboard in order to get my chosen accent - simple!

The Playdough is contained.

I've begun on my mission to tidy Torin's toys (as complained about here) - I went to IKEA for some cheap storage for his pens and Playdough. I also realised yesterday that he can (quite scarily I think) recognise the brand of Playdough because he pointed at the logo printed on a piece of paper and said "Playdough" quite clearly. Now for a child of 2 who obviously can't read, to know that is what the image said, that's some clever branding!

I didn't buy much, and still need to find something to contain the majority of his smaller toys that are in our living room, but for the meantime, I bought 2 SAMLA storage boxes. They're not particularly pretty, but what they lack in aesthetics, they make up for in functionality, and they're a great size for Torin's bits and bobs. 

I think I may pop back there tomorrow and buy a larger box to store his train set!

Toys, toys, toys!

I've got two words on my mind after Torin's party . . . toys and storage! 

He got so many lovely presents over the weekend, but now our living room is somewhat overrun! Since Torin was born, keeping his toys tidy in both his bedroom and the living room has been an ongoing process. Room for storage in his bedroom is limited, so most of his toys are kept downstairs, and our attic isn't boarded out at the moment, so we can't store anything up there. Therefore, I've moved his toys in and out of boxes of varying size, tried to streamline them by storing his most babyish toys in the wardrobe in his bedroom and given over a bookshelf in the living room for his books. Part of me struggles with this a little though, as I feel a bit like who am I to decide when he's lost interest in a certain toy? - he may not want it to be relegated to the back of the wardrobe.

What I'm wondering now is what to keep things like Lego, Playdough and crayons in. Before his birthday, he had a few coloured pencils and crayons, and today he was given some felt-tipped pens (so glad I painted the chimney breast in Endurance paint as I've already wiped off a thick line of orange pen from the wall!). I'm sure his collection of these will continue to grow, so what I'm wondering about is what sized container should they all be kept in? Do I find something that will house them as they are at the moment? Or, do I pre-empt a growing collection and go for something much larger?

I also don't want to end up with piles of individual storage boxes in our living room, so I think I'll need something large enough to put most of his toys in. I really don't mind having all of his toys out during the day - I somehow manage to look over them and don't count them in the annoying clutter I notice everywhere else, but it is nice to be able to tidy them away at least a little bit, when he is in bed, or when we have guests.

One of our friends keeps her son's toys in a large wicker storage trunk, which I do like the look of; however, I really don't trust our cats. We have IKEA's MELBU mirror (with a rattan frame) in our bedroom, and shortly after we'd hung it on the wall Rufus managed to get upstairs and began clawing at it - honestly, it was like he was drawn to it. So, I'd be a little hesitant to spend good money on something that could quickly turn into a giant scratching post for the cats.

We do have an old blanket box in our room that would work quite well. The only thing is that I don't think it'll quite fit in the space where the toy storage needs to go - under our stairs next to the sofa that is there.

Believe me people, this is NOT all of them!

Any suggestions?

It's coming along . . .

Hope you all had a good weekend! David took Torin out for the afternoon on Saturday so I could get on with painting the dining room - I wanted to do some more before Torin's birthday party this weekend and I managed to paint two walls. I doubt I'll finish the room by Saturday, but at least I've covered up some of the areas where I used tester pots on the walls!

Here are some before and after shots to show you what I got up to:

Before

This is the top part of the wall that is on the right as you enter our dining room - you can just see the entrance into the living room in the bottom left corner. You can see where David painted down onto the wall while he was painting the ceiling white - I like to do this as it creates a neater finish when painting the walls - it ensures there are no gaps, and it's fine to do if you are going to paint over it with a darker colour.

Can you see that the ceiling in here is wallpapered? The ceilings were already like it when we moved in, and as our walls are plain, I don't mind it too much. It's one of those things that we would ideally change, but in the meantime, at least it's nicer than artex!

After

Here's the same bit of wall - much better don't you agree? The wall is painted in Dulux's Gooseberry Fool 5.

Before

Here's a shot of the walls around the dining room door (you can see where I took the previous picture in the top left corner). We recently replaced the door as the existing one contained dangerous glass panels, which we felt was too much of a hazard with Torin around. As you can see, we've primed but haven't yet painted the door, or the surround - I like to do all the gloss work when I've finished with the emulsion.

After

And the same area looking much much neater after I'd given it 2 coats of emulsion. You can see I've painted onto the door surround a little, but I'm not worried about that as it'll be covered over with gloss soon.

Hopefully I'll be able to get this finished soon, and then I'll show you pictures of the completed living room and dining room.

Spot the difference!

Quick quiz!

There are 5 main differences in these two pictures (apart from the fact that some of the books are in slightly different places) - can you spot them?

Did you find them? Answers below:

1. I have managed to put one of the shelves back on the wall. I got our newish powerful drill out at the weekend, and managed to put the shelf up securely. I may have actually let the words "Girl Power!" slip from my lips with the excitement that comes as a result of a job well done. Embarrassing! Luckily David was playing with Torin upstairs, so no one was around to hear! I'll post another picture when the top shelf is back up, but this is going to be a more difficult job as most of the wall plugs were ripped out of the wall when the shelf came down (as I describe here).
2. There is a pretty greetings card on the second shelf. I gave this to David for his birthday back in October. It's still on the shelf because I plan to frame it (I'll give you a close up when this has been done). In the meantime, you can view it here.
3. There's a candlestick infront of the blue books. I bought this in an antiques shop in York just before we were due to go to a wedding. It wasn't expensive, but it really caught my eye. I believe it dates back to the 1870s.
4. There's a large red vase next to the vases. This was from The Pier (now closed down), and was one of the first pieces of "red" that David and I had in the flat we rented together when we first moved to Cardiff. At the moment it's acting as a bookend, but it may stay there as I quite like the contrast between the red and the white; it depends on how many white books are left on this level when I've put the top shelf back up.

Lastly . . . number 5

David surprised me at the weekend and gave me the little wooden bird that I was coveting here. It's so cute, and I'm very lucky!

Here it is in close-up:

I think when the top shelf is up and the books are back on the shelf, the bird should end up in front of the white books, which will help it stand out more. In the meantime, I'll enjoy looking at it in its nest by the brown books every time I walk through our dining room. 

In need of a new mousemat.

Yesterday, David and I re-arranged our living room and dining room (pictures to come soon), and my desk is now in a much more prominent position in the dining room - it was in the dining room in the alcove under our stairs and it's now infront of the chimney breast. We much prefer it in its new home, and it'll hopefully make sure that it doesn't accumulate piles of paperwork and general junk anymore. With such a clear desk however, it has become clear that we need a new mousemat.

This is our very tatty mousemat:

I know it's not awful, but one a little more in-keeping with the room (and in-keeping with how I want the room to eventually look in my imagination) would be so much better.

Here are a few of some of the best mousemats I've found so far:

"Grey martini" from tinyshoppe.

"Owl" by Eleanor Grosch at mirrorgirl.

"Unikko" mouse mat at Marimekko.

I really like the subtle colour of "Grey martini", but I think the Marimekko one has the edge for me - funky! Which is your favourite?

Don't try this at home.

OK, so I spent a while taking the books off my shelves last night, smiled a lot while I was sitting on the floor surrounded by a pretty rainbow of books, and then began to put them back on the shelf. Then . . . disaster struck!

I had put the red and orange books on the top shelf, was just reaching up with the yellows, and - argh! - the top shelf came crashing down, and clonked the second shelf on its way (this didn't fall down, but I took it down just in case). Books and screws everywhere. Not a happy bunny.

I then remembered that when David and I put those shelves up on the wall, we really struggled as our drill wasn't very powerful. We decided to get as many screws into the wall as we could, and then made the shelves safe enough by supporting the top shelf with taller books on the shelf below. We had planned to put the shelves up properly once we had a better drill (which we now have), but obviously forgot. I obviously weakened the top shelf when I took the supporting books away from the shelf below.

Anyway . . .

I've managed to put some of the books back on the remaining shelves, and piled the others up on top of the cupboard below:

I'm really pleased with how neat it looks - it turns our books from a bit of a mess, into more of a feature. David even admitted that they looked, "sweet".

I was so inspired with how good the books looked, that I also sorted out our poetry books.

The bookcase on our landing also got the treatment:

Ah, the littlest changes can be so pleasing. I know it's not the most practical solution, but as we have so many books in our house (I haven't shown you our spare room yet!), it takes a while to find a book anyway, so I don't think colour-coding them will make much difference to searching time.

Right . . . guess I'd better find some time to put those shelves up more securely - will show you what it looks like when it's done. 

Never judge a book by its colour.

Our house is getting a bit overrun by books. Although most of them are on shelves (most), I'm finding that they make the rooms feel cluttered, and something definitely needs to be done. Before I began writing this post, I wondered about the possibility of sorting the books in my dining room according to colour. This is what the area looks like (sorry for the grainy photo - it's been dismal weather here this morning):

Ugh, those shelves - I really wish we'd got a carpenter to make fitted shelves in this alcove. Instead we went with the cheaper option (we have shelves in all 4 alcoves in our living room and dining room) and fitted floating shelves ourselves. I don't think they look too bad, but fitted shelves would have looked neater and more authentic.

I've spent a while getting inspired by pretty pictures of colour-coded bookshelves like the ones below.

Anna's books in her dining room at Door Sixteen:

Lovely, neat piles at HomeShoppingSpy:

Ordered shelves in Manda McGrory's living room via here:

A cute little library from Lesley:

And I think my mind is made up - I'm going to go for it. Not sure David's going to play ball with this idea (I just told him what I was planning to do, and he raised his eyebrows - a clear indication that I'm going to be forever putting books back in the "correct" place after he has plonked them on the shelf). Oh well, as long as they go on the shelf, I won't mind too much!

Stay tuned to see what my shelves look like after I've sorted them.