Printer's tray on the landing.

On Sunday I grabbed a few minutes to hang up my new printer's tray. The very kind gift from David's father and stepmother, has been propped up against the wall for a while now, even though I've known where it was going to live since it entered my house! It's hanging on the wall at the top of our stairs, right outside Torin's bedroom.

So far I've only added a few little items to it, but I'm looking forward to adding more as time goes by.

On there at the moment is:

The name tag that I made for our room when we got married (I made one for every room in the house that we hired). I was so pleased with them when I made them nearly six years ago, and still am really (though I really wish now that I had used a type writer or stamp to write the names).

One of the snowflakes I used as a decoration for Astrid's birthday party (I know, I'm so rubbish - I still haven't posted all of the pictures from that!).

My plan for the hallway and landing is to re-paint the walls in a darker shade - probably something like this and then I'm going to hang wallpaper on the wall behind the tray (I want to use some up that we bought yonks ago to go on the chimney breast in the living room). I think I'll probably eventually paint the tray - probably in a neutral colour like this. I think it will make the objects on it stand out, and make the whole area feel more streamlined.

In other printer's tray news . . . have you seen this project from Vintage Sheet Adict? I think it looks great. I'd certainly attempt it myself if I hadn't already decided to hang wallpaper up behind mine.

Image from here.

A cosy landing at last!

The new carpet was fitted on the stairs and landing on Saturday and since then we've all spent a good while going up and down the stairs bare-footed - it feels so soft underfoot and it's made the stairs so quiet! I felt so much more relaxed after putting Torin to bed tonight - this week has been the first time since spring last year, that our stairs haven't creaked loudly when I've been trying to creep down them after settling him. David and I love the new carpet, and Torin keeps saying "New stairs!" to anyone who comes to our door - including the postman and trick or treaters last night!

Now the tiles have been changed in the hallway, there is a new carpet on the stairs and landing, and the bannisters have been replaced and painted, the centre of our home really feels so much cosier! Even though the walls and woodwork need re-painting, I no longer feel like I need to apologise for the state of the area when people come round!

Here are some pics of the hallway, stairs and landing since the carpet has been laid - hope you like it as much as we do!

This is now what you see when you come in through our front door - you can see that we really need to re-decorate, but it's such an improvement on what we had before!

This is taken from Torin's bedroom doorway - you can see here and here what it looked like before. SO much better now! Don't the bannisters look great painted (thanks mum)!

This is the landing taken from our bedroom doorway - you can just about see the rib in the carpet from this picture - I really like the texture of this carpet. We really must replace the glass in the door of the spare room - at the moment we've got fabric hanging over it to disguise the horrible opaque panel, but we need to make it safer for Torin as this will become his room soon.

From here you can get a bit of an impression of how the whole space works together - the new tiles in the hallway, the new wooden and painted bannisters, and the carpet on the landing. So glad it's finally been sorted out!

New tiles in the hallway!

Gosh! A lot has been going on in our little house in the past week. I know I said last week that I would post a picture of our newly tiled hallway (and then didn't), well here it is!

What do you think? I love the fact that I can stand in the living room, look into the kitchen and the hall and see the same tiles - it makes the whole ground floor flow so much better as the tiles are the same in the bathroom too. We are going to redecorate this space - you can probably see how scuffed the walls are, and that the woodwork needs a lick of paint, but that's definitely a job for next year. You can see my plans by taking a peek at my to-do lists.

David said yesterday that with the new bannisters and tiles, our house is beginning to feel like a proper space, and it really is!

My mum's been a star - she came up on Thursday, stayed until Saturday and worked tirelessly painting the woodwork in our living room and landing. She's done such a great job. I felt so useless just sitting chatting to her and watching her work. She wouldn't let me do anything though, and I guess to tell the truth, the paint fumes did start getting to me after a while. It all looks great though - thanks so much mum!

We did even more over the weekend - we chose and bought a carpet for our stairs and landing. I had initially chosen a natural look carpet that was meant to look like sisal but was actually made from polypropelene, but when I told the salesman that I wanted it for our stairs and landing, he shook his head and said he wouldn't sell it to me as it was completely unsuitable. I pointed out that it said on the back of the sample that it was suitable for stairs, but he again shook his head and said that it was really dangerous. Apparently, if you spill a tiny bit of water onto that type of carpet, it becomes an ice-rink! He apologised for spoiling my day, but I assured him that he hadn't and I was glad that he had pointed out the danger. He also lost money as we ended up choosing a cheaper carpet, so I have no doubt that what he told me was out of genuine concern.

In the end we chose a 100% wool carpet that is called Stone Rib. I can't find a picture of it anywhere online, so you're going to have to wait until it's fitted (hopefully on Saturday) before you see it. It's probably better that way anyway I guess. I can't wait to have it fitted, it's going to make our whole house feel warmer, and at last will stop the stairs from creaking so much!

A busy week!

So far this week has really flown by. It's been a jumble of potty training, general tidying and lots of organising. 

The potty training is going well, still some accidents - ended up pouring wee out of one of Torin's wellies tonight (!), but he's really very good now.

I do seem to spend a large proportion of my life putting things back at the moment. By this I mean trying to put items away in our house - Torin's favourite thing at the moment is to empty things - cupboards, drawers, plastic containers etc. and always in their entirety! This really is fine, and just part of general day to day play, but it's quite hard for me now as I'm getting more and more tired (35 weeks now!). The other problem is that there just always seems to be a lot of stuff everywhere in our house. In our quest to sort out and blitz before our new arrival, we do seem to end up with piles of things everywhere, and it is these that Torin likes to pull apart and re-arrange, and it these that catch my eye and irritate me as I walk into or through a room!

On a more positive note though, things are moving along nicely with our hallway and landing. I've got a man coming round in the morning to give us a quote for changing these tiles in our hallway:

It's not really an essential job, although I can never seem to get them completely clean, and they were laid really badly before we moved in. However, I felt that as we were having so much work done in this area anyway, that we may as well change the tiles to something a little better. 

We have these tiles in our kitchen and bathroom, so the plan is for the cream tiles to be replaced with the same slate-effect ones that we have in those two rooms.

Sorry, I know this really isn't a great picture of them, but you can see that they are dark.

Lastly, it's David's birthday on Sunday and his birthday present arrived yesterday. I can't tell you what it is yet as he will probably read this, but I can give you these clues - it's from The Conran Shop although it doesn't bear their label; it's a little bit cream, a little bit chrome, a little bit red and has won loads of awards this year; it's based on a design classic and is set to become a future classic in its own right. Any ideas - can you guess what it is? I'm very excited about it, I just really hope that he'll love it. I'll show you what it is on Monday!

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.

I saw this image in the July edition of Living etc magazine, and every time I open the magazine I'm drawn to it.

Image found here.

I don't know if it's the mixture of patterns, the mustard tone of the yellow, or the fact that the colour of the wood goes so well with the yellow and the grey hue of the walls (I think they are actually white, but the lighting makes them look grey to me), but I just think this picture zings!

I would love to give this type of stencilling a go in a plain hallway (as mine is at the moment), but we are about to lay carpet on our stairs. At the moment they are painted white - we chose to do this as the old carpet was badly stained and I do like the way they look, but they are so impractical when you have a toddler! I settle Torin in his cot, and then the moment I walk out of his room onto the landing and the floorboards creak, he wakes up as he knows I'm no longer in his room! If I make it across the landing, I've taken to going down the stairs 5 at a time which involves using my hands and feet in an almost crab-like movement - not something I'm going to be able to do for much longer! So, we've decided that a new carpet is the answer, as it will hopefully muffle the sound of our feet and Torin will be none the wiser!

So, this picture is firmly in an "appreciation from afar" box, rather than something I'm going to do in my home, but I hope it has brought your Friday a little bit of sunshine (something we've certainly lacked in rainy Wales today)!

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.