It's Orla tidied up.

I managed to snatch a few minutes the other day to peruse around John Lewis. I was very excited to see the new raised stem collection from Orla Kiely. I loved these cake tins - absolutely made me wish I a) was the type of woman who baked frequently, and b) had more room in my kitchen to display them (I could therefore store items other than cake in them!). Sadly, neither is the truth, so I will have to just stroke them like a loon (they're very tactile!) every time I see them.

I also really liked the raised stem storage canisters. Didn't I get a set of Orla Kiely storage canisters for Christmas? Yes, I did - and I'm putting them to great use. However, these are quite special and as usual, I love the colours, so I may have to sneak some into my house somehow. I'm currently trying to think of what I could store in the grey one in my bathroom.

Image from here.

An IKEA induced nostalgia.

I popped to IKEA with the children yesterday. I was in search of a picture frame, but I also thought the small adventure playground that they have outside our local branch would absorb some of Torin's excess energy! 

It was a successful trip - I picked up an ÖDBY frame for the wonderful Eloise Renouf print my brother gave me for my birthday back in the summer (I know, things move slowly around here!). I'm really pleased with it actually - I'll post some pictures when it eventually makes it onto the wall above our bed!

While I was in the frame section, my eye was drawn to the NORRLIDA frame. I'm not sure if it is a new product, but I hadn't seen it before. The display model contained a fabric collage showing two owls and some bunting - I thought this was quite creative for IKEA and it set my mind wondering about what use I could find for one. Described as "the perfect frame to make collages with your pictures and other keepsakes", it reminded me so much of the frames my great-grandmother used to frame her wonderful cross-stitch creations. I can clearly picture a white frame, with a cross-stitch design inside it depicting rolling green hills and fields of lilac heather. I think it's hanging on the wall in my grandmother's cottage now, so I'll try and grab a picture of it next time we're back in Kent and share it with you.

I was quite drawn to the unusual shape of the frame - if I can think of a good project involving one, I'll get it and share my thoughts with you. In the meantime, here are some pictures of how others have put their NORRLIDA frames to good use:

Image from here.

Image from here.

The Full Monty at Loaf.

A while ago, I mentioned that I really liked this bedside table from the new range of furniture at The Sleep Room. Well, The Sleep Room is now Loaf, and their new range of furniture is now massive. Alice from Home Shopping Spy mentioned that there were some really lovely new products that just had to be seen, so I decided to take a look.

I always admire the sofas and beds that Loaf advertise in full page campaigns in interiors magazines - they tend to make me want to strip out everything in our bedroom / living room and just focus on one new big squashy bed / sofa. Their new range The Full Monty, is called that because Loaf have expanded beyond living rooms and bedrooms and now sell products for every room in the house. Hurrah, I say!

I like how the chalky tone of this bedside lamp contrasts with the glossy finish.

These plain linen cushions are from India and have been livened up with blanket stitched edging in bright colours.

I'm really drawn to industrial shelving at the moment - I once saw a great use of an old shoe rack that was used as towel storage above a door in a bathroom - I'll try and dig out the picture if I can remember where I saw it. This upright unit, aptly called Highwire, would neatly fit into any bathroom. I'd happily have it in mine, but I think that with the recent addition of my lovely new cabinet, we'd have storage overload!

Finally, I love the curves of this hand beaten metal mirror that was inspired by a 1930s mirror seen in Venice. 

Which is your favourite piece?

150 years of the London Underground

According to Google this morning, today is the 150th anniversary of the London underground. Over those 150 years, the iconic transport system has featured significantly in our culture - it has inspired art, films, novels; been used to stage music videos, and most recently has set trends in interior decoration.

Inspired by the images in their poster archive, the London Transport Museum has launched a celebratory range of gifts and souvenirs. I had a look at the rest of the shop  to see what they had to offer and below are some of my favourite pieces.

This colourful poster would be great for a child's room.

I really like the colours in this old print.

I know we've seen these before, but these vintage luggage rack shelves are achingly cool (if a tad expensive!).

And finally, these bright tea towel designs by Michelle Mason would liven up any kitchen. The "Big Leaf" pattern is her take on the classic 1930s "Colindale" print used on tube upholstery material.

All images from here.

Also, speaking of anniversaries - I'd like to say a big thank you to you all for reading my little blog - Beautiful Square Feet was 2 on the 3rd!

The Vintage Wall

Have any of you seen The Vintage Wall? I stumbled upon it last night while I was searching for part of Astrid's birthday present - I've decided to look for decorative letters spelling out her initials. I don't want to buy the letters from only one place - in my mind different styles would be put together, producing the kind of effect shown by the word Lula here. So, in my search for vintage letters, up popped The Vintage Wall, which proved to be a treasure trove of all things vintage and beautiful.

The website has an interface quite different from others like it. You flick through the website, looking at the different "walls" that are actually pictures of delightfully arranged products showing off the company's wares. If you see something you like in a particular picture, you click on the item and you are taken to a new page where you can read more details about the product. Many of the items I clicked on were unfortunately labelled as "sold", but apparently new stock is added regularly.

Here are some of my favourite "walls".

These old filing cabinets are wonderful. I also really like the combination of the dark blue and the brown chips on the rims of the storage cannisters. 

This picture has just reminded me that David is meant to be tracking down an old printer's tray as a late part of my birthday present! There's something deeply satisfying, I think anyway, about arranging things in little compartments! 

The contrast of the magenta, blue, brown and white makes for a great arrangement in this picture. I think the chemical bottle would make a sweet little bud vase, although you'd better make sure all the ammonium hydroxide had been washed out thoroughly first!

All images from here.

Which is your favourite thing in these pictures?

Style at IKEA

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that IKEA are using some wonderful props in their catalogue shoots these days? Last night I stayed up way past my bedtime, flicking through the new 2013 catalogue online and noticed that on many of the pages, my eye was drawn not to the IKEA products, but to the objects in the background. Some of my favourite items are included in the images below.

I really like the simple vintage feel of the luggage tag place settings in this tablescape:

I love the great mix of old and new among the items in these cabinets:

I can almost feel the softness of the brown leather bag on top of this shelving unit. Oh, and I think the wallpaper is pretty too.

Lastly, I have to mention the vintage-looking lamp that features on several pages of the catalogue. 

I found myself wondering what kind of Mad Men style office they'd swiped it from but then saw (and kudos to IKEA here) that there was a reason that the lamp appears on more than one page - it's their ARÖD work lamp. I really like its smart bluey grey colour - it would help to make for a soothing office environment. 

I do find IKEA handy for standard items like floating shelves and magazine files; though we have tried to keep the amount of IKEA in our house to a minimum, so as not to risk it looking like a page from their catalogue. Having said that, the 2013 collection really does show that it is possible to make their furniture and products sit alongside (and sometimes underneath!) older and cherished objects that you may have collected over the years.

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.

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!

Six green glasses sitting in my sink . . .

. . . and if one green glass, should accidentally fall . . .

I don't know how we manage it, but we always seem to be breaking glasses in our house. I have to admit, a large proportion are probably broken by me - I can be a little (!) clumsy at times, but it really doesn't seem like very long ago that I was at IKEA buying a set of six tumblers, of which we only have one left. So, the other day I went looking for some replacements. I decided to go to IKEA again because they are so reasonable there, and as any glasses I bought were in danger of having a very short life in our house, I thought it better that I didn't spend a lot of money.

When buying glasses, I normally go for the conventional clear kind, but these SKOJA glasses caught my eye:

I don't know if it's because Spring has definitely arrived here, but I really like the fresh green colour of the glass and at 49p each they were quite a bargain.

As I said, I would normally go for clear glass, but I do really like these coloured glasses and I also thought that even if I got bored of the colour, they'd probably end up broken quite soon anyway so I'm sure I'd have a chance to change them soon enough!

Garden rooms with a Tolkien twist.

In anticipation of the new film of "The Hobbit" coming out later this year, I wanted to draw your attention to these Tolkienesque outdoor buildings from Wooden Wonders.

Images from here.

Cool aren't they! As you can see, there's a door in the circular shape on the front which opens up into this cute little space:

Image from here.

It would be so cool to have one of those at the end of our garden - certainly more fun than your average garden shed. Though at $3k, they're definitely not cheap!

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.

My grandmother bought a really sweet vest for Astrid this Christmas; it's a little too big for her at the moment, or I would have put a picture of her wearing it on here. She bought it from a shop called The Oak Room, which can be found in the grounds of Hatfield House, Herfordshire. The vest came in a wonderful bag that was made from old newspaper, and had a promotional postcard for the shop inside. I was so impressed with the bag, and the pictures on the postcard that I took a look at their website.

What I found at The Oak Room, was a collection of lovely products for the home, as well as seasonal and celebration gifts, and a lot of stationery. I naturally went to the Home and Garden section first and found some unusual objects such as this Garden Rake Hook:

and this Russian Doll Ceramic Money Box (I'd love to get one of these for Astrid!):

One area of the shop I especially liked was the Haberdashery and Craft section, where I found this Live, Laugh, Love Paper Tape:

and these super cute little Chick Buttons, that can also be used as beads:

All images from here.

The website is described as "an edited version of our beautiful shop", and certainly, there are products that feature on the promotional postcard that I couldn't find on the website, but it's well worth a look at their website, and I'll definitely be paying a visit to their shop if I ever go to Hatfield House.

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.

Gosh, it seems it's been a while since I did one of these posts - sorry!

I've begun to turn my thoughts to Christmas presents this week. Last year I was very proud of myself because I made all of the gifts that we gave to people. I knew however, that wasn't really feasible this year though, as I'm due on Tuesday and a new baby, a two and a half year old and lots of little craft projects just wouldn't really work out very well! Even though I am going to be buying gifts, I am going to try and buy mostly handmade where possible, perhaps to ease my conscience a little - there really are some wonderful things around on sites like ETSY.

Elsewhere however, products and potential gifts that have caught my eye this week are all linked by the fact that they're spangly! I've found myself drawn to anything sparkly and vintage-looking, especially in mercury glass like these beautiful place name baubles from Cox & Cox:

Image from here.

I love the 1920s glamour of these storage jars - perfect for housing beauty essentials:

Image from here.

Admittedly, unless we won the lottery, this would probably never be given as a gift for anyone as it's quite pricey. However, I absolutely can't stop looking at this picture of this antique looking mirror. It would look amazing in my hallway. Sigh! I guess it'll have to stay on my pie in the sky gifts to myself list for now!

Image from here.

Hope you all have sparkly weekends - are you up to much? We're going to be painting the cupboard that my brother-in-law built in the alcove in our dining room. I think it's going to look great when it's finished as he's done such a good job on it already. I'll be sure to post some pictures of the finished article on Monday. 

Apart from that, it's the waiting game for us . . .

Flower power in the living room.

On Saturday, Wales became the first country in the UK to introduce a mandatory charge for plastic bags in shops. From now on it's going to cost shoppers a minimum of 5p per plastic bag used. I think I'll be fine in the supermarket - I really try and make sure I have plenty of bags for life with me when I'm doing the weekly shop. It's going to be when I'm in town and in individual shops that I may quite often find myself bagless. For example, we bought Torin his winter shoes this weekend - we got him these, and realised that even though it was the first day of the new charge, we hadn't brought bags with us! Luckily his shoes fitted into our baby-change bag, so we were spared the fine! It's a change I wholeheartedly endorse, I guess it's just going to take a bit of getting used to.

Making the change easier for me is going to be this latest beauty from the Orla Kiely / Tesco / CLIC Sargent / Royal College of Art collaboration:

I was thinking about these bags the other day, because I remembered that there were meant to be several designs released throughout this year. I did an internet search and found that I'd missed out on some of them already - I only have this one - the first one. So, I was really happy when I happened to be in Tesco the other day and found myself looking at a whole end of aisle display full of this new design. I may actually have to get myself another one because mine is currently underneath the console table in our living room and I'm using it to store all of Torin's musical instruments. It looks rather good there as it is exactly the right colour - the olive green, brown and red match our room exactly - it may have to be stay there for a while!

Do any of you have one of these bags? Which is your favourite design?

More beautiful bed linen?

Is there ever such a thing as having too much beautiful bed linen? I had to remind myself very sternly that I really don't need anything new when I was in the bed linen aisle of HomeSense today, as it was bargain city!

Firstly, I found two of these Aura Flight pillow cases, which were so beautiful and would have gone so well in our bedroom:

Image from here.

I can't remember where I first saw this picture a few months ago, but I thought the whole concept of butterflies fluttering across the duvet cover was lovely then . . . it's even nicer in the flesh and at £3.99 each (instead of £12.99), they were a bargain too. I really had to fight myself to put them back on the shelf, only letting them grace my trolley for a few minutes. I really don't need any more bed linen - I love my Orla Kiely sets, and they'll hopefully last for many years yet!

I also spied several Clarissa Hulse sets for £19.99, so if you like her stuff, I'd hot foot it down to your nearest HomeSense or TK Maxx asap!

Share your space with IKEA

IKEA is encouraging us to share our spaces. I saw this new feature from IKEA on Making it Lovely yesterday and thought it was a great idea. 

The purpose of the new site called Share Space, is for people to post photos from their houses that show how products from IKEA fit into their homes. I love having a nosey around other people's homes, so this aspect of their website is perfect for me.

Image from here.

Once I've finished writing this post, I'll be posting some of my own pictures onto Share Space, so why not take a look to see what I've put up on there. 

Torin's bed has arrived!

I'm very excited today because Torin's bed was delivered! I wrote about it here - it's the single Hastings bed from Marks and Spencer. I chose to get it from there because I knew that it would be good quality, and that things should be less likely to go wrong with its delivery as Marks and Spencer pride themselves so much on their good name. I'm pleased to say that they didn't disappoint - they contacted me when they said they would, gave me a delivery slot of two hours, and even called prior to arriving to say that they were 45 minutes away.

When the bed arrived, the two delivery men took the bed up to Torin's room and built it for us - it took them less than fifteen minutes and they did a really good job - it feels really sturdy. And the best part? All of this was included in the price of the bed! No delivery charge, and no installation charge!

Here's the bed in Torin's room:

I hope this pic doesn't make the bed look too orangey. It's actually a lovely warm golden stain rather than orange pine!

We haven't yet got a mattress for it, as in the reviews of the bed on the M&S website two people had advised to buy a deep mattress to go with this bed - can you see that the slats actually sit quite deeply within the bed frame? I wanted to see the bed for myself before I made a decision on which mattress to buy, and now that I've seen exactly how deep the bed is, I will be following their advice and looking for a deep mattress.

Torin will go into this bed as soon as we've ordered a mattress and it arrives, but the bed's only staying here temporarily, as Torin will be moving into the back bedroom when his little sibling arrives (exciting news on this coming tomorrow!).

In other news . . .

I wanted to say a big thank you to the 10 people who are following me on here - thank you to: 

Bridget of Life As An Amateur Homemaker

Fay of Dreaming of an Aga

Suzanne of And My House

C at the Bristol Parenting Cafe 

Rachel of Tattered Rose

Hannah of Camera and Crochet

Jo

Karen

Bec-a-nory

and beautiful square feet's newest friend:

Megan of The Messy Little House

Thank you all for your support!

Reader, I bought it.

Knowing that I had a purse full of Next vouchers, I couldn't resist popping in there and treating myself to the recycled red glass vase I mentioned here. I'm really pleased with it and how it looks in this corner of our living room.

The plan here, is to firstly put some more screws in that shelf so that it doesn't dip down anymore (!) and then to hang the Vogue picture, which was a twenty-first birthday present from my brother and sister, on the wall. That will free up some more space on the shelf and I'll then put another olive green vase (the same as the one in the bottom right of this picture) on the shelf next to the red vase.

I was reading this post over at Decor8 the other day, and it got me thinking about this corner. As I've mentioned above, there are a few little tweaks that I want to make to this alcove, but overall, I rather like it at the moment. Now, to get to work on the other corners in my house . . .

Let me know if you want to know sources for anything else in this picture.

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 went into my local Next home shop yesterday to look for a gift for my great aunt's birthday, and was really pleasantly surprised with their new range of accessories. As usual, everything was available in several colourways, but what really impressed me was the range of 100% recycled glass vases that were on display. My favourite was this red one - I really love the shape:

Image from here.

This green vase also caught my eye:

I really like how the recycled aspect of the glass makes the vases look older they are. Also, at only £5, they're complete bargains!

A space on a hill in Bristol

Yesterday I ventured to Bristol with Torin and David as David was doing some fieldwork in a school there, and I wanted to go and look for a bed for Torin. The bed I'd seen was the single Oundle bed from ASPACE and, having only seen it in their catalogue and online, I wanted to see it in the flesh. 

Before we left Cardiff I checked where the shop was, and the directions told me it was on Whiteladies Road, which, I thought to myself, was good because I knew where that road was. For those of you who are local, David's office is in Clifton, so I knew the road I needed was nearby. What I had forgotten however, that most of Whiteladies Road is on a steep hill! Eventually, after much puffing and panting (I was pushing Torin in the buggy; it was hot; I'm pregnant etc.) I found where the shop was and stopped outside to have some water and compose myself a little before I went in.

This is the bed I went to see:

Oundle bed in antique stain, available here.

Oundle bed in matt white finish, available here.

Luckily, they had this bed on display in the shop in the white finish, so I was able to see the dimensions of the bed were like, inspect the slats (my dad said this was important!), and get a general feel of the quality. Although the single bed was only on display in the white finish, they had a double bed on display in the dark antique stain that I like.

Overall, the bed seemed pretty good quality, although it was a little scuffed from being on display, and I was pleased with the colour of the dark antique stain. It's also very reasonably priced compared to a lot of other places - it retails for £199 and ASPACE often have 10% off everything sales. I realise that there are cheaper places (like IKEA for example), but ideally I really want this bed to last him into his teens (this is also the reason we're looking for a full sized single bed rather than a toddler bed), so I really want a bed that is good quality, and that will hopefully last. I believe that the Oundle bed is one of ASPACE's best sellers, and I have read some good reviews of it - do any of you know of it already?

I think if we do decide on this bed, that we'll get it in the dark antique stain. I have changed my mind on this however, as I was very drawn to the matt white finish initially. My parents suggested that it would perhaps a little feminine and childish for a teenage boy though - and I think they might be right - what do you think?

I need to go and look at a lot of other places before we actually buy a bed for Torin, but at the moment, based on its aesthetics, quality and the price, this is the front runner.

Where did you go to buy beds for your children?