A quick fix in the kitchen.

When we moved in to our house nearly six years ago, certain aspects like the kitchen and the bathroom weren't quite to our taste, but were too new to change. Fine - it meant that we moved in to a house with a modern kitchen and bathroom. However, our house was clearly modernised for sale, and modernised by a bit of a bodger.

For example, the kitchen cupboards were left incomplete - there were no end boards. Around the extractor hood looked like this:

The missing panels made what was already a budget kitchen, look even cheaper. Annoyingly, there wasn't enough room between the extractor and the cupboards to even fit on any end boards. I had to come up with another solution.

The answer came with sticky backed plastic! I found a roll of wood effect lino, cut it to size, and stuck it on.

After about an hour, after a lot of fiddling and huffing, my cupboards looked like this. Tons better don't you think? The lino helps to create the illusion that the cupboards are actually made of solid wood!

A quick fix that has made quite an impact, and all for about £6!

It's Orla neat and tidy in the kitchen.

As I begin to write this, I can hear the sentence forming in my father-in-law's mind - "Oh goody, another one of Bec and David's corners!" And, yes, that is what I'm going to show you. However, with the addition of some lovely new Orla Kiely canisters, they are now very pretty corners.

I've never had a proper biscuit tin. I've always made do with other tins that we've had, or plastic tupperwaresque boxes. However, that just leads to soggy contents, and I was beginning to feel mean feeding them to the children, assuming that they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. So, for Christmas, I asked for a biscuit tin and hinted that I liked the new set of three Orla Kiely air-tight canisters that I had seen in Lakeland.

We've recently realised that we're not making the most of the space in our kitchen - when we moved in over five years ago, we just plonked everything in the cupboards without much thought to how easily things could be accessed, or indeed, what we were actually putting in there.

So, with the help of my new trusty tins, I've re-arranged a few areas of the kitchen and I'm enjoying the new little space I've created.

Originally, the bread bin was underneath the cups on the other wall and I didn't really realise just how much worktop it occupied that way round. In it's new position, it leaves room for the new tin (containing rice), and it also means that there is room on top for four tall storage jars. I'm also pretty pleased with my addition of an IKEA VARIERA shelf insert, which means there's room for the pestle and mortar, salt pig, butter dish AND a small jar of I think, ground coriander. You can also see in this picture, my smart new spoon rest (my Christmas list was so exciting this year!).

I've shown you the rest of this shelf before (it's the one from which our pots and pans hang), so I decided to focus solely on the new tin which does actually contain biscuits (malted milk for the children, scrummy shortbread for me - mmm). I really like the design of all three tins, but I think this one just has the edge on the others and is perhaps, my favourite. I love the way the dusky blue flowers are set off by the tomato red of the lid.

Lastly, here is the third and smallest of the three new tins. This one is currently empty (any suggestions?) but it looks great on this shelf, so it's going to stay there until I can think of something worthy to put in it. 

Hope you're all having a good week!

When life gives you lemons . . .

Can you spot the difference between these two pictures (clue: it's not the size of the cobwebs I'm horrified to see in one picture!)?

Yes, that's right! It's my super sleek birthday present from my lovely children! 

It's the "Juicy Salif" lemon squeezer that Philippe Starck designed for Alessi in the 80s. I'm sure you've seen it before, but it's cool isn't it!

As it was a big birthday, David wanted to get me a design classic as a special gift,  and this iconic piece of kit certainly fits the bill. According to an article in the Independent a while back, I now have "a work of art" in my kitchen, as apparently the lemon squeezer is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York!

He had hoped that I'd be able to use it to make fresh lemonade throughout our scorching summer, but it really doesn't seem that the weather is going to play ball this year. Although that may not be so bad, as rumour has it that it may look wonderful, but it's not actually very good at squeezing lemons - more juice flows over the counter than actually into the glass placed underneath! It's even said that Stark himself remarked, "It's not meant to squeeze lemons, it is meant to start conversations." Well, whatever it's squeezing ability may actually be, it certainly looks good up on my shelf next to my vintage glass dessert bowls and my Mason Cash mixing bowl. 

I did say as I opened it that I hoped David realised that I was now going to have to redesign our whole kitchen just to show it off to maximum effect. If I remember correctly, my response was a smile with just a hint of nervousness.

Thank you Torin and Astrid, mummy's getting cooler by the day!

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!

Hearts and apples.

Do you like my new oven gloves?

They were a Christmas present from my grandmother - she clearly has good taste!

I really like the Orla-like retro pattern and the colours obviously match the ground floor of my house perfectly (red and green seem to be rapidly seeping from our living room and dining room into our kitchen at the moment)!

They're made by Typhoon too, so should last for a good while!

This year, my Christmas list seemed to consist of almost entirely very practical things that we absolutely needed (tea-towels, socks etc.) so it is great that these oven gloves are practical but very stylish!

Do you have something that's very practical, but also pretty?

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!

My new kitchen shelf.

In this, one of my first posts, I mentioned that I was thinking of buying one of these shelves to go in our kitchen. I'd seen it featured here in Anna's city apartment, and thought it would be an excellent way of making use of dead space in our kitchen, and freeing up the very limited space in our cupboards at the same time.

My parents bought me the shelf as part of my birthday present this year, and this weekend it finally went up on the wall (thanks Dad!).

Sorry for the poor light in this photo - I had to take it in the evening using the flash!

I'm really pleased with how well it matches the kitchen cupboards, and it really is useful. Not only has it meant we've now got more space in our cupboards and on the worktops, it also makes useful ingredients very accessible.

Spring tulips and lovely sunshine.

What a glorious weekend! Hope you had the sun where you are.

My parents came to stay and we were able to spend most of our time outside because of the lovely lovely weather. When they arrived on Friday, they gave me two bunches of pretty tulips:

The windowsill behind the sink in the kitchen is one of my favourite places to display flowers - you can perhaps see from this picture that we can't see our garden from this window, as it is at the side of the house, so I love to have flowers here to bring a bit of the outside indoors.

On Saturday, my brother and his girlfriend, and David's brother came over and we all went to Bute park in the centre of Cardiff, for a picnic. We sat in dappled sunshine underneath blossoming trees, and drank in the beautiful spring day. A lazy walk back to our house via a sunny beer garden completed a relaxing day. 

Pretty tea caddy.

The other day my sister-in-law gave me this tea caddy as a gift. She'd bought one for herself, thought that I'd like one too and so bought me one as they were reduced. Sweet, isn't it? 

I haven't yet decided where in the kitchen it's going to live, so for now it's on the windowsill next to the little cabinet that holds sunglasses, stamps and small notebooks.

My home: an introduction.

In this mini-series, I'm going to share a selection of my favourite things from each room in our house. Hopefully these posts will provide you with a little insight into my style, and give you a peek into what our house is like.

Kitchen

Our fridge

Our fridge is brilliant. When we moved into our house, we found that the owners had left their old fridge in the kitchen, so made do with it for a while. However, it was tiny and had a really bad stench. We coped by putting a pot of bicarbonate of soda inside it, which quelled the smell for a bit, but it soon became clear that we would need a new fridge. I had long coveted the retro design of the SMEG fridges, but knew there was no way we could afford the price tags, so I looked around for alternatives. I found our fridge, the Electra E7316 for almost a third of the price of a similar SMEG. We were so pleased when we did our first big shop after we'd bought it - there was no more sqeezing everything in, or forgetting we had something because it was squashed at the back. The new fridge had masses of space.

I love the retro look of this fridge (which also comes in alternative colours), and the cream goes well in our kitchen. There really was only one place it would fit in our kitchen (see below), as it is quite big, and luckily it slotted in perfectly next to our washing machine.

The things on top of the fridge are:

• a sweet wicker picnic hamper that David bought me for my birthday several years ago
• our digital radio
• a box in which David keeps the seeds he uses to plant vegetables in our garden
• a coffee bean grinder that was a Christmas present from my uncle this year

You can see from this picture, several of the jobs that I need to do in the kitchen:

• finish painting the walls
• fix skirting board to the wall next to the fridge / paint down to the floor if skirting won't fit down the side of the fridge (it was a snug fit)
• seal the window properly (you can't see it from this picture, but there is a small gap down the side of the kitchen window - behind the tall black vase)

More things to add to the never-ending list of things to do around the house!

My red Newgate clock

This clock was a gift from David a few years ago. He'd seen it in a shop in Monmouth, and bought it for me as a surprise. Unbeknown to him, I had seen it in a magazine and had been lusting after it for weeks! The clock used to sit on a cupboard in one of the alcoves in our living room, not because we needed a clock in there (as I mentioned here), but because I didn't really know where to put it, and I wanted to pick a space that showed it off properly. I had thought it would go really well in our kitchen, but there isn't much wall space in there (it's all taken up with cupboards and our fridge), so I tried to think of alternatives. 

Then it dawned on me - the area inbetween our kitchen and bathroom (a downstairs bathroom is common to the old terraced houses in our area) would be the perfect place to house the clock. We never close the door from the kitchen, so the wall that can be viewed through the kitchen door, could almost be treated as an extension of the wall in the kitchen (as seen below).

I think the clock looks great here - we have red accessories in our living room, so having the clock here, carries this theme through into the kitchen, and helps the downstairs of the house to flow well.

What are your favourite things in your house?

Quick, neat fix in the kitchen.

For a long time, the chopping boards in our kitchen have looked like this:

As I've mentioned before, we inherited our kitchen from the previous owner, and there is no designated space for chopping boards (or much else actually!). So, the chopping boards lived there, on the work surface, next to the fridge - not ideal. I know they don't look terrible, but they were proving to be a bit of a hazard. If the wooden board at the front was in use, the others would slide down the work surface, which is dangerous - especially now Torin is walking (and running!) around the house. It is especially dangerous as this is where we put things that need to be washed up (no space for a dishwasher!). I'm sure it would have only been a matter of time before something was pushed onto the floor (or onto Torin) by the sliding chopping boards.

The problem would be solved if we could get something to put the chopping boards in - some sort of box or basket. My parents keep their magazines in a rack similar to this one, and last time we were at their house I realised that it would be perfect to house our chopping boards. I set about searching for a suitable magazine holder - the one from MUJI wasn't right for us as I wanted it to be opaque, have sides, and be cheaper!

After a few weeks of searching, I found what I was looking for in TK Maxx. Now, our chopping boards look like this:

So much better!

What do you think? What about you, where do you keep your chopping boards?

Kitchen shelf.

We're running out of space in our kitchen. It's only a small room, we do try to keep it tidy, but things just don't seem to fit in there very well. I think the time has come for us to really think carefully about how we store our stuff! We inherited the kitchen from the previous owner, and haven't really done much to it. We added a new sink, and put some shelves up, but not really much else.

Having seen the MOLGER shelf from IKEA a while ago, I really think one would work well in our kitchen. It's meant to be used in a bathroom, but I really like the idea of using things in ways other than they were intended.

Anna from Door Sixteen used hers like this in her city apartment:

I think one would be great above our microwave, underneath the run of wall cupboards. This space currently looks like this:

A shelf under there would be great for storing cooking oils, spices, anything really. It would also do the badly needed job of freeing up cupboard space for us!

I think a trip to IKEA, is in order. I can feel David jumping for joy (!) already!