Paint for the shed.

I know I said that I'd post some pictures of my recent feats in painting, but I've left it too late today and now the light's gone. It'd be a bit pointless if I tried to show you what the rooms look like in artificial light, so I'll wait until tomorrow if that's ok with you?

What I can show you though, is the paint that I've decided to use on our shed. This is how our shed currently looks:

And, the colour I'm going to paint it is Coastal Mist from the Cuprinol Shades collection:

Image from here (sorry about the fuzziness of the picture, but you get the idea).

I really like the sagey greens too, but we don't currently have much colour in our garden (other than green), so I think the blue would work well. What do you think of the colour?

Do you have a shed? If so, have you painted it?

Out with the old (and unsafe) . . .

I had quite a productive weekend  - what about you? I managed to get all of the emulsion in the living room and dining room finished - remember the last bit was taking ages because it involved taking 5 shelves and loads of books off the wall first? Anyway, I can now tick that off my to-do list (will post some pictures tomorrow) and this weekend I'll hopefully be able to tackle the woodwork.

Another item on that list is to get a carpenter to change the bannister on our landing. I'm currently in the process of getting quotes for this job (which is why I've been taking photos of it), so hopefully it'll be done before too long. The reason we need to change what we have is because it looks like this:

This is the view down the landing, standing in Torin's doorway and looking at the spare / junk room which is going to become Torin's room soon.

From the little landing outside the spare room, looking up into our bedroom. 

At the top of the stairs, looking down into the hall and across into our bedroom.

Who on earth thought that this was a suitable handrail for a staircase? It has to go - it looks awful, and it's so wobbly. Plus. Torin could quite easily fit between the swirls at the bottom if he wanted - scary!

It's not going to be a cheap job, but honestly, it'll be worth it for peace of mind. We're going to change it for just a normal painted wooden one with newel posts and spindles - probably something like this (but painted) so I also think it'll look so so much better too! What do you think?

Image from here.

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!

Napoli is stuck fast.

I've managed to knock another item off my living room to-do list - I've finally managed to get around to fixing my Napoli canvas to the wall above the console table.

The canvas was a birthday present from our lovely friends Andy and Anna last year and it has been resting on the console table ever since. This is mainly due to the fact that I knew that I was going to be decorating the room before too long, and also the fact that there's a blooming great steel girder running down the centre of that part of the wall - not very convenient for drilling holes to hang pictures!

Anyway, the picture is now up, and I'm very pleased with how it looks, and how well it has stuck to the wall. In the end I used sticky pads from Sellotape to fix it to the wall - they're meant to be removable, but we'll see!

The only slight thing is that I think I may have put the picture up a little too high. It's at the kind of height it would be if it was hanging from a picture rail, but I think in order for it to look really good with the things on the console table, it needs to hang a little lower - I think the bottom of it should hang lower than the top of the red vase - what do you think?

Rather than try to move the picture and risk ripping the lining paper on the wall (that I have recently painted remember), I think that I'll just put up a smaller picture in the space underneath the canvas. This should balance the area a little better I think.

A few little bed additions.

We spent the bank holiday weekend in Kent having a really lovely time seeing family and friends. Silly weather though - on the Sunday we got totally drenched while trying to have a picnic in a park, and managed to spend the whole of the following day sitting on a beach in glorious sunshine. 

As usual, my mum couldn't resist spoiling Torin (and me) and bought us a new duvet cover for Torin's bed. I mentioned here that I hadn't found a duvet cover that I liked and that was reasonably priced, but we managed to find this one in BHS of all places.

I really like the classic look of the pale blue ticking, and he won't outgrow it for a while either. He still absolutely loves his bed - it makes getting him to sleep a lot easier! Since he's been sleeping in it, he has fallen out a couple of times, so I decided it would be a good idea to get a bed guard, as I don't want him to get into the habit of waking in the night again!

I decided on this painted white one by Baby Dan, as it is easily usable with a slatted bed base (I found that a lot were only really suitable for divans). 

I like the fact that I can remove it easily during the day and then slot it back into place once Torin is asleep.

You may have noticed that I've moved his bed around - it used to be along the window wall. I moved it because after I'd dismantled his cot (which you can just see under his bed), his room had a spare alcove, so I moved his wardrobe into it. The bed then looked better around this way, and it's a bonus that he's now no longer sleeping against an outside wall.

What do you think? Any sources for lovely bedding that's not too childish?