Owls in the Kitchen

Good Afternoon!

Every now and then, Laura Ashley come up with something wonderously cute.  For the past few months, I've been fixating over a cute, owl shaped utensil holder, but was nervous as to whether it would survive shipping.  Last weekend I was in Southampton, and I came across on of their stores!  Not only did I find the owl (with no postage of worries therein) but they had a 30% off sale, so it only cost me £11.  Cue happy dance (no really, I danced all day).

And above is my happy kitchen menagerie.  I think I will declare Peonies my Favorite Summer Flower.  Now I just need to decide if tulips or daffodils are my favorite Spring flower, then get to work on the other seasons...

Pretty Flowers and Country Shows...

Whilst I get some more pics together of what's going on in the house I thought I'd share a few snaps I've taken recently.  Last weekend we headed up to Highclere Castle for a country show.  We got soaked.

 I've been wearing a lot more dresses recently-even if it IS with a mac and wellies!  We didn't really see that much at the show, but it was a nice day out all the same.  Over the last few weeks we've just been chilling out and meandering.  Last weekend I managed to find a super cute utensil holder for the kitchen, in the shape of an owl-more on that in a later post I think!  For now, here are some beautiful peonies I picked up this afternoon to perk myself up.

Calm new living room!

Good Afternoon.

As promised, here are the 'After' pictures of the newly painted living room (and kitchen, I suppose).

It feels so much softer and calmer in here now.  I made a trip to the big Swedish box today to get the second lampshade so that they both matched.  This made me happy.

Redecorating the living room

Good evening all,

We decided to redecorate the living room, get rid of the one dark grey wall and go for a softer grey all over.  After spending days agonising over the exact shade, hue and intensity of grey (seriously, who knew there so may greys!) we came to a decision and headed off to Homebase to get it mixed.  Obviously we came home with something else.

The colour we chose was called 'night jewels 5' by Dulux, but we picked up a tub of Once in Chic Shadow instead.  What can I say, I'm impatient.  Here's the obligatory 'before' shot...

Most of the walls are white, but the one behind the TV was a dark grey shade called 'Smoulder' by Crown Paints.  It's been that colour for a couple of years now and needed freshening up, so we decided to change it up completely and brighten the room up a bit.  Last night everything went back to 'moving-day white'...

In an homage to Red Dwarf, we changed it from Dowdy old 'Ocean Grey' to crisp new 'Military Grey'...

And here's the completed paintwork!  We're still putting the room back together, so I'll stick up some pictures of the room tomorrow, but for now hopefully this gives an idea of the changes...We've moved some of the prints around too, and the whole room just looks so much less cluttered.

More pictures tomorrow!  

Cute New Outfits

Good afternoon, whilst the next post is not about the house, it IS about feeling pretty (and the house is in the background, after all).  I've been watching a fair bit of Pushing Daisies lately, and am utterly besotted with the wardrobe of Charlotte Charles, AKA Chuck.  Losing a bit of chunk has given me the opportunity to choose new clothes and styles and I'm relishing it!  I put together an outfit in theory, seeing how it would look together.  This is the result:

Happy with the way it looked, I decided to rock it for real this morning.  I'm going for 'Librarian Chic' here, and I think I pulled it off...

The exact pieces aren't identical, but I like seeing it all down together first.  Perhaps I will start keeping photos of all my clothes so that I don't have to go hunting through the wardrobe trying on hundreds of combinations to see if I like something together.  Hmm, I feel a project coming on!

A Few Changes...

There have been a few changes to the blog, and there are probably some more to come.  I've had a few changes myself-so if you'll forgive the self-indulgent nature of this post, I'll fill you in.  I've decided to finally lose my extra weight.  I was about two and a half stone overweight, and I've just about lost the first stone.  Yay me.  I've finally started to feel 'pretty' again, and I've wanted to reflect this in my house, my clothes...everything.  Hence the changes.  I've started to re-decorate some of the house, and I'm super excited to share that with you!
I'm going to find the pictures from the original Estate Agency listing for our house, because even though it's a rental and we've not been able to change anything structurally, it was still a bland white box when we moved in.  I've also been baking more and making cute bento-style lunches for myself and the Mr, so perhaps a few of those will pop up.  Who knows?
Also, I've just ordered a new camera, so no more iPhone pictures!

I've just finished the bathroom.  I painted it whisper pink, and bought a cute print from keep calm gallery that reminds me to look lovely.

I love fresh starts, and I'm starting to feel like a bit of a different person.  I've even turned into a MORNING person, which I have never been in all of my 25 years.  I like this period of change, it's exciting and I wonder where I'll end up?  Hopefully it will be somewhere spectacular and you'll all be there to share it with me!

Double Glimpse!

Good evening internet.  It's been a busy few weeks in the Elliott household.  We decided to overhaul the dining room somewhat, we've been collecting new furniture gradually so we thought it high time to 'finish the job'.  A tin of paint and a trip to Ikea later and we have a dining room that we're happy with.

We've gone for yellow, which isn't something either of us expected, but that seemed to work (took 40 minutes of staring at colour cards at the Dulux machine to figure that out...)

Secondly...

We've had some fun in the bedroom ;-)

We want to change it right up in there as I've had the same country style pine for donkeys years.  We can't afford to change it all out at the moment so we decided to change the headboard on the bed.  This evolved into full-blown reupholstering the whole bed, and I think it's much better.

Before

After

We used the same principle as this guy, only we 'tufted' our headboard afterwards, which was a bit of a pain in the arse, to be honest.  Last job to do is figure out what to do with the legs.  I wan to cover the tops in the wool, but the Mr wants to stain them black.  I guess it comes down to who has the most free time...

Here are some close ups of todays project...

 Looking forward to a good nights sleep tonight!  For now, though, I need to rest my swollen hand, I fired a thousand staples into that thing, and the electric staplegun kept blowing fuses, so I did it with a manual one.  Ouch.

Make Do and Mend...

A bit of a cheeky DIY post today (with poor photography-sorry).  I've had some old blue box files kicking around for a while that I think must have crept home with me from work once upon a time.  I DO use them, but I hide them away because they are pretty awful.  I decided today that I would cover them with a nice paper.  I took a trip to John Lewis and picked up a roll of Orla Kiely Multi Stem wrapping paper, and covered the aforementioned boxes.










Much Better.  We've got a few plans for the dining room this year, meaning that more things are going to be on display.  We got a new table last month-which finally replaces the one from Homebase, and there are a few more things on the To-Do list.  We're going to repaint, get rid of my huge desk and we're finally going to get around to putting up shelves in there.  This means all the files, vases, magazines and who-knows-what-else will be on show.



Unfortunately, John Lewis is a dangerous place, as I instantly fell in love with these Sagaform glasses...

They would look very nice on the new shelves....

Things for 2011.

I never make any New Year's Resolutions for the simple reason that I never seem to be able to stick to them.  I always say 'This year I'll x,y,z...And I MEAN it this time..." But it never happens.  The only year I succeeded in keeping my resolutions was when I decided to drink more, start smoking and bite my fingernails.  That was a good year.  The moral of this story then?  I'm going to put into words my New Year's Resolutions, and then call them something else.  Simple.
So.  Things for 2011 then.
First of all (and I really, really mean it this time) I need to get myself more organised.  I think the only way to do this is to figure out just how much actual stuff I have, how much of it I use, and how much of it I like.  We have no loft space in our apartment, but we do have a large, walk-in cupboard built right into the eaves.  Last year Mr E built bespoke shelving with the intention of coralling all the 'stuff' that ends up in there.  I don't even know what's in there any more.
This cupboard is number one on the list.  It will be neat, it will be useful.  It will contain blissfully folded towells, stacks of neat, ironed sheets in bundles ready to be grabbed should we have unexpected guests.  It will huose the emergency food and tools, it will, in short, be amazing.

This cupboard will then start a chain reaction, I feel.  Although everything is always 'away' in our apartment, nothing really has a home (except the rice crispies).  We have enough storage, but everything always seems to be in the wrong place.  Hopefully, when the cupboard is sorted, the Christmas china can go up there, freeing up space in the dining room for the lesser used casserole dishes and cake tins, freeing up space in the kitchen for...you get the picture.  Hopefully having a coherent plan of HOW we use the apartment will help us to understand where our stuff needs to be.

Secondly, I think we need to look at the stuff that we bring into the place, almost mindlessly sometimes.  I am terribly guilty of impulse buying, only for things to sit on a shelf somewhere before eventually being given to charity.  I therefore 'resolve' (whoops, oh well, it's down now) to think about every little thing I aquire, and not just grab everything that takes my fancy in TK Maxx.  If we need one and we don't have one I will buy one.  If we have one and I find a nice one, I will buy one-but give the old one away.  At one point last year, we had no fewer than FOUR yucky plastic measuring jugs, as well as one nice on and a glass one.  This is what I'm talking about.

I guess the mantra for 2011 is THINK!

A bit late, but...

Merry Christmas and a happy new year everyone!  I thought I should share my Christmas decorations with everyone.  I always struggle to find a Christmas tree that I'm happy with-this year we went for a 5'5" Nordman Fir, and I'm pleased to report that it hardly dropped any needles and stayed green and verdant for the whole three weeks we've had it up.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!