Love this time of year…so much inspiration… so many wildflowers, fresh green leaves and blue skies. I have starting making candles using essential oils and soy wax…a very therapeutic process especially as the oils I’m using are great for relaxing and de-stressing. We’ve planted as many bee friendly plants as we can and have had quite a few happy customers 🙂 l’ve also invested in a vintage typewriter…

I made these gorgeous pompom fairy lights at a Christmas craft afternoon. So simple but effective…all you need is a string of small battery run fairy lights, wool and pompom looms (all of which can be purchased online).

We also made personalised gifts for family and friends and it was so lovely to relax and chat…supporting the drive to give homemade gifts for Christmas…everyone is happy!

I love this time of year…always get completely carried away filling the house with Christmas decorations and making it feel cosy…a little retreat from the dark cold winter days. It all starts with our tree from a local Christmas tree farm. It then gets laden with paper snowflakes, retro paper honeycomb decorations, wooden ornaments (from many years of collecting) and finally ikea gingerbread hearts from ikea that my boys love to decorate…

I have also embroidered mini felt stockings with initials and used metal cookies cutters as decorations!

I love homes; I have forever loved home magazines and dream of beautiful interiors. I have clippings of homes from my parents’ Telegraph colour supplements dating back to the 1990s in scrapbooks; but that’s how it all started…my amateur interior designing.

Tip#1: When planning a room pick an object you love and want to be reflected throughout your design

We recently completed decorating our kitchen…this all started life as inspiration taken from a retro teapot and crockery collected over the years from charity shops. I love them because they reflect the 1960s and are nostalgic which I think work really well when juxtaposed with utilitarian kitchen ware…

 Tip#2: Be inspired by beautiful spaces…

The Albion, Shoreditch London/ Hubbard and Bell The Hoxton, Holborn/H&H Amersham

These images form your mood board and can be used and constantly referred back to when making every decision in your design.

Tip#3: Highlight the key elements of your design

In a full design this would be the walls, floors, ceiling, lighting, furniture, window treatments. In the case of our kitchen it was just walls and lighting as we were keeping the existing kitchen units etc. Each decision should be referred back to the mood board…do they reflect your initial inspiration.

Tip#4: What problems do I need to solve with my design?

I wanted to make the space more cosy (Hygge), find some pendant lights and add colour and pattern…

Tip#5 Get samples to build up a sample board

This is my hobby!…when I have time…researching online, magazines and shops…

First stop was to find some wallpaper that would reflect the mood board…

Love at first sight!…Cole and Son wallpaper Albemarle Piccadilly 94/8043

As a friend said to me ‘I’m sure I had tiles like this when I was young!’ Mission complete; retro nostalgic and beautiful colours.

Next I wanted to find paints that would compliment the wallpaper without distracting from it or overwhelming the space. After many sample purchases, painting pieces of card and placing them around the kitchen, I went for Farrow and Ball’s Strong White for the ceiling and walls.

Ceilings being painted the same hue as the walls to create a seamless look…in a space with a pitched roof and lots of lines. For the television/play/snug area we went for Farrow and Ball’s Vardo; my son mixed a colour just like this when he was painting and then we found it…we had to paint a wall in it and it creates a lovely cosy feel and draws on the wallpaper…

Lighting…a great believer is upcycling I was determined to find pre-owned pendants that would fit with the scheme and draw on the utilitarian style I love…we found these pendants on eBay…Benjamin factory lights…we then bought the lighting accessories from the vintage and industrial lighting company Skinflint (www.skinflintdesign.com)…they also have a fantastic range of lighting all beautifully reconditioned.

I then made a sample board with these wallcoverings and lighting choices and placed them alongside images of the existing elements of our kitchen to see how they worked together before taking the plunge! I like to use the wall coverings as the back ground and place the different pieces of furnishings in roughly the position they will be in the space.

We eventually went for it and decorated our kitchen…

The blackboard was from an eBay seller; Love litter and very useful for organising my life…I think?!…work continues on our snug area…using our mood board and sample board…we were are hopefully creating a Hygge-inspired cosy family area…

This spring and summer I have loved buying British grown flowers and putting them in a motley collection of jam jars with various flowers and greenery gathered from our garden. Arranged with little candles and vintage trays…bringing a lovely Bohemian nostalgic country feel to the kitchen and supporting the British flower growers…

 

 

I had been in search of a nostalgic sheepskin dressing table stool for our bedroom…this led me to a £20 mid-century piece on Ebay that had definitely seen better days! My husband looked slightly horrified when I got it out of the packaging…a standard reaction to most of my eBay purchases…but I think now he has faith that all will be well in the end!

I stripped it back to just the wooden seat and cleaned it up…

I then bought some foam suitable for furniture, cut it to size and affixed it using furniture friendly glue…

I bought a sheepskin from Ikea…to avoid making mistakes with cutting the sheepskin to size I made a template to fit around the stool. I then cut the sheepskin to size using the template.

To affix the sheepskin to the stool I used a heavy duty staple gun…

All completed I had my nostalgic sheepskin dressing table stool for the fraction of the price of buying it new…

Columbia Road flower market is one of my favourite places to go in London; especially in Spring…with an abundance of beautiful spring flowers and blossom. As we move out of Winter and into Spring, flowers are a great of injecting colour, life and positivity into homes. These Cherry blossom branches make me feel happy every time I walk into the kitchen….perfect for bringing Spring into our house:)

One of my favourite things to do is going out to bars, cafes and restaurants as much for the lovely coffees, cakes, wine and food as for the inspiration and ideas for our home…here are some of the cafes and restaurants that I love to go to; they may also be sources of inspiration for you and if you are passing, somewhere lovely to go…

Primrose Bakery

I would love my kitchen to look just like this..gorgeous pastels…pinks, mint green, primrose yellow, retro furniture, eclectic vintage cake stands filled with beautifully decorated cakes, biscuits and pastries, nostalgic bits and pieces and seasonal flowers…our kitchen larder was inspired by Primrose bakery…mint green and filled with vintage crockery!

For extra inspiration I love to look through The Primrose Bakery Book…lovely pictures of their cafes and delicious recipes…I think my family would definitely recommend the Gingerbread Men recipe…this year for Valentine’s day I filled a Le Parfait jar with Gingerbread heart biscuits for my husband…as he frequently asks me when I might be baking some more…great for dunking in tea!

 

I know I have a very finite amount of time that I have a say over my sons bedrooms but for the time being they seem happy for me to decorate their rooms…so I better make the most of it!

I always loved the Cath Kidston Cowboy wallpaper which was the inspiration for my eldest son’s bedroom…

 

Ikea has been a great source of furniture for both my sons rooms which I have mixed up with some vintage furniture, knitted blankets and various Cath Kidston prints.

My youngest son’s room is basically a variation on a theme! I painted an old pine wardrobe in Annie Sloan chalk paint…

My eldest son has been requested some more ‘grown up’ updates to his room…so watch this space!!

When we first moved we had a UPVC front door, carpeted hallway, chipped terracotta tiles and a constantly cluttered porch with shoes, coats and bags so every time I got home I was met with clutter; not a great greeting for us as a family or guests! So we set about changing this…

We replaced the carpet, which used to be constantly muddy with two young boys running through the house, with wooden flooring. We painted the bottom half of the walls in Dulux Chic Shadow as the previous white walls were always scuffed and dirty…now it’s so much better! I then painted the gold overmantle mirror in a soft grey Autentico chalk paint which was very easy to paint onto the mirror; definitely would recommend it! I then bought the console table from Ebay and of course the mustard telephone which always gets a mention when anyone walks into the house (Wild and Wolf 746 1960s corded telephone in English Mustard).

 

The set of 3  white flying swallow wall decorations are from Sass and Belle (lovely website!).

 

The first change to the porch was the front door…we replaced the UPVC front door with a contemporary oak door (External Linear Oak door from Howdens Joinery co.) We then continued the herringbone style of flooring with the Augustus Bluestone Tumbled tiles from Topps Tiles. The walls are painted in Farrow and Ball Blackened. The coats are now organised thanks to the Carson chrome coat rack from Graham and Green and the hats, scarves and gloves are tucked into the Fortnum and Mason hamper which I bought from a little antique shop but eBay has plenty to choose from. The shoes are in the little wicker baskets which we bought years ago but Garden Trading company and the Cotswold Company do some great shoe storage and benches. Now I feel much better walking into the house…all sorted!