Inspired by our mid-century house! The floor tiles are Augustus Bluestone Tumbled tiles (toppstiles.co.uk) laid in herringbone to match the parquet. The wallpaper is Darjeeling wallpaper: Chalkhill blue from a company called Mini Moderns (minimoderns.com). They have a great range of retro style wallpaper, furnishings and fabrics. I love their Kitchenalia. The mirror is from Ebay.
This was a room inspired by High Road House (Soho House)…muted colours with grey velvets, fur, vintage accessories and mid-century pieces of furniture.
The fireplace started life as an ugly 1960s brick surround with a gas fire. We had the gas fire taken out and replaced it with a simple grate so we could have open fires and then we painted it white…so the transformation of the sitting room started!
The Ercol table is from Ebay. The clock was in a window in a French town – Le Touquet – and we managed to barter with the shopkeeper to reduce its price….
The cane chair was given to my husband by his neighbour when he said he liked it and she was moving it out of her house. A lovely piece of original mid-century furniture. The tan leather moroccan pouffe is from Graham and Green
The footstool was a ‘Danish style’ footstool from Ebay with a plastic leather effect cover. I had it covered in grey velvet.
The upcycled cupboard I bought off a good friend who was going to sell it when she redecorated her sitting room. The record player I bought for my husband with some records: a classic that I’m sure is making a comeback!
We added these shelves to these alcoves to make use of the space and to make it feel part of the sitting room…
Mystroskas from charity shops over the years and our photo wall…
We upcycled a well-loved sofa by covering it in a grey crushed velvet and added fur effect cushions…
We make our Easter tree from twigs collected from the garden and put them in a vase with some daffodils. This year I made felt Easter egg decorations. I bought the felt, ribbon and embroidery thread from Hobby Craft and the retro fabric I have collected from charity shops and jumble sales over the years.
I mixed colours and fabrics…
The finished Easter tree…
This year we made Gingerbread biscuits (Primrose Bakery Recipe) and iced them to give as Easter gifts. I put them in candy bags and made labels using mini luggage labels and vintage style fabric from Hobby Craft.
We also made chocolates by melting Green and Blacks milk chocolate and adding chopped nuts and raisins. I thought afterwards that mini marshmallows and pieces of fudge would also work well. After letting them set in the fridge I put them in jam jars…
Like Christmas, I love decorating the house with Easter decorations I have collected over the years, spring flowers and vintage floral bunting from dotcomgiftshop.com…
For my boys’ birthday parties I try to make them as traditional and simple as possible…with of course a hint of retro and a lot of fun! The invitations hopefully also reflect this. I usually stick to primary colours and this year the invites started life as a red and white striped paper bag…
I used my paper cutter to cut them into 8.5cmx6cm pieces.I then cut white card into 10cmx7cm rectangles. I then stuck the striped pieces of paper onto the white card.I then cut blue card into 12.5cmx9cm rectangles and then used a corner punch to finish the corners with a curved edge.
Next it was time to use the ‘Party’ rubber stamp from lollipop designs (lollipopdesigns.co.uk) to complete the invitations…a production line!….
The finished invitation 🙂 
Getting ready for a family Mother’s day lunch…seasonal blooms, jam jar bulbs, vintage crockery and tea lights..
The place settings…
Jam jar bulbs…
Seasonal blooms in glass jars…
Vintage crockery
We created a ‘utilitarian’ look with the metro tiles and charcoal grout and quarry tiles.
I then softened it with a few homespun pieces!
A Pegbag…the pegs are another ebay buy…
Laundry bag made with vintage fabric…
This is really the boys domain…usually carpeted with Lego! The sofa is from Made.com and I bought the velvet cushions from Graham and Green, the floral cushion is from Cath Kidston and I made this cushion using reclaimed curtain fabric from ebay.
I made this little photo and ‘art gallery ‘ using the photos shelves and frames from Ikea.
This drawer unit was given to me by the school I used to work at when they were getting rid of it after I had said how much I would like it for the boys’ Lego!
The coffee from Ikea makes a perfect little table and the wooden chairs are from ebay.
This is inspired by the Soho house ‘Eat, Drink and Nap’ book…full of lots of inspiration. I like the mixture of iconic spirits bottles, vintage/classic mismatched glasses and the oversized French style gold mirror.
The glasses cupboard came from Graham and Green and I filled it with a hotchpotch of glasses from our trips to France (Duralex glasses from hypermarkets), charity shops and a shop in Winchester; The Hambledon(www.thehambledon.com).
When we moved into our house, every room needed to be either gutted or decorated…a great project. We spent a long time planning and saving to change the house. From updating previous houses and using lots of different ideas from restaurants, cafes and bars…my plans for a room seem to follow a formula of somethings old, somethings new, somethings utilitarian and somethings classic i.e….mixing vintage, used & reclaimed with modern or design classics.
So this part of my blog is really to advocate design classics, charity shops and eBay as great starts for creating homely homes for not lots of money!
My inspiration for the kitchen definitely came from magazines, trawling charity shops, researching sixties and seventies design and spending times with my sons in cafes…I especially love the Primrose Bakery! My scrapbook has a collection of cuttings…
My favourite and actually only tile choice! I love them because they are classic; vintage,simple and timeless. They are also reasonably priced – win/win! I also like grey grout but stuck to white in the kitchen.
Being a 60s house, our home doesn’t have many attractive features so we wanted to add some ‘original’ features and saved up for parquet flooring to add character and warmth. We spend nearly all our time in the kitchen area, so wanted a warm material instead of tiling which would have required underfloor heating – something that would have been too expensive. We did consider reclaimed parquet which would have added more character.
To add colour, character and to soften the white, wood and stainless steel. I bought all the crockery from charity shops or eBay. I am always very excited when I see a piece of 1970s crockery on the shelves of a charity shop…a piece of treasure! One of my favourite pastimes is wandering around the charity shops looking for retro crockery and fabric (which I now share with my sons; who are always keen to have a look through the second-hand toys!)
I was pleased to find the ‘Dripping’ pot in a charity shop 🙂
This took a lot of persuading! Especially as the first one we bought was falling apart due to woodworm! I did some research and found a company called Capelcrafts on eBay who make the larders from scratch; so I could choose the style, size and colour to fit our kitchen.
Bush Radio: love dancing round the kitchen when cleaning and cooking!
Dualit toaster: brings back memories of our Uni halls toaster…
Smeg Fridge Freezer and Newgate Electric Clock: Most rooms have one, if not more clocks…I love their different designs and Newgate produce some great ‘reproduction’ vintage-style clocks.
The reclaimed church chairs: The church chairs we had always loved in Pubs and bars and we bought these via eBay. I love them mixed with the Eames style chairs…couldn’t afford the real ones…maybe one day!
I have collected Russian dolls for a long time and I sometimes find them in charity shops (which is very exciting) or markets, or my husband has brought some back when he has travelled to Russia. I love the colours and designs and they appear to pop up in most rooms in our house…
…we seem to have quite a lot of these in the house but I really don’t think you can have too many…they are great to brighten miserable winter evenings and have a magical feel on summer nights.
I had hoped to be organised enough this year to blog my preparations and decorations for Christmas 2015…however; being a teacher meant there was plenty of marking and planning to be done and also being a mother there was similar amounts of buying and wrapping to be done! So here I am, 27th December 2015, perhaps blogging some ideas for Christmas 2016…?
I love getting ready for Christmas, and like many people, I buy the Christmas editions of various home magazines and flick through old magazine cuttings and catalogues that come through the post. However; one of my favourite places to go around Christmas time with my family is London – Santa’s grottos, ice rinks, Oxford Street and Regent Street lights, Seven Dials, shop windows and Christmas on Columbia Road.
As I was choosing our wrapping paper, gift-tags, ribbon, Christmas decorations etc (which my husband tells me I take way too much time & consideration over!), I thought about Shoreditch and Columbia Flower market. I combined vintage floral with utility: brown paper, twine, white ribbon, tags with a retro font and vintage fabric lavender hearts.
For decorations, we went a bit mad with fairy lights and foliage…our London Christmas lights and a bit of Columbia Road Flower Market!
Our Christmas tree was decorated with lots of fairy lights, paper
baubles and snowflakes (from John Lewis, Pearl & Earl and The Paper Snowflake Company). We also chose rustic metal and wooden tree decorations in the shapes of hearts, stars and reindeers (I always like looking in supermarkets and garden centres for decorations). I made lots of gingerbread star biscuits with my sons, which they loved decorating with white icing and silver balls. This year, I remembered to make a hole in the biscuits as soon as they came out of the oven and were still soft! I also bought some wooden hearts from Hobbycraft and using rubber letter stamps the boys stamped our initials on them…
We decorated the house with lots of fairy lights (from Lights4fun, attaching them with Command decoration hooks), giant snowflakes (from the Paper Snowflake company) and bunting (from Pearl & Earl).
When we went to buy our Christmas tree there were lots of Christmas tree branches left on the ground…so I asked the vendor if I could collect them up to take home and thinking I was slightly mad, he said yes. I used them to decorate the mirrors, fireplace mantel and the Christmas table.
For the Christmas table arrangement I bought the teapot from a charity shop and added Eucalyptus foliage to the holly, ivy and Christmas tree branches! I also like daffodil and hyacinth bulbs around the home at Christmas…
In fact Christmas seems to turn up all over our house…
First I chose my fabrics, buttons and ribbons. I collected lots of different retro style fabrics from Ebay and various charity shops, and an assortment of buttons from Hobbycraft…for ribbon I went for white. I then (while watching Monsters Inc with the boys one rainy Saturday afternoon), used a heart template I had printed from Google images and drew around it on the ‘wrong’ side of the fabric. I then repeated for the plain white fabric which will be the back of the lavender heart.
I cut out the hearts using pinking shears, being careful to leave a 1cm gap between my cutting line and the line I drew. I then chose a button to match the fabric…having said that, I like unusual colours together like oranges and turquoises, yellows and blues, lime greens, pinks and oranges. I sewed the button on to the floral fabric on the ‘right’ side…
I then pinned the floral fabric with the plain fabric, making sure that the lines I drew are on the outside as I was pinning the hearts together I pinned the ribbon the inside…
I then sewed along the lines I had drawn and then remembered to leave a 2cm gap near the bottom of the heart to turn the heart inside out. I then filled the heart with dried lavender using a funnel..a source of much hilarity for my husband and sons..!
Then carefully sewed up the remaining part of the heart with tiny stitches. They were then ready to add to the presents…
bluebird at home 