I totally don’t want to be a home bore – and if you follow me on instagram then you are probably sick of the sight of the inside of my house by now – but about an hour ago we finally got our internet working, and the first thing I want to do is show you a few photos of the things we’ve done since we moved in. I hope that’s okay – I’ve just never had a pretty house before so I can’t help but want to share it!
One of the first things we did was hang curtains in the bedroom. We have two large sash windows (one of the things that attracted us to the house in the first place was the beautiful light, bright main bedroom) but we didn’t quite want it to be so light at 5am! We bought curtain tracks from Dunelm Mill and these lovely Portland Curtains from John Lewis (£90). I don’t think we’ll carry through the nautical theme we had in some rooms in our old house much into this one, but I loved the putty grey colour and the subtle lighthouse print. I also hung our wicker hearts from the window locks – totally copying the house across the road but I like that you can see them from the street, it adds a pretty little detail to the windows.
We also put up the Ikea picture ledge above our bed and put a few little pictures on it. We’re going to make a gallery wall for the dining room as there’s a big blank wall above where our dining table is, but this was a quick way to get some pictures up in the meantime. We bought the bed from Asda but I forgot to take a picture of that and Asda messed me around so much with the delivery that I wouldn’t recommend buying furniture from them, still the bed looks lovely in the room. We got a king size mattress from Amazon (a Nytex Memory Foam one for £205 and it’s so comfy) – I’m pretty sold on having a king size bed now, it’ll be hard if we ever go back to sleeping in a double!
Not a project per sé but I just love the pine doors in this house. This is our bedroom door – I bought a new dressing gown from Primark which looks rather lovely hanging on the back of it I think, and even lovelier on the back of the bathroom door which is all white (I told the lady in Primark I was buying a dressing gown to match my bathroom and she looked at me like she was about to call security).
One of my favourite little jobs this week was unpacking some of my books and putting them up in a bookcase in the dining room. I used to have all my books in bookcases along the wall in the office but now we don’t have an office or a third bedroom I’m not able to have as many books on show as I did before. Instead I’ve chosen a few of my favourites, and once we’ve cleared the spare room of boxes (if we ever manage to!) I might be able to have a smaller bookcase in there with some of my books ‘to read’ on. I am seriously in my happy place when arranging books and ornaments.
The lightbox and pastel letters are from Berylune (£29.95 and £7.95 for the letters). The print on the top shelf is by the lovely Ella Masters, and the beautiful Puffin in Bloom books on the top shelf are from Amazon – I just need Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland to complete my collection!
We’ve put my old office table in the dining room as a dining table, it looks pretty sweet with a vintage jug full of fresh flowers on it (my friend bought these round on Saturday, aren’t they just beautiful?) I’ve tucked my dining chairs from Made.com behind the table so the table can be pulled out when we have guests.
I’ve also put a few little ornaments on our mantelpiece – fake plants from Ikea are all over the house now, they look pretty and I can’t kill them (bonus). The concrete ‘&’ sign was a gift from the lovely Katy at Christmas, I’ve collected a few more ampersand items since too (it’s getting to be a bit of an addiction!) The new home card is from Sarah – those ladies are truly the best.
We’ve taken to calling our living room ‘the snug’ as it’s really quite little! But it’s big enough for our sofa and my beautiful Next armchair (remember it from my Easter DIY challenge? It looks even better in this house!)
The sailor cushion is from Asda (£7), and the fish cushion is from Habitat (£12). I could have bought everything in Habitat when we visited, they have so many dreamy things in at the moment.
Tom and I both work for the Coastguard and he was given this antique Coastguard search light a couple of years ago. He put in a light from Ikea so we can use it as a proper lamp – I think it looks lovely in our little snug!
The kitchen is much, much smaller than in our old house so we’ve had a bit of trouble cramming everything in (I put all our plates and crockery out and felt pleased with myself until I realised we didn’t have any space for food!) I’ve had to put away things like my food processor and recipe stand that I previously had out in the kitchen, and the washing machine and our big fridge-freezer is now out in the utility room, so you have to go out of the back door to get to them as it’s separate to the house. Even though space is at a bit of a premium though, I couldn’t resist this vintage looking toaster (£73.79*) from House of Fraser’s range of toasters – all of our appliances and kitchen accessories are black to fit with the old kitchen so this one is a nice upgrade!
… And today has been gloomy and rainy, so we spent the afternoon in front of the fire! Tom treated himself to the ash and kindling buckets from Waitrose (£10), he has also spent inordinate amounts of time at the bottom of the garden chopping wood (men, fire and wood is a lethal combination!)
I hope you haven’t minded the new house spam – I can’t promise there won’t be more but I’ll try and mix it up a bit, though what is it about having a new home that makes you forget about clothes and want to spend all your money on new home-y bits?
