FUTURE ROOMS: Craft Room

Love this space from Whatever

Beautiful chaos - love this!

KITCHEN: Ideas & inspiration

I have recently found a wonderful new blog for inspiration - Remodelaholic! It is a collection of lots of other peoples home projects and is a complete aladins cave of ideas. Here is a Kitchen transformation which I just love:

From:

 To:

 Stunning! Please find full article on the project here.

 Just found another lovely kitchen, but this time on Like it, Love it:

It's amazing how striking just white can be!

I think I will do a signature colour on our walls, maybe a turquoisey colour but I think everything else bar the work tops and floors will be white.

Another lovely Kitchen from a new blog I've found called Whatever:

 

 

Love the flashes of colour in this otherwise very white kitchen on Fenton& Fenton featured on Belle Maison

DINING ROOM: Ideas and inspirations

I'm just going to put like a scrap book here of ideas which we could use for our next project room: the dining room....

I really love this green against the neutral colours beyond in the kitchen and the dark wood in the foreground .

Though this room is a bit of a different layout to ours I do think we could take a lot of ideas from it. I really love the overall look. In case you are wondering I found it on Remodelaholic and the article is entiled "Kitchen of my dreams"

I will add more lovely ideas as I find them.....

DECORATIVE IDEAS: April 2011

Love this post from That's my Letter on doing up an arm chair to get it from:

to....

....stunning job and definitely something I'd like to do some day too.


Another lovely idea for neatening up spaces using homemade wire baskets with homemade lining again from That's my Letter.

Getting you from this:

 to....

 

Such a great and simple idea that really works.

It's amazing how much impact you can achieve just by changing some accessories around....

Love this make over of a space on The Shabby Nest;


From...

 To....

 It completely transforms and modernises the space!

Love love love - this make over on The Less than perfect life of Bliss...

From....

To... 

BACK GARDEN: Progress and even our 1st BBQ of 2011!

Still can't believe we managed to have our first BBQ of 2011 in APRIL! It was absolutely glorious all weekend! It was like the middle of summer. And when the weather is like that I only appreciate even more how gorgeous our garden is, how much potential it has and how lucky we are.

We ended up using the disposable BBQ for ease of not having to sort out the other one but it really was lovely. We ate pesto chicken, couscous salad and flat bread - it was yummy.














We managed to get some oxygenating pond weed off some close family friends so hopefully the pond will soon be in a state ready for lilies and we can make it into a real feature. We want to get the mini waterfall working behind it again and Adam wants to arrange his bonsai collection around the rockery area by the waterfall too which will look just lovely. I also want to paint the back fence an olivey green and then have a clematis (which I already have) and passion flower, which I have always wanted, just because I am blown away by how nature can make something so beautiful trailing across.













The other major thing to tackle, in fact the first thing we want to tackle, is the pond safety as it is very deep and if we have young children around then we will have to be very careful with them.  Having looked into a few different options online, the one which we will more than likely go for is a picket fence. It's reasonably priced, attractive and does the job too, in the mean time, I have arranged all my patio pots round to create some sort of a barrier but to be honest think I might keep them there after the fence is put up to as they make a rather nice feature.

GARDEN: Lovely items (April 2011)

Some lovely ideas for those who are feeling a little green fingered in the month of April:

 How nice is this idea - taking something so ordinary and making it lovely!: HOSE CLOTHES from Etsy @ £15.11:

GROW recycled-wood sign from Etsy @ £23.93

Gardeners Scrub - 100% Natural Handmade Olive Oil Soap from Etsy @ £3.15 - Just love the vintage packaging on this.

Make your own recycled handmade pots with this Gardening Paper Pot Maker also from Etsy @ £15.74

This one is more garden theme than garden but so lovely I had to add it: Artichoke Thistle linen tea towel, Etsy again @ £15.11

 These White Garden Markers with Dark Green Stamp are excellent for any home growers out there, Etsy @ £13.85

Love this Eden Metal Watering Can (in purple) - so stylish and practical too... and not bad price @ £16.00 - now just to wait for this style to come back into stock...

MASTER BEDROOM: Wallpaper

We just got our wallpaper put up last night for our feature headboard wall in the master bedroom:

This is the one we chose; Colours by B&Q Sienna Wallcovering Purple. I really like the purple flowers on it and the aubergine wall oposite but unfortunately the stone walls on each side just clash massively and will need to be repainted - joyful weekend ahead. Also now it is up I am not sure about the brown stems on the wallpaper. I'm just kicking myself for not planning enough! We planned so well with the living room, I think maybe because we bought the couches first so everything then had to go with them.


This very much a case of lesson learnt. Always try several samples for several walls in both paint and wallpaper before making any final decisions. New term today, learnt off my friend Toni, "that'll do, will not do" plan properly and fully and don't rush into things which are then too expensive and time consuming to fix if they all go wrong.

Anyway, now to look at the way forward, the wallpaper is fine and it is now too much of an expense to get redone. I'm happy with the aubergine wall oposite as I say so we just need to repaint the two side walls. I'm going to pop to Wickes at lunch and pick up some samples, then paint them on some paper/card in order to match the best one with the paper and aubergine. I will keep you posted...


















Below are the colour options I am going to pick up:

Champagne:

Calico:

Fawn:

Vintage Blush:

Wild Woods:

Cappuccino:

23.12....

Right quick update time. Bought the paint samples at lunch, when I got home painted them on a piece of card and left them to dry whilst I went about painting all the woodwork white - which I must say has made a massive improvement on before.

I really like the vintage blush but think it's perhaps a bit to girlie for both of us so Calico is the colour of choice. Man I can't wait to get this all sorted out!

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Colours by B&Q Sienna Wallcovering Purple 10m

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Colours by B&Q Sienna Wallcovering Purple 10m

14 April 2011...

Must say - the decision to change the colour to Calico is definitely the right one, it makes such a difference to the whole look of the room and really does bring the tonal pallet all together, I'm very pleased with the result:

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Colours by B&Q Sienna Wallcovering Purple 10m