Bloomin’ heck
It’s been three months since I moved into the bubble of happiness that is our beautiful bungalow. If you haven’t read about that journey, check out the post here.
Where did that time go? How comes it feels like I’ve always lived there? And how comes it still looks pretty pristine?
I still get a bit smiley when I wander round the place knowing that it belongs to us. And, not blowing my own trumpet or nuttin’, but visitors do tend to comment on on how well we’ve done on the interior design side of things.
SO with that in mind, I thought I’d share some of my fave pieces in the house today, and tell you where you can get your hands on them. Or similar stuff, so to speak.
THE ANTIQUE TABLE & CHAIRS
Probably one of the best buys of the house. They set off my kitchen with the perfect country/shabby chic vibe I was going for.
I spent a hella long time scouring the internet for old tables and chairs to revamp and upcycle. Needless to say, it’s not the easiest task and it was bloody time consuming.
The amount of times I found the PERFECT chair only for it to be 100 miles away was soul destroying.
We ended up finding our table at our local antiques centre, buried under a host of other tables, just waiting to be found.
The chairs I nabbed from various places using ebay/gumtree. They cost me no more than £10 each.
Three tips for getting this look:
- Don’t rule antique centres out. Not everything there is £100000. We picked up our gem of a table for £150, a fraction of what I was gonna pay for something online. Be open-minded and be prepared to search, search, search.
- Do be prepared to do some paint work. I was lucky in that I had a very good friend offer to upcycle my chairs as a moving in present. But if you saw these chairs before they had their makeover, you wouldn’t have thought much of them. You have to see past that though; how could these look with a lick of paint? Use your imagination folks.
- Do be prepared to do a few miles. Each chair I purchased I had to go pick up from different locations. It even took Max deep into the countryside one evening where he was told to find the cottage with the lady standing outside waving a flashlight. True story. So if you’re looking for a mismatch vibe, then you gotta be prepared to do a few trips out to collect your treasure.
THE FUN PRINTS
My Insta obsession has led to a very healthy print obsession too. Opps.
I think prints add a zap of fun into a room. I don’t take life too seriously, and I don’t want my decor to either. I think it was my way of saying ‘yes I know I’m adult enough to own a home now, but I’m still young and fun too‘. #scaredofgrowingup
I purchased my ‘Life is fab’ print from Lucy Wilkins who hand prints these beaut designs. She actually features on onthehighstreet.com and you can look at her range of prints here.
My ‘Home is where the wifi is’ was from Lala Land and they do a whole range of cool, quirky prints. You can see the full range here.
The thing to bear in mind when you’re scouring the internet for prints, is that some you buy are then sent to you as a downloadable item that you then need to print yourself. Ermmmm that’s no fun. So make sure you check if it’s a hard copy your buying or a digital format.
If you’re looking to browse some prints, the best place to start is Etsy. There’s hundreds of prints on there. My faves being these ones here:
‘Sassy, classy & a bit bad-assy’ Print
‘You are the pina to my colada’ Print
THE ‘COLOUR POP’ ACCESSORIES
For the first two months in our home, I kept saying to Max:
‘Our bedroom isn’t finished. The design isn’t tying together quite right.’
This baffled the boy. There was a bed to sleep on and places to store his many football shirts, what more could a bedroom need?
The room needed more unity in colour. I had giant pastel hexagons on the wall but the rest of the room was white. Enter the accessories that transformed my room for less than 20 squid.
I picked up these purple and grey photo frames from Next Home and these cushions from Primark and voila, they tied the colour theme of the room together perfectly.
Small hints of colour are sometimes all it takes to finish off a room. And the main point I’d like to make is you don’t have to spend loads of dollar on these items.
On that note, Primark have an ace home range. Here’s some of the stuff that’s making me swoon:
THE SHELVES FULL OF CAREFULLY PLACED STUFF
I’m a lover of shelves. They give a different dimension to a room. It’s using space that’s otherwise wasted.
And yes, you may think that shelves are a place to dump stuff, but every item on my shelf is carefully thought out and placed. Would you expect anything less?
I like to use shelves to display items that make me happy. That make my heart smile. In the words of Kondo, that spark joy.
So you’ll see my treasured books. You’ll see plants. You’ll see prints. You’ll see an origami dinosaur that Max constructed at Christmas that I couldn’t bear to throw away.
The letterholder that holds my favourite cards. Maxwell couldn’t quite understand why he was scolded so much for putting an actual letter in it – ‘It’s not for holding letters‘ I said. ‘But it’s a letter holder‘ he said.
You’re missing the point my dear.
I don’t like clutter and I don’t like ornaments in general. But if things with no practical use are going to go anywhere in my home, they will go on my shelf. Simple as.
THE IKEA CACTI
Cacti are cool right?
Mini cacti in baby pink pots are cooler.
I’m a big fan of ikea. Max and I did numerous trips whilst choosing decor for the house. These babies give a pop of colour to my otherwise very white kitchen. I like plants in the house too, gives a freshness to the place, especially in a place like the kitchen.
I don’t actually have anything else to say about these. But they had to feature. Obvs.
Mini cacti – ikea
THE LAMP CALLED HECTOR
Hector stands in the corner of our living room against the backdrop of a bright yellow wall. He gives off a soft balmy light, just perfect for reading a book whilst Max plays Fifa.
Hector is a key piece of our living room. And Hector was cheap as chips.
We felt very strongly when designing the house that we didn’t want to make small choices. Shy choices. Choices that made the house blasé. Hence why we painted a wall in our living room sahara yellow and bought key pieces of furniture, like our tapestry chest, our copper framed bed, Hector the lamp.
I lusted over Made.com for months, but in the end I realised a lot of the high end designer items that were hundreds of pounds could be bought for a fraction of the price elsewhere. And don’t get me wrong, the quality and detail isn’t the same, but you’re still getting something that’s gonna make a statement in your room.
So yeah, that pretty much sums up a collection of favourite things in our home.
So in true MTV style; ‘You’ve seen my crib, you’ve seen my cars, NOW GET THE HELL OUT‘
(Soz not soz, used to love that programme)
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Love it! You can come and decorate my home any day!
Author
Yes Ana, new line of work! Would love to haha xxx