Kitchen: Before & After

We have lived in our cottage for a year now and my favourite space has always been the kitchen. We love food. We love entertaining. I love baking! The kitchen is the heart of a home to us. Our previous apartment had the teeniest weeniest kitchen you could imagine. It was not well looked after by the landlords and we had about 2ft of worktop in total. There was no way we were getting anywhere to sit in there, so we had a little fold down table and stools in the living room. We were SO excited when we first went to visit what would become our new home...

BEFORE:

The kitchen is a really good size, but was not very sensibly organised as you can see. Don't even get me started on that rug! The whole house was different beige tones and the kitchen was no exception. Those tiles too... However we are very fortunate in our lease that they think of the house as 'ours' to a degree, so we were allowed to fix it all up. 

AFTER:

What a difference a bit of paint makes! We painted the entire house white to start us off and then added a few feature walls. We decided on a chalkboard wall for the kitchen as it made something of an unused space. It was also a good way to hide the radiator. The table was bought at a flea market in Knutsford from a lovely man who was using it to display his items. It was already grey, so we just gave the tops a two tone teal. 

This wall was inspired by Rice DK's new wallpaper range. I wanted something a little less busy, as we love to have coloured 'things' but I tend to keep the backgrounds mostly white. The little bookshelves from Ikea keep my current favourites handy, but also disguise an ugly blanked socked on the wall ;). We also painted all of the cabinets to make the space brighter - they are a laminate wood, but this worked surprisingly well. The difference it has made to the feel of the room was totally worth the effort! New tiles were essential too, as the previous ones were dark and broken. We chose bright white subway tiles all around.

Paint is my BFF. Anything can be given a new lease of life with a bit of paint.

So there you have it! What do you think?

Polka Dots

(source)

I've been wondering for a while what I could do to spruce up our little bedroom. There is no space to add any furniture, and not really any room to put anything pretty on the dressing table! We need to repaint the room white, as it is currently a shade of nasty cream. Unfortunately the lady who leased the place before us smoked a lot. Thankfully the smell went quite quickly! With no room to add anything further, I've been trying to think of something a little special to do - and I think this is it! I love polka dots. Don't they just instantly make you happy? Simple and beautiful. With a little more art on the opposite wall, a new lightshade (I have a great DIY coming up for this!) and a wee bit of spray paint... We will have a lovely, cozy bedroom :)

Do you have any decorating tips for small spaces? 

love

That Room We Avoid...

What a strange week. I've felt like I've been SO busy... but I've not really done anything apart from sleep and work. Apologies for the lack of posts this week but I've been feeling a little under the weather, and needed to sleep it off. Still a little groggy but all is good in the hood!

Check out our spare room. It's actually worse than this picture too, as we have just added a table and chairs into 'The Pile'. Most of the stuff in there at the moment is stuff from my Mum's house when she moved, that we are to eBay. All funds for the big W! That's the wedding, for you none-telepathic folk. I seriously need to get around to sorting it all but it's SUCH a huge job that i'm just pretending we don't have a spare room for the time being! We can't finish decorating until The Pile is gone either eek.

It's my birthday tomorrow... holy cow. How fast has this year gone?!

Home Wishlist

1. Desk Bunny / 2. Lappljung Ruta Cushion / 3. Velvet Cushion / 4. Juice Stop By Glasses Set / 5. Joseph Joseph Vinyl Chopping Board / 6. Diana Mini Latitude / 7. Metal Coffee Table / 8. Take Your Turntable Green 

1. Reversible Leaves Quilt / 2. Lappljung Ruta Rug

I adore the patterns on these two so I couldn't bring myself to make them smaller! Don't you just love the metal table? I'd use it to sit my vinyl player on, and I reckon a plant. I still haven't found any succulents. The vinyl would look awesome underneath too. I have the perfect spot for it!

Oh and that beautiful quilt is on sale, i'm hoping it still comes down more though.

love

Homies

We've lived in this flat for just over a year now. When we moved it was a bit of a rush, and although there were a (large) handful of imperfections, we moved in as it was big, cheap and in the perfect place. We rent so I decided after a month or so that maybe we shouldn't start the list until we had a better idea of what 'the plan' was.

Like I said, we've been here just over a year now, and plan to stay for up to another two years! Time to get sorting right? Due to the rushing, everything we owned was either Ikea or someone's spare. Don't get me wrong, I love both these things! But we had nothing special if you get me? Nothing we thought 'wow!' and bought. 

Until now that is! I've been ebaying and carbooting hunting for great pictures, furniture, blankets.... We are finally starting our collection of treasured items :). I got an awesome cabinet off ebay for £3! It was a bit ugly so we painted it white and added pastel ombre style colours to the doors. We are still missing the middle glass piece which will be white, and the two centre white drawers are going to have vintage paper on them. Hopefully it will look good! 

The picture isn't very good quality! My camera has broke so I'm using my iPhone for the foreseeable future. Oh and can you spot Monty the Yeti in the middle? I totally made him. Yep.

We have a few other bits and pieces too, like a retro wood drop-leaf dining table. It's only a twosie and it looks like its straight from a cafe! Too cute. And you can just see the corner of our striped chair in that picture. Something i'd really like are some wire baskets, I see bloggers with huge ones used as side tables or made into vinyl cabinets. I swear I just can't find any in England. 

I love collecting new pieces for our home, but it's going to be a long process!

love