Attic24

And so into June

So here we are, racing through June at such a pace I can hardly catch my breath. Just this morning I happened to catch sight of the date and was astounded to find out that we are already in the middle of the month and goodness me, the Summer Solstice is less than a week away! Say what???!!! I remember it was just the same last year, so maybe this is what May-June feels like at this time in my life? I think it's because our winter season seems to take foreeeeeveeer to be over and done with, that once Spring finally arrives it rushes in and out like a flood tide. 

Towards the end of May my Dad and Lady B journeyed all the way from Dorset to visit for a week, it was a holiday that had been postponed since 2020. Back then in pre-covid times my Dad's memory and general health was very much more robust, so I was a little worried about how he would cope with the lengthy train travel and also being out of his usual environment and routine. Lets just say it was a challenge - whether he was really aware of it or not I'm unsure, but his level of general confusion was pretty heart breaking. So yeah, it was a very intense week, not stressful as such, but highly emotional and draining nevertheless. 

On top of the worry about my Dad's health decline, I also tend to experience a surge of emotions at this time of year - ever since I lost my Mum five years ago, the month of May weighs heavy on me. I'm the kind of person who tends to deal with these things silently and inwardly which is probably not the best way, but keeping everything tightly wrapped up is just the way I am. I'm still trying to come to terms with many things to do with my Mum and the way her life came to a very sad and abrupt end, gosh this kind of deep rooted stuff isn't easy is it?

Anyhow, I'm not here to dig into my past because my childhood and my relationship with my parents has always been quite the messy tangle which I keep locked down tight, but I did just want to let you know a little of what I've been going through lately. Thankfully these times never seem to last for long and I'm pretty adept at bouncing back - boing! I'm here, it's mid June with summer almost upon us and all is warm and well.

At the beginning of June the UK commemorated the Queen's Platinum Jubilee and as such we were treated to a four day bank holiday weekend. The weather was mixed (of course it was) but it mostly held dry if a bit on the chilly-breezy side. The town was hugely busy with visitors, both on the pavements and the waterways and I love the hustle and bustle of a high season holiday weekend when the atmosphere is joyful and celebratory.

On my friendly little street with it's terraced houses all tucked together in close proximity, we collectively organised a laid back Jubilee street party. We applied to the council for a permit to close the road to traffic, hung up strings of red, white and blue bunting and gathered together enough food and drink to feed a small army.

It was a lot of fun just being able to sit in the middle of the road and chat to neighbours from up and down the street, most of whom we did already know (thirty houses in total). There was cake....

....and of course there was Pimms served in paper cups. It was really ever so British and made me remember how very much I love Pimms (and cake) in the summertime.

May and early June is such a l-u-s-h time in the countryside and the abundance of greenery and general floral frothiness has really lifted my spirits lately. 

My daily morning walks in the woodland have continued to keep me simultaneously grounded and uplifted and I'm so thankful for this place that I call home.

Up until this week, the weather has been unseasonably cold (and very windy) during the past few months. I really hope that Summer will bring plenty of warmth and sunshine as I desperately feel a need for both.

I've been keeping an eye on the elderflowers around and about as I'm hoping to make a nice big batch of cordial again this year. The above photo was taken nine days ago, and since then most of the bushes I walk past are now in full floral froth. It's a glorious time of year and I absolutely love to (literally) bottle it up - I'll go and buy the sugar, lemons and oranges tomorrow so that I can get busy with it over the weekend if it stays dry. The recipe is on my blog here >> {Elderflower Cordial recipe, scroll down through the long-winded chatty blog post to find it}

What else to tell you? Building work finished here early last week, resulting in the safe dismantling of an old disused chimney stack and the back wall of our house being repaired and repointed. We asked the builders if they could leave the actual chimney pot for us as I thought it would be fun to plant something in it - my goodness, we were totally unprepared for the monstrous size of it, it's gigantic! It must stand four feet tall and was on top of a stack of heavy stone which was as high again - imagine, an eight foot tall chimney sitting very precariously on top of our bathroom roof, it blows my mind every time I think about it.

Our back yard is still in disarray because the scaffolding hasn't yet come down. I'm impatiently waiting for that to happen and then I can get busy with cleaning and tidying and planting up my pots for the summer.

The past few weeks I've been in full Mum-mode, supporting Little Lady as she revises and sits her A level exams. I think she's doing remarkably well in terms of managing both her time and her wellbeing, putting in many hours of revision and coping with a certain inevitable level of daily anxiety. She's only got two more exams left to do now, so next Tuesday I anticipate there will be much rejoicing, and I will finally be able to breathe out again.

This past week or two I've been working steadily away behind the scenes, finalising the colour palette for my next CAL blanket which will be revealed in November. I generally work around five months in advance which can be quite challenging for someone like me who much prefers the do-it-right-now spontaneous approach. Ahhhh......I can't wait to show you more, so exciting! I'm now working on the stitch design and it's been the usual frustrating, stop-start affair, but I spent a good few hours noodling with yarn and hook today and think I'm finally getting somewhere.

Goodness knows how many hours I've spent at the dining table during these past few weeks as it takes a LOT of time to work through the colour and pattern design process for one of my blankets. My whole heart and soul goes into each and every blanket and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Well I think that's about all for now, I hope you are doing ok out there in the world and enjoying these mid year months. Despite the emotional ups and downs, this really is my very best favourite time of year by far.

Thanks as always for popping into the Attic to visit, it's always so good to be here for a chat and a catch up....see you again soon xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

 

 

Life Lately

I've been on Blossom Watch during the past few weeks which is pretty normal for me at this time of year. I tend to get these seasonally induced obsessions throughout the year and they occupy my thoughts on the daily. I know from past experience that May will be a busy month inside my head because there is so much to obsess over - blossom, wild garlic flowers, bluebells, cow parsley, buttercups, asparagus season, tree leaves....oh my seasonal cup positively overflows in May!

Being that I live in the northern part of the UK where temperatures are cooler, I'd say we are about three weeks behind those in the south. Blossom is just starting to reach full froth this week and I am absolutely delighted by it as always.

I honestly don't think I could keep away from these beautiful trees if you paid me, they call to me so loudly each and every morning. Sometimes I'm content to admire them from across the grassy expanse of the park, but often times I find myself walking to them even before I've made the conscious decision. Standing underneath a blossom tree when it's in full tilt against the bluest of morning skies is one of life's great pleasures. 

On of my other favourite trees at this time of year is the Whitebeam, and I only found out it's name last year after being in love with it for a long, long time. The new leaves are a beautiful pale silvery green colour when they first emerge and I just love them so much. 

As I wrote in my blog post last week, I'm still keeping up with my morning wake-up-walk at 7am and I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying it. I guess it's like walking a dog every morning, except without the actual dog.

The cold weather continues, and when I say cold, I really do mean it. We are into early May now, but most days it's literally freezing out there when I walk in the mornings.

These bluebells were frozen solid this morning, stiff and icy but still looking very beautiful.

We've actually had a fair bit of rain during the past week, but this morning the sky had cleared and the air felt clean and crisp. It was zero degrees out there. Zero!! What is going on with our Spring this year?? I'd really, really like it to warm up now please. 

Walking back towards home along the side of the canal, there is often a blackbird perched high in the tree singing his heart out. Can you see him in the above photo? And do you know the song of a blackbird? It's so melodic - and loud too, I always forget how loud birdsong can be at times. It fills the air as I walk.

I'm back to my daily morning workouts this week after an enforced rest last week. I've been having leg trouble, it's something that comes and goes and is most definitely hormone/peri-menopause related so I'm not worried about it, but my goodness me it is super irritating. It's like a deep, dragging ache within the depths of my thigh, painful enough to keep me awake at night which is the worst part of it. Anyhow, I generally try to ignore it although I do make an effort to rest up a bit when it comes on, and after a week or two it slowly begins to fade away again, until the next time.

Been feeling much stronger again this week though, so I started out on a four week exercise challenge with my fave Lucy Wyndham-Read on YouTube. The programme is completely free, with short workouts all on the Tube (find all the info and links HERE) and I'm really enjoying it. I can highly recommend starting the day with a quick ten minute blast of outdoor fresh air walking, followed by twenty minutes of home workouts - half an hour is all it takes, and honestly it'll make you feel soooo good. 

Life continues to be very same-samey here, as I'm sure it is with most of you too. We haven't been anywhere much at all, preferring to stay very close to home for all of our leisure, pleasure and work time. At the start of last week we drove out into the Dales to walk around Grimwith Reservoir which we've not done for a long while.

It was a beautiful walk, and yes you guessed it, it was bloomin' freeeeezing! I enjoyed all the blues of water and sky so much, gosh I miss the sea something chronic. It's been nine months now and not a day goes by when I don't think about being beside the waves. Rivers, waterfalls and reservoirs are a pretty good second best though, especially on a clear sunny day.

After a very dry period of weather throughout March and April (not counting the snow of course), the start of May has given us some much needed rain. The first day that it rained after many dry weeks, the scent of petrichor was really intense. Ooooh, I've just been on a little petrichor search, and found an interesting article about it ((here)). 

Rain made the bank holiday weekend a bit of a wash out, but we still managed to visit the market and then sit outside our favourite café for an al fresco breakfast (huddled up and wearing allllll the layers). But mostly it was a time for relaxation and lazing about indoors keeping warm.

Tilly obviously got the memo about the importance of lazing about, it's one of her favourite pastimes. And yup, we lit fire. I was in two minds about it, mostly because I'd taken the time last week to Spring clean the hearth and put it to bed for the season. But the lure of having some cosy warmth on a holiday weekend when the rain did not stop falling was too much to resist. I honestly don't think we've ever had a May fire before, except for the very first fire we ever lit when we had the chimney repaired and the open grate installed in May 2008. Ah well, it was unexpected and unseasonal, but lovely all the same.

Firelight and candle light, this is all sounding very depressingly autumnal don't you think?! But whatever season we're in, I'm still enjoying the heck out of my little ceramic candle burner, and light it next to my bed most evenings. I was gifted this burner by a lovely friend for Christmas, but they are easy to find online and come in all different shapes and sizes (the one I have can be found on Amazon HERE)

I bought myself some eco friendly tea lights which have compostable cups (instead of aluminium ones) and are made from vegetable wax with no nasties in it.

But the stars of the show are the scented wax melts, and I just love swapping these depending on the season we're in. My current obsession is Orange Blossom, and Oh. My. Goodness. I am absolutely besotted by the smell of these. I buy my melts from the Botanical Candle Co who are a fabulous small business based down in Dorset and I can highly recommend them for all your seasonal scented candle needs. 

As soon as I sniffed these little waxy stars I was instantly transported back to two years ago when I was lucky enough to visit Portugal for the first time. It was springtime back then too, and I enjoyed a truly wonderful long weekend in Faro with Christine.  I'd always wanted to visit Portugal, and a few nights in Faro seemed like it would be just the thing in March when we didn't want a beach jolly, but didn't want a hectic sight seeing city break either.

I absolutely adored Faro, it was everything I had dreamed of and so much more, oh it's such a beautiful place! But the thing I remember the most about being there in March were the orange trees, they were utterly, utterly enchanting. Yes they had a tonne of very beautiful fruits in the branches, but the blossom....oh, the blossom!!!! The scent!!! the air was filled with the most ridiculously beautiful, intoxicating sweet perfume and I won't ever forget the joy of it.

Having this scent in the home is like taking a mini holiday and I couldn't love it more.

So, what else to tell you? This week I've enjoyed some lovely spring blooms on my table, although as you can see they are past their best now and starting to droop.

I also thoroughly cleaned and decluttered my dining room mantel which had gathered a lot of miscellaneous objects during the past year or two, as well as a good insulating layer of dust. In fact I've been doing a lot of decluttering here lately, working hard on the task of sorting, clearing and organising in areas of the house which had gotten completely out of hand over the years. It's been eye wateringly hard at times, but also extremely therapeutic. I'm still neck deep in the clutter zone mind you, with a long way to go.....the Cupboards of Doom are currently spilling their guts out onto the dining room floor and everything is in tremendous disarray. I've taken some photos to share with you at some point, but only once I'm safely out the other side and can offer up some satisfying "after" photos to be proud of. Right now, the mess is a bit overwhelming and I'm only just managing to maintain my equilibrium. It'll be worth it when it's done though, I keep telling myself this as I dig deep into years of accumulated stuff. So. Much. Stuff. 

More on that journey another day......for now I'm going to love you and leave you as I need to be horizontal now, cosied up in my bed with the scent of orange blossom doing it's thing. I hope you're doing OK  and that you're enjoying the season you're in, whether it's Spring or Autumn depending where you are.

Tell me how your days are feeling, and what's making you happy, I'd love to know xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

 

 

 

 

Attitude of Gratitude

I've been struggling with my days of late, feeling a little on the low side and experiencing a rush of Overwhelm which quite predictably for this time of year has come speeding in like a freight train. I am really just plain exhausted to be honest, and in dire need of a rest and a bit of a break.

However, I am not one to wallow and I do try very hard to practice a daily Attitude of Gratitude towards my life. I know how very lucky I am, and trust me I do thank my lucky stars each and every day for everything that makes up my daily life. I am truly grateful for all of it. I keep reminding myself that tiredness isn't illness and this Overwhelm phase will pass over soon enough. Just got to keep on keeping on for the time being.

I'm really enjoying my little potted dahliettas in the back yard, even though I am waging a constant battle with slugs and snails. I had to resort to liberally sprinkling some pellets down (the kind that are deemed safe for the environment), and that has stopped the nightly feasting for the time being.

This one is especially charming I have to say, and I find myself sitting and simply gazing in awe at those delicious raspberry ripple petals. I've never seen anything quite like it, and for £2 I feel like I've gotten the bargain of the century.

I've had very few still, quiet moments of late, and very little time to sit and think. It's all been go-go-go, and work-work-work. Lots of time at my desk which makes me a little grouchy it has to be said. I try and remind myself to go and sit outside for a short while in the early evening once the dinner has been made and devoured and the kitchen cleared and cleaned down. It's a brief spell before I return to my desk when I make a small fresh coffee and treat myself to a dark chocolate rice cake which is just the nicest thing. I never would have guessed that a daily rice cake would make me so happy. As it's been very warm and humid this week, I've started drinking my coffee on the cool side which is bizarrely satisfying. Instead of heating my milk, I pour it cold into one of my favourite melamine cups and add in a shot of decaff espresso. Finish with a dusting of chocolate powder, inhale and enjoy. 

I was upstairs dealing with the mountain of laundry earlier, sorting, folding, stacking. Like you do. I tend to do a big heap of washing at the weekend (4 or 5 loads usually) and for about 22.5 minutes the laundry basket is joyously, miraculously, completely and utterly empty on a Sunday afternoon. It blows my mind!!! Of course this isn't the end of laundry duty and probably every alternate day during the week I'm at one stage or another with a load of clothes, bedding or towels in transit. I actually don't mind it to be honest. I added a clean pair of hand knit socks to the top of my pile this afternoon and stood for a while just looking at that beautiful pile of colourful stripes. I'm mostly gadding about in sandals or flip flops at the moment (even when it rains) but I often find that I get cold feet in the evenings and there is nothing nicer than pulling a pair of hand knit socks over chilly toes. I love them so much, and I am grateful for the simple pleasure of them.

I've been despairing at the state of our house of late, wondering if there will ever come a time when we aren't too busy or too weary to deal with it all. We've lived here for eleven years and honestly, the place is falling apart. Our bed is broken, the bathroom light has started doing weird flickery on-off things, the carpet has worn out holes in it (actual holes), the fridge has a broken shelf and a door that won't shut properly, the stair banisters are broken, the toilet seat has cracked, there are holes in the walls, wallpaper falling off the walls, a glass light fitting that is smashed (J and Little B and a Nerf Gun fight, seriously) and on and on. Every single bit of every single room needs attention, and I just don't know where to start. I keep looking at it, and thinking that right now, in the run up to the long summer holidays which will be filled with the usual work-Mum juggle, it's just not do-able. House Overwhelm I tell you - another carriage on the freight train.

But still I am grateful for this old shabby house which is such a good home for us, for the way in which it has made me feel so content and secure after a lifetime of moving around and never feeling settled.

J and I walked in the Yorkshire Dales on Monday, a still, hot and humid day. We tramped over the hills that rise above the picturesque village of Grassington, making our way down through Grass Wood to eventually reach the riverside.

It's such a lovely spot right by the river where there are huge, flat stones to sit on and take a breather.

We had a picnic lunch and a flask of fresh coffee each, and honestly it was just so pleasurable. I really love my flask by the way (it's this one on Amazon if you're interested?!). It has a really cute little cup to sip out of and I'm sure coffee tastes better when drunk out of a flask cup. I am easily pleased.

So yeah....Yarndale. I'm working hard for it right now, that's for sure. The above was a little project that I designed and made last week for the brochure. It's harder than you'd think to come up with something new that can be written as a very short, simple pattern to fit an A4 page. I'm not all that good with the 'short' part, being the long-winded, gazillion-photo type of pattern writer. I'll show you more of this project next week I think, I took photos for a little tassel-making lesson which was really satisfying.

I'm still working on the lamp post wraps as and when I find time to actually sit and crochet, which is usually at the cafe. I haven't finished the sunflower yet, but I decided to start on another idea. I made a whole length of green stripes and now I'm crocheting a flock of sheep to fill it. I designed the sheep pattern myself and am quite proud of it actually. They look like sheep and don't look evil, which is always a bonus when doing animal faces.

Speaking of faces.....

......here's a little sneaky peek of something else I've been working on for quite a long time behind the scenes. 

It's a delightful project - Yarndale is teaming up with a fantastic charity this year, and I'll be sharing the Yarndale Creative Community project with you all next week. I very much hope you'll feel inspired to join in, it's for such a good cause.

So that's us all caught up for now. I'm sorry for the slight whiny tone carrying through this post - I really had intended to come here and be upbeat and overflowing with gratitude. But maybe I'm just a bit too tired this evening, so you've been delivered the honest version of the right here and now at the tail end of a long, busy day. 

I hope your days are ticking along nicely, let me know what's making you happy this week? I bet it's not rice cakes?!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

 

 

 

Round the Houses

I have long held a bit of an obsession with houses, and both the inside and outside aesthetics of domestic living arrangements fascinate me. The idea of creating a happy nest inside a pile of bricks and mortar intrigues me very much and I love to see how different people choose to decorate and furnish their homes.

My creative interest in houses/homes is mainly to do with the interiors, but at the same time I do love a good nosey around the outer periphery too - in short, I am a nosey so-and-so and I find home life in all it's shapes and forms fascinating. I like looking at different styles of front doors and windows and I love seeing what folk do with their little patches of front garden. I like to see flower pots and window boxes and little gates and washing lines...

...oh yes, I love washing lines so much! There is something so comforting and humble about a string of clean clothes drying in the open air. Usually laundry-drying is strictly a back garden activity, but here in my town many of the houses don't actually have back gardens. So it's not uncommon to see washing lines strung across back yards and back cobbled streets, making use of any available space.

The town where I live is old (like really old) and is recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086. It has heaps of old buildings (including a 900 year old castle) but what I'm sharing today is the simple terraced housing. These house were built for the families who worked in the many textile mills that sprang up during the Industrial Revolution.

There are lots of these houses across town, row upon row upon row of them. They have front doors opening out onto the pavements......

...but there is also a network of old cobbled back streets running behind every terrace. These back streets are wide enough for cars to drive down, but mostly they are used by pedestrians and give access into the little back yards behind each house.

These back yards are small but precious and many folk go to some effort to create little gardens in their tiny outdoor spaces. Often the back yard also contains an old "outhouse" which would have contained a simple toilet in Victorian times.

I really love these old cobbled back streets, they are more than one hundred years old, isn't that a teesny bit wonderful?

The thing about these rows of terraced houses is that they aren't just houses. They represent communities of families living in pretty close proximity to their neighbours - it's a friendly way to live for sure.

You don't always have a great deal of privacy, but the feeling of security and homely comfort that surrounds daily life is priceless. Sometimes I miss not having a bigger outdoor space and sometimes I miss not having a green, open outlook. Our view is the mellow colour of Yorkshire stone walls, we are surrounded by them on all sides.

I admit it took me a while to get used to living this way. We moved from a detached house on a small, quiet cul-de-sac where privacy was everything and where neighbours kept themselves to themselves. You generally said a polite "hello" in passing, but that was pretty much it.

Living in a terraced house (especially a Yorkshire terraced house), you really get to know your neighbours. These folk love nothing more than to stop and chat, socialise, make friends, and you become a part of the community very quickly. You get absorbed into the street you live on and become a true part of it.

After seven years of terraced street living, I can tell you that it's pretty great.

I would love to hear about where you live, any other terrace-dwellers out there?

Do you have a garden, land, a view? Do you know your neighbours?

Do you love where you live or aspire to something different?

Let's talk homey stuff!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

 

 

 

The Bathroom :: Ta-dah!

 

Oh my, I do so enjoy writing my Ta-dah posts, such fun! And now come to think of it, this might possibly be a first homey sort of a ta-dah type reveal I've ever done too, as I'm usually presenting crochet projects to you aren't I? So extra special feelings of excitement in the Attic today, as I've been really, really looking forward to sharing this with you all.

It's been a looooong time coming I know, we've really taken our sweet, sweet time pulling this little room together. If you've been bobbing in to see me in the Attic for a while, you may well remember when we first started the work :: it was way back in January when my grouchy-but-super-efficient Bathroom Workmen arrived. Like I say, a long time coming.

Right from the word go, I had a vision for my bathroom, had a whole big idea going on with myself about how I wanted it to look and feel. I happen to be very good at visualising, and could see the room soo clearly in my mind.

I was thinking fun, colourful and jaunty with a bright, seaside-holiday vibe.

Bunting and stripes, boats and beach huts.

Walls the colour of aqua seaglass.

And do you know what? I actually made it happen just the way I imagined it.

And I have to confess I really am ever so pleased with it. Keep finding reasons to go in there just for the pleasure of gazing around and ahhhing quietly to myself with the sheer joy of it.

So shall we have a look at some Before and After pictures???

Ok.......only if you promise not to be too horrified by the Before pictures, they are pretty rotten.....

:: Before :: (yeeeeeuuuugh!)

:: During :: (oh-crikey!)

:: After :: (ta-dah!)

:: Before :: (yuckety-yuck!)

:: During :: (oh-noooooooooo!)

 

:: After :: (ta-dah!)

:: Before :: (rotten!)

:: During :: (oh-my-gosh!)

:: After :: (ta-dah!)

 

As you can see, for such a small room, there was a surprising amount of work to be done.

We had previously replaced the boiler so that we could do away with the water tank (which was housed in the yucky green cupboard).

This then meant that we could demolish the yucky green cupboard, creating enough room to fit in a full length bath (instead of the daft yucky corner bath).

The shower was then relocated onto the opposite wall, making way for a lovely chrome towel warmer on the wall where the old shower used to be.

We kept the same toilet and basin to save a bit of money (changing tarnished brass fittings for shiny chrome ones).

The tongue and groove paneling was removed from all around the walls (oh, I was soooo glad to see the back of that!), and replaced with simple square white tiles.

And lastly we had new flooring laid, and the walls and woodwork repainted.

Now can you remember this old bathroom cabinet? Remember me asking your advice about what colour to paint it??

Shall I show you how it turned out??

Ok.....

....take a look.....

Ta-dah!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Do you like it??

I do.

I really, really do.

And do you remember my crocheted bunting?

Sorry this is not a very good picture of it, but it does look really lovely hung above the door.

I must make some more for other parts of the house, it's one of those insanely satisfying projects which comes together really quickly and seems to generate lots of fun in the process.

And talking of fun......do you like the stripy-pompommed little blind I made last week? Jaunty and jolly, don't you think?

Both the fabric and the pompom trim came from the fabulous Deckchair Stripes company, which I am quite in love with. That website does fluttery things to my heart.

Well my lovelies, I think thats all for now.....hope you've enjoyed peeking into my bathroom today.

I thank you as always for sharing it all with me, I appreciate it very much.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

 

Bathroom update

Progress on anything in our house is always slow. We take our sweet, pondering, indecisive time here at Attic24. The bathroom is a prime example. The refurb began in January and should really and truly be completed by now, but we have ground to a halt. The issue currently undergoing hot debate is the windows. We need to replace the windows before we can decorate, and yet we are unable it seems to decide on what exactly we want to do with the windows. Currently we have single glazed wooden windows, with the top opening about 1/3 of the way down. We want to have double glazed ones fitted but cannot decide whether to re-instate Victorian style sash windows (wooden, double glazed, sliding up and down), or have wooden, double glazed top-openers made.
Its a big decision because it costs a hellava lot of dosh to buy new windows. Thousands and thousands. And we want to get it right. So for now we are sitting and scratching our heads and having a jolly good ponder.

However, besides the walls and the windows being unfinished, the rest of this little room is giving me a lot of pleasure.
I am really, really enjoying some hot deep bubble baths amidst lots of shiny white ceramic.
I am enjoying sparkling chrome fixtures.
I am enjoying fluffy new towels warmed on our new chrome towel radiator.
And I am enjoying a new wooden toilet seat.

Oh, and I'm also huuugely enjoying Multicoloured Stripes and Pompoms.
We had our new flooring laid a couple weeks ago...it's a cushioned vinyl which looks like worn whitewashed planks and I happen to think it's rather nice. Makes me think of beach huts and driftwood, of summer days by the sea.
Our old bathmat was plain white and I felt everything in the bathroom was starting to look very bland and well....white. So I googled "striped bath mat" and found this stripy pompom edged beauty...isn't it funky??!!

I get rather a thrill from standing on it whilst wearing my new socks.

And here we have more Stripy thrills destined for the bathroom, courtesy of the Deckchair Stripes company. I heard about this company via Janet Bell, and I was immediately smitten. Their website is a colourful, glorious celebration of all things jaunty and stripy. Take a look at their interior stripes page and feast your eyes on all that scrumptious stripyness!

You can order up to five samples of their fabric, which of course I had to do...and of course I am now pondering and scratching my head and trying to make yet another decision. Its hard work this decorating business! Which stripes should I go for? I want to make a blind for the window and possibly a little bit of something else...
Oh, and as well as gorgeous stripy fabric they also sell this adorable pompom bobble fringe, oh my heart skips a beat when I look at all that colourful bobbly pompom stuff! Love love love it.

Another current love of mine is this particular shade of summer blue. Today in fact I am wearing a jumper this colour, and I've been painting some bits and pieces too. It just sings to me of summer skies, of lazy, relaxed, warm days. Wonderful.
You can see above I've painted a shelf already for the bathroom (although we've not put it up yet).
 

The bathroom walls are currently painted in this shade of aqua, the choice of the previous house owners which I happen to like quite a lot. But as many of the walls had to be replastered when the bathroom was being pulled apart, it's in desperate need of re painting. I'm thinking of choosing a similar shade of aqua but a little paler :: sort of a seaglass colour, if you can imagine that.

Now maybe you could help me out with yet another decision here?
Above photo is of the current wall cabinet, stained a horrid green by the previous owners. Rather than sling it out and replace it, I figured I could repaint it and put on new knobs, kind of give it a new lease of life.
But what colour to paint it?
Bare in mind there is a lot of white already in the bathroom...the suite and the tiles (all around the room to dado height, and to ceiling height above the bath) are all sparkling, shiny white. The floor as you have seen is a distressed white. Walls (above dado/tile height) will be seaglass aqua.
So should it be sky blue to match the painted shelf?
Or white?
Or another colour entirely?
Any input gratefully received.....
....thank you so much :: I love the idea of using you (in the nicest possible way) to make my decorating decisions, a sort of Global Colour Selection Panel.
:o)
xxxxxxxxx

 

Shelves and Cupboards

A few of you have been asking if I'd show you more photos of my home. Well I don't suppose this was exactly what you were expecting?! You can see how my photos up until now have been veeeeeeeery carefully selective about precisely how much they show of my home. Truth is, I am slightly embarrassed to show you the above photograph of our dining room in it's current state, but I'm throwing caution to the wind here and hoping you won't think too badly of me.

In my mind you know I live in a light, spacious, warm, appealing family home. A pleasure wherever you look, calm and serene vistas of sunlight-filled lovliness. But the reality you see is a little different. The reality is that for one thing I am a grade A hoarder, a messy, unorganised individual and the rest of my family tends to follow in my footsteps. And for another thing, we are in the middle of trying to deal with a serious lack of storage around here, trying to find a way to deal with all the accumulated stuff of daily family life which simply has nowhere to go. We are living amongst dangerously teetering piles of books, magazines, catalogues, craft materials, colouring books, stationary, crochet, documents, files, directories, bills, letters, photographs, wrapping paper, writing paper, leaflets.
Some sort of method is needed in here to keep dangerous piles under control, in other words Shelves and Cupboards. One thing about houses with fireplaces, the alcoves either side of the chimney breast are taylor-made for built in storage solutions.

When in need of interior inspiration for just such intended storage solutions I turn to my collection of magazines (in a huge, teetering pile, naturally). I spend a whole weekend dragging them around, rifling through the pages in search of pictures of shelving. I snippety snip pictures out and study them intently, show them to my rather disinterested other half. And gradually over the course of a week or two, we come up with a design for our alcoves. Good size cupboards at the bottom, strong shelves to hold books and pretty things above. A bit of beading on the doors, pretty ceramic knobs, and maybe an arch over the top like that one there in the magazine. And painted white, yes lets paint it white and make it look all light and bright and wonderful.

I take the clippings to my father-in-law, the man who can do wonders with wood and scary tools. He has been champing at the bit for months, waiting for us to get our act together and ask for his assistance but not wanting to rush us or interfere (wonderful man that he is). He loves nothing better than a project on the go, some woodworking and DIY, yes, he's our man for the job. Straight talking Yorkshire man that he is, he tells me upfront that he doesn't like the arch idea, but says he can do it if it's what I really want, and I say yes pleeeease, its what i really want. We study the magazine clippings some more and make pencil sketches on bits of paper, do some measuring. Wood is brought in and a temporary workshop set up in the cellar.
Work eventually gets underway and I am drafted in for frequent quality control ("ooo you're a fussy-britches" he says when I tell him it's not quite level/smooth enough/high enough). I'm consulted on shelf spacing and the such like, and then I get on with my job which is priming and painting. I don't mind painting really, I got me some new paint brushes and used a water based satin paint which is nice to paint with and easy to clean up. I'm a messy painter and get a lot of paint on me. I also frequently lose track of time and end up almost forgetting to collect the Little People from nursery/school on numerous occasions, dashing across town in my painty clothes and arriving hot and sweaty and well, painty. Then of course I have to stand amongst a group of well-groomed Mummies knowing full well that I look a total mess. But it's oh-so-worth-it because I know I am making progress.

And finally last Wednesday, ta-dah!!!! The first alcove was finished and I am mighty pleased with how it turned out. Time to put stuff on the shelves :: Oh, I did enjoy this bit, yes I really, really did! My lovely books which were still in their packing boxes in the cellar have now got a beautiful place to live.
Books, books, don't you just love 'em? This alcove mainly has our non-fiction books in :: gardening, wildlife, travel, he-books (war/universe) and she-books (domestic/interiors).The alcove on the other side when we finish it is going to have all our cookery books (we have a LOT of those), a small stereo and the fiction books. We decided that my craft/art books and his computer/geek books are all going to live in the attic because that is where we respectively do crafty/geeky things.

I do love my little collection of domestic books very much and have read every one of them cover to cover. See how when the roses are gone there is a cleverly left decent sized space for oooh maybe eleven more books? Which is the current length of my Amazon Wish List. A girl can dream.

My Home Sweet Home

We moved house at the end of November 2007 so it is still quite new to us. Its a mid terrace house on a slight hill, Victorian, built around the turn of the century. Its on four levels and has the lovely bits and pieces you would expect to find in a house this age. Deep skirting boards, beautiful coving and ceiling roses. Fireplaces, chimney breasts and alcoves. Wonky walls. Old stripped wooden doors.A basement and an Attic.

There's a dorma window in the roof and thats where I'm sitting right now, up in the Attic. If I look out of the window I can see right across our town to the hills and moors behind. This little room at the top of the house is going to become my studio and I can't tell you how excited I am about it!! I am not going to be able to hog it all though for myself though as our computer is up here which means a corner is being made into a home office. The room also has to miraculously become a Guest Bedroom when folk come to stay. But I love saying that I have an Attic Studio, makes me feel good.          

This is the second house we have owned. Our first house we lived in for 8 years and was a 1980's detached house on a small estate. We didn't love that house but we did enjoy our time there. We got married when we were there and  our two children were born. It was a good family house, but there was no real character, no real soul to it. So last year we decided for various reasons that the time was right for us to move, not only house but location too. So we are now 40miles away from our old house in a town that suits us much better. We are very much closer to family (8 miles instead of 50), and closer to countryside. We've moved from a small commuter village to a thriving, bustling old market town. And we are happy. My 5 year old son drew this little picture and presented it to me not long after we had moved. It tweaked my heart strings somewhat.

Its stressful buying and selling houses isn't it? We had a relatively easy time of it I think but I did hate that period when the solicitors are doing their thing and you are kind of in limbo with it all. During this time last Autumn I was in Barcelona on a girly weekend. I spotted these Gaudi-inspired number tiles and knew I had to buy them even though my friends all said I might jinx myself. They did helpfully point out that if we lost the house then I could always look for another house so long as it was a number 24, 42, 2 or 4.

I like the number 24, not sure why, but I think it just looks and sounds good. Number 24. My Home Sweet Home.