Attic24

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?!

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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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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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.

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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)
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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.