Saturday 21 December 2013

Decking the halls

We put our Christmas tree up this week, how late are we?? I know everyone has already done the whole 'look at our tree' thing but here is ours. Apologies for the rubbish photos but the camera doesn't do low light very well and I didn't want to put the flash on so you could see the lights...I am really not a photographer!
I don't have a tree skirt or anything to cover the base as I will soon be putting presents under there to cover it.
It isn't stylish or modern or different. It doesn't have a colour scheme other than 'christmassy' colours like red, gold and silver. Basically it looks like Christmas threw up on our tree. I love it.
I love the family traditions of Christmas and I like quite a traditional looking tree (i.e. traditional to us like the trees we had as kids used to look) we have quite a mish mash of decorations that we have collected along the way and I make it my mission to use all of the decorations.
I like these wooden figurine ones, they were from paperchase a few years back and I had some similar as a child.
The rest are all baubles and tinsel bought from either supermarkets or DIY stores in packs.
We bought this owl one from the Christmas market the other week as we have a random private joke about a bit from Phone Shop where they say 'A Owl? A owl bruv'.
I don't really do too much other than the tree as we live in a smallish flat so I don't want to crowd it but I did throw some tinsel over the picture frames and put up my usual few sentimental ornaments and little touches.


We don't have a fireplace so don't have stockings (we have only had fireplaces in half the places we have lived) and I don't have a mantel to dress. The only other place so far to get decorated is the table, I couldn't find anywhere to hang the wreath so I used it on the table. The snowman and santa salt and pepper shakers are from Avon years back when we had family round for Christmas dinner the first  (and so far only) time at our last house.


Now I'm off to have a massive present wrapping session while listening to carols and maybe having a cheeky glass of wine!

That's probably about it from me here before Christmas, working Monday and Tuesday and then looking forward to some family time. I hope you all have a lovely Christmas however you are spending it xx

Friday 13 December 2013

Friday Inspiration

Nice but busy week for us this week, we went to the Christmas market in Birmingham on Tuesday for a festive day out and it was a lot of fun. I seem to have done my knee in so no running and not great climbing this week, I'm hoping it will be better soon. I think it's just a muscle strain so going to take it easy for a few days and try some swimming to gently mobilise it.

Anyway other than my poor battered body not much gong on here...hoping to get the Christmas tree up this weekend as Tom as been a Grinch and not let me put it up yet :)

I have been pinning loads recently, so you can find loads more inspiration on my pinterest page.

Please can I spend the weekend here instead of Christmas shopping?
This is my dream kitchen. It has an island, hardwood floors, gorgeous cabinets and a lovely wall colour. I'm also and loving the rug, I'm debating a rug for our kitchen to provide a bit of warmth and colour...
Another living room trunk, I am totally obsessed! I am forever looking out for them but am yet to find one that is the right shape and size with a flat top (a lot seem to be domed, no good for use as a table)...I will find the one eventually!

Have a lovely weekend everyone, we have a Christmas party to go to and my brother and cousins joint 21st Birthday party so we will be having a very merry weekend!

Monday 9 December 2013

Nearly There!

I did the second to last room in the big deluttering challenge last weekend, the kitchen. This is how it looked before.
This room wasn't really too cluttered but since we moved in we've not really been using some of the space in the best way. For example the space on top of the microwave had become a bit of a mess as it was often where we just put larger food items due to not having enough cupboard space.
So I cleared it off, threw away the crisps and crackers as they were out of date, and put my porridge oats up there in their place. This jar stays down from the cabinet top as I use it every day (the others have flour etc in which I don't use daily) and I don't want to have to climb the cabinets every morning to make breakfast! I got a box out for stuff to go to the charity/car boot pile but actually everything ended up in the bin liner for the tip, so Minty claimed the box as her fort for the day.
It was already looking better, but still there was too much out on the counters in here for my liking meaning cooking can get a bit frustrating due to lack of counter space. This is our largest cupboard, and it is just full of random stuff.
 The pots and pans were all in this smaller cupboard next to the oven
So I dragged it all out and swapped them around. Now the 'random kitchen stuff' cupboard is the smaller one, and the cookware, tupperware and tea towels are in the larger one. Much more sensible. The carrier bags are all in the hallway now, as I figure if they are near the front door they are more likely to get reused than if they're hidden under the sink.


The next to do was food, we had a bigger kitchen in our last house but now only have one cupboard for food so we need to get better at buying less and only what we will eat straight away. I got all the food out of here and sorted through it.

After getting rid of all the out of date things and reorganising the cupboard I was able to get more things into the food cupboard, like oils and spices, so there is less on the counter and I could move the toaster round and also fit a chopping board in front of it.

 This is the out of date stuff. We have out of date tinned goods, how embarrassing!
We have gained a usable counter space!
It's amazing what a couple of hours and a bin liner can free up, we now have more cupboard space and another work surface. 
I will get a few more small jars when I'm next at The Range as I want to move some more of the dried stuff like couscous up to the top of the cabinet out of the cupboard, and there is room for another row of smaller jars behind the big ones. Other than that now it's nice and clear I'd like to replace some stuff in there like the bread bin and canisters, and bring in some more colour and interest as it looks pretty boring.


Also observant people might notice that the view out of the window looks different, the garden is being redone so the landlords part of it now looks like this.
I will ask if I can take some snaps when it's done but it is certainly more open and they now have a nice spiral staircase in up to their back door instead of the old wooden stairs they had before. We are hoping this will mean more sun into our little part of the garden in the summer and it certainly feels a lot more spacious out there. Our part looks like a dump though as we had to move all our pots into the centre to let them do the work so I need to spend a few hours out there! Another thing for the to do list...

Saturday 7 December 2013

Weekend Inspiration

OK so back to Saturday for this post, I think I might just call it weekend inspiration from now on and post on either day! I used to be able to do this on a Friday because I didn't have a lot on after work most days, I finish earlier than Tom so I used the in between time to write my posts as if we had evening plans they wouldn't be until a few hours after I got home from work.  However now I'm climbing 3 times a week and in the last week I've also completed week of the couch to 5K challenge so have been running 3 days as well.

Upsides are I'm feeling great and my climbing is really coming along in the boulder room. I even went up on the walls one day last week, very briefly and didn't make it to the top but I didn't cry or pass out so that's a bonus. I also am really proud of myself for starting up running and actually kind of enjoying it (OK enjoying might be too strong, I don't hate it and I feel good afterwards). Downside is I have stuff to do 6 out of 7 nights of the week, so I'm kind of slow with projects and the flat looks terrible! I'm hoping to find a bit of balance eventually as this is the first week I've been running as well as climbing so eventually I should manage to fit it in around the rest of my life.

However there is ALWAYS time for Pinterest (mainly on the bus to work on my phone) so the inspiration just keeps on coming...and while a lot of it the last week has been wedding, travel and cute animals there is always home inspiration in there.

These fairy lights are pretty cute for a teenagers bedroom, but I really love the bedding and the blanket it just looks so snug
This mint coffee table and the frame arrangement above really drew me in, this is kind of how I want our living room to look, mainly white and neutral but with fun little colour accents. Click on the photo for the rest of the house tour as the rest of the house is also gorgeous!
This look is probably a little bold for me to use in our flat (I am envious of that window!) but the geometric rug and the sculptural coffee table paired with the dark accessories definitely make an impact!

Hope you are all having a lovely weekend so far, the advantage of my little clean up last night is that I don't have much housework to do today and I will write the post on the kitchen that I promised you last week!