interior design

Decorating for Halloween a house filled with pumpkins!

Advice, interior design

I love Halloween.

I always have, the dressing up the food the colour palette! How often do orange and purple get pride of place on the shop shelves or even in your home.

Plastic mass production is getting me down a little so rather than go mad on fresh decorations I thought I would just use what I had and this year cook my pumpkins!

Do throw anything away

Well even though I am Mary Kondoing my home I still love a lot of stuff. The gin and books are always on my mantle piece.

As is the severed finger

Gav proposed to me with that finger so I will always have it pride of place!

I did buy the candles.

But knowing me I will just light the unscented ones and have them for years too! Plus when I do eventually use them up I will keep the containers.

The books I have had for years and the top one was a wedding gift and it’s a book of Japanese poems and it is beautiful.

The journey to the Centre of the earth was an event we went to with scala in London. We dressed up and the event was one of the best we have ever been to.

Reuse recycle

I am trying not to buy more crap. I do understand that tonnes of pumpkins get chucked out every year but at least they are biodegradable.

My pumpkins are ending up in my belly so I am busy looking forward to searching for recipes this weekend!

The dried flowers are from my wedding bouquet as is the Harry Potter wand and the Brockmans gin bottle.

I am not a goth by any means but I do love skulls, zombies and magic!

That’s what Halloween and Christmas are to me. They are magical!

I lit all the bottom white candles and had a really cosy evening with just me and Frank. Gavin was a way with friends.

I think our fireplace looks autumnal but also fairy elegant. The fairy lights and white candles were also from the wedding so they are also getting reused.

Everything else we have had for years!

Getting the sitting room ready for Halloween was so much fun but also it needed it. Our fireplace had become a dumping ground so I needed a good deep clean!

I thoroughly enjoyed styling it up. I still need to get my ravens from the attic and it will be perfect.

Halloween Plans

We will get treats in for the neighbourhood kids. The rule is if you have a pumpkin lit then they will knock on your door. We love it and have been doing it for 5 years now. The parents appreciate it as not every house does it so it’s a nice safe place!

Frank already has his costume! I know we are terrible but we don’t actually care and he doesn’t mind.

Do you do anything for Halloween?

mirror mirror on the walls: Bargain hunt in homeware

interior design

Oh I love a thrift and a bargain!

I have 3 mirrors in my home all bought in local charity shops or vintage stores and all 3 for £100.

My first mirror has gorgeous green filigree. It is so heavy and large. It is the first mirror I bought for my house and I love it. Two but this mirror in a proper shop it would be over £300 the craftsman ship in it is stunning. I paid £20 for it!

It hangs in the upstairs hall way and I don’t think it’s appreciated enough!

My second mirror my dad bought for me at a local antiques shop. It was £40 and fills up most of my bedroom fireplace. The frame is like beaten metal panels. I have never seen a mirror like it and I love it. Again it is super heavy and the craftsmanship is incredible.

It hangs in our bedroom and I love it.

My third and last mirror I have bought was in the salvation aren’t store I bought my first mirror, just 7 years later!!

She was £40 and from a cool pub/ theatre me and Gav still go to.

I love a bargain and my three mirrors are all a part of history. They are so beautiful I am glad they never ended up in a tip. There is nothing like finding a bargain.

Kerb appeal, falling in love

interior design

Day14 outside kerb appeal.

The first time I saw my house was on a viewing to see another house two roads down.

I causally said.

I could live here!

We loved the house a few roads down it was a Victorian end of terrace with room to improve. It was bigger than ours but the owners appears reluctant to sell and we couldn’t get hold of them.

That’s fate.

Then we found our house

I fell in love the first time I saw it listed.

I was trying to arrange a viewing on the Thursday but the estate agent said that it would be sold by Thursday.

He was right!

We bought it! Me and Gav were elated after we saw it. It had everything and was beautiful and liveable. He even left it in a good state.

The first time we stepped inside we knew. It had to be ours.

My four walls mean a lot to me. It’s the home that me nd Gav are building together.

Thank you house!

Nature inspired interior let’s talk about pineapples

french bulldog, interior design

Today’s blog is on nature inspired so I thought a trip down memory lane may be a good idea!

Not my memory but the Victorians in there interior architecture. Nature was inspired with every fleur de ly, every sconce and carpet runner pole.

They brought nature inside without being too obvious. And round my house is no different.

We have a ceiling Rose that is in desperate need of some TLC the paint needs to come off and a light perhaps installed.

In the hallway maybe my favourite room of the house we have a carpet runner in a plush green carpet. It feels lovely underfoot on our steep Victorian stairs.

The runners are brass. When we first looked around the house I declared look Gav they even have pineapples on them. The owner laughed at me and said if you buy the house you can call them pineapples if you like.

They are obvious not pineapples but thistles. Beautiful brass thistles that contrast beautifuly with the green carpet. They do look a wee bit like pineapples and it does remind me of the billy Connelly story where a Scottish man in Asian tattoo artist for Scotland forever and a big thistle on his back.

The man didn’t know what a thistle was so the Scotsman drew it out for him. And so the tattoo artist wrote Scotland forever and a giant pineapple on this back!

I love this story. I also love pineapples and tropical prints.

I upcycled this little chest of drawers and Becky bought me my gold pineapple! We also insulted most of Spain buy buying these sombreros on a trip to Barcelona!

Note to self sombrero are Mexican not Spanish!

As you can see I love colour, pineapples and prints and they are all Seychelles inspired!

Work it!!!

interior design

My little house really works for us. It’s cool all year round so even in the hottest summer that was last year my Victorian brick house was cool as a cucumber.

This means in winter it gets cold but it doesn’t take long with central heating to warm it up.

Plus we love a fire!

It very cold today but not too cold I can put the heating on! Nor the fire so I will have to settle for a few candles instead!

So confession time, I got confused with which day it was and wrote a whole cute little blog on pineapples and it turns out that is for tomorrow. Because I am following Instagram I noticed that the title was work it. So I am literally typing this right now.

So forgive me if this is a bit crazy!

So I had no time to think about what this title meant.

So I thought I should just write about how my little house works for us.

It does. We actually use every room. The dining room the least as we treat this more like a corridor to the kitchen which means it often becomes a dumping ground. It also has a ridiculously large amount of wedding boxes in there.

As well as all our booze ( and gin).

All the bedrooms get used I made a little art area for me to do some drawings. I am currently practicing my painting so that I can hand paint a few signs.

I made a little space for me.

There isn’t a room that doesn’t work for us! We have a lovely little house and sometimes I think it looks after me a bit better than we look after it!

Sofa so good…… DFS issues

interior design

So this is an old picture of when Manny was still with us so it’s going up! Gone but not forgotten kitty!

We fell in love with a sofa from John Lewis. It was gorgeous battered leather in a beautiful old tan colour. It would look good in an old house or a new one!

Then we read all the reviews.

Although it was a gorgeous comfy couch and every one loved it! The back pillows constantly fell down and it had to be straightened every night. The complaints on this were endless.

So we looked elsewhere.

A DFS sofa

The interior snob in my hadn’t even considered DSF. But we went and had a look and found this battered tan couch that we fell in love with. It probably is too big for the room but we love it. We wanted an arm chair to match but that really was too big.

We had our exchange date in hand and they said it would take 2 months to make. So we signed for it.

They made it in a month and then constantly harassed me to take it even though we hadn’t moved in yet. I was living in Kingston with my friend and vomiting to Hampstead every day.

They suggested that I just get it sent to a friends?

Yes good idea DSF! You said two months we exchanged in 2 more weeks and even though we explained this I was still harassed with phone calls all the time.

It was delivered 1 hour after we moved in and we love it.

It fairly hardy and has survived two fur babies. countless hungover mornings and becoming my laze inducing best friend. Some days I don’t want to leave it!

Some night I think I could just shut my eyes!

Cushions

I live a cushion Gav actually loves them too. I like mix and match some are from homesense, some next and a few from Primark! This is our cozy space and I love it!

Oh and the Prints are Joe Wilson again!

Old or New in interior design?

interior design

For me it will always be old when it comes to furniture I like to hunt through antique shops and charity shops.

The things you can find are sinply marvellous. Also it suits the house. We have a Victorian terrace so older pieces suit it. This doesn’t mean that I only have old furniture in my house. Definitely not. Our bed was brand knew and so was the sofa.

When choosing them we went for the feel of them rather than the look. They are our most used items of furniture both super comfortable and suit our lifestyle.

The dining room furniture is a mixture of old and new.

Yes those are lightsabers

Our wine rack is a an old champagne holder that they used to store and turn the champagne on. Our Booze cabinet is a Victorian display cabinet by sister bought in Edinburgh for £20 and now lives pride of place in the dining room.

Poubelle diving

We have two clocks in the dining room. Both thrown out. Gav found one and I found the other. The wooden one is an old french station clock that was thrown away at a brocante because they lost the key. I search high and low for a key and then Gavs grandad kindly took on the challenge and within a few weeks found a key.

It is so loud we rarely charge it up but it works really well and is a beautiful clock.

Our dining room furniture was bought with the house and I love the table but the chairs are leather look and not my cup of tea. I dreamed of a Monica style set up with mismatch chairs and different colours.

We don’t believe in replacing something unless is broken or we don’t use it. We don’t want to waste money or fill up the land fill so these very comfortable ugly chairs will remain in my home until they fall apart!

I also have 3 amazing mirrors in my house but i will save that story for another day!