Saturday 29 March 2014

Gower holiday: part one

We're just back from another amazing holiday on the Gower coast. We first went back in October 2013 and fell in love with the stunning coastline. This time we stayed at Langland Bay, in a beautiful cottage overlooking the sea. It was amazing watching the weather change over the coastline & hearing the waves crashing onto the shore at night.

We packed lots of stuff into our four day holiday: digging on the beach, fishing with nets in rock pools, a coastal footpath walk, visited Clyne Gardens in Swansea, climbed a tower, drank hot chocolate in the sun & collected special rocks on the beach.

We did so many things I'm going to split the photos over two blog posts! These photos are of Langland Bay & our fun on the beach.

I'm linking up with the lovely Country Kids at Coombe Mill for this blog post

Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall

Wednesday 19 March 2014

The Great Interior Design Challenge

I've won a prize! After taking part in a Twitter competition, my copy of the "The Great Interior Design Challenge" arrived last week. A few weeks ago I saw a tweet posted by @HabitatUK offering a copy of the #GIDC book if you could correctly identify the sofa featured on the front cover. I had a look through the

Habitat website (no great chore, I could look at it for quite some hours) and found the right sofa & posted my answer. I didn't think anymore about it & was extremely pleased to get an email saying that I'd won.

I really enjoyed the series and it has inspired me to be more adventurous and stamp a more individual feel on our home. It was also a great lesson in transforming a room on a very tight budget. Most people usually think "expensive" when they think of interior design, but the #GIDC series proved that with a bit of imagination & elbow grease, you can have contemporary and interesting design for minimal expenditure.

The book couldn't have arrived at a better time for us. We've lived in our house for just over a year & we've been redecorating virtually every room since we moved in. We've finally made a start on the room I was dreading the most...the kitchen. We've lived with the previous owners grubby, wonky & very dark tiles for the past fifteen months. It was time for them to go. The tiler who removed the old tiles said it was the worst tiling job he'd ever seen...so we were glad to see the back of them. The previous owner had tiled all the way to the ceiling and used a combination of lopsided white tiles above jet black tiles at the bottom. We don't have a big kitchen and the black tiles sucked all the light our of the room.

We've had fun choosing some beautiful new tiles. Whilst we loved the vivid yellow of the Mexican rustic wall tiles, we decided to go with a glossy sea green colour. I can't wait to see them on the wall...although bare walls are an improvement on the tiles that were there before.

I've already read the chapter on sanding wood floors in the #GIDC book and I'm hoping to make a start on the dining room and conservatory floors once the weather warms up & we can have some windows open. It looks like incredibly dusty work. We're toying with the idea of painting the floorboards white, but I think I prefer the warm tones of natural wood with a clear lacquer or varnish.

The #GIDC series also introduced me to chalk paint. Lots of the contestants used drab, second hand furniture and transformed it with a coat of paint. I am now a chalk paint convert & have painted an antique wardrobe. It now houses my vintage fabric collection out in the hallway. I've also bought a dresser to house my vintage china collection. Currently it is in the dining area, it remains unpainted whilst we complete the kitchen. But as soon as I get time, I will get the chalk paint out. At £46, it was a absolute bargain on Ebay. It just needs some TLC and it will look amazing.

I've also moved my computer down to the dining area next to the kitchen. This was partly out of necessity because my broadband signal wouldn't reach upstairs to my office. But, I'm happy with the way it looks and I'm going to hang a "Tiger Who Came to Tea" print on the wall above my desk. It is one of my daughter's favourite books and as I have aspirations to be a children's author, I hope it will inspire me every time I look up from the computer screen.

The Great Interior Design Challenge

Habitat

The Great Interior Design Challenge book

Tuesday 11 March 2014

Vintage Love: scrap bundles and fabric pieces

I'm having a fabric clear-out!

First up is a fab selection of vintage fabric scraps.

Perfect for patchwork, mixed media art, scrapbooking, crafting projects, collages, dolls clothes.

Beautiful, bright vintage fabrics with eye popping prints & colours.

Each bundle weighs over 170g and contains pieces in all shapes, sizes and colours, one is made up of orange tones and the other is in shades of blue and green.

A real treat for vintage fabric fans!

Bundle of vintage fabric scraps patchwork, scrapbook, sewing, orange tones

Bundle of vintage fabric scraps patchwork, scrapbook, sewing, blue tones

Next up is a large piece vintage abstract, crazy, wild print fabric in yellow, orange, black.

Perfect for dressmaking or other craft projects. Bold colour palettes, large scale abstract prints & ornate accents are all over the catwalk this season.

Large piece vintage abstract, crazy, wild print fabric in yellow, orange, black

I'm also selling two pieces of this funky chiffon/sheer fabric

In fab 70s colours of chocolate brown, sunset orange and bright yellow

Very disco, very Studio 54!

Vintage sheer chiffon floral tropical fabric in orange, yellow and brown over 2m

Tuesday 4 March 2014

Daffodils and rainy day activities

I haven't blogged for ages...we've all been poorly recently. My daughter had a temperature of 103 which is always scary, thankfully the paracetamol and ibuprofen kicked in and her fever calmed down. Turns out she had a nasty ear infection which has been resolved with antibiotics. I always find that illness knocks our day-to-day life out of shape for quite a while...particularly when I go down with same illness a few days later.

Currently my brain feels like a huge lump of cotton wool and I haven't had the energy or motivation to blog. But, when I became a Mum I soon realised that illness does not cut the mustard with children and you have to plough on even when you feel like crawling back into bed!

So we've been hand painting, cutting and sticking and admiring our daffodils planted back in Autumn.

Illness has meant we haven't ventured much further than our own back garden. But with the sun making an appearance and signs of Spring popping up here & there, it's one of the nicest places to be.

My daughter and I planted some bulbs back in September last year. They started to burst through the soil just before Christmas and are growing bigger everyday. Hopefully they will be flowering soon. I thing Spring bulbs are one of the most welcome sights after a horrible, wet Winter.

Weather and illness has dictated that we've spent a lot of time indoors recently. We've done lots of hand painting and getting the 'craft jar' out. Both activities involve lots of mess and fun, which we're big fans of in our house!

Hopefully we can stay lurgy-free for a while now and we'll be out and about more often...roll on Spring!

I'm linking up with the lovely Country Kids Linky at Coombe Mill

Country Kids from Coombe Mill Family Farm Holidays Cornwall

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