The Living Room

Our living room is looking pretty bare at the moment, as you can see from the pictures, but it has got great potential! The walls are white so it's a nice blank canvas to work with, and I like that it has floor boards instead of a carpet.  

There are two windows and a pair of patio doors into the conservatory, but despite this the room is still quite dark, because this side of the house is surrounded by a little woodland area, and the trees overhang the house. There are pro's and con's to that I guess; con -  being terrified the trees would fall onto our house the other day during the mega storm, pro - the lovely view and feeling of privacy we get, even though we live in a pretty built up area. 

Anyway, luckily the lamp in the room is super bright, so that helps to solve the darkness problem. The other thing will be to get less heavy curtains.

The sofas we currently have are both ancient, and I am looking forward to buying a proper, comfortable sofa soon.

We have decided that the colour scheme we are going to go for in this room is grey and yellow! I am quite excited to be tearing myself away from the mints and turquoises I have been obsessed with of late.
  
The plan is to get a nice grey sofa, and pepper it with pretty yellow cushions. I'd also like to get a single chair, perhaps in yellow fabric or a pattern.  I think I am going to try painting the fireplace grey, and I will definitely be getting new bright curtains, as the ones we have at the moment  are quite heavy, and make the room feel darker than it needs to be. I'm also dying to get a nice fluffy grey rug, as it is a little bit cold with no carpet at all. 

I am hoping I can pick up a coffe table on one of my dump trips, which I might paint to go with the colour scheme if it is a bit battered. I also want to find a wooden corner unit with drawers that the TV will fit on. I'd like to be able to hide our games and dvd's inside.

I found the glass display cabinet, pictured below, on one of my previous dump trips. I believe it cost me £8. It was a bit worse for wear at the time so I gave it a lick of paint to spruce it up a bit!  I'm not sure if it will fit with the new colour scheme, so I may have to re-pain it, or it might find its way to the spare bedroom.

Here is a little collage of things I have found which I think would look great together. I think we are going for a bit of a 60's vibe. I can't wait to start putting this into action!

Curtain Fabrics - John Lewis, Boyd Chair - Next, Walton Sofa & Footstool - Next, Alhede Rug - Ikea, Little Trees Cushion - John Lewis, Buttons Cushion - Next

What do you think? Are you a fan of grey and yellow? Have you seen any furniture or accessories about that would match my colour scheme? I'd love to know if you have!

Laura xXx

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A Tour Of Our New Kitchen

On friday we made our big move, it was a really exciting day!  I've finally finished unpacking boxes and our house is now starting to feel more like a home! 

My first priority was getting the kitchen sorted. It is my favourite room. Luckily the decoration was all already lovely, so all I really needed to do was a bit of cleaning and carefully choose where I was going to put all of our things!

I am so pleased with this Morphy Richards kettle and toaster set from Argos. I think the toaster looks a bit like a vintage radio! I love the colours and have decided that I am going to base the colour theme of the kitchen around them.  I'm going with cream, retro/pastel green, and  a hint of black to match the cooker and fridge.

I had some vouchers for Next from when I left work, so I bought a drainer to match my kettle and toaster! Because for some reason we didn't have a draining board fitted. But actually this looks much prettier don't you think?

I love my new 'Leisure' cooker.  It's so big! And it has an awesome hot plate which you can use to cook steaks or pancakes. I'm looking forward to trying that out!

We picked a black Beko fridge freezer from Argos to match the cooker, and I think it was a really good choice, great value compared to a lot that we had seen. (Even if they did deliver it a 7:10am!) I'm also loving the cream bin we chose from Dunelm Mill, if there is such a thing as loving a bin?

A lot of things in the kitchen are second hand or given to us from relatives. Our awesome John Lewis knife set used to belong to Chris' cousin, but he kindly passed them on to us when he bought himself a new set. He also gave us some great pots and pans.  My 'pasta' tin holding the utensils next to the cooker once belonged to my Auntie Margaret, as did the washing machine. The blue tea set in the picture above was bought from a charity shop, and the  (faux) vintage radio next to the sink was found at a carboot sale, which I then painted.

I didn't realise I had so many cookery books! It's lovely to be able to have them all out though.

I'm so glad this kitchen has enough room for a dining table, I think it makes it much more sociable! I bought my table from a car boot sale for £5! (It was the end of the day and the man didn't want to take it home again!) I painted the legs and sanded down the top. It is great because it extends so I can fit more people around it. You might remember that I made over the chairs in this post. The candlestick holders were given to me by my granny.

The light fittings were left from the previous owner, they are really pretty and they sure are bright!

My bureau came from the dump and was only £20. It just needed a lick of paint and then it was beautiful! It is definitely my favourite piece of furniture.  I wasn't quite sure where to put it, but it ended up in the kitchen and it may well stay there! I might make it my crafty corner as it is such a light room, and I will probably end up doing lots of crafts on the dining room table anyway. Maybe I just need a little table in the corner to put my sewing machine on.

I love that the windowsill  is big enough to use as a seat, and handy too since we don't have many chairs at the moment! You can't really tell from these pictures, but this window actually looks out onto a small woodland area at the front of the house. 

And here are some lovely cards we were sent! The lady who lived in the house before left us a card, a bottle of fizz and 2 bunches of flowers, it was a lovely welcome!

The only thing we need to do in terms of decoration is get some nice green/cream blinds to match my colour theme. We're also hoping to get a dishwasher soon, as my parents are buying a new one, so we can have their old one. I'm quite excited about that as it will mean less washing up, yay!

I am so pleased with my new kitchen, I think I will be spending a lot of time in here!

 Laura xXx

Disclaimer - I was gifted the Morphy Richards toaster and kettle set from Argos, but I genuinely love them to bits!

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