Conversation Pieces

First, some good news: we sold our old flat.
Which is such a relief I can’t tell you.

But it has caused a slight problem* as…

I now have all my prints and art from both flats.

So this weekend, inspired by the following gorgeous displays,
I’m going to have a go at grouping some of our pictures.

(If you hear a loud yelp in Edinburgh,
it’ll be me hitting my thumb with the hammer.)

How gorgeous is this display? I love that isak print!

Amazing colours… in this pop-up shop.

Love the idea of using trouser hangers.

I’ve tried this with bulldog clips in the past but we obviously
have the heating on too much… as the prints started to curl up!

I also adore this clipboard idea…

Love this staircase display…

Yes, I have spotted it has maps and globes in it!

And a super cute staircase wall display by the seventy tree.

I love the blackboard speech bubble. So clever.

I was extremely lucky to recently win one of her
gorgeous bear prints – another one for the display!

Ok, now where did I put that hammer…

****

1. nicoletter via pinterest 2. Kate Spade via life style etc
3. apartment therapy via pinterest 4. smile and wave
5. design sponge 6. seventy tree 7. seventy tree shop

*when I said ‘slight problem’
I may have been exaggerating!

I have never wanted to live in a house. I like flats.
I like being up high (I think that’s my inner cat.)

But every time I see a set of beautifully painted stairs,
it really makes me wish we had some. (Yes I am strange!)

Always loved these stairs decorated by Helen from the Living Etc forum.
(I actually bought a version of this Orla Kiely wallpaper for our bedroom.)

Love the different patterns… oh yes, and they’re yellow!

Simpler than the first ‘wordy’ one… I think the steps
should also say ‘come on down’ for the way back down.

Love this… I can’t imagine how long it would take to paint!

Perhaps I should paint my building’s communal stairs instead?
Just start graduating the colour from my yellow door down!

Happy Friday everyone! xx

****

1. the cherry blossom girl 2. design sponge 3. painter girl
4. say yes to hoboken 5. the haystack needle 6. the townhouse

It’s Sunday. The alleged day of rest… and I’m blinking tired.

Right now I’m blaming the workmen who have been hammering, drilling and sawing since 9am this morning. They’re renovating a flat two below mine and the noise is unreal.

They’ve been at for 3 weeks solid. Every day. Monday to Sunday.

Some days they like to start at 8am just for kicks.

So inspired by those ‘lovely’ dusty fellows below,
here’s some things for a sleepy Sunday:

Actually a subliminal print for babies… but it’s working on me too!

I would love this cute tache jumper to snooze in…

I probably don’t need to explain this photo do I?

This embroidered money pillow would be good to snuggle into.

Isn’t this bunting perfect for a sleepy day?

Maybe it’s time for a cat nap… if I can find some ear plugs!

A few weeks ago myself, the OH and our grey ninja cat had a rather odd morning. A lovely reporter and a very nice photographer came round to our old flat and asked us lots of questions and took lots of pictures.

(The fox-owl-cat stayed at home as she gets scared of strangers and would have just hid under the duvet the whole time!)

I’d been a bit nervous about it but the reporter Fiona was so amiable that chatting away to her about our renovations was great fun… the OH even compared it to free therapy!

Then last weekend the OH got up early to go and get the Scotland on Sunday… while I, still in my pjs, did some pacing in the flat.

But I needn’t have worried, the feature is lovely, the pictures are great (even if I am smirking in them!) and as the OH pointed out it will be a very nice thing to keep for when we’re older. He’s imagining us both in our Parker Knolls with our big adventure book I think (the film ‘UP’ might have had a lasting effect on him!).

So if you fancy reading the interview, just click here to download the pdf.

Hope you all like it x

On the 17th of July, two bright-eyed , bushy-tailed shiny little souls started building a kitchen.

Like all adventurers setting off on a voyage of discovery, they were nervous but hopeful.

Little did they realise that a month from that fateful date they still wouldn’t be finished. This is their story…

Ok, so that’s a tad dramatic… but a month! It’s been a month already? Oh bugger!

I guess we’ve made lots of progress for people who’ve been fitting this in around work, a holiday, more work, getting another flat ready for selling and whatever else we’e been up.

First of all, we’ve made and put up all the cabinets. We’ve installed (with a bit of help from an electrician friend) the oven and induction hob. We have lights were there were none before. There’s new plugs, a new extractor fan, a new fridge and a new freezer. And a heck of a lot of dust!

(This is our new oven… I like how he looks like he’s smiling. But I like that he cooks our food even more!)

BUT… the worktop isn’t arriving until the middle of September so we can’t put the flooring down until after then. Bummer.

And we’ve had to enlist help building our kitchen island. We were pretty confident we could build this ourselves… until we realised that as a kitchen island is a non-standard thing, you don’t get any instructions for it. At all. Ikea just give you some huge lengths of end panels and that’s it. Try as we might we’ve not been able to make sense of how those end panels are meant to translate into an island. So we’ve got a joiner round to quote for it but he can’t do the work until 2 weeks from now. Drat.

There’s also a 30cm wide space on one side that we can’t decide what to do with. Ikea don’t have a wall cabinet in that size with our door. We had thought of getting a corner type shelf thing but went off the idea.

So any suggestions for what to do with the space would be gratefully received. I’ve been thinking of using it for something statementy but I’ve no idea what yet.

Other things we haven’t decided what to do with yet include our Superman splashback that we had for the sink… He’s about 120cm wide but the wall space on the sink side is now 210cm so he doesn’t quite work anymore – but we’ve got used to him moodily staring at our dirty dishes so if we can figure out a way to keep him, we will.

However there have been some rather joyful discoveries of having a proper kitchen (or at least proper kitchen cabinets) for the first time in nearly 2 years… I now have a little drawer just for my tea!

Yes, it’s a bit indulgent but by god I do love my tea! It’s also been great to put all our things on shelves again. Strange how something so simple can feel like such a huge step! The heart mugs are ones the OH made me as a present back in 2004, while the happy rainbow cup was one I found for him in a charity shop. (Yes, his real name isn’t actually OH!)

It’s also been so nice to rediscover some things that have been packed away for aaaaaaaaages… like my babycham glasses. (Can you tell I have a habit of collecting things?)

Of course our diy hasn’t been limited to just the kitchen (because we’re crazy like that)… we also put up our Mini Moderns wallpaper in the hall.

It’s now one of the first things you see when you come into our flat… and it just makes me feel ridiculously happy. (Badgers to do that to me for some reason!)

However two members of our household have not been such fans of the month-long diy-athon…

Grey ninja suit cat has been giving us this look a lot… we translate this as I command you to stop drilling, hammering, painting etc and pay attention to me!

While our owl-fox cat – who has a more nervous disposition (she freaks out and hides when anyone rings the doorbell) – has taken to her bed.

Wait, did I say her bed? I meant, our bed. (Why do cats act like they own everything and somehow convince you that they do too?)

We expect a full recovery from her sometime mid-September… around the same time we think we’ll have a finished kitchen.

If it’s not finished by then, I may take to my bed too!

So we’ve built the kitchen cabinets, we’ve ordered the worktop (not being delivered until September unfortunately) and now we’re thinking tiles…

Originally we (well, me) had been thinking about getting mirror splashbacks to maximise the light in the kitchen – but having decided on a white worktop with white cabinets, I’m thinking mirror might look a bit stark. So we looked at some coloured splashbacks and we just weren’t that wowed… They seem more modern than tiles, more streamlined etc but somehow less personal.

Which now means we’re on the hunt for cool tiles that would suit a white kitchen that will have a grey with dots floor and pink jelly wallpaper… um…

One of our thoughts was to buy plain white tiles and then get a few patterned/screenprinted ones to mix in among them. Kind of like Lulu Guinness’ kitchen (via here) but less full on…

Here’s what I’ve come across so far in my tile hunting so far:

This Punk Doily tile by Kiss Her is the right colour for going with the jellies… it also reminds me of my friend’s wedding!

We could spell out any word with these circus tiles by Kiss Her … though I think deciding what those words should be would be a hard task.

Which would be the same problem with these Big Tomato tiles (spotted via Home Shopping Spy). Our favourite is the Dalek… anyone who saw the ‘would you like a cup of tea?’ episode of Dr Who will understand why we think we need this in our kitchen!

We also came across these rather lovely Wellbeck cutlery tiles (also via Home Shopping Spy)…

They do a jellies one too which would either look great with our Thornback and Peel wallpaper or be jelly overkill!

A further look at their range revealed Wellbeck also do these gorgeous tiles… Now I’m not a very flowery girl but how awesome do these look? I love the mix of the white tiles and the patterned ones (especially the gold hearts).

Then in amongst all this tile thinking, we remembered we already own this Rob Ryan tile (ours is in red) and thought well, we could maybe just buy a few more of his tiles…

But I’m not sure I could cope with these buttony ones… they remind me of Coraline too much!

So we gave up on that theory. (One Rob Ryan tile turns out to be enough for us!) Anyway, from there, I ended up on Design Sponge where I spotted these lovely tiles by Xenia Taler…

A quick trip over to her site revealed these cute as hell tiles… I think the caterpillar is my favourite but he’s maybe a bit of an odd choice considering how much else we have going on in the kitchen. (The OH now wants owl tiles though!)

After all the searching, I remembered seeing these teacup tiles a few years ago…

They would be very handy but wouldn’t exactly break up an all white kitchen!

So basically after all that I’m no further on deciding tiles… though I did come across a clock that I now want!

Anyone any suggestions for cool tiles?

I’m half beginning to think we should make some ourselves

Oh my… India Knight has just posted some first look pics of Anthropologie. I just had to share my favourite of her pics – the chandelier, the narwhal, those goose measuring cups (see le petit oiseau for the very same cups that she found in a car boot sale!) and the button light shade. Ooooh… swoon!

All you Londoners will have to make me very jealous and confirm just how wonderful it is until I can make it down to London! (It might be a bit much to demand they open a second shop up in Scotland already!)

It’s August in Edinburgh which can only mean one thing… that there are not enough hours in the day. Yup, this is the time of year when it seems like the whole world descends on Edinburgh (more specifically on Princess Street and the Royal Mile) and seems to just loiter there… It can only be Festival time.

Which is half great and half annoying. You see it becomes impossible to get anything done in August when you live in this city. Bus and car journeys now take at least 20 mins longer than they should, you can’t get in to any restaurants or cafes without queueing for an inordinate amount of time, and you feel a sudden need to stay out until 5.30am just because the clubs are open until then.

Which is as I said great but also annoying… partly because every year you convince yourself that it’s not going to be like the year before. You are going to make wiser choices about what shows you see – either see someone you know you will love or see some random whose ticket price is less than £5 (everybody wins that way). You’re not going to go out, see 5 shows in one night (meaning they all blur into one… especially if you go to the one that only starts at midnight) and spend more money than you do at Christmas.

Except you do. Or I do. And I really should know better… not only because I’m saving for a kitchen (and meant to be finishing my bathroom!) but because I used to work at the Festival (both behind the scenes and as a reviewer). But hey isn’t this what life is all about… learning lessons just so you can forget them and learn them all over again?

Anyway, you’re probably wondering where on earth this random rant of sorts is going (I’m blaming Dylan Moran for this outburst as I just left his show… and he was very shouty)… Basically it’s my rather long-winded way of explaining that I’m posting on some random things below because I’m too festivaled out to finish any of the posts I’ve been meaning to post. So here is some random lovely things I’ve bookmarked recently (or recently-ish) they have no theme other than their general niceness… I suspect all my August posts might be more of the same!

1. Print via Kick Can and Conkers
Has it been raining every day where you are? It’s driving me nuts as copious amounts of rain plus riding home on a bicycle do not make a good combo. My poor bike has spent many a night at my office because the weather has been so crud lately. Don’t you just love the expression on the cloud’s face here?

2. Kid’s wallpaper via A Cup of Jo
It’s my little sis’s birthday next month so I get to do our annual mad September trip down to London… amongst other things it involves not sleeping and always walking further than you meant to. Whenever I’m in London there seems to be a lot less buses and taxis involved than there are in this cute wallpaper!

3. 50s kitchen cabinet via My Black Book
So we’ve painted the bathroom (one coat so far) and still have some tiling and wallpapering to do but we’re not far off being finished, so naturally our thoughts have turned to our next project: gettting a kitchen. I can honestly say that if I managed to acquire this 50s cabinet I would happily design my whole kitchen around it. Why is it just so darn oooh? (The other half even likes it as he thinks it looks like a kitchen transformer!)

4. Christine Martinez of Lama design‘s home via Milk Tooth’s Rain
Talking of oooh, how gorgeous is this lamp? I mean seriously it’s so beautiful. And so yellow.

In fact, a lot of Christine Martinez’s home is pretty yellow…

And of course only the coolest people have a yellow bed…

Anyway, that’s enough randomness from me for one day. I’m off to my yellow bed. Only 4 more working day until I’m on holiday, which means I’ll be doing even more festivally stuff! Yup, no lessons learned here!