Summer fun in the garden!

Sometimes we just want to stay home, especially when it's been SO hot.  I just can't bear the thought of being stuck out in the sun somewhere or even getting into the roasting hot car before it cools down with the air-con.  Luckily we have a decent sized garden with a paddling pool and playhouse to keep the kids entertained and plenty of shade in the form of porches and brollies too!  Plus - free fun days at home are always good, we can't afford to be going out every day, especially when I'm barely ever organised enough to make packed lunches.

I took a few photos on one such day and I love them so I thought I'd share them here as a bit of inspiration and as a little intro to my revamped Bexphoto site too!

Of course, a hot day in the garden isn't complete without a Mini Twister or two (and a Nobbly Bobbly for me)!  The twins adore these treats and were more than happy to get up on their playhouse porch for me to capture them eating their lollies.  (Kalyan is looking exceptionally pale due to the usual Factor 50 Fight!  His is not rubbed in very well!)

Downstairs Loo - Before & After

It's been months since this room was finished and I took photos back in January but have only just gotten around to blogging it since I wrote about the plans and before photos here.  I adore the new wallpaper and I'm so glad we decided to splash out on the F&B Lotus pattern.  In the end though, we couldn't justify the cost of doing all the walls in such a small room so opted for just the back wall in paper and actually I'm so glad we did, it looks fab with the other walls in the dark grey background colour, Plummet.  The amazing Matt and his mum from MRJ Services did a fantastic job hanging the wallpaper and painting the room.

Going for gold - top tips for DIY spray painting!

The guest room is coming along nicely now, I've managed to get rid of all the furniture we no longer wanted, all donated to a local furniture charity shop.  It's a brilliant way to get rid of furniture you no longer want, saved us more wasted time trying to sell it ourselves and benefits the local hospice, plus they collect it free of charge, check out the Hospice in the Weald website.

Priya waving goodbye to the truck carrying away our old furniture.

As for the fun stuff, you may have noticed on Instagram that I've been going mad with the spray paint over Christmas.  I decided some gold touches with the Hague Blue walls in the room would look nice and started with this gorgeous hexagon mirror from Oliver Bonas.  I had hoped to get both the small and large sizes to hang together but they sold out of the larger one and although I found plenty of other ones, none were much larger in size to go with the small one.  In the end I opted for a circular one to hang with it and actually think it'll look nice having the two different shapes.  While on the Oliver Bonas website, I also found this gold edged tray which is perfect in the room.

Our Christmas Tree & other decorations 2017

Every year I've planned to post about our decorations and I don't think I've managed it once since having the twins!  I struggle to keep up with everything at this time of year and end up thinking I'll take the photos and write it ready for next year!  Happened once in 2015.  So I'm surprised at myself for getting this year's decorations photographed and on the blog before Christmas!

Cable & Cotton lights - Brighton store experience

If you love colour like I do, you must visit the Cable & Cotton shop in Brighton!  I already have a set of their lights in green and grey (our wedding colours) from 2011 but now they do LED ones and after seeing their window display for Brighton Pride, I knew we needed a new set for the twins' room in rainbow colours.  When Ma asked what she could get the twins for Christmas this year, I knew just the thing!  

Guest Room makeover plans - Home Inspiration in East Sussex

This post contains some affiliate links.

Our spare room has been largely left since we moved in.  It's well used as Nik's parent currently stay over every Sunday night to look after the twins while I work on Mondays, or when my parents visit from Malaysia or any other guests like when Gems and Aldo come to visit (and on the odd occasion of snoring/illnesses meaning Nik or I use it)!

I made a little collage which shows a few products I like (some of which I've already bought).

Top L-R: Human print - £28 - Violet & Thistle, "Stiffkey Blue" Paint - £43.50 - Farrow & Ball, 

Archie Table Lamp - £49 - M&S, Zzz LED Lightbox - £27.50 - John Lewis

Bottom L-R: Hexagon Gold Mirror - £25 Oliver Bonas, Irving Bedside Table - £29 - Asda, 

Designer's Guild "Quill" Wallpaper in Cobalt - £59 - John Lewis, 3 Cactus Ornaments - £39 - Love Frankie

Raindrop cushion - Pin It Do It & Tutorial

Well, here's a post I started writing in November 2014.  I'm sure you can imagine why that was such a busy month (what with the twins being born!) and it never got finished.  But, we have the return of #pinitdoit, I was reminded to finish this one and I recently shared a pic of the cushion on Instagram too.

Downstairs Loo Redesign

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It's a while since we updated anything in our house but there are quite a few things I'd like to do to it.  As our house was pretty much liveable when we moved in, we concentrated on one major thing (ripping down a wall), one fairly major thing (designing and preparing the twins' nursery), a quick redecoration and then all the minor stuff like organising our things, an obligatory Ikea trip, framing photos...

The thing is, although it was liveable and we did redecorate the main rooms (and even those are still a work in progress with quite a few temporary features like a bookcase I hate), we didn't really sort out any of the other rooms.

I'm starting small and doing the downstairs loo first.  Mainly because Nik and I had a look around Farrow & Ball in Tunbridge Wells recently and fell in love with a wall paper design.  Rather than looking for a wall paper for a room, we found a wall paper and had to think of where we might be able to put it!  We both agreed it would look fab in our WC along one side (as we think it would be too much on all the walls in such a small space) and would really spruce up a very plain room which is used a lot by both us and visitors.  It's also Kalyan's favourite place to wash his hands.

Bright prints for the twins' bedroom gallery wall

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You may remember the gallery wall I made above the twins' cots in their nursery.  I filled lots of white frames with various brightly coloured prints as well as a few of my maternity photos.

Photo by Laura Aziz {baby, picture this}

The Pink House - guest room before and after by Amy

I absolutely LOVE our first before & after peek inside Amy's amazing new house!  It's inspired me to want to sort out our mish-mash of a spare room soon.  I love what they've done with this space, so calm and stylish.  Over to Amy...

The room we decided to make our guest room had previously been the master bedroom.  It's got a lovely river view and great inbuilt storage but is on the corner with the road so we decided it was better for occasional rather than regular use.

The final result

You can't really tell from the before photos but the whole room, including the ceiling, was covered in woodchip, which was a real effort to remove!  And after we had removed it we were pretty scared the ceiling was going to fall in as it was covered in large cracks.  All of the plasterwork is lathe and plaster so it would have been a massive and very messy job to redo the ceiling so instead we elected to fill the cracks and paper it. One piece of advice for you all - papering ceilings is bloody hard work and WILL lead to arguments. 

BEFORE:

The ceiling:

We decided to go nautical in this room but we wanted it to maintain a high end look and not feel tacky or themey.  There were a few bits from our old flat we'd originally intended to go in here but have decided they don't quite fit.  James found this AMAZING Cole & Son wallpaper and that really set the tone for the rest of the room.  It's an original wallpaper pattern from the 1900's and is based on Hokusai's Great Wave which I'd studied at uni so it was perfect in lots of ways.  We decided to tie that through with other nods and added the Hokusai print and book.  We also decided to have a bit of fun with our ceiling ordeal and frame this vintage Puffin postcard.

AFTER:

We've still got a few bits still to do - I'm looking for a mirror for above the fireplace (I'd seen a lovely white wooden round one in The Range but it was too small) and once we've found one we will hang the frames currently on the mantle on the opposite wall. My uncle has also given us a lovely curvy old wooden chair that will go in the corner by the door and I'm trying to find a nice fabric to reupholster the seat pads that will go well with the wallpaper in a complementary clashing sort of way.  Overall though we are so pleased with this room and it has turned out exactly how we wanted it to, which makes all the blood sweat and tears worth it!

Where we shopped:

• The chest was left for us by the previous owners and we think was home made. 
• The fireplace and floorboards were both original features that we uncovered. 
• The blue wall is painted in B&Q Valspar Sea Swirl, the white is just Crown trade matt brilliant white, and the gloss is Wilkos own brand one coat brilliant white (which is ace!)
• The bedside tables were from ebay and also we added brass knobs from The Range to those and the cupboard doors which were just painted white.
• The bedside lamps and the glass ombre lightshade were both from Dunelm. 
• The white frames are from Poundland and the wooden ones were BHS.
• The bedspread was from Homescapes and the cushions are John Lewis and Primark.
• The bed is our old one from John Lewis bought in the sale a few years ago but with an ebay headboard.
• The wallpaper is Great Wave from Cole & Son.

The kitchen - plea for help! The Pink House by Amy

So as you will have seen from my last post, we are about to launch headfirst into some serious decorating! Usually the 2 of us have very similar taste on pretty much everything (lamps and light fittings being the notable exception) but we are really struggling to decide on how to style the kitchen. Luckily this is going to be pretty much the last room we do (living room and downstairs hall will probably be the last) so we’ve got plenty of time to decide what we want but I’m totally stuck. We have a completely blank space to play with as we’re relocating the kitchen so literally anything goes. Key features to take into consideration are a red brick fireplace (which I’m going to paint wash to a more natural brick colour and open up a bit to put a BRIGHT PINK range style cooker in), and some beams which are currently really dark but we’re going to strip back to a lighter wood.

My all time favourite kitchen style that I keep coming back to is modern white gloss units with wooden worktops but I’m really nervous about the wood because in my experience it marks and stains really easily, especially around the sink.  J is leaning more towards a shabby chic country kitchen style but I don’t feel as though that fits with our overall style. Other styles we both like are either a really modern industrial type vibe which I like but worry I’d get bored of, or brightly coloured units with a light stone worktop which are really fresh and funky but might look a bit garish with our brightly coloured appliances and utensils?

I’d honestly welcome any thoughts and also any top tips on kitchen shopping as it’s our first time!

Amy

Ruby Wedding- the flowers, the venue and the decor - Anniversary Inspiration by Bex

As you know, I LOVE planning and decorating events.  When our parents' 40th anniversary was coming up, we made sure we could get both sets in the same city at the same time in order to throw them a joint party.  Not as easy as it sounds with my parents living in Malaysia and Nik's in London but given the awesome coincidence of them having married on the exact same day all those years ago, we made sure we planned it nice and early and last Sunday, we had a wonderful day of celebrations all together.

We opted for London as we thought it would be the easiest place for our relative to get to rather than somewhere near us in Sussex.  Lots of Nik's family are in London anyway but my family up north would find it much easier to either fly there or get the train.  I wanted somewhere near the in-laws place to make it easier for me to get there to make arrangements etc. and it also meant we could invite everyone back after for cake and bubbly.  I recruited Gemma as my local London expert (she lives near my in-laws) and she gave me a great list of potential venues.

In the end we plumped for Bianco 43, a beautiful bright looking Italian restaurant, it's all white washed so the perfect blank canvas.  They were very helpful planning with me over email about menus and what exactly we needed for the event.  Not only that but they let me turn up early, two hours before they were open on the day to set up and let us take advantage of their birthday party offer of a free glass of fizz for all our guests!  I went to visit the venue the evening before the party and was delighted to see where they planned to have us, with two long tables below the mezzanine which meant I could hang my banner, garland and photos!

Of course the first thing I do when planning anything is to make a Pinterest board, imagine if I'd had Pinterest when I was getting married!  I had to keep this one secret as Mum's on Pinterest but here are a few of the flower inspiration images I saved:

I wanted to have clusters of little vases along the centre of the tables, filled with ruby colours, lots of greenery and a few white touches.  I had hoped to get some deep red Peonies, Dahlias and Ranunculus among other things.  I thought these were all in season in the summer and made plans to head to the famous Columbia Road flower market before the event as the anniversary was on a Sunday.  I headed off bright and early to arrive when it opened at 8am and found some free parking nearby.  Luckily it was still pretty quiet so I had a lovely time wandering up and down exploring what was on offer.

Sadly it turns out that Peonies had just finished and Dahlias were just starting so no-one had any of either.  There was actually a lack of red in general, other than roses.  Luckily I found some of my favourites, Celosia in the deep ruby colour (they also come in orange and green, I actually had green ones in my wedding bouquet) as well as some gorgeous fluffy dark pink Astilbe and another pink one with teenie flowers on each stem which I don't remember the name of (update: I saw these in a florist today and asked, they're called Veronicas).  I had already bought some gorgeous dark red roses from a supermarket too.  As there weren't as many large red blooms as I hoped, I did buy a few more white than I planned, some of my other favourites - Freesias and Lisianthus with a little bit of baby's breath and some greenery and again some others like the pink ones with lots of little flowers which I can't remember the name of.  I wanted to make sure I had enough and spent £50 plus the roses.

Off I went with my armful of flowers (and a bag full of a few extra vases I did some great haggling for in a junk shop) and Nik came with me to the venue to get everything set up.  Most of the vases were also from our wedding, I'd collected a few cut glass bud vases from various charity shops and had a few little jars left over from our jam wedding favours.  I also managed to sneak a couple of small vases out of MIL's house that morning too!

In addition to the flowers, I had made a pom pom garland, a photo banner and had painted a 40 and RUBY letters to add to the decor as well as a little lovely company letter banner to spell out Happy 40th Anniversary.  I made some tissue paper poms to hang back at the house as well and had some framed wedding pictures of both sets of parents (the same frames I used to display them at our own wedding).  I have to say, I am really pleased with how everything looked in the end, especially the flowers!  (I often picture ideas in my head but have trouble executing them to the same perfectionist standard I stupidly set myself but I was SO happy with how the floral arrangements turned out, exactly as I wanted!)

As you can imagine, I delegated childcare to Granny & Grampy while I painted and glittered little hearts, cut ribbons, fluffed tissue paper and trotted off to the flower market.  The twins got some special extra time with their grandparents while I got to enjoy secretive crafting in the garage!

I'll share the actual event photos soon and show you how we re-arranged all the decor back at the house with the cake (and recipe)!