Eggy - My Sunday Photo

Scrambled eggs on Saturday (or as Priya calls it, Eggy).  With a tiny bit of shell!  Extra calcium 😉

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!

Into Mills 20% discount code

As promised to those of you who didn't win our recent giveaway of Into Mill's gorgeous mugs.  Sally has kindly offered Olive Dragonfly readers a whopping 20% off! 

Photos by www.bexphoto.com

Pink house kitchen / dining before & after

Before:

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

Bex's Kitchen - Before & After

by Bex

I've finally managed to take some photos of our kitchen as it is now.  I would say now it's finished but there's still a bit of work we would like done to make it perfect (or as perfect as can be without a whole new kitchen!).  The main thing is, now the wall has been opened up into the dining room we have a lot more light coming in via the patio doors and the space is much more user friendly and family oriented.  The only thing I'd like now is a bit more storage for all of my baking goodies!  I was spoiled in our kitchen in Glasgow with such a huge space and LOADS of cupboards so I still have one box left to unpack in here.

Anyway, as I posted before, we've added a bookcase to the end of the units for all of our cookery books which finishes off the new opening a bit better than just the side of the tall cupboard.  This bookcase was intended as a temporary option until we can get something nicer built in (this is a bargain £17 job from Ikea).  It was the only one we could find shallow enough not to stick out too far but does stick out just a few millimetres by the cupboard and it's not the prettiest.

Here's a reminder of the before:

As we removed the wall next to that tall cupboard, our fridge freezer had to go against the wall by the window.  Luckily it doesn't overlap much of the window itself and we found a great sticky roll of blackboard to go on one side.

What we'd like to do is add two units to the end of the unit above, sticking into the room a little, similar to the 'peninsula' we had in Glasgow.  This would give me some more storage as well as a fantastic large extra surface, ideal for baking with the twins when they get older.

The day after I took these photos, I managed to cause a huge crack in the ceramic hob top when a glass spice bottle fell out of that cupboard to the left while I was making chilli!  We're hoping it can be repaired but if we have to replace it, I'd like to change it if possible.  As lush as the Smeg cooker looks (it came with the house), I hate the electric hob!  It's so tricky to get the right temperature and takes forever to heat up and cool down.  Unfortunately we don't have gas here (we have an oil fired boiler) so I can't have a gas hob anyway but I think an induction hob might be easier to control from what I've heard.

Our Dualit coffee machine (a previous Christmas pressie for Nik) blew up not long after we moved in last year!  We replaced it with this less attractive but cheaper and more practical 'bean to cup' machine from DeLonghi.  I already posted about our new kettle from Asda but I still love the copper finish!

You may also notice our prolific basil!  Apparently it's easier to grow things here even indoors!  We always managed to kill our basil plants in Glasgow, they never lasted long and usually looked weedy.  This one looks better than when we bought it and has been going strong for months now!  We also have a chilli plant I was given as a seedling from someone at the village pop-in, it's also doing well on the windowsill with 5 little chillies starting to grow!

As for the colour of the kitchen, we painted over the pasty 'Churlish Green' with the nice zesty 'Manzanilla Olive' to match the colour I chose for the dining room wall.  (You can see the dining room soon as I took those pictures the same day!)  We kept the other walls off white.

Before

After

We have our bins at the side of the fridge (they recycle SO many things here, it's great!) and our new cordless Dyson hoover (A fab Christmas pressie from my in-laws) down the other side as it has to be plugged in to charge.

To keep our kitchen sides relatively clear we have our microwave and food processor in the utility room.  I had thought this might be annoying but it's actually fine.  Also, I LOVE having a tumble dryer!  You can see we also keep the (currently redundant) sterilising equipment and bottles, etc in here out of the way.

It's great having a utility room (you'd think I have enough storage with these cupboards but sadly not!!) to store all of the duplicate bottles of softener etc. that Nik buys on offer!  And boxes of cereal, ditto.

The only things we really have on the sides are the toaster, bread boards, kettle, tea caddies, coffee machine, tub of wooden spoons, oil bottles, kitchen roll and the Kitchen Aid.  It sounds like a lot but it fairly uncluttered.  Nik hates clutter!  When we extend the units, he has said we can finally get a slow cooker!  I'm so exited, I really am so old these days!!

It's great being able to keep an eye on the twins in the garden from the kitchen too.  I love being in a house as opposed to a flat, we couldn't have done this living two floors up!

I love the new, more open layout, it's so much easier keeping an eye on the twins in their high chairs while I prepare their dinners too and will be even more so once I have my new peninsula area!  :)

God, I love our sideboard!  More on that soon in the dining room before & after post!!

The Forever House - our finished Kitchen!

by Roz

The kitchen in the house is finally finished!!!  I am so excited to share it with you as so many of you helped me out with advice on paint colours, splash back colour, which worktop to go with, the lights...I hope you all like the finished room.  If you remember the room wasn't a kitchen when we bought the house, as shown here, so we got to plan the layout exactly how we wanted.  This was obviously great as we didn't need to have our sink or oven in a certain place as we needed to run new plumbing and wiring, but did mean we had endless discussions over how big to make the island and if we had space left for a table in the window. I shared our ideas for the kitchen here and I think you'll see we've stuck with a number of them, as well as picking some different finishes.

I thought it would help to include a few before shots, it seems strange looking back at how the room was!

We are so happy with the finished room and I just know we are going to spend so much time here making fabulous memories. I think back to all the work we did in this room, from the hours we spent ripping up the carpet, and underlay that was glued to the floor, removing the layers upon layers of wallpaper, chiseling out the chimney breast to allow our units to sit flush against the wall....to the work we got tradesmen to do, such as the knock through, the plastering and the plumbing and wiring, it's certainly a complete transformation.

Our kitchen units are from Ashley Ann, who make all their own units in their factory in Scotland and also have a showroom in Glasgow which was handy for all the planning meetings! We went round a number of kitchen suppliers, including Ikea and Howdens, once we decided we wanted the high gloss white doors and Ashley Ann came out with the best price for the taller units we wanted for the room. Their service has also been excellent and I would highly recommend them.

It took us forever to pick lights for the room. There were plenty of lights I liked but as we needed three of them, the cost  ruled out so many of the ones I found. In the end we actually picked these lights in a pale purple colour, only to order them and find out they had been discontinued. Arghhhhh! It was choosing the green lights that resulted in us agreeing to paint the kitchen walls a pale green. The colour is Celtic Forest 4 from Dulux and it's lovely and calming and works so well with all the white in the room.

The oak floor up close 

I'm also very happy with our choice of floor. We went with an engineered oak board, that runs through our kitchen and lounge, in a super wide and extra long plank. The colour is perfect, it's a brushed and oiled finish, and is so much warmer and softer underfoot than a tiled floor. We had engineered wood floors in our flat, so we know how hard wearing they are, yet we also have the option to sand and reseal the boards at least once in the future.

If you look in the before picture, you can see there used to be a door (to a cupboard) on this wall. We knew the kitchen units would make this unusable, but B came up with the idea of utilising the space and creating a book and wine rack. It's genius and so very handy. We made it out of unfinished mdf and then just painted it in white eggshell to match the rest of the wood in the room. Having my cook books on show does actually temp me to use them a bit more often rather than just cooking one of the 10 meals we eat most often!

I took the photo below the day after the knock through between the kitchen and our lounge. It took us a long time to find someone to make the oak glazed doors I pictured in my head for the opening. Most of the places we tried in Glasgow were very expensive and in the end we found a excellent firm called Premier Joinery in Falkirk. Our doors are beautiful and I could not recommend the guys more.

Most people comment on the ovens when they come in to the kitchen for the first time. Yes three ovens might look a bit over the top. But this is my dream kitchen. Our flat had two ovens that were constantly in use when I cooked for friends or family on a regular basis. So we went with three for the forever house. They are Neff ovens and I might be a little in love with them. The single oven in the middle has a slide and hide door :)

My ovens!

The ovens are all slightly different, we have a microwave combi, a single oven and a steam oven combi. We went with Neff as the appliances in our flat were all Neff and we'd never had any problems with them and liked the way they looked. Neff however is not a cheap brand. Up steps B and manages to buy all three ovens and the two warming drawers from our kitchen company as ex display appliances. Saved us a fortune! We went with much cheaper brand for our integrated fridge, freezer and dishwasher and with hindsight it would have made sense to at least read some reviews before ordering these as we already miss our old dishwasher.

I really love having a table in the window. A eats all his meals here sitting in his fab tripp trapp (bought second hand on eBay) and we find ourselves doing the same more often than not. It's great family time. B and I disagreed about the table versus a dropped section on the end of the island. Personally I'm so glad he was happy to go with my preference of the table, as sitting looking out to our garden or to the Campsies in the distance is just lovely. The table is a small, cheap one we picked up in Ikea and I think it actually looks quite small in the space. It works for us just now, especially with A knocking lumps out of it every meal time.

Our induction hob lives on the island and was a real splurge.  Again we had one in our flat, are you seeing a theme?! We love cooking on it and how easy it is to keep clean and the safety aspect is great too. We also have two pop up sockets on the island which come with usb ports for charging phones, iPads, etc. The island is so big that it is usually covered in clutter though, do any of you manage to keep your kitchen clean all the time? Going to bed early usually wins over me loading the dishwasher.

We went with a grey blue colour for our splash back and I really, really like the colour.  A local firm did it for us and it was a much cheaper option than tiles as we only needed one cut out in the glass.  I really like how it looks against the white gloss units and our grey quartz worktop. Our tap is a boiling tap, something B really wanted, and it's great not just for making hot drinks but when you need to fill a pan for cooking.

The stainless steel sink is probably the only think I dislike. I love the size of the sink, it's deep and wide, and I love having a half sink again, but oh my is it scratched. Very scratched already. Urgh. It's an under mount sink and our quartz was cut around it so we have no option to change it. It's minor in the grand scheme of the kitchen, as you can't see the scrapes unless you go inspecting the sink, but I certainly would not recommend a stainless steel sink to anyone.

One area of the kitchen I was very excited about was our pantry. I pinned so many images of beautiful shelving and neat, orderly food and drink. Let's just say one day!

The pantry door...

...that hides the mess!!

The room has a window and is a great size. It has lots of potential for the future!

Well I hope you all liked the finished room, it's been great writing the post about it :)

Roz xx

Little updates

by Bex

I'm afraid it'll just be little house updates for a while, despite us pretty much having the house the way we want it now, I need to perfect & tidy the rooms and take some photos then put together before & after posts which take a lot more work and time.  They'll slowly get done as I can't wait to share the changes now the house reflects our style more.  The nursery is still my favourite though!!

In the meantime, here are some wee bits 'n' bobs around the house so far!

Just last week we bought ourselves this new copper kettle for the kitchen.  Our old one still worked but it was starting to look pretty rank with the plastic on the lid all broken after 8 years of use.

The new one is also from Asda, I spotted it in an advert in Look magazine and when we saw it in store, Nik really liked it too.  The copper colour goes well with the cherry cabinet doors in our new kitchen but it still has chrome details which match other items in the kitchen and tie it in with the stainless steel cooker and silver fridge freezer.  I wouldn't have thought it was from Asda, it looks so stylish.

I've already spoken about the lack of storage in our kitchen (compared to our previous kitchen in Glasgow) so my baking stuff is still in a box awaiting us getting organised enough as well as funds to add on some more cabinets to the end of the current ones.  We plan to add a small peninsula, similar to that we had in Glasgow which will house my baking stuff and allow us to organise the other cupboards a bit better with more space to spread out into.  I can totally imagine having a good area of counter space to have fun baking with the kids one day too!

Anyway, other than that we are loving the kitchen and have now found space for all of our recipe books!  This bookcase was just £17 from Ikea although it caused a lot of stress just before Christmas as we got it home to find NO fixings, the whole bag was missing and they wanted us to either go back (a 2.5 hour round trip with 2 newborns, NO THANKS, going once was an ordeal enough after waiting 45 minutes with 2 hungry babies to organise home delivery!) or they would send out fixings from Sweden in 7-10 days not including the Christmas/New Year holidays, not ideal when we had all the other bits lying around waiting to be built and a pile of books we wanted out of the way before Christmas!  They ended up sending us another one on a delivery van 2 days before Christmas to swap and it had no fixings either!!!   Anyway, it fitted the small space at the edge of the new opening to the dining room almost perfectly and once we had it built, I had fun organising the books by colour and choosing what to put on the top shelf.  Nik had his own ideas...

Priya - the prettiest ornament ever!

But we settled on this layout:

The new cabinets will be where the unpacked box currently is.

And since the copper kettle addition, I added my new copper apple trinket box from Next and re-shuffled things.

As for styling shelves, we got another bookcase in Ikea for the living room.  I had wanted a darker grey one to show off the white ornaments at their best and I love their Liatorp range but it's just too tall and too expensive (£195) so we ended up buying this pale grey Borgsjo one instead which is the perfect size and much cheaper (£55) but not as nice looking as it's very basic.  I do have plans to wallpaper the back at some stage but in the meantime, it is a nice space for some of my books and ornaments and I had fun 'styling' the shelves.  I'm still not totally happy with it and will be changing things around for a while yet I think but for now it's meant I could finish unpacking all of the last little bits in here.

So that's it for now, I'll try to share a few more details soon ;)