Holiday Cheer

I love holidays and Christmas is a favorite. This year we're staying in London for Christmas, which we've only done one other time in the 5 years we've been here. Even when we go away, we always decorate a bit, 2013 being a favorite, before we re-arranged our house. I thought we'd go all out decorating like mad, but I'm a little behind in all the things I had planned. But it's still quite festive and we've done a good bit of Christmas crafting and baking. We made a lot of paper snowflakes, which are addictive and really easy to make. They're in our front window and so pretty to look at in the evening light.

In Love Sewing

Life is whizzing by, and as usual I feel like I'm having a hard time keeping up! I have a backlog of photos I want to post on my blog but they need editing first, and there's projects to tackle, things to sew, lists of stuff to get done, a wedding in the US next week to plan for. I know some people who manage to do IT ALL like Alicia and Artemis, two of my greatest inspirations, but alas, I'm afraid that as hard as I try to get a lot done, I never seem to get nearly as much done (or so well) as they do! Honestly I feel like most of my waking hours (if I'm at home) are spent picking things up and putting them away--I guess that's the life of a mother consistently distracted by clutter and mess. I always try to remind myself of one of my favorite quotes: "a perfectly kept house is the sign of a misspent life" which is also the title of a favorite book by Mary Randolph Carter. Clutter or no clutter, I keep trying to get a lot done...

Let There Be DIY Light

Every day our colorful family room is looking more finished! I'm happy to have found some great vintage school chairs on ebay with the perfect teal colored paint. We all love them. School chairs are a safe bet, I think. Lamp shopping, on the other hand, is tricky for me because there's often one element of a lamp that doesn't interest me, and actually the lamps I tend to be most drawn to are really expensive. So I've taken to doing some lamp DIY. I've been having fun customizing lampshades for a few rooms and now have the bug to customize some actual lamps as well after completing one. Inspired by my friend Paula who turns interesting and unusual industrial things into lamps, like pulleys, pipes and all manner of other odd bits, I decided to give it a go myself.

A Bright New Year

I hope you had a great Christmas and Happy New Year! We had a wonderful time visiting family in the US. I tend to post everyday pictures regarding what I'm up to on Instagram, much more so than on my blog, so if you're interested in seeing more of our daily lives, feel free to browse my Instagram feed. I have some pictures from our recent trip to the US there. It's always hard to come home after the holidays. I think I'm fortunate in that I love my family and love being around them, and I miss them even if I've just seen them. So when I know I have to come home, living so far away, I always like to have a few things to look forward to. One of those things this time was finishing up our house re-arrange and buying some last pieces to complete our colorful sitting room downstairs. I've made some good progress since we returned home because I was able to bring home our new Lulie Wallace painting that I had shipped to my mom's (it's the floral painting on the right in these photos.)

Merry and Bright

Even though we always go home to the US for Christmas, we still like to get in the spirit at home and decorate the house a bit and I always send Christmas cards. We use Tiny Prints for our photo cards. Sometimes I have photos of all of us, but this year I chose two photos of the girls. I always find styles I like from their selection. This year we bought a small tree and put it on a table. It's just about the same height as Lois and fits our favorite ornaments perfectly. Lois actually carried it home herself! 

Craft Room Re-do

I think I mentioned that in our house re-arrange I've taken over Ellie's room as my craft room. We're actually sharing a room for now. She hasn't really noticed I've hijacked her room. My craft bits and bobs, which are mostly pretty florals and many pastel colors, go well with her nursery decor. I switched out the grey velvet curtains that were in her room (which belong to our landlords) and replaced them with the chevron Ballard Designs curtains I previously had in our front room. I wanted to move our old dining room table into this room, but we couldn't get it up the stairs! It's about an inch too wide to fit. So I decided to get this simple table from IKEA.

Shades of Green

We decided to re-arrange our house a bit and so there's been lots of moving furniture, painting walls, and buying new things here and there to make it all work. It all started with a conversation about our dining table. Our dining area was quite cramped, with a dining table against our stairwell wall beside our kitchen. It's bothered us that we don't have a very good place for a kitchen table since we moved here, especially in winter because we can't eat alfresco when it's cold and wet. So we decided to make our downstairs lounge a dining room AND sitting room within one room, which meant moving quite a few things around to make it work.

At Home in 91 Magazine

Also in the current craft issue of 91 Magazine is our little abode! I was really happy to have our place featured in the craft edition and happy Caroline wrote the article. I've not shared many photos around our house on my blog because I don't feel like anything is ever finished (I know I always say this), and I often hesitate to take photos thinking things look too unfinished. It seems each room is a perpetual work in progress! But I imagine that is how many people feel about their houses. We're renters so that's one thing I have to keep in mind as well. My dream of painted white floors will have to wait! Part of the fun in making a house home, whether you rent or own, is finding things at different places at different times, and I just have to remind myself of that when I look around the house a bit frustrated that it's not "done." I have the thrill of the hunt to look forward to. But things are coming together around here and everyday it feels more homey.

Decking the Halls

We've been getting in the spirit of the holidays and have had fun the last few weeks decking the halls. We'll be in the US for Christmas but wanted to decorate a bit around the house anyway. We haven't had our own tree since 2009 because we're always away for Christmas. And in the weeks leading up to Christmas I often wish I had decorated more. It might seem silly to have a tree when we will be away for Christmas, but we've planned to give our tree to our neighbors who've just moved back into their house after renovating it since summer. I didn't go crazy with the decorations, but here's a little bit our holiday cheer around the house. I have soooo many Christmas craft and decorating ideas on Pinterest and this wreath is just one thing I wanted to make inspired by a photo I've pinned. I've hung it in a few different places in our front room, which is basically my craft room. I love it and love that it was simple enough for Lois to help me make it. Our front room looks really pretty in the evening when the sun is going down, which is when I took these photos. 

And Speaking of Decorating a Child's Room...

So finally, here's a peek into Ellie's room! First, I should say that I was going for a softer, lighter look than Lois's room. Her room as always had bold, primary sorts of colors. You can see her room here. That was her room in our first place in London, so it's not her current room, but she has all the same items but in a different configuration. Also, for Ellie's room, since I was working with little to start with, I decided to consult Pinterest (of course!).

Decorating and Making (trying to anyway!)

I'm still working on making our place more homey. The front room is coming along, finally! It was a complete mess a few weeks ago. Uh, see below, slobs!

Before and After

Since we've been home we've been busy getting settled back into our lives here... back to nursery for Lois, and back to our general routine around here. We're also still working on our place, trying to make it more of our own, as much as we can as renters anyway. I showed you our front room a while back, the dark red floral wallpaper that we wanted to remove and then the color we wanted to paint it.

Nesting

Still waiting on baby to arrive! My mom's here in town now, so I'm actually glad the bun is holding off a bit. I've been having a lot of fun taking my mom around to some of my favorite places around the neighborhood. And she's been helping me a lot at our new place. My nesting instinct has kicked in and I feel like I want to get a lot of things done asap! Like our front room. I'd love for it to look like the photo above. Really nice, huh? (found on Pinterest). It is a living room that we don't actually need since our kitchen is connected to another living room, but I wanted to turn it into a room we'd use. I thought maybe it could be Andrew's office, but he'd prefer an area in our bedroom for that. So I thought it would be a sitting room / sewing room. It has burgundy-gold floral wallpaper on the walls right now.

We've Moved!

Last weekend we moved into our new place. Life moves fast, and I'm sorry I haven't been very good about updating my blog. But I love our new place, and I love the neighborhood, which is East Dulwich. I first learned about this area when I went to Le Chandelier to take photos and then Artemis reminded me of it when we started looking for a new place and I was looking for neighborhood suggestions. The neighborhood is cosy and very family friendly. It has some nice shops, great food choices, and some good junk shopping too. Above are some photos from the little Saturday street market here. I'm looking forward to exploring more and making our place homey. More soon from our new hood!

Before and After: New Chair!

So we've had our first piece of furniture re-covered! We've had this great chair for a few years now but it was covered in a burnt orange velvet (you can see the before in the last image), and I've finally had it recovered. I chose black and white ticking because to me it's timeless and looks classic and modern at the same time. I LOVE it! Thanks to MN who referred the upholsterer, Romano Falchi. He did a great job and at a very reasonable price.

Room to Sew

You might remember that when we were looking for a new apartment last winter, one major draw to our current place was an extra room. I say "extra" room because our place isn't technically a three bedroom, but there is a small third room next door. It's more of a utility room in that it has exposed pipes and wires, and doesn't have a bathroom, but it does have pretty nice wood floors and heat, so I decided to make it into a guest room / craft room. Initially I thought I would make it an office for Andrew and try to give it a masculine vibe, but he thought I might use the room more than him and suggested I let it be a room to sew. He does like to work in there as it is though. He thinks it's pretty cozy.

Treasures

Last week I went to the big flea, well, one of the bigger flea markets in London, the Kempton Park market. This time I rented a man and van. I usually get what I think of as "sold envy" when I'm at markets here: I watch people haul away loads of good junk! Since we don't have a car, and I can't really carry anything too large on the train, I thought I'd hire someone who could haul my junk home. I've been needing a bedside table and a small bookshelf for a while now, and I've wanted some small furniture for our little patio. So I made a list and actually found a lot of what was on it. Here's a bit of what I brought home. 

Paintings weren't on my list but I couldn't resist these two bargains.

My bedside table before...

And after! I didn't do anything to it really, as you can probably tell, but I like it that way, all chippy. I bought a handful of other things like a bookshelf, a bench, and some patio furniture. But I didn't take pictures of those yet. But I'll post some pictures of the patio soon. 

Our little patio has looked quite sad for months now until I found this pile of pots! I wanted to make our patio look better and finding these pots was just the motivation I needed. A guy down the street was tossing them. There were more than what's shown here, and most of them were big terra-cotta pots, so I made a few trips and got them home. Below is the patio in its before state, but after I brought some of the pots home.

And here's a peek of the after through our living room. More pictures of it coming soon.

Progress

Hi Lois! There she is in our new place before we crammed in all our stuff. I've been unpacking like mad since we got here because I hate being surrounded by boxes, and I'm excited to be here. Though this flat itself wouldn't be our top pick, we do like a lot of things about it, and we love the neighborhood (northwest London). We have a third bedroom, sort of anyway--it's more of a storeroom and it has its own entrance, but it does have wood floors and heat, so I'm planning to make it into an office / guest bedroom if everything can fit. We have part of the living room together now. That's one wall that's pretty much done, but I have to work on the rest of the room. If we paint the walls, it will be a while before we do that, so I went ahead and hung things. I'm a little tired of some of our stuff and would like to get a pick-up truck and go hunting for new junk, but in the meantime, here's the usual in a new-ish configuration. Hi again Lois! Cookies make her happy :)

And here's the 3rd room. Gotta get working on that mess. 

Sewing Nook

A while back I gave you a little peek at my sewing nook. I'm pretty much finished with it now. I was just waiting to amass enough buttons to make a button border on my inspiration board. And my mom helped me out with that. Over Thanksgiving she let me raid her button stash and take all I wanted. Oooh, buttons, so fun! This little space is a work in progress, but it's a start. This area started as the bar (see how it started looking as a bar here), but the shelves were too narrow and too far apart to make it look good with bar accessories, and since we rent here, and I know the landlord isn't too keen on changes, I thought it would work better as a something else, and I've been wanting a craft space. Now that my machine and supplies are out of the closet, I have no excuses! Here's to more sewing in 2011. Happy New Year!!

O Christmas Tree

This year our tree is really just some ornaments on branches in a vase. There really isn't a good spot in our apartment for an entire tree, so I thought a little tree on a table would do. I've had branches in a vase for a while now and thought it would be easy and cute to decorate them instead of a real tree. Unfortunately the vase this was originally in fell over and broke so I decided to used a glass canister from the kitchen instead. So here it is our wee branch tree, including one new ornament--a salt dough elephant ornament that Lois made! And of course it includes a few family pictures too. Merry Christmas!