Wishlist

Forever trawling the internet for goodies to fill my basket. There are however a few things I “need”, first up is some craft storage;

I’m desperately in need of something pretty and cheap to store all my fabric, ribbon etc in and this £35 set of drawers from Matalan are perfect! I don’t want to buy something more expensive/permanent as we want to buy a house eventually and it might not all fit.

I’ve had my eye on a nice lamp base so that I can make a pretty lampshade and I think this one will do nicely!

It’s from wilkos and is £22, I’ve seen a few other cheaper ones and I’m still on the hunt for that perfect base, curvy and shapely.

Something else I desperately need is a new wardrobe and this Next one made me gasp out loud

It’s perfect, it’s the right colour, size, style but most of all it’s reasonable. It makes my heart swoon!

A wishlist of mine wouldn’t be complete without a little CK, this apron will be perfect (and I definitely do not want to cut it up and make pretty things with it…. maybe I should buy two….)

Looking back I’m surprised how much of my wishlist is for the home, it’s usually full of clothes, I’m turning into a real homebody.
Money is a bit tight at the moment so for now my wishlist shall just be a wish but soon my pretties soon…….

What are you currently wishing for?

Amy

Painted furniture update

I blogged about painting furniture a couple of posts ago and thought I’d share the end results with you!
This chest of drawers was a freebie from my gran’s neighbour (hurray!) and so I only paid for the paint and some new door knobs (which I’m yet to buy).

I painted the inside of the drawers duck egg blue:

I also painted this old mahogany side table and I think it looks adorable painted up!

After painting these two pieces of furniture I still have half a tin of paint left! Annie Sloan is expensive but it definitely lasts.

I wasn’t too impressed with the finish on the chest of drawers, you can see brush marks when you look closely. When I painted the side table I watered it down slightly and the finish is much better. If you’re going to paint furniture I would water it down first.

All in all I am very impressed with my furniture painting skills!

Would you consider painting furniture?

Amy x

 

Painted furniture, filofaxes and wild dreams

I’ve had the last 2.5 weeks off work and so far I have achieved; not a great deal. I find it really hard to get motivated when I have all the time in the world! I find it much easier to get things done when I’m under pressure. Therefore my summer holiday has so far being delightfully dull. Well except for the first proper summer I’ve seen in the UK (extremely exciting!).
One thing I promised myself that I would do over summer is paint this chest of drawers (that I got for free!) with some Annie Sloan Chalk paint.

If you don’t know what chalk paint is let me introduce you to this amazing product. Basically this paint will cover any surface and you don’t need to prime the furniture first, you just slap it on! This is incredible for lazy people like me, and makes it really easy to spruce up old furniture making it look as good as new.
It took me a long time deciding which colour to choose. Annie Sloan gives some helpful hints on her website but a lot of the paint swatches are shown with another colour underneath. Therefore I took the plunge and ordered….original which is a creamy white. I really wanted to go french country but it wouldn’t have fit with the other furniture in our room.

I’ve done one coat of paint on the chest of drawers and I can still see the pine colour underneath so I’m going to paint it again and hopefully it will start to look a little better.

Myself and Gary decided that we were going to start saving for a house and in the middle of dreaming about tiny cottages with stone floors and log burning stoves I had an epiphany. It was a sofa sent from heaven, all of a sudden I knew exactly what sofa I needed in our future home. Et voila:

I think my sister is right, I am boring. Who gets excited about the kind of sofa they want to buy!? Well me apparently…

Something else I’ve been getting excited about is my filofax! Having being inspired through instagram I decided to pretty up my filofax which is something I’ve been using for yeeeears (I never knew they had such a cult following!). I get very easily bored so I decorated my filofax and haven’t touched it since, although it will be getting more use when I go back to work. I need to stop starting work in progress and then leaving them never to be used/looked at ever again!

 

Gary has the week off next week so we’re going to the Doncaster wildlife park and to the seaside too. I’m very excited about actually doing something with my summer holiday!

I also have a job interview in 2 weeks to go from being a part time teacher to (nearly) full time, wish me luck!

Amy x

Sew good!

I got out of my sewing funk! Hurray.
Me and my boyfriend were driving back from holmfirth and spotted a sign for a fabric shop. We stopped and ohmygosh it was perfect! I’ve been looking for a fabric shop nearby but there’s only haberdashery shops which sell sewing supplies but no fabric.
The majority of my fabric is bought on eBay which can be expensive. I bought 3 metres of fabric from this shop for less than £20! Amazing, and a bonus is that it’s all the fabrics I’m looking for.
I could’ve spent all day in there!

I’m thinking of making a dress from the white and blue pattern

 I started my mums patchwork cushion an and I was debating over fabrics for a while. I finally took the plunge and just started it. I’ve nearly finished it just need to sew the back on now.
It’s not perfect by any means but I love how the fabric complements each other.

Next up is dress making! Really want to get into making my own clothes.

Amy

Moving in

It took us a while to find our house and when I say a while it was the first house we looked at.
For me it didn’t have that certain sense of this is where I’m going to live however considering the other options in our price range we quickly realised this house is amazing. Now I can’t imagine living anywhere else.

When we first moved in we had nothing, only furniture that other people gave us and some bits and bobs that I already had such as cutlery and plates etc. For 2 months we were living on a mattress on the floor!
We haven’t been able to buy everything we wanted at once so we had to prioritise. The first thing we bought was a bed.

To start buying things for our house is amazing and I love to see it grow which is why I’ve started this blog. To share my ideas of what I’m doing and what I want to do with our house.

Probably my favourite thing that we have bought so far is our table. My boyfriend, Gary, persuaded me to buy it after we visited a furniture shop down the road and it was on sale! It’s absolutely perfect and just what I was looking for. Unfortunately we don’t have any chairs yet, but I’m on the lookout for some!

This is probably another favourite of mine, I’ve been looking for an old wooden blanket box, more like a trunk, but when I found this in Homesense for £30 I couldn’t resist. (Please ignore the unmade bed!). The wardrobes that we have already are white and after buying 2 more white pieces of furniture I think I’m keeping the white furniture theme for upstairs.

We’ve been here 3 months now (nearly 4) and we’re getting there, slowly but surely. I’ve really found the style that I love and there’s so many pieces that I’m lusting after at the moment (keep an eye out for a post on what I’m wishing for at the moment) but I’m really enjoying seeing it all piece together bit by bit.
Finding shops like The Range and buying the jugs below helps too. (Check out the Emma Bridgewater style jug that cost me £5!)