Tuesday, March 17, 2015

A mini flat tour

Wahey, we finally have an interior post... better late than never eh?! We've had so much bad luck with the flat in the past couple of months - from broken boilers, to no electricity or heating, to furniture deliveries going missing - really, we've had it all. Needless to say, this has caused a bit of a setback in the whole decorating the flat part of things, so for the moment we've got a bit of a temporary set-up going on. Although it'll all be re-shuffled over the next couple of months I actually quite like how it's looking - plus I've been bursting to show you some of the bits and bobs we've gathered - so I thought I'd put together a little details post in advance of my proper flat tour.

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One of the first things we did in that flat was steam off all the wallpaper (I very nearly died of boredom in the process) and paint the walls grey. We sampled so. freaking. many. shades of grey and the one we settled on still isn't quiiiite what I was after, but I love it all the same. The carpet was then lifted and we - by we I mean Rob, got those floorboards sanded right down toe the bare bonez and painted white. White floorboards were always going to be a risk, but I couldn't be happier with the way they turned out. Urban Outfitters were also lovely enough to send us over some bits from their new Tribal Dreamers collection (check it out - everything's amazing and whimsical and just perfectly whimsically amazing) including this huge big fluffy cream rug that wouldn't look out of place in an Austin Powers movie. It's so soft underfoot and gives the room the extra little bit of warmth it needs, plus Lilo seems to have adopted it as her older, less 3D cousin. 

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Behold, the couch of a thousand cushions. My Mum's an interiors goddess and changes her decor up quite a lot, so me and Rob were lucky enough to inherit the couches as well as these big blue fluffy cushions along the way, which ended up going perfectly with the woven aztec print cushion and my little TK Maxx round ones.

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This big badboy was another thing we were lucky enough to pilfer from my Mum and is one of my most prized possessions in the flat. I've become horribly precious about it and can be often found shouting 'COASTER, PLEASE' at anyone who goes within a five mile radius of it with a drink in hand.

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I've always been a big fan of alcoves (weird thing to be a fan of I know, but there we go) as I think the make a really lovely feature in a room, so I was over the moon that the flat already had some built in. So far we've sanded these down and painted them white, but the next step is to add two more shelves in each then fill them with a menagerie of ornaments, plants, books and whatever else I can squeeze in there really. For now though, I do quite like how minimal they are - it's a nice little corner I can head to to escape from the chaos going on everywhere else in the flat and pretend that I don't currently have to go to the toilet in the pitch black.

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Although the notepads aren't exactly homeware I really wanted to add them in because they're, in the words of Ron Weasley, bloody brilliant. The first is an embossed leather notepad (smells even better than it looks) which I've been using to jot down ideas for future blog posts and videos. The second, 'One Line a Day' book however, is my absolute favourite - I've been meaning to keep a diary for years but can just never quite motivate myself, but the fact that this encourages you to write a condensed down version of what you did that day and has enough space for five years worth of memories really appealed to me and my lazy, lazy ways.

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Here's another two of my favourite features (I know I've thrown the word favourite around A LOT but I'm still in the honeymoon phase); the cow print stool and the fairy light jar. You might have been made aware of my stool obsession - not the wrong kind of stool, the kind you rest your feet on - over on my Instagram, but this Ikea one's my number one. The jar was another Ikea buy for a whopping 90p, and the Urban Outfitters fairy lights wrapped around it are an absolute dream. There are no bulbs around the lights which gives a really subtle, dreamy effect, almost like little fireflies resting on the wire. Plus, the actual wire itself is copper which is always a win.

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I'm very hesitant to use the word favourite again, but these really are two of my f-word pieces in the flat right now. Eventually the teranium will be filled with soil and plants like this one on the website, but for now I've just popped in a set of cacti from Ikea. Rob put me on a cactus-buying ban because I'd stocked up on so many, so now I've taken to sneaking them in one by one and telling him they've just multiplied overnight because I... watered them too much? The brass bison head's an absolute beauty on its own as a feature, but once we start getting back on our merry decorating way I'm going to put that up on our bedroom wall against the gold mirror you can see above in the alcove shots, plus - hopefully - a bigger, white bison head if I can track one down!

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So there we go, I really hoped you liked this post as I had a larra larra fun putting it together. Also, big thank you to Urban Outfitters for kitting our little crib out!

Amy