I've been mentally putting together the living room for about a year now, so thought I'd share the main bones of it.  Some pricey items, some not so. Ok, mostly so.  Jielde loft lamp would be the biggest splurge, but I promise I would love him forever. And ever.  

So, the swish list (left to right, top to bottom):

• Original Jielde factory lamp, ebay
• Throw rug, Ferm Living (I found this one after posting about my other favourites yesterday)
• Rug, Ikea
• Cushion, John Lewis
• Coffee table, Vitra (wish list? more like pipe dream)
• Serving tray, Liberty

Mmmm, yellow. I love how it goes with black and white. Hence my newfound obsession with the blog Black. White. Yellow. Throw in a bit of grey and I'm yours.

Swish list

Found this in the April edition of Elle Decoration:

Its perfect for the couch, and desperately needed since the old doona I'm using is way too big and looks fugly.  Its conveniently available from Selfridges online, for the inconvenient price of £345.
Also on the cards at a slightly more reasonable price of £139, is any of Melin Tregwynt throws, although in particular I like the St David's Cross design in Silver Grey:

 Or Carew in Aqua:

They are also featured in a few hotels, of most interest is Boundary in Shoreditch, where they are used on the rooftop bar.  I'll definitely be having a cocktail or two here when summer finally arrives.

A new dawn

GG and I are working in the background on an update to the blog design, to be unveiled over the next few weeks.  Actually GG has to take most of the credit, he's done an amazing job coming up with a new header design, shall we say slightly more sophisticated than the 5 minute version I created nearly a year ago. Yes, a year. So the launch will be kind of a celebration, and also a sigh of relief that I've managed to keep this up regularly (although we may have different views on the definition of 'regularly').
I can't wait to launch it! I'm sick of looking at that big green turd.
Oh, and I've added some more blogs (beautifully designed I might add) to my blogroll.

Hallway updates

Well, as promised, here are some photos of the new addition to the hallway. We got this guy off ebay for £150 + £40 delivery, so not exactly the deal of the century, but to be honest it was a bit spur of the moment.  I was tired of our hallway looking like Selfridges on Boxing Day. Here is it after I've tidied up:

And, here is the guy we bought, sitting in the stairwell. He looked so good out there I was tempted to leave him.  We really, really need to paint our walls white.

The ebay sellers were brilliant, helping GG get up the stairs, and even giving us a 2 hour delivery window on a Sunday. I love that kind of service.  You can also see here, his brother, the double width version in his native habitat:

Actually this photo is scary, its a little too kitsch for me, and GG and I are both not 100% sure that he's the right solution to our problem yet.
Nevertheless, we moved him inside and loaded him up with shoes.  I sorted through all the boxes, picked 4 nice ones to keep since not everything would fit inside the cabinet, selected 5 pairs of too-pointy heels leftover from 2003 (that I stupidly lugged all the way from Melbourne and haven't worn since) for Good Sammys.  Detour: For those of you who don't know - 'Good Sammys', short for 'Good Samaritan', is the nickname that Australians give to all charity shops in Perth (of any organisation), mostly because it has this cute and memorable seal on the shopsigns:

And, voila! Shoes under control, ideal dumping ground for keys, wallet, phone - and some space to display random stuff including an utterly pretentious selection of books. Yay!

We're still getting used to walking in the room and BAM! seeing a hulking great piece of furniture sitting in there. Not sure how long this guy will live in our house for (probably forever if we take as long to address this situation as we are the bathroom).
We might end up going for something simpler, more modern, and less space hungry (probably less practical too, but that's never been my strong point) - such as this long bench from Ikea:

 

When we eventually have a real wardrobe, most of the shoes can go in there, and we could get a 1 or 2 square baskets to slide under the bench for shoes we wear every day.  It also leaves space for coat hooks above, and all in all would look a lot better. Sorry g plan.

Guilty pleasures

I'm making history today. A real mid-week post, not even pre-written and scheduled!

I've been working so hard lately - on the weekends, til after midnight everyday and even 2am last night, and tonight I am so tired I can't even focus. Last week I visited 5 different airports between Monday and Thursday. Tonight I'm sitting in a Novotel in a backwater town in France. So, in the absence of any appropriately mind-numbing tv (BBC World does not qualify I'm afraid), I'm indulging in a little blog-reading instead.

Anyway, aside from whinging and digging for sympathy, the purpose of this post is to say that last weekend we got a new piece of furniture delivered! And, I'll be posting about it this weekend. Yay! It'll be worth the wait, trust me. See you on Sunday!