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!

Booty

Today GG and I trekked out to Wimbledon (15 minute bike ride, 15 min wait for the train, 15 min train, 15 min walk) to Wimbledon Stadium, where they run greyhounds or 'the Dogs' as they are called.  Not, of course, to witness this travesty of barbarian entertainment (although judging from the posters around the joint it is a très classy event). Instead we went to check out the weekly car boot sale.

A car boot sale is a strangely UK phenomena. It involves everyone driving into a large dodgy looking carpark or field with their boot full of stuff that to get rid of, opening up said boot to display wares, and playing trashy dance music from crappy car speakers.  I think it might only be this last part that is unique to this country.

And did we bring home some booty.  Well, as much as you can get for the grand sum of £6.50.

Item 1, a small 1970's metallic drinks tray featuring a map of the Maltese islands, 50p. Super exciting because we have been there but would never considering purchasing such a tacky souvenir, yet somehow it seems so right 3 years later and right in our home town.

Item 2, a Midwinter green and gold stripe tea cup, £1.  Hardly a standout, but it is green, and I felt bad after the lady rummaged around to pull out a whole box full of the stuff after I picked it up for a quick squiz.

Item 3, the crowning glory, a drawing of a Rough Legged Buzzard, £5.  I've since discovered this is a hawk found in Europe, Asia and North America, with an average wingspan of 134cm and an average total length of 53cm. Thankyou Wikipedia. Its special because its the only hawk of its size to regularly hover over one spot, which (aside from those awesome beaks) is what makes hawks so interesting in the first place. Woe is the hawk who can't even hover. What a loser. This guy was part of a pair, but the his partner wasn't so cool and so he got left behind.

He's hanging in the hallway, which you may never have seen before now. A sunless, dog-legged room with 5 doorways and a warped floor thanks to the leaking roof issue before we moved in. This is the view looking towards our bedroom at the back of the flat.

 

You might have noticed GG's little addition to spice up the hallway decor, a postcard of Rocky, in which it looks like Rocky is holding hands with Michael Jackson circa 2006 wearing a long skirt.

And while I was getting busy with the screwdriver in the hallway, I thought screw it, why not hang the mirror that's been sitting in the corner of the room on a chair for the last 14 months (seen most clearly here, behind the dining room table)?  After all, doesn't matter how many pock marks we put in the walls, they're all getting a new paint job in the next few.

Voila! £35 from Camden market when we first moved over here and I got confused and thought £35 was cheap.  Its a great shape though, and will hopefully reflect a little more light around the place.

Are you loving the industrial-ness of those pipes in the hallway?  They're similar to the one running through our bedroom, but they all originate outside our flat, and are probably whisking away the cooking fumes from all the other tennants.  They all disappear into the laundry cupboard (around the corner to the right in this photo), which is a veritable spaghetti mess of gas, water and electricity pipes and meters, along with the upstairs neighbours poo shute. The joys of apartment living.

Bedroom upgrades

I haven't posted any photos of the bedroom before now (except a snapshot of the beside table, and I'm sure the suspense has been killing you.  Here's a photo taken in the first week after we moved in.  That silver cylinder of loveliness streaking through the room is actually the kitchen exhaust, winging its way to the atmosphere at the rear of the building. 

Note the ubiquitous Ikea Malm double bed.  In birch veneer no less.  Well, it was inherited so I can't take the blame on that one.  But I ask you, what is wrong with Black-Brown? Or even oak veneer? Basically anything is more interesting than Ikea's birch blandness.

Anyway, we've made 3 key improvements since this photo was taken. (1) We changed up the position of the bed so the head of the bed is opposite the window. (2) We replaced the ugliest blind in the world, and (3) I bought a new duvet and cover when we were in Australia.

The previous owner had rented the flat with a very fetching cream blackout blind, which would have been extremely functional (albeit very ugly) - if only they had bothered to get the right size so that it covered the entire window! As it was, the blind was fitted a couple of inches below the top of the window, and when fully extended the blind left about 5 inches of free space at the bottom of the window.

From the looks of the additional plug holes, it looks like they made at least 2 attempts to finally end up with it in this genius position.

Anyway, our new blind was bought online, hassle-free from www.blindsuk.net.  It is African Blackwood, which translates to "cheap wood painted black". Either way it is 100 times better than what we had. GG has filled the old holes so now it looks the finished product.  We did discover a rather large crack in the brickwork while drilling the holes, but hopefully its nothing serious.

It is such a large window that the blind is ridiculously heavy to lift, so much so that I'm afraid one day I'll rip it out of the wall.  And it actually does a pretty poor job of keeping light out in the morning, but that's not a problem because there are few things that can come between me and a good ol' shut-eye.  These days the only thing that keeps me awake is GG whinging about noise from the neighbours.  Sorry for the poor quality photo, the rooms not very wide and the window is so tall its hard to get a good perspective (or lighting conditions!).

The second major improvement was the purchase of new linen - a black and white graphic duvet cover and grey coloured sheet and pillowcases.  I am incredibly fussy when it comes to duvet covers; it is virtually impossible to find one that I like and that GG won't hate. Originally I wanted something asymmetrical, with trees and bird silhouettes but I was unable to find anything that had the right colours (i.e. blue/grey tones with not too much white in it) and wasn't too trendy.  I'm pretty happy with what I found, and was even happier with the price: $AU50!  

I've since been using the old duvet on the couch for watching TV, and last night I accidentally ripped a huge hole in it. So it was probably a rather timely purchase.
The one thing the bedroom is really lacking is storage, at the moment we only have a couple of rails on the wall for hanging clothes (to the right in this photo), and consequently we are still living out of suitcases. 13 months after moving in.  I can't even bring myself to take a photo of that horror show.  But in the works is a wall-length floor to ceiling wardrobe that will solve all our storage problems and probably yours too.

A long time between drinks

Happy new year! A little long in the tooth now but then I am almost always late.

We've spent some time in Australia over Christmas and new year, 5 weeks in total for me.  Its very difficult to return to London midwinter after spending time in 35 degree heat let me tell you.  And before you ask - yes, I have family in Queensland, Toowoomba as it happens, where the flash flood occurred. (about a week after I left for Perth).  Thankfully they were not affected by the floods, although as I'm sure you've read, there were many, many people who lost their homes, and in the flash flood around 30 people died or are still missing.  The size of the 'inland sea' was greater than France and Germany combined.  Cost of repair and recovery expected to be $AU3.9bn.  Despite all this, we managed to completely avoid all the disruption and spent quality time with our friends and  families in the sun.

On the home front, we were pleased to find that, contrary to the constructs of my vivid imagination, no squatters had taken up residence in our flat and all was exactly as we left it. 

Before heading to Australia, I had invited a few of the girls over for a morning tea, mostly so that I could prove to GG that all my kitchenalia is a useful, nay, absolutely necessary investment.  In fact, all it did was highlight to said sceptic the missing items in my cupboard.  Like a coffee maker. And a teapot (although I do have a tea cosy, forlornly waiting in the drawer).

I made a list. I got up at 7. I raced to the bakers.  Of course I didn't actually make all that stuff. We don't even have the oven hooked up.  I got everything from Sweet Boulangerie and Patisserie in Exmouth Market.  They've been given a nice write up by Sarah Lambersky here.


Note the vintage green tea cup (part of a trio with cake plate), and 3 layered cake stand, both gifts from my Mum.  The 4 green glasses with gold rimming were part of a lemonade set (there is a beautiful accompanying jug that I later used for champagne + OJ), which were a 30th birthday gift from 2 of my lovely friends S and C who joined me for morning tea.  And lastly, the Snowden Flood tree glasses in black, also a 30th gift from KtB.

Anyway, the food was good, the conversation even better, ending at around 6pm that evening after grazing all day on the nibbles, watching a few literal videos and having a giggle at this.  

Hopefully not too long until the next update, GG has been working hard on our flat - its nearly finished. In Sketchup that is. I also made a few choice purchases back home so will share some of those with you over the coming week or so.