House Hunting News

Gingham Dress: Handmade (using Great British Sewing Bee book; fabric from Boyes) | Tights: M&S | Heels: ASOS

I have some exciting news, finally!! Ben and I are (or soon will be) officially homeowners, eeee!! I know I mentioned a bit about it the other day, but I’ve been trying to keep it off social media and my blog as much as possible just in case things didn’t go through as I’d be more disappointed in the end then. BUT, we have had our offer accepted finally, 3 weeks after viewing the house, and we’re heading off to the bank tomorrow to get the ball rolling with the mortgage – terrifying that we will soon have to part with our money, but so exciting that it’s finally happening!

The first time I talked about our house hunting was at the end of the October, but our journey had already started quite a bit before that as we’d been watching properties in the area for about a year. By the end of the October, we’d already viewed a few but none had really taken our fancy. In mid-November, we were going back over ones we’d considered before to see if we thought we should view any, just in case, and saw one we liked. Unfortunately by the time the agents got back to us, it had already had an offer in on it, but they recommended a couple of others to us, one of which we had already discounted from our search based on price. It had actually dropped in price though, so we decided to go and view it as soon as we could. We headed off on a Wednesday evening to see the house, and were a bit sceptical as we left because for some reason, we’d previously decided we weren’t so keen on the development it was on. Strangely enough, we now have no idea why we’d discounted the development because it’s lovely!! I keep saying it has an American feel, because it really does! The estate was built only a few years ago, and really well done, so the houses are all unique and situated around a green. We had to see the house in the dark, but as soon as we stepped in the door, it had a completely different feeling to the others we’d seen. We were shown round by the agent rather than the owners, which might have made a bit of a difference, but I could tell that I liked it immediately and could already see us living there.

I won’t go into a huge amount of detail (I guess I already have…!), but it’s bigger than we were actually looking for and than what we need right now, but we aren’t intending on moving again any time soon – we’ve lived in 3 places together already (not including time spent at home, that adds on another 1 I guess!), so we want to have a good few years in one place now! It’s got a gorgeous garden room (where I’ve already got a wall planned for indoor outfit photos!), a lovely attic bedroom and more bathrooms than we can use in one go – two are en suites, which means there are enough for Ben and I to have one each, and the cats to have one each!!

The offering process took a long time due to the change in Stamp Duty while we were offering which meant the value of the house changed, as well as the one the vendors were negotiating on. We won’t be moving for a good couple/few months yet – our contract in our current house runs till April, so we don’t want too much overlap. And the vendors haven’t yet closed on their offer yet, so the chain technically isn’t complete. But hopefully it’ll all be sorted soon and we’ll get a moving date. First though, there are lots of important and scary things to sort out like the mortgage and solicitors….

Anyway, back to the fashion side of this post! This is another memade dress – and again, another from the Great British Sewing Bee Book – as I mentioned before, it’s a different skirtred version of the shift dress (which I’ve made in Eiffel Tower and tartan fabric). It uses the same bodice, but adds these little capped sleeves and swaps the pencil skirt for a full skirt cut on the bias. It is slightly shorter than I’d like at the moment, so next time I may end up lengthening it a bit, but I find it really quick and easy to make. Like the shift dress, I do find the waist hits slightly higher than I like, but I think that’s the style of the dress. I think I might try adding the cap sleeves to the shift dress pattern at some point to see how that works out! I did rush a little bit on this one though, and the princess seams on the bodice aren’t as neat as the other, plus I caught a tiny bit of fabric in one sleeve which resulted in a bit of a pleat there, but they’re not noticeable unless I told you – serves me right for rushing though!

Though the book does have several errors, I’ve so far found the patterns pretty easy to work with which is nice – I’m awful at things which involve diagrams as I can never see what they’re trying to get me to see, so it’s nice when it’s not too confusing! I’m also working on a pattern for a little girl’s and a baby dress from the book too, and I have fabric for the wrap dress, so soon enough I think I’ll have made enough patterns to properly review the book for you!
PS: Apologies for the creepy face below! This was a bad day for photo taking, so I had to take them inside, and I find these really difficult to do with the lighting in our house, hence I ended up with only about 5 useable pictures, some of which had weird faces like this one – oops!