House & Home | It’s All in the Details

It’s been a little while since my last Moving House post, but that’s because it’s still a work in progress! We’ve managed to unpack pretty much everything now (aside from those 2…3 boxes still resident in the garage), and we’ve got the majority of the furniture in, including some sliding wardrobes from IKEA (more on these in another post). We do have a delivery from Wren Furniture coming on Friday which includes a dining table and chairs (finally!), plus a nest of tables and the thing I’ve been excited about for months (possibly years!) as you might remember: a bookcase.
We are on a bit of a savings kick right now though, as you can probably imagine! We’d saved a lot before we moved as we knew that I needed a new car, and obviously a big chunk had to go down on the deposit, plus the monthly payments have now gone up from when we were renting. It’s still affordable, but with buying pieces of new furniture, it’s a bit tighter than before. There are other things too that you know are there, but sort of forget about – everything from the solicitor’s fees on the mortgage to other monthly payments such as pet insurance and our life insurance. Speaking of which, apparently a lot of women don’t actually have life insurance, despite often being the breadwinners and owning their own homes – Legal & General have published some info about it here. And have you seen this video on the history of life insurance? I didn’t know it had been around since 1783, and yet, still so many of us don’t have it!

But what we have right furniture-wise right now is definitely enough – we have everything we need to make the house more than liveable, and we’ve managed to pull together enough bits and pieces from our old house, plus a few new things, to make it more of a comfortable home. And that’s what this post is all about: the details. I wanted to share a few pictures with you of some favourite places and small things from around our house that make it what it is. Do bear in mind though that behind these pictures, there are lots of areas of mess and strategically hidden ancient sofas (I’m getting rid of it soon, I swear!!).
The picture at the top of the post is probably my favourite room of the house (aside from my sewing room, of course!) – the garden room. It sounds a bit “fancy” to call it that, but technically it’s not a conservatory as it has proper walls but a glass roof, with one brick wall which I love. The clock is from Home Sense – we bought it for our old house to go above the fireplace and it fits just perfectly against the brick wall. I also love the lighting in the garden room – it has spotlights all around the edges which give a really nice effect.

These lights are one of my favourite recent buys – they weren’t necessary in the slightest as we already had all the lighting in place, plus we’d bought some of those cheap Argos lampshades. But I spotted these on the Dunelm website then found them in store in a flash sale for nearly half the price, I just had to buy them. They’re part of the Cosy Skandi Lighting Collection from which I’ve just decided I need this table lamp too. I know Scandi chic is a bit cliche at the moment, and I’m definitely one to be taken in by trends like this (I was all over shabby chic before), but I’m so tempted by all the orange, blue and yellow colours with dark wood and that sort of retro style. Also spot in the background my gorgeous Harry Potter Spineless Classics print – I got this from my parents for my birthday a couple of years ago, but had been saving it for a special place in the house, so it’s currently residing in the dining room where everyone can see it in an IKEA frame.

This picture features quite a few things, including my favourite check cushion (see more on this below), one of our two grey sofas (the Amelia from Sofa Sofa), the woodland theme cushion I made myself with fabric from Dunelm, and our tripod floor lamp (more on this below too).

This picture features two of my detail pieces in the living room – our Next Woven Check Stirling curtains and a little vase with some fake IKEA flowers. Okay, the flowers seem a little bit silly and over the top, but they’re bright and pretty so I like them. We’ve had them for a few years now and a couple of moves, so they’re starting to look a bit shabby – ideally I’d like to get some more from somewhere that actually specialises in flowers like Michael Dark rather than some random ones we picked up on a whim in IKEA! I’m also useless at keeping plants alive (aside from my cactus and an orchid we’ve just bought), and I always forget about fresh flowers and find they’re completely dried out a few weeks later!
The curtains though have a bit of a story behind them – we’d bought the check cushion (above) from Next before we moved as we’d already ordered our plain grey sofas and knew that we wanted that sort of style in our living room. The window in there is a bay window, but it doesn’t have any wall around the top and above the window panes themselves, meaning it’s impossible to get a rail in there. The wall above the bay is also too short up to the ceiling to put a rail up there. The issue with this? I, before now, disliked pencil pleat curtains, much preferring eyelet ones. In spite of the problems, we still tried to fit a rail there with a pair of Dunelm Highland Check eyelet curtains – yep, it didn’t fit. So we had to stick with the rail in place there, return the unused Dunelm curtains, and settle with these Next ones. And actually…I liked these better in the end! And of course, to be all matchy matchy, we had to buy the rug to match too!

And a bit of a close up on the lamp you saw earlier – this is our tripod Easel Floor Lamp from Next (spotting a theme?!). It was a little pricey, but we did have some money left on a voucher from Christmas to use, plus we wanted to treat ourselves. It turns out that our impulse/treat buys all seem to be lighting related! It is gorgeous though and finishes off the room perfectly. Also in the background, our new mirror (bought very cheaply from T K Maxx), the orchid (that’s still alive!) and…a digger on the fireplace (Ben’s cousin William who is 4 decided he wanted to keep it there for when he visits!).

And the final finishing piece for our living room/dining room (which is where the majority of the details in this post have come from) is my Walt Disney Vision print. I just need another trip to Disney to be able to get the Heritage one for the other side of the fireplace now!