Hygge Nook

A little expedition to Anthropologie and Cath Kidston

Yesterday, I ventured out in to the freezing cold and zoomed my way into central London for a mini shopping trip, the purpose of which was to stop by Cath Kidston and check out Anthropologie. Covent Garden's Cath Kidston was delightful and the staff super helpful. I was desperate for one of the coloured baskets (not for sale) and they told me that they are sourced from flea markets and painted so I'll be keeping by eye out in the future!

I picked up a cute blue polka dot travel card wallet (£5) to replace my falling apart at the seams FrostFrench holder, a red button tin (£5) where I'll store my scissors, needles and other bits and some uber cute floral playing cards for my Mum's Christmas stocking (I've already wrapped them so can't a pic). Though, really, I could have bought LOADS in there.

 

Next up was Anthropologie and I can see why it has been getting such mixed opinions here. It is a fabulous treasure trove of pretties. As you enter, most of the clothes are pushed towards the front though you won't get much change out of £100 for a single item of clothing (but perhaps the key is to buy less, buy better?).

With jars set out stuffed with accessories, ready for the lids to be lifted and rummaged through, it was like a sweet shop for girls. Meanwhile, the glass vases and candles with big knitted cosies are an idea to borrow for crafty types.

The in-store displays were fab - amazing chandeliers with flowers, jewels and all sorts plus a plaster creature suspended above the basement floor which was a cross between a unicorn and a whale (I feel I should know the name for this, but can't think a narwhal). The homewares were just delightful but... pricey. Think £12 for a single glass or £258 for a freeform crochet blanket (I would love to know what kind of people shell out that for a throw. Perhaps they could adopt me), a single Christmas tree decoration for £14-£18, delicate teacups... it was heavenly. Definately one worth revisiting to pick up items that will have a special place in your home.

I didn't take any pictures so I've found a few from their website to show you what I cooed over (there's more in the store that I didn't find online):

Top row from left: Colossal cables throw, was £126.18 now £63.70, Robin decoration £11.47
 Middle from left: cathedral goblets £7.65, cardiff cup and saucer £11.47, sweater sleeve candle was £15.29 now £7.65. (Prices not including VAT).

Kirstie's Homemade Christmas

I've noticed a spike in traffic from people looking for Kirstie's Homemade Home today, no doubt because Kirstie is on the TV doing her Christmas edition. What the heck, I may as well blog about it again and for your pleasure, it's a live blog...

I do like Kirstie. I think she is a unique character on TV, warm and friendly, slightly bonkers tights and she'd probably make a fabulous Famous Five character. I also love that she is championing the 'make do and mend' trend, though I do think she misses the point about because, really, who can afford to do all the things she's showing off or the prices they no doubt entail.

Anyway, the show...

Looking at decorations to start off with as it's the theme of the shoe. Kirstie is fascinated by the glitter, thinking they'll be fab for her children's imaginations. I'd be freaking out about how breakable they are.

It takes a whopping 11 minutes for Kirstie to mention Meadowgate, her Devon home, and that is its first Christmas being in habited in 40 years.

It's cake making with The Little Venice Cake Company. The cakes look delightful with its super smooth white icing and red and green iced dots. The polar bears are absolutely cute and very cheap to make. Good start!

Kirstie is hacking down a Christmas tree, scaring people with her saw (are you watching Phil?). Fresh trees are lovely but they're a pain with needle dropping and then you have to dump the poor dead thing after. Could she not have got one by the roots so she could have planted it after?

Next craft! Lino cutting. What? Oh, Christmas cards. I've never heard of this. Steve from Delf and Dufy are showing Kirstie what to do and that she can make all her cards for £20 and have the cutters for next year. I buy all mine for £5 and still have some for next year!

Next up - salt dough Christmas decorations at a school. Egyptians did it, you can do it. It looks quite messy to mix up so probably a good one to insist your child's teacher does at school. Squash them into shapes, microwave them and paint them. Kirstie wishes she could spend her life with glitter glue but 'it turns out life isn't like that.' But it is Kirstie, it is, you're doing it! I like the 'merry christmas' shapes. They're rather sweet and it's another cheapie idea.

Back to Meadowgate which Kirstie wants to decorate with homemade ornaments so she's pottered off to see glassblower Will Shakespeare to make some baubles. Will is teaching Kirstie how to make stripey baubles. I wonder if she'll make one then he'll turn up with a box full later?

Safeguard your home's belongings

I'm going to push my British reserve aside in favour of a little self promote. But first some background... Back in March, my house was burgled and my laptop stolen. It was pretty upsetting, not least because I hadn't backed up alot of my work and the many, many photos on it. Still, it did make me think alot about home security and how we just weren't doing enough. Now, I have everything UV marked and registered on the national property register and I have a back up drive now, small measures that make me feel a little better.

If you want to check out a piece I wrote with some advice on safeguarding your gadgets, grab a copy of Woman & Home's August issue - out now - and turn to page 121.

More and more friends are reporting burgalries and I don't think we should be complacent about our hard-earned things, especially when they might be so tempting to others during these times. Do you have any security measures in place to protect your things? Do tell.

House or Home: Renting again (last column!)

Over the past few weeks, I've written about every house I've lived in and now we're at the end! With only a few weeks between selling our house and having to move out, there just wasn't enough time to buy somewhere else. Is there any need to mention that with the state of the market, there are also scant properties available. So, we decided to rent instead and we saw some absolute shockers. Revolting decor, falling apart kitchens, a house where the landlord lived next door and had taken the garden (!), a place with white carpets everywhere... it wasn't looking good. Then I was told about this house. It had just come up for rent again. Despite being a cottage style terrace, from the outside it looked pretty dreadful - it's a lesson in how not to create kerb appeal - and I wasn't hopeful about the inside. However, I was surprised. Inside, it was the best house we'd seen. Newish laminate flooring downstairs, neutral decor, a useable kitchen, good sized rooms, newish carpeting upstairs and three decent sized bedrooms with a huge garden a patio and a tenant who needed to move quickly. We took it.

We moved in as quickly as possible. My oldest son finally got his old room again, the two youngest shared the larger second bedroom and we got a bedroom without children in it! Fortunately with the decor being quite neutral (cream, everywhere) we didn't have to do anything inside and it meant that none of our furnishings clashed. However, I did have to buy curtains for everywhere as none of ours fit and have rather bravely gone for white (three kids + white curtains = actually going okay). The only room that hasn't been re-curtained is the lounge because the poles have been up wonky be a previous resident and I can't get them off.

House or Home: Owning my first property

We found a house that was the right price, a liveable size but in entirely the wrong location. So, we bought it with the aim of staying just a couple of years but things being what things are, we ended up staying four years before selling.

The house was, let's say, only fit for the colourblind. The small hallway had stripy blue wallpaper up to chest height and the rest was blue paint. The dark downstairs loo dark mutinous green, the kitchen the same dark green and the living space... toxic yellow at the top, stripy paper below, two - count 'em! - borders and borders round the ceiling, skirting boards and light switches too! Upstairs was no better, dark blue up the stairs and landing, murky orange on the bedroom walls with more stripy paper on two walls and the second bedroom had floor to ceiling teddy bear wallpaper. I think I can safely say it wasn't very us and it was just so dark. I wanted light, bright and breezy not dark, dingy and depressing!

 

Before pics: clockwise from top left, my bedroom, kids room, living room, kitchen. I know! Gah!

Having only two months to go until the baby was born, we set about scraping off paper, re-papering with liner and painting everywhere with Dulux Barley White, a nice creamy white colour. The kitchen got a lift of pale lemon and new wooden blinds and the children's rooms was painted mid blue with cool pirate-motif curtains. Despite it only being a small house, all that took *ages*.

My boyfriend also built a cabin in the garden which he intended to use as an office but never really did and had to dig up the garden, lay new top soil and turf it by which time our new daughter was two. Here's a pic of our tiny garden as it was being laid out. Btw, white pebbles do not stay white, if I did it again I would have gone for slate coloured, the black stuff underneath the pebbles is a liner that supposedly stopped weeds getting through though it didn't stop thistles one bit. We didn't use the garden very much due to the complete lack of privacy and only shortly before we moved did we put in a five foot fence to the right. I wish I had done that immediately.

After pic: Garden, post cabin building, turfing and half way through pebble laying. We inherited the crazy paving patio - another gah!

Squashed though we were, and with the two children now sharing a room, we had another baby in the summer of 2007 and frankly, no where to put him or any more stuff! His cot was squished into our room and there wasn't room to swing... anything, anywhere.

Had we been in the location we wanted to be in we may have considered extending out or into the loft, but the location was all wrong. We had to move. So we put the house up for sale as the market started crashing and were fortunate to find a buyer who wanted us out in a matter of weeks. With no time to buy anything we started the search for a rental and moved out in November last year. Moving served well because we did get rid of a large amount of stuff, sending a lot to be recycled and generally decluttering, something I'm not sure my partner yet understands the concept of!

House or home? I really loathed living there, definitely just a house.

Next week: My current home!

Top tip: Don't make huge compromises, everyone ends up unhappy.

Do you have Ikea fatigue?

Looking round our house recently, my partner and I said to each other, 'We have to stop shopping in Ikea.' We have a lot of Ikea things, Billy bookcases, Klippan sofas, birch Gilbert chairs, shoe cabinet, children's extendable beds not to mention heaps of storage boxes. Too much, we thought! Fortunately we never got to the stage where we bought the same prints that you saw in literally everybody else's house. Still, we wondered if we were suffering from Ikea fatigue.

Thing is, most of their stuff is well made. It doesn't fall apart (at least none of ours have). If well arranged and looked after, it looks good. There are tons of great basics that work well with more expensive pieces from elsewhere, without breaking the budget. A few days ago I discovered blog Door Sixteen and it revitalised my love for Ikea. Many of their home's furnishings are Ikea but they look seriously great (the house, of course, is beautiful) and it made me look at Ikea in a new light. Surely it doesn't matter if every single other person you know shops there too, so long as you make it work for you.

So, do you have Ikea fatigue, does the store swing in and out of favour or do you just love Ikea?

House or Home: Moving to London

Moving to London in 2003 was a huge step. Not only did I have to pack up an entire house again, but I had to move hundreds of miles, finish off my Masters thesis and find a job. Fortunately my boyfriend did all the house searching and I visited the house precisely once before moving in. It was a 1930s semi with a red front door, gardens to the front and back and fairly nice inside with stripped wooden floors, living and dining rooms, kitchen, three bedrooms and a bathroom. No more back-to-backs for me!

However, we barely had any furniture. I'd bought only a couple of larger pieces with me from my previous houses - the pine dining table and chairs, dryer, washer, fridge and a couple of chests of drawers - and nothing else. First on my list was a bed for my son and a bed for us. Fortunately the bedrooms had wardrobes built in though they weren't really fit for purpose. Due to disagreements on furnishings, we didn't have sofas for months. It was only when I found myself pregnant early the following year, that I insisted we stopped waiting and got a flaming sofa. Of course, I didn't measure the space and bought one that was really too big (note to self: always measure, don't guess) but at least I had somewhere to sit down! Finally though that was shifted into the dining room where it also functioned as a guest bed and we got a pair of black leather Klippan sofas that we still have. We decided on these as they were practical with a little boy and a new arrival and wouldn't date quickly.

House or Home? My third and final student house

I moved into this house, just a few minutes walk from Leeds' Hyde Park, in August 2002 and it was to be my last house in Leeds. At the time I had just finished my first degree and was about to start a Masters the next month. It was at the top of the hill I'd been battling with for the past three years so no more of that - hurrah! It was slightly bigger and there was a tiny but hugely overgrown garden with a little gate and path. I tackled the garden straight away by tearing off the clumps of ivy covering the brickwork on the front walls (loads of bugs, v.gross), digging up all the weeds and what was left of any grass, cutting back and creating a border, planting tulips, daffodils and snowdrops and laying grass seed. I noticed after I'd done mine, several other houses down the street tackled their gardens too. (I may have some pictures somewhere, and if I do find them, I'll update this.)

The house was a similar layout to the other houses I lived in. On the ground floor, you turned left into the galley kitchen which had a door leading into the basement where the washing maching went (and where a stray cat managed to live for a few days too). The front door led straight onto the living room with stripped wooden floors, green coving and yellow paint. Looking back, adding in my red sofa throws meant it probably slightly resembled a rasta hat. A door led from here to the first floor with a large bedroom for my son, now three, and a big bathroom. From here, there was another door up to the light-filled attic room which was an odd shape but quite big.

House or home: My second student house

The next house I moved to would be the house I'd live in for the next two years. It was only a few streets away from my first student house but a ton nicer though still in the back-to-back style. It was tiny, the front door opened straight on to the living room which was a little tired and the previous tenants had left a miniscule rug over the dinner plate sized burn they had managed to make right in the centre of the carpet. To the left was a sliding door to the kitchen which had a couple of cabinets, a washer and a fridge/freezer under a large cupboard. Next to that was the basement door. On the same wall as the kitchen was the door to the stairs which led  to a little landing off of which was a single bedroom, a double and a peach coloured bathroom suite (ugh!) and a cupboard unhelpfully packed with the absent landlady's stuff.

House or Home: My first student house

...was hideous in every way but its name. Autumn Avenue. Sounds so pretty. In reality? So dire. Moving to a whole new city was daunting, finding my first house was daunting, trying to find one mid summer when most rental places had been snapped up in an area I didn't really know was even worse so I ended up with the house that everyone else had quite rightly rejected. And to confound things, the street names were entirely unimaginative. Autumn Avenue was bordered by Autumn Road, Grove, Street... you name it followed by another set of similarly named properties. The area was undergoing a huge facelift back in 1999 - all properties were getting brand new doors and windows and scaffolding was everywhere. Residents were largely students for nearby Leeds University, poor lecturers and immigrants. In short, everyone who couldn't afford something better. The flats the 7/7 bombers later used were literally right around the corner. Nice.

It was a back-to-back style house. Hugely popular in certain areas of Leeds like Hyde Park and Headingley. If you don't know what a back-to-back is, think of a rectangle, cut it once down the middle then bisect three times so that you have six blocks. Each of those blocks is a house with another house directly to either side and behind. The blocks were punctuated with yards used for storing rubbish bins though some residents had turned theirs into little gardens which were pretty and innovative.