hilkat

I honestly don’t think I’ve ever been this bad at blogging since the whole project started - but hey ho, that’s life with a toddler for you! I’ve also been really busy making our new home look pretty, investigating shops for goodies (TK Maxx homewares department is an absolute GOLDMINE) and generally making everything as cosy and comfy as possible. I’ve developed some sort of a mug obsession… I’ve never noticed until recently just how many wonderful cups and mugs there are around….

My favourite so far (it was a tough contest, and this one only won by a whisker!) is nothing short of fabulous, and I love the little saying painted round the top; “life is like a teapot, what you put in is what you pour out”. Brilliant!

The kitchen seems to be the area getting most attention at the moment, whether it’s with plates and trays…

…floral goodnesses….

…or egg cups and oven gloves (what a wonderful name that would be for a domestic blog - Egg Cups and Oven Gloves!)…

And although there hasn’t been much progress anywhere else, a tiny corner of the bathroom is looking a lot more colourful than before…

The little beach hut is actually a box, and although I have absolutely nothing to put in it, I couldn’t resist - it does the perfect job of brightening up the window sill.

Finally, after two weeks of carrying, lifting, moving and shifting, losing feeling in our feet and continually digging the car out of the snow and ice, we are settled in our new home. Somehow, I managed to pick not only the same year, but right down to the same week and even day to move house that the UK decided to go all unnatural weather-wise, and deliver us 20cm of snow - if it hadn’t been so annoying, it might have been funny. I hate moving house at the best of times, and it’s safe to say that trying to get everything done during what was dubbed, ‘The Big Freeze’ with a fifteen-month old toddler in tow really iced the removal cake. BUT, we’re in now, so I can get on with more exciting things, namely, new crafty goodies and a sneaky peek into our new home!

Our new place is much bigger than our old one, so we have lots and lots and lots of homewares shopping to do (secretly, my favourite kind!) to really fill it out and make it look as comfy and cosy as we can (while remembering to place everything up high so it’s safe from the sticky grasp of the little man). I’ve made a good start on the kitchen, with milk jugs, flower pots and printed trays all jostling for space along the worktops, and gorgeous little postcards dancing along the picture rail…..

The views from the huge lounge windows are lovely, and on a clear day you can see all the way across to the Isle of Wight - although this week it looked more like this…

Apart from the endless possibilities of finding coloured delights and little knick-knacks for our home, the second exciting thing is how many crafty projects I’m planning. For Christmas, my lovely husband-to-be bought me a Brother sewing machine, so I wasted no time in logging on to eBay to see what lovely fabrics I could find - I particularly like the blue owls that I’m going to use in the little man’s room, and the colourful flowers…and the stripes… actually, I love them all!

As you can see, I’ve also got some rather lovely new yarn for various crochet projects I’m starting (why work on one thing at once, when you can work on ten?!), and several new craft books to work my way through. I’m planning a post soon to actually start showing you some of the things I’ve (half) done, so keep an eye out!

My blogging productivity seems to go in peaks and troughs - the latest trough seems to have outlasted all the others by miles, though. Work, the Boy becoming a walking, talking, miniature hurricane, the festive season (SO many post opportunities missed!) and moving house have all taken their toll on my poor, neglected blog, so I thought it was time to add some content.

I’ve got plenty of pictures of gorgeous fabrics, snippets from around our new home, the snowy scenery and other delights waiting on the camera, but typically I seem to have mislaid the lead which connects it to the laptop. Sigh. So for now, here is a little post on some of the best cushions (is my obsession with interiors showing through?!) around at the moment from two of my favourite websites.

Etsy

Not on the High Street

I’m like a magpie when it comes to shopping - anything coloured, patterned or slightly eclectic draws me in and usually ends up coming home with me. My latest purchases are no different - and I love that since I’ve expanded the content rules for the blog, I can now post wonderful pictures of them as well, hurrah! - and have absolutely nothing to link them all together, apart from the fact that I just had to have them…

I was browsing through Whittard during my lunch break last week, searching through for any mugs or plates that caught my eye for our new flat, when I stumbled across this tea towel. The teapots featured in the design are the exact style of china I love, and am aiming to start collecting, so of course it ended up in the basket (along with some tea bags and two bags of chocolate coins!).

Another lunch break (maybe I should just stay in the staffroom and read?!) led to the finding of (and this was actually written on the label, it’s not one of my awful jokes…) Lorraine Deer in Paperchase. She’s made up of such a lovely fabric, that I thought it would be something nice to keep with the Christmas decorations. The owl tissue paper was collected on the same shopping trip, and the intention is to wrap my Mums birthday presents in it in January, as she loves owls and I thought it would make a nice change from the usual ‘Happy Birthday’ rolls from Asda.

Lastly, and by no means least, a trip to Hobbycraft resulted in the gorgeous wool pictured below (on the ironing board - what a great cover!) and a French knitting dolly. The fingerless mittens are from Asda, and are to keep my hands warm while I labour over my own pair - although keen, I’m pretty new to crocheting and knitting, and projects tend to be slow and rather laborious.

I haven’t done French knitting for a while, and had to do a search on Google Images to see what could actually come out of it, and I was quite pleasantly surprised. Although the only thing you end up with is a long piece of knitted cord (which could obviously be used as a…cord…), there are plenty of things it can be transformed into, and I have an overload of ideas of using it for words and phrases, as well as weaving several together into a scarf. And not forgetting the rather obvious rug option, of course.

Working in the complex where I do is a problem for two rather relevant reasons. Firstly, there is a Krispy Kreme donut stall. Anyone who’s ever eaten even a single Krispy Kreme will know that this requires no further explanation. Secondly, Paperchase is just around the corner from the shop I work in, and it happens to have the most enticing window displays full of trinkets and lovely printed notepaper and diaries…. does a person really need six notebooks and an assortment of birthday cards to keep ‘just in case’? Probably not. While wandering past yesterday on my way to work, I noticed they had a new rack of postcards in the window… I left with several for the Boy’s room, one for the kitchen (which actually made me guffaw out loud) and a lovely little bargain ‘Hula Lover’ £3 bag. I’ve decided this new job isn’t as great as it first appeared - at this rate I’m going to end up fat and broke, but I suppose at least I’ll have a wonderful stationary collection.

To buy all of these completely unnecessary items, I wore my new beige peg-leg trousers (£5 from H&M in the sale), a t-shirt from eBay (also £5), bright red socks and black boots from New Look. I have to admit, the combination of boots, socks and the cut of the trouser made me feel a little like I was an eighties-skinhead (think This is England - all I needed were braces) but I went with it anyway. Nothing ventured, nothing gained…

Day two of my new job (which I love, I might add - I work with the best people ever) and I decided it was time to pull out the coloured tights. “Blimey,” my taxi driver said, “they’re a bit loud aren’t they?” I admitted they were, but I loved them, and also had planned to wear them with a red dress. “Not together, surely?” he said, looking at me like I may be certifiable, and I laughed and explained that I do love a bit of clashing colour, but had decided I wanted to wear my new pencil skirt, so the red dress had been banished back to the wardrobe.

This was also the day that I got carried away and bought a load of postcards for our new house (which we don’t actually have yet…details, details) from Paperchase. As you know from previous posts, I love peacock prints, so got rather overexcited when I saw the stand. The owl print is for my mum, as she adores them - I might go back and have a look for some more today… only for my mum, you understand….