Lighting the way

I have to face facts, Alexander is now too big for his Moses Basket. I suspect he is waking himself up by bumping into the sides of the basket and he really is filling it now. That being said, I am dragging my heels about putting him in his own room. I love having him near me at night, not to mention the convenience of not having to walk down the corridor in the middle of the night when he wakes up. Nevertheless, I plan to make the 'big move' in the next couple of days.

Just in time for Alexander's move to his own room, I found the perfect lamp. It is just right for his sweet, traditional nursery and I love it! I am so going to miss my baby boy at night, but at least we will have a soft sweet light to share for sleepy bedtime cuddles.

Alexander's Nursery

We don't spend a lot of time in the nursery at the moment as Alexander still sleeps in with us, but we do try to spend some of our day here. It is so soft and sweet and is even better now that I have my little boy to put in it.  Alexander is my last baby, so I am doing my best to soak up everything 'baby' and I just love his nursery. Now that we know that Alexander is a boy, I would like to replace the pink carpet and faintly pink walls at some point (you may remember it used to be Lily's room). I know he doesn't care now, but there will come a time when he will object to a pink bedroom! For now though, it is lovely just the way it is.

His chest of drawers now has a few personal items on display, like the little 'Baby Boy' teddy given to Alex by one of Tom's school friends. The 'A' with the little Peter Rabbit figure was a very thoughtful gift from a family friend and we display it next to one of Alexander's newborn pictures (Thanks again Hattie! We love it!)

Of course, Alex still sleeps in with us at the moment, so he also likes to hang out on my bed. Especially around 4am!

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The Nursery

It still needs a few finishing touches, but the nursery is pretty much finished! I was on a very tight budget for the nursery, so managed to put this together for less than £15. We were very lucky to be given the cot for nothing and my parents very kindly bought the chest of drawers as a 'new baby' present for us. Everything else are things we had anyway, or things I have been able to make very cheaply. I am still on the lookout for the right lamp at the right price, but I am ever so pleased with how the nursery looks and feels. I like to just go in there and sit and enjoy it. It won't be long until its little occupant will arrive now and it feels wonderful to know that the nursery is all ready.

The picture above the chest was a cheap frame I bought in Home Bargains and I simply filled it with Beatrix Potter characters I printed off the Internet. The pine chest of drawers is a generous 'New Baby' gift from my parents. They even bought a load of new terry babygros and little vests to put in them. Is there anything sweeter than clean, white little baby clothes! Thank you Mum and Dad, I love them!

I made these pictures for Lily and she has generously allowed the new baby to have use of them

A pretty Wedgewood plate hangs on the wall above the cot. This hung in the room when it was Lily's and she has kindly left it in there for the new baby to enjoy.

The picture frame was an extravagant 50p from a local charity shop and I printed an image from The Tale of Peter Rabbit from the Internet to put in it. The Wedgewood plate was a childhood present from my Godfather. I used to have a little cup to match it, but I used to let the children use it and unfortunately it got broken.

This pretty little fabric plaque was an eBay find

Tom's Christening shoes, hung up with crochet lace.

I put this wreath together last night. When I know whether the baby is a boy or a girl I will add a blue or pink ribbon accordingly.

The cot canopy isn't actually Beatrix Potter, but it does have lots of little bunnies in clothes all over it. Emma had it on her cot and I think it looks sweet in here too.

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Room for Two

After much anticipation and a great deal of hard work by the Podlings' uncles, the girls are finally sharing a room! They are so thrilled! Mark's brothers came round one Saturday morning and worked tirelessly to move all the big furniture around so the girls' wish to share a room could be fulfilled. Mark's Mum and Dad had been helping me for days to organise the play room and move things out of cupboards and the whole move was very much a family affair. I am so grateful to everyone for their help, since I am finding things all rather difficult in my somewhat enlarged state!

I had a lot of fun making it a proper little girls room. We were on a tight budget, so there are still a few things I would like to do to finish it off. I am really pleased with how it has come together so far. The girls both have matching floral duvets and flower sprigged bed canopies. Lily already had her canopy and I had a bit of trouble getting hold of a matching one for Emma as they have been discontinued (they were made by Gisela Graham if you are interested). I finally managed to track down an online store that had one left in stock. A few other little details and the room is acquiring a bit of a fairy garden theme. It is so pretty!

So far so good, we haven't had any major fuss at bedtime (though there is a great deal of talking!) and Emma is actually spending  more time in her own bed and less time in ours, which is definitely a good thing! I look forward to being able to put the finishing touches to their room in due course, but for now we are all very pleased with how it has turned out. Now to sort out the nursery...

I made the rose wreath for Lily's room a few years ago. The exquisite hand-knitted dress was made for Lily by a friend of the Podlings' Great Auntie Mary. Both girls have worn it as babies and it is just too pretty to hide away in a drawer, so it hangs on display in their room.

Sister dolls! The little wooden nightlight was made for Emma by her Great Uncle Keith. Each of the Podlings have one.

Emma's dress up clothes hang on hooks behind the door for easy access. The tall bookcase holds various of the girls' sundries, as well as a selection of our vast collection of children's books.

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Pretty and practical

We recently had to retire the chest of drawers that Lily had in her bedroom. The bottom two drawers were unusable as they would collapse if you tried to open them, pushing the sides out of the unit and causing the second drawer to drop down too. Only the top drawer was usable, but it was such an attractive wooden unit I was reluctant to just throw it away. I threw out the bottom two drawers and then pinned a remnant of net I had leftover from another project across the gap. The unit now sits in the family bathroom and the dirty washing basket I had in that corner is now hidden behind the net curtain. The unit serves the double purpose of hiding the ripped wallpaper caused by the radiator coming off the wall last year. Plus, I still have two drawers worth of storage space available to me. I can consider it a success as even Mark said 'That doesn't look too bad' when he saw it...high praise indeed!



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Let there be light

The newest edition to our festive home. Mark bought us this lovely window arch last weekend and it now takes centre stage in the bay window in the lounge. Now we don't pull the curtains until we go to bed so we can sit and enjoy it in the evenings. I love Christmas!

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Good things come to those who wait...

I am now the proud owner of this lovely oil painting! It was a bargain I picked up in a local charity shop this morning and I am over the moon with it! It reminds me of the Lake District (somewhere we love to holiday in and are very fond of) and the photograph doesn't do it justice. I've been wanting a lovely painting to go behind the sofa in our lounge for some time.  I knew I wanted an oil painting of an English landscape in an ornate gilt frame, but I have had to be patient as I have expensive taste!

I am a keen bargain hunter and love to visit charity shops and the like in search of treasure (by treasure I mean things that I like, not things that are worth money). I saw this painting a few weeks ago, but at £60 it was out of my price range. I went into to the shop again today and they had knocked the price down, but I still thought it a little pricey. As I asked them if they would take £35 for it my hands were shaking and my heart was racing...I'm not usually that brazen but I really like this picture. Thankfully they said that was fine, so now this beauty is hanging in my lounge and giving me pleasure every time I look at it. I'm looking at it a lot!

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever:

Its loveliness increases;" ~ Keats

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Emma's nursery

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I finally got around to hanging the remainder of the Royal Doulton Bunnikins plates in Emma's room last week. It's only taken me a year to do it! We didn't have the time or the resources to redecorate this room before Emma moved into it, so we had to work with what was there when we moved in to the house. Luckily it was quite neutral, so despite my underlying desire to paint everything pink and put roses everywhere, I felt I could live with what was there. I decided on a Bunnikins theme because the colours work very well with the wallpaper border that was already there, but they also contain pink tones that I could pull out. Plus, what can be cuter than little rabbits in jackets and dresses in a baby's room?

In addition to the plates, the canopy over Emma's cot has lots of little Bunnikins-style rabbits all over it and there are several toy bunnies around the room. The drawers under the cot are full of toys. Emma already knows where to go to get to her things! I can't bear to put the Moses basket away, so it houses two of Emma's stuffed rabbits. It also contains Emma on occasion when she climbs in to play in it!

There are still a few things I would like to do to this room to finish it off, but I think it makes a rather sweet little nursery for my littlest Podling. I have to say I have found the laminate floor tremendously convenient with Emma's recent illness too!

 Three of the Bunnikins plates that hang above Emma's cot (you can click on the photo to make it bigger). I plan to fill in the tear in the wallpaper border by copying the pattern with felt pens. From a distance it shouldn't be too visible.

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 Emma's Sarah Louise bibs were too pretty to hide in a drawer, so I have them out on display. The bear is wearing one of Emma's newborn dresses.

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Baby girl's clothes are so pretty! I have several of Emma's prettiest newborn dresses on display around the nursery. It seems such a shame to hide them away now that she has outgrown them.

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It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Tom and Lily decorated the Christmas tree on Sunday afternoon, shortly before Lily came down with a nasty fever. I haven't actually rearranged any of the ornaments as I think they did a really good job this year. I put on the lights, the ribbon and the angel and Mark and I put a few decorations on the higher branches to balance the tree out a bit, but they did the rest and had a lovely time doing it. I took a gamble and put the tree in the lounge, but thankfully Emma isn't as obsessed with it as I thought she might be. She already knows she's not supposed to take the baubles off the tree and tries to get away with merely tickling them when she thinks no one is looking! So far no breakages!

Emma loved exploring the box of baubles.
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It's very...ummm...pink!

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Lily is a typical four year old girl, which for anyone who doesn't have recent experience of four year old girls means that she loves Disney Princesses and pink. Preferences which lead us to the current solution to the toy situation in Lily's bedroom. Behold, the new delight of Lily's heart, her Disney Princess drawer unit!

Lily likes toys that have lots of bits. Lots of bits that were spreading their way all over her floor and stopping me from getting in there with the hoover. Something had to be done! We saw this drawer unit in Tesco the other day for the rather reasonable price of £12.48 and thought it might be the solution we were looking for. Now in an ideal world, The Solution would have been something tasteful in white and pastels with Beatrix Potter characters on it, but then I'm not a four year old girl so what do I know!
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This unit is working really well and Lily is able to keep her room tidy without help. Her play food is in the bottom drawer, the middle drawer contains her Disney Princess dolls and their accessories and the top drawer is for everything else. 'Everything else' mainly consists of bags and purses of various sizes, though mostly in pink. Lily has a thing for bags. She has a couple of boxes of toys under her bed and everything else is in the playroom. I crave order and if bright pink Disney Princesses will help me achieve it, then so be it!

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A bed fit for a princess...

We've been having some trouble with Lily waking up at night and coming in our bed recently, so we thought the time had come to try her in a full size bed. She was getting too big for her toddler bed and every time she rolled over it made a lot of noise (and Lily is a fidgety sleeper).
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We ordered a lovely pine bed earlier this week, so when it arrived today I set about dismantling the old and assembling the new. I had to move the furniture around a bit to fit in the bigger bed, but the finished room is looking lovely. Part of the 'you must stay in your own bed' deal involved bed curtains. Emma has a little Bunnikins canopy over her cot and Lily has wanted her own canopy for a while. My mum and I bought this lovely Gisela Graham bed canopy that perfectly matches Lily's pink roses bedroom. The duvet cover is the one my mum made for me when I was a girl, so I am thrilled that my own little girl is now sleeping under it. I absolutely love this room now. It makes me wish I was a little girl again!
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Lily is beyond thrilled with her new bed and was trying to get me to take her to bed from about 4.30pm this afternoon! I finally took her up to bed an hour early at half past six. The funny girl wanted me to close the curtains, so her pretty bed canopy is now an effective mosquito net! Since she is very jumpy about moths and other flying insects, this may actually help to sleep better.
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The new bed is much more comfortable than her old one, so fingers crossed she will sleep better tonight. If she does wake up, I am hoping that she will find her new bed as thrilling in the middle of the night as she did this afternoon and will stay in it!

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The result...

If anyone pays any attention to my random twitterings in the sidebar, you'll know that The Great Switcheroo took place last week. I am so grateful to Mark's dad and uncle, who worked incredibly hard moving all the furniture. The rooms have been in their new arrangement for just over a week now and I am absolutely thrilled with it. The new lounge is such a relaxing room and I can't tell you how much calmer the whole house feels to me now. The entire downstairs is staying much tidier and, as a result, my housework is much, much easier. My only regret is that we didn't do this months ago! I love it!

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The Great Switcheroo

The current room arrangement

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I have big plans in store for our house, involving swapping over the music room and playroom. This is no small undertaking. The playroom is, without a doubt, the most 'stuff heavy' room in the house and we have some very large and very heavy furniture in both rooms. It is something I have been thinking about for a while now and I have come to the definite conclusion that it is the best way to proceed. The music room is much bigger than the current playroom and can easily be shut off at the end of the day if I don't want to look at a room full of toys. It will also make it much easier to keep Emma away from all the tiny (read 'chokeable') toys that Tom and Lily love without having to restrict their play. Plus, the carpet in the music room is the original one we inherited when we moved in. It is at least a decade old, faded and threadbare in places and I really hate it. In short, it is certainly not something I'm going to be too worried about the Podlings messing up!
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The current arrangement was the best one when we moved in as Tom was only two and Lily only a year old at the time. However, now that they are older it will be much nicer to have a proper lounge in the main part of the home, rather than the playroom. Lily is quite excited about the change and is currently asking daily if we can change the rooms over. She gets that from me! Having decided to make the change I now want it all done yesterday! I am not exactly known for my patience in these matters and it is quite possible that I am currently driving my husband nuts. Due to the aforementioned heavy furniture, we can't make the change until we can rope in some help, so I have to try to be patient. Not something I'm good at! I can see how much easier my life will be with the rooms in the alternate arrangement, so I'm chomping at the bit. Hopefully we can get it done soon and my long-suffering husband can get some peace again!
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Let it snow...

Our house at about 3.30pm this afternoon. It was a bin day, but the bin men didn't make it. Hope they got to have some fun with their children instead.

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We've had about four inches of snow here, so we weren't surprised to learn that Tom's school and Lily's playgroup were both closed today. We had a lot of fun playing in the snow and I took a lot of photos, but it's very late and I'm tired, so I'll wait until tomorrow to share them with you. I wouldn't be surprised if there's no school tomorrow either, but I'll still have to get up early just in case. I'm off to bed...
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Deck the Halls - Kitchen, lounge and hallway

We bought this pretty wooden decoration at a German Christmas market a few years ago. This is the first year we have actually had it on show as we have only just changed the German plug for a British one! The other end of the window sill has a couple of candles and some more pine cones.

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This is the final installment of my festive tour. I thought I'd better post it now as I'm going to be pretty busy from here on in. We are off to Mark's parents' for Christmas, so I have ironing, packing, present wrapping and house cleaning to keep me occupied until we leave tomorrow afternoon. I can't wait for Christmas...I'm worse than the children! I particularly enjoy Christmas Eve as it is just so magical with the Podlings. I love Christmas!

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Festive touches in the kitchen include a mini Poinsettia, a basket of satsumas and some artificial greenery. My tins contain some festive goodies.
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This pretty Lilliput Lane cottage on the bookcase in the hall was a gift from Mark a few years ago. It has a light inside and glows with a warm, homely light. So cosy!
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Mark bought this small fibre optic tree on his way home from work one evening. It graces the corner of the lounge and looks lovely at night with it's soothing multicoloured glow.
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A detail of the garland on the mantelpiece in the lounge
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Deck the Halls - The Christmas Tree

The tree looks stunning this year and the photo really doesn't do it justice. Why is it so hard to get a decent picture of a Christmas tree? Incidentally, I'm a new convert to wired ribbon on Christmas trees. I just love the way it looks!

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I thought I'd better get around to taking some pictures of the Christmas tree before it dies. The trunk of this specimen is so thick that we had to hammer our tree stand on to it, which means that there isn't even the tiniest gap in which to get water into this poor thing. Thankfully it only has to last until Christmas eve, as we will be visiting family after that. We'll be buying a new Christmas tree stand next year though as there is no way on Earth we are ever going to get it off this tree again!

I think the tree is beautiful this year, though it kills me to have coloured fairy lights on it. I much prefer the rather more tasteful white fairy lights (the yellow coloured ones, not the bright white LED ones), but we put the coloured ones on because the Podlings love them. Tom and Lily decorated the tree with a little assistance. I rearranged the ornaments slightly after they had finished, hung the ones on the higher branches and put on the ribbon, but I haven't changed it drastically from the way they decorated it. There will be time enough for white fairy lights and tastefully decorated trees when the children are grown and I will miss their childish clusterings of ornaments on the lower branches of the tree.
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Emma's first ornament. Tom and Lily both had Gisela Graham ornaments for their first Christmas, so I chose one for Emma's first ornament too. Lily's got damaged last year, so I plan to pick another one of these up for her as a replacement 'First Christmas' ornament.

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We started a tradition when Tom was a baby of buying the Podlings one Christmas ornament every year. They really enjoy hanging their special ornaments each year and when they move out and have a home of their own they will each have a collection of ornaments ready to go on their first Christmas tree. When they were babies, we chose ornaments for them, but we now let them choose their own. The outing to choose these special ornaments has become one of the family traditions that I really look forward to each Christmas. Allowing them to choose their own ornaments has resulted in some interesting selections though. Tom chose a huge monstrosity a couple of years ago that I now hide at the back of the Christmas tree every year!

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This year I treated myself to a special ornament. This tiny glass robin reminded me of the story my mum used to tell of Father Christmas's robin. Every time we saw a robin in the garden she would tell my sister and me that it was watching us and would fly and tell Father Christmas whether we were being good or naughty. Those beady black eyes kept me in check for many a year!
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I love this glass owl that Lily chose as her special ornament last year. I shall be loathe to part with it when, many years hence, Lily takes her ornaments with her to her own home.

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Deck the Halls - Dining room edition

Our festive dining room. Yes, I need to clean the hand prints off the wall. It will get done eventually, but I have two young children and a baby and therefore very little time...please don't judge me! On a completely unrelated subject, I officially hate the radiator on that wall and would love to get a cabinet to cover it at some point.

The dining room is looking wonderfully festive with the two beautiful quilted advent calenders that my mum made the Podlings adorning the wall. Tom is particularly keen to come down and discover his treat each morning. My mum is in the process of gathering the fabric to make an advent calender for Emma for next Christmas. They take an incredible amount of work, so she's getting a head start.

The embroidered tablecloth was a gift from Mark's parents from one of their trips to Cyprus. We also have matching napkins, but unlike the rest of the world we take the tablecloth off when we eat as I don't want the Podlings to ruin it!
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I gave up trying to get a decent picture of the light fitting, but I have decorated it with red and gold baubles and artificial candy canes. It looks great.
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In the centre of the table is a glass vase filled with red and gold baubles of various finishes. I can't claim the credit for this idea, but I can't for the life of me remember were I originally saw it. I think it's really effective though.
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A detail of the tablecloth, showing one of the cute, if slightly evil-looking Santas that decorate the edge.

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I haven't decorated the sideboard, so I haven't bothered to picture it, but I plan to get a potted poinsettia to put on it.

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So there you have our festive dining room. The photos don't really do it justice as it looks much better in real life. Incidentally, I feel the need to apologise for the quality of some of my photos lately. My camera isn't consistently giving me the picture quality I know it is capable of and I can't work out why. It's probably Podling related!

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