So we have been in our new home around 4 months now. It feels like much longer, as we are all so settled here, it feels like home. We have fallen into habits and routines already, I have 'my seat' in the living room, the kitchen cupboards have been assigned, we have a night time 'lock up' routine. Its like we have always lived here.
However as a visiter to our new house you could be forgiven for thinking we have been here only a few weeks, the walls are bare,the beautiful uncovered wooden floor remains untreated, the bathroom is brown and tragic, the back room has half ripped off wallpaper and the spare room has a few unpacked boxes lingering. Well, Mr Visiter, shut up with your stupid judging, we've done plenty! We spent days and days stripping off wallpaper and lining paper went up to create our blank canvas. Boxes upon boxes have been unpacked and organised. Furniture from our old house has been arranged and rearranged in various rooms. The bulk of the effort during this last 6 weeks or so of lovely weather has been in the front and back garden.
But this is a house for life, the decorating and sorting can happen organically over time, we made this move for Joel's benefit and so we have been spending plenty of time as a family enjoying the new lifestyle our new home and neighbourhood has to offer.
Our pennies are being saved for one big job - the bathroom project. We have a separate cubicle for the toilet and small bathroom next door, both decorated floor to ceiling with brown tiles that must be at least 40 years old. So until we get this job done we are tackling low cost projects.
Last month I focused on getting Joel's room sorted....
And this is where we started, like every other room in this house, with a steamer and a wall paper scraper and hours and hours of scraping and scraping layers and layers of stupid stubborn wallpaper.
Once the lining paper went up I chose a neutral colour for the walls. I am not a fan of busy character themed bedrooms for young children. Joel's room is a small box room, we have plenty of room for play downstairs and so I wanted to keep his bedroom nice and calm for sleeping and relaxing. I choose a calm putty colour called 'Soft Pebble' from Homebase. It's lovely and neutral so I am confident it could withstand a change in theme in the bedroom, plus it would nicely match a pair of curtains we already had that would fit the window in this bedroom.
There is an alcove in the room with shelving which is great for toy storage. I added some storage cubes from Ikea to sort toys. Cost free as we already had them! In our old flat these boxes were in the spare bedroom and so are bright and flowery. I did have a minor dilemma considering weather they were too flowery for a boys bedroom and then realised I should catch myself on. Joel has yet to express a dislike of flowers, and I have never heard of a baby boy falling into a down and out life as the result of a flower box in his bedroom.
Perhaps I should have tidied the shelves before taking this photo but whats the point? The reality is that toys are to be played with and so the shelves always are messy have a 'shabby chic' and 'well used' appearance.
When Joel was born my Auntie Deborah sent a beautiful handmade quilt all the way from Canada. Its just gorgeous with lovely autumnal colours of orange, mustard yellow and green.
Isn't this a beautiful piece of work. This quilt inspired me to sign up to a local quilting class. I had hopes of turning Joel's old clothes into memory quilts but I only ever managed to get half way through a beginner christmas custion cover. Quilting is an art and a skill, a skill I sadly don't naturally have nor do i ahve the attention span to develop it. However attending that class made me appreciate this beautifukl little quilt even more, and the skill and time that went into it. I decided to use this quilt as the basis of a woodland theme for Joel's bedroom. 
I took a wee notion and drew a tree freehand on her wall. This was nerve wreaking - not because I was nervous about how it would turn out - I could always paint over it again but because my husband is a wee perfectionist and I was worried he would hate the wobbly edges. I used a couple of tester pots of paint to do this. Very low cost.
Taadaa! Small but perfectly formed, no? This is a bit bland for me so I enlisted my mum's crafty skills...
She crocheted some colourful owl bunting and a wee owl-y friend to perch on the tree to brighten the room up. Isn't she terribly talented? Crocheting - another skill I have never mastered.
I then added some cheapy frames from B&M Bargains. A pack of 3 for £2. Wait, that makes it sound easy. What actually happened was I bought the frames and then spent WEEKS of nagging the other half to put them up for me. Apparently there some sort of alien super hammer required for the job that we didn't have. So it was eventually Father-in-Law to the rescue. So about 5 weeks later we got the frames up and photoes in the frames ordered from Photobox and Bob's your uncle! Or Mike with the special hammer is your Father-in-Law more like!
Joel loves his family tree. In the morning I lift him ontop of the chest of drawers on the changing mat to change his nappy and he likes to point at the faces and try to name them. He points at the bird and tweets. Then he pulls at the bunting and swats the frames to try and knock them off because he knows it drives me mad - wee monster.
Well, what do you think? Its no artsy fartsy interior design but its putting our wee stamp on our family home.
