Autumn Accents

I am loving this season change from Summer to Autumn and feel ready to change up my decor to reflect it.  Obviously I'm not going to make major changes for every season but it occurred to me a few years ago that we have decorations that we bring out for December, but why only December?!  I'm not talking about anything so major as Christmas trees but a few changes to make the decor feel new are always nice.

For me, Autumn is about getting the candles and snuggly blankets out and getting ready for winter.  It's a time for eating home made soup by the fire.  I just love it!

Thinking about how few autumn decorations I have (by now I am usually fully focussed on Christmas) I thought I'd put together a few ideas for Autumn Accents.

This is just a selection of items from a wander around the internet.  I feel like October time is a good time to introduce a few gold cushions - they can stay right through to Christmas (or all year if you don't get easily bored of decor like me) and keep you safe from of terracotta and orange overload.

Of course with Autumn comes harvest and Halloween so I like this reference to a pumpkin (available on etsy).  As I said before I love candles and blankets.  I also think that changing up the artwork would be fun and a good chance to get the kids involved.

I fell in love with Autumnal wreaths but I'm not sure the UK is on board with wreaths for anything other than Christmas.  I might be standing a wreath up beside my fireplace rather than on my front door!!

A little flower arranging weekend

This past weekend was the local village fair and I like to support it by entering a couple of flower arrangements.  So, I thought I'd share some photos of them here.

The first category was arrangement for a wedding, this was mine, a rose topiary ball mounted on a champagne bottle.  I won't do a full tutorial but I'll go through it quickly.  

This is a 16cm topiary oasis, I found the bottle I wanted to use, but for stability I had to mount the ball on sticks which went into the bottle. (Special thanks to my dad for drinking the contents of the bottle so that I could use it - what a hero!!!).  I added the foliage (and I should know what it is, but it was just a plant in the garden) I added roses all over mixing the colours and then filled the gaps with a little gypsophila.  I stuck labels over the bottle to show a table number and date.

The slight shock was how many roses it required - 60 small rose heads went into this one ball! 

A few people asked me about the costs to make at the show so I'll try to break that down.
Oasis - £5 (think this was discounted)
Roses - £12 (6 packs from supermarket)
Gypsophila £1.50 but only used about half
Foliage - free from the garden
Sticks - £1
Bottle - had already but I know you can buy empty bottles online or buy a drink you happen to like
TOTAL: £17.50 excluding bottle, which isn't bad as DIY for a wedding.

The next category I chose to enter was a flower arrangement depicting a song.  Here is mine.....guess the song.

 Got it?  Here is a little close up that might help!

It's "We're Off to See the Wizard" more commonly known as "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" from the Wizard of Oz (helpfully the category was depict a song, not song title, so I got away with it).  

The yellow roses to depict the yellow road, the foliage at the back (with leaf shine although that doesn't really show in the photo) to represent the emerald city and red shoes as an extra clue that Dorothy might be visiting.

My favourite part of this, of course, is the red shoes.  Although they were by far the most difficult part.  My daughter refused to donate any of her dolls shoes, so I bought a doll (shhhh, daughter will be getting a shoeless doll from Christmas) and tried to coat them in PVA ready for glitter.  This is where I learnt that plastic doll shoes are totally repellant to PVA glue. Even after thorough soapy washing and even after submerging in glue, it just ran straight off.  So being the girl that I am, got some hairspray from my bag and that stuck the glitter on.  Hairspray worked brilliantly and I did a couple of coats to make sure it was truly covered.  I used a hot glue gun to stick cocktail sticks to the shoes to secure them to the arrangement.

I was super pleased that these both won first prize in their category and the Yellow Brick Road one won Best in Show. It's only a small village show but it's still always nice to win something.

Tiling DIY - Tiling around a pipe

In a bid to save some money on my latest project, I am tackling the tiling myself, I have learnt a lot over the last few days and I thought I would share some of what I have learnt incase you are going to give tiling a go.

I have 3 rooms to tile, bathroom (onto existing walls), shower room (onto new plasterboard) and kitchen splash backs (onto fresh plaster).

You notice I included the surfaces that the tiles are going on to......I previously didn't really think this was important. After 2 days of trying to level tiles around lumps and bumps, I can say it is important.

Tip 1:  Preparation is key - trying to make tiles look level and straight while negotiating bumps that turn tiles into seesaws is not fun....and ultimately doesn't look good.  Sand or scrape away any imperfections or previous tile adhesive.  Check the walls are level - mine weren't.  You might have to compensate for walls that aren't square and this is easier to do if you can anticipate it.

Tip 2:  Mark out the tile positions before you start.  There are hundreds of tutorials about different ways to set out tiles around windows, showers, etc so I'm not going into that here.  What I found helpful (although a little time consuming) was a pencil in on the walls the first row or section of tiles to check that there weren't any odd shaped end tiles, it also gave me a good grasp on how many full tiles I could do in a run before stopping to cut a tile.  As a non-professional, I am not quick enough to cut a tile while there is adhesive on the wall without it drying out.  Also I was able to make some complicated cuts easier by where in the tile they landed - see below!

Tip 3:  Use fresh adhesive.  This one sounds a bit funny, but I chose to use ready mixed adhesive (because life is complicated enough already) and I had a tub left over from a previous job.  My money saving instinct kicked in and used that up first.  It wasn't until I finished that and opened a fresh tub that I realised how much easier to use the new one was.  Yes it's obvious now but I thought I could save some £££'s.

Tip 4:  Find a friend.  Unless you are a pro, I really don't think this is a one man/woman job,  we got into a rhythm of one putting on the adhesive while the other cuts and sticks on tiles.  It worked really well, although typically areas to be tiled are quite small, so make sure its a good friend!!

Tip 5:  Electric (wet) cutter AND manual cutter:  In the DIY store the assistant tried to talk me into just buying the electric cutter and saving money by not using a manual one.  I ignored the advice and I'm so glad I did.  I find the electric one terrifying (I value all of my fingers) and maybe its just me but I also find it quite slow.  The manual cutter is a cut and crack (probably not the technical terms) and ready to go.  The electric one also has it's place.  There are cuts you just can't make manually, unless you have some super skills I'm not aware of.

Which brings me to cutting tiles to fit round a pipe.

In the bathroom I was tackling today I had 2 pipes to contend with, toilet and sink.

The sink luckily fell into place on a join and as it will be forever hidden behind the sink, I just cut a square which I will seal with silicone.  The toilet, well the toilet tested every last ounce of patience I had - fortunately I had planned it to land in the centre of 2 tiles so it was 2 semi circles and not 1 circle. (see tip 2!)

Not only is it a super awkward place to get to (assuming the toilet pan is connected) but it's a circle, in tiles that like to break in straight lines. 

This is my step by step of how I did it - which may not be 'textbook' but it worked.

Step 1: Mark the circle.  This involved some close contact with the toilet pan so you might want to make sure its very clean.  I put tile tile up against the pipe and marked the top and bottom positions, then using a pipe of the same diameter (or you can use a compass - the one with a pencil for drawing circles - not the direction one) scribed the edge to weaken the tile.  I then used a pencil to draw in the line for my own benefit.

Step 2: Cutting it out:  Use the wet cutter to make lots of small straight cuts to the edge of the curve.  Not going to lie, this is quite difficult, as the water makes it difficult to see exactly where the curve is and where to stop.  Slow and steady is key.

Step 3: Break away the unwanted pieces.  Once you have all the little lines, use nippers or nibblers (depending where you are from) to literally snap out the sections.  As long as you are gentle they come away without breaking any further and leave you with a round curve which can be filed to a more precise shape. 

Once I had done one, I was able to use it as a template for the second, which made it much easier.

And ready to attach, 2 semi circles to fit around the pipe.  I can't get a photo of it in situ because of the angle, but I'm pleased with it anyway!!

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A princess bedroom

My little girl has just turned 3 and for her birthday asked for a pink princess bedroom. 

Now call me mean, but the last thing I want to do is paint a whole room pink for her to go off pink in a year or two and want something entirely different.  It isn't finished yet (waiting to find the right furniture solutions) but here are some of the features.

As a baby, the themes in her nursery were hot air balloons and tatty teddy.  

The curtains are called Flying High by Prestigious Textiles.  These were custom made with blackout linings and I'm not going to get rid of them after only 3 years so they had to be incorporated into the new scheme.

So working with the colours on this fabric I went in search of wallpaper and found a fab stripe wallpaper by Harlequin called rush that came in almost exactly the same colours.  

As the stripes are really bold, and working with the curtain pattern, I put them on one wall behind the bed and left the other walls magnolia (not ideal - although one of the colours in the wall paper is magnolia so it works for now - plus I am still waiting for the plaster to finish moving and cracking before I do any serious painting)

The bedding is the lilac from the wallpaper, but if i ever find the right pink i'll switch that and I had a throw made for the bed in the same pattern as the curtains.

So far, a bit pink, not "Princessy" (the key word in the brief) at all, so using the frames I bought from Ikea ages ago, I switched the pictures for Princess art. The first is a poster, the second a painting by my daddy (his very talented interpretation of a disney castle) and the third is a disney princess poster from etsy.

          

 


Inspired by Elsa's bedroom door in Frozen, used paint in the wallpaper colours to paint a pattern on the back (the side that only we see) of the door.

                

I didn't want to copy the design directly, so this is just an interpretation but it got the "princess" seal of approval so it can't be too bad - but more importantly, can be sanded back and glossed over when necessary.  I would have preferred to use stickers but just couldn't find any.