I love treehouses, there is something mystical about the secrecy of them. Maybe it’s because the children have been reading Secret Seven but treehouses simply suggest secrecy to me, secret meeting, planning, or simply peace and quiet as you read a book and enjoy being on your own.

Treehouses of the World

Here’s a selection of my favourites taken from a book ‘New Treehouses of the World’ by Pete Nelson. I love the take on a traditional treehouse as in the photo above but so much bigger and better than a child’s treehouse. Below is a much more modern one – my favourite is the traditional. Which is yours?

Treehouses

And here’s a picture of the interior of a traditional treehouse – doesn’t it look like something out of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’?

Treehouse Interior

Quite twee but so fairytaleish!

I love windowseats. There is nothing nicer than a cosy reading nook and with the natural light flowing in, a cosy window seat ticks all the boxes. Unfortunately I don’t have one but if we ever restore a certain house, there will be windowseats in its deep windows! Here’s a few of my favourites:

Although would you need a good head for heights with this one?  A great way to make a cosy space from a stairs window and once you climb up there, you’re unlikely to be interrupted except by passing traffic!

So much natural light in this one – it might be a tough choice between reading a book and looking at that view!

This is a great one for children – create a comfy reading nook on a landing but simply cordoning it off with curtains or a room divider, putting up some shelves and placing in a beanbag or a comfy chair.

Okay, this isn’t strictly a window seat but it is so cute, I had to include it – perfect for reading there during the day. Imagine being curled up in the topmost bunk with a good book on a windy and raining winter’s day – pure bliss!

This image proves that even the smallest of spaces can be transformed into a cute and cosy reading nook – I love the addition of the throw, the plants and the lamp – really do add the finishing touches.

I’ve featured this last image once before but I love it so much, I’m using it again. I read the entire Harry Potter series to the children from Sept – Dec, finishing the last 2 books over Christmas. Everytime Brian came in from the farmwork (and thank goodness he had farmwork to do or he would have driven us mad) we were curled up on the sofa in front of the fire. I think the longest session was a 5 hour read of the last book one day – I was almost hoarse. Now, if I’d had a window seat like this – I’d never leave it so perhaps it is just as well I don’t!

Images: Hooked on Houses, Safdier Rabines; These Moments of Mine; Suzie Beezie; The Inspired Room;

If you had to choose, which one would be your favourite?

I was asked this question recently ‘How do you decide on a paint colour for the other walls when wallpapering a feature wall?’

Wallpapering feature walls is very popular and works particularly well in rooms such as bedrooms when the ‘unbroken’ wall (not broken up by windows or doors) is that which the bed is set against.  It also works well in reception rooms with a fireplace (either the whole wall, the chimney breast or the alcoves can be wallpapered), bathrooms and within rooms that are an unusual shape.

But how to decide on the paint colour? Choose your wallpaper first and then you have to decide on whether you want to wallpaper to really stand out as the feature or not.  If you do, it is best to let the paint blend into the background of the wallpaper so the paint colour will be similar to or lighter than the main background wallpaper colour.

In my own hall, you can see that the backgrounds in the Taraz wallpaper and in the fabric are of a similar tone. The carpet has varying shades so we opted for Farrow & Ball’s Old White for the other 3 walls which is lighter, partly because the hall can be quite dark.  There is a very subtle metallic stripe in the wallpaper which means that it looks much darker in the evenings and can be quite bright when the late afternoon sun is streaming in.

This bedroom from House to Home has a matching pair of curtains to the feature wall wallpaper and rather than letting the painted walls recede  into the background with white paint, they are making a bolder statement by picking out the vivid green leaf detailing in the pattern.  This gives the other walls more impact but also draws more attention to the pattern within the wallpaper and fabric.

In this living room (image also from House to Home) , the feature wall simply has a couple of strips of wallpaper in its centre and symmetry is created with the positioning of the console table, the lamps, the framed wallpapers and the centralised coffee table.  Here the silvery grey in the wallpaper pattern is used on the walls which gives the wallpaper and the yellow chaise much more impact in this room.

I hope those tips help. If you have any more queries, do add them in the comments.

I’m guest posting over at Scarlet Opus today with a post on some of the interior design trends I spotted at Maison so do pop over there for a look.

If you have been missing my ‘farming type’ posts that I occasionally posted here, I have just started up a new blog at Irish Farmerette. I was finding I was getting too many unrelated hits, not to mention phone calls looking for breeds of pigs! So do pop over there and say hello every now and then

I have also set up a new business in partnership with Marie Ennis O’Connor. It is a ghost blogging business, offering blog writing and mentoring services to business and also offering training regarding using social media to promote your business. Following on from our enthusiasm (and yes, I admit it, addition) to social media and our reaching the finals of various blogging categories with our blogs, we decided to partner and start. We will be officially launching in December but are working on getting the word out there. You can check out our website Write On Track and let us know what you think.

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend and see you on Monday

Having just chosen a wallpaper for a client’s dining room (will have a photo in a week or so), I decided to do a post on wallpapers that look fabulous in dining rooms. Wallpaper makes the room or dining area so much warmer and cosier and more luxurious, perfect for creating the ambience for making a meal seem special and for lingering over a post-dinner coffee with a long chat.

1. Fit for a Manor

Yukari Sweeney’s Manor House wallpaper is suitably grand and atmospheric for a dining room, featuring chandeliers and candelabras but yet is light enough to wallpaper the entire room and not be overwhelming, even for small rooms.

2. Go Retro

Pet Sounds by Mini Moderns offers a fun, quirky conversation wall covering for a retro dining room.

3. Delineate the Dining ‘Zone’

Use wall panels to delineate a dining area in an open plan living space or in a kitchen/dining room. These are the new ‘Colour’ wall panels by Scandinavian Surface.

4. Wallpapering within Panels or in Alcoves

If you think a wallpaper is too busy or in too strong a colour to wallpaper the entire room, then you could either use wall panels within an alcove or to create a feature wall such as Yukari Sweeney’s Field Trip and Rose wall panels as seen above, or create a panelled area and wallpaper within it.

5. Feature Wall

And if you remember Lisa’s (Nenaghgal’s blog) guest post on decorating her home some time ago, you’ll remember her dining room with its striking blue and white toile wallpaper on the feature wall – it works great with a plain table and chairs as it is allowed to make a statement rather than ‘fighting’ with other decorative details.

6. Go Retro again

Sanderson launched their 50s collection this year and there’s a plethora of choice of retro wallpapers in this collection. These are designs that would have traditionally have been placed within the sitting rooms and dining rooms of houses all over the country and here it is happening again.

Atomic by Sanderson has a strong distinctive retro pattern – see here how the shapes in the design are echoed by the ceiling light and the round table.

7. Go Animal

Not a traditional dining room – but Turner and Pocock’s Zebra wallpaper was used in this London restaurant to great effect.

What do you think? Do you have wallpaper in your dining room or dining area? Is it something you would consider? Do you have a favourite style?