Here’s a peek at some of the old blue and white china and old medicine bottles that have, at long last, been retrieved from the attic. I’m still missing some Willow serving plates and think they must be in a box at the extreme end of the low eaves in the attic!

Willow Pattern

The light was too dark (we had really heavy showers this evening) to take many photos so I’ll get some more over the weekend.  So many of these pieces bring back so many memories of scouring antique shops and auctions many many moons ago.

Antique Blue Medicine Bottles

It’s December, the cows are dry ( they are having a rest from milking before they start calving in February) so that means my husband is in from work at a reasonable time (6.30ish) rather than the usual 9pm.  Now I usually leave it until January before I start getting him to do those jobs around the house that have been waiting for him but that means there is only a couple of weeks before he is back working long hours again so this year I’ve started cracking the whip a bit earlier!

I got him to remove the sink and old units in the utility last January and I painted it. Unfortunately, the cows started calving before he did any more so I think I’ve been a very tolerant wife for the last 11 months! Tolerant or mad – not sure which.  The new worktop was delivered today so that will start taking shape next week.

Excuse the quality of these photos but my camera wasn’t charged so I just took a couple of quick photos with the iphone.  It all needs to be tidied up along with the new blinds (waiting to be hung) but here’s the wallpaper up in the downstairs loo.

It’ll need a coat of varnish to protect it from water splashes. If you are wondering what the wallpaper design is – it’s Zepherine in crocus by Designers Guild – it’s great for using on its own as it is extra wide at 68.5cm.

There is a cloakroom leading to the downstairs loo from the hall, it is basically just a walk through. There is an alcove that was traditionally used for storing coats but I’ve decided to make more of a feature of it and got Brian to wallpaper the back of the alcove with this Palmieri wallpaper in slate – again by Designers Guild.

The plan is to place about 3 shelves there with some white and glass accessories to profile nicely against the wallpaper.

What about all those coats? Where are they? Well, the ones that are rarely used are in the spare room wardrobe. Our more frequently used coats can now hang on the back of the door now that these coat hooks have been put up

Do you find you have a quiet time of the year when you or your partner can catch up on the decorating and those jobs that have been waiting?  Unfortunately ours is in the depths of winter and the dark evenings aren’t the most inspiring for getting started.

We’re putting up our Christmas tree today. We have had an artificial tree (which is reasonably realistic and nice) for the last number of years because I’m allergic to pine.  When we moved here, the house was surrounded by a small forest of evergreen pine trees and as my eczema became steadily worse, we discovered that I was allergic to the trees. We always intended cutting them down as they make the house so dark but then getting rid of them became a priority. It seemed a bit silly that Christmas to bring in a tree that I was allergic to!

I’ve missed the smell of the pine though. I have childhood memories of tiptoeing down the stairs and smelling the pine from our tree in the hall. This year I asked Brian to bring in a small real tree, I was thinking of something that would be 2-3 feet high and I was going to let the children decorate it with these miniature decorations and fairy decorations but he brought in one that is 8 foot high!

Have you got your decorations up? We’ll get the tree for the living room up tonight and then get everything else done at the weekend including the real tree in the hall.  It’s been some time since we left putting the decorations up so late but it actually makes me feel more Christmassy rather than seeing them up for ages and ages.

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 hurt my back over the weekend, not bad enough to have to lie on the floor but not far off at times! Received a telling off  from my dad for carrying such heavy buckets of milk when feeding the calves along with some of his painkillers (bless him!).  I went to the osteopath yesterday and apparently it is just muscle damage, nothing out thank goodness but he warned it would be sore this morning and boy, he wasn’t  joking!

The upholsterer is coming up some evening this week to quote me for upholstering our chesterfield and to confirm the amount of fabric I need to order.   But which fabric to order – that is the problem! My only constraints really are the curtain fabric because it is easy enough to change the paint colour/get new cushions etc. The Chesterfield and the curtains are going to be the main influencers in the room so everything else will have to tie in with that. I’d love to move the curtains to another room but aside from the sitting room which has lovely curtains in it, no other room has windows as big (about 13 foot wide = a lot of fabric).

This is my curtain fabric – Hortense by William Yeoward in the velvet rose colourway.

I’ve love a grey chesterfield but it won’t work with this fabric but I can still oogle this gorgeous ones:

Although I won’t be opting for a floral fabric, I included this picture as it is very similar in style to our own, except ours is buttoned.   The large floral pattern looks very sleek in an unbuttoned chesterfield but I still prefer the buttoned versions – which do you prefer?

And although this photo (by Amanda Nisbet) isn’t of a Chesterfield, I’m including it as I love grey and I love love love the green walls although given the size of our living room, it would be too acidic for us. We have a sage green at the moment but I’m thinking of a drastic change so watch this space! Mind you, I won’t be doing much until this back is better!

Images: Living Etc, Homes and Gardens, Amanda Nisbet

My DIY efforts have been a bit pathetic lately – it seems as though all I have time for is just about keeping the house kind of tidy, working on the site, and keeping the family fed and watered. But I have just finished a sewing class, I attended one of Smart Sewing’s one morning a week for 5 weeks classes and have learnt how to make a bag, a cushion cover and how to patchwork.

Now, the cushion cover I made on my own doesn’t quite come up to the standard of the one I made in class with help on hand but here it is in all its glory:

The rocking chair had actually been thrown into one of our fields a couple of years ago, Brian mended the arm and I had painted it in cream. It needed a repaint which I did last week. The cushion is a little large for it but I have a little patchwork one planned – watch this space!

In a determined effort to get more decorating done, I am going to post something that I’ve done in  my home every Monday, this is intended of course, to get me working on it each weekend rather than continually working on the website so it may be small changes initially ……

By the way, I’ve been working on the website for our local school in recent weeks and it just went live this morning so if you’d like to have a look at the Wandesforde school website, I’d love to hear what you think.