bedroom dreams

at some point in the nearish future i will be painting our bedroom the colour on the paint chip here (pinning it to the wall was supposed to motivate me, it hasn't worked!)

i crocheted -what is the past tense of crochet?- this blanket about six months ago, in preparation for the new yellowness.

all the pictures currently on the windowsill will be going on the wall above the bed, along with the glory that we got on saturday, and i will be replacing the mirrored doors on the wardrobe with a white and embroidered patchwork-y curtain (still to be made!)

 i also need a new quilt cover. i MUST have this now that we can get urban outfitters homewares (a paltry selection though) in europe...

saturday spoils!

mr lc brought these lovelies home from the car boot sale this morning...

a duck and reed embelished beveled edge granny mirror, along with two others to add to the ever growing collection, which is yet to find a home...

and a super fabulous 50's floral print which will be very at home in our bedroom (more on which next week).  i love, love, love, love the colours in this!!

today i am coveting...

continuing the illustrated ceramics with weird cute little faces, i really wish i had a spare £235, as these donna wilson staffordshire dogs would be very at home in the new (as yet fantasy) hallway...

but which colour?!

oh goodness me!

just look at the loveliness of these ceramics by stoke-on-trent illustrator katy leigh...

what weird pretty little faces!

i do love a cute salt and pepper shaker set, especially ones that have matching teacups!

and what a beautiful early-picassoesque naked lady and what a lovely POMPOMED blanket.

just like her ceramics, her website is simple, quirky and stylish; the contact page being particularly charming. i really love her style of illustration.

all images from www.katyleigh.co.uk

lovely stripey paper bags

when i grow up and have a wonderful emporium of my own, these are the bags i shall use (i shall also have matching rope handled carriers!) ...

i think i may just have to order some from carrierbagshop.co.uk (you would never have guessed that's where these photos are from!) just for me to hoard, i think they will make me very happy!

a natural pallette

when i hear the phrase 'a natural pallette' i usually think of boring, dreary, dull, depressing autumnal colours, or kountry krafty browns. 

i like vivivd, pure, bright colours that skip the eyes and go straight to the sinapses.

we went to the garden show BLOOM in Dublin yesterday and i got another of many recent doses of amazing plants.

there are so many colours and colour combinations in plants that just look like they cannot possibly be real or natural colours. i like my plants to look like they are chemichally dyed (but most certainly don't like them actually chemically altered in any way!!)

oh look at the vintagey yellow and super purple in these lupins!

the lilacs in these lilacs! (and the contrast with the pure green)

i LOVE begonia leaves, imagine these clours and patterns in a kilim type rug!

i have no idea what these are, some kind of special french (poisonous?) berry that grows at Versaille, but i love the slightly cold lavenderish shades. even the brown of the branch looks good beside the pretty!!

Oh hydrangeas!!!  i can't wait for these to be in bloom in our garden again! all those shades on one plant!! our other bedroom is going to have this kind of pallette (eventually!)

ahhh, pink and yellow, never should one be far from some pink and yellow!

delphiniums just make me feel like i've stepped into another dimension, how can they be just so blue!!

i really do love colour!

 

all images by me.

my fancy bathroom floor

look! look! a post about something i have actually done in the house, not just am planning to do or idly dreaming about!

lack of funds and creative fussiness on both our parts led to an experimental and untested idea for our bathroom floor. there are no before photos, as for nearly four years, it was plywood painted with purple fence paint and spattered with various paints and adhesives as we very slowly made progress with the walls (unphotographable!).

mr lc wanted a green and white tiled floor like in the crash rooms in ER, i wanted to get some kind of patterned real linoleum, so we compromised and i screen-printed the floor!! my parents had covered a kitchen table with brown grocery bags and varnished it in the past so i figured along those lines and if it didn't work i could get my linoleum.

i have been using this pattern in black and white for years and we both love it, it is featured in a few places around our home already.

first i papered the floor with thickest lining paper and waterproof PVA, then tiled with the screen-printed thick art paper, and 3 layers of the PVA.  we may need to put a coat of boat varnish over the PVA as it still goes a bit cloudy when it gets drops of water on it, which does tend to happen a lot in a bathroom.

it does look ACE though!! now i just need to get a blind or some kind of "window treatment" so i can stop giving the neighbours a peep-show of an evening!!

when life gives you excess amounts of mint...

one of our mint bushes multiplied massively when we weren't looking so as i love mint soda i decided to make mint cordial!  recipie? pah!! i prefer the challenge of figuring it out as i go along...

two large salad spinners full of curly mint, with a bit of peppermint and apple(?)mint thrown in for possible balance of minty flavour

a litre-ish of boiling water and frightening amounts of caster and unrefined sugar (even for me!)

reduce down for probably not long enough (until it could just about be described as syrupy)

decant into bottle and label with nice ricedk wrapping paper (mr lc says i only made it so i could make the label!)

it does look like dark chicken stock but it tastes good!

The Hallway Plan (yes i'm back)

I can't stop looking at these hallway photos MFAMB posted today, don't know where it's originally from, but think the wallpaper is Farrow and Ball...

We already have an even nicer but similar mirror by our front door but i want a hall like this!  Now I really do have to act on my great idea for our frankly very boring hallway, it involves blackboard paint, white woodwork and ceilings and this Vivviene Westwood wallpaper...

So I just need at least £100 for wallpaper, about £80 for paint and to convince Mr LC that a mainly black hall will be FABULOUS!!  At least boys are usually seduceable with a bit of punk related history!

LOVE!!

Love all the colour and pattern all together! Especially love the lampshade and the pretty coloured plastic hangers and do always love the use of an Aqua Panna bottle - its the styling 'b-side' of S. Pelligrino!

Am assuming this is something to do with Anthropologie?

Image David Meredith via Desire to Inspire