Except…

Except I found this house. It was charitably described by the estate agents as “in need of internal decoration” which was the understatement of the century. The chap who lived here previously had been a heavy smoker and after his death, his son had ripped up all the flooring and thrown magnolia paint over the entirety of the house to get it ready for sale. Unfortunately, the nicotine had seeped through the paint leaving the whole house tinged brown and greasy to the touch. The kitchen consisted of two cupboards and a sink, the bathroom was a hideous browny pink monstrosity and the central heating needed completely overhauled.

The one thing it really had going for it was the garden. These are the original photos we took on our first viewing:

and I was sold. For some reason – maybe eight years of living in flats – I was obsessed with the idea of having a garden for the kids to play in and when I stepped out the back door into this wonderland, my mind started doing calculations to work out if we could afford to live here. We left the viewing with me amped up and energised, Bob quietly enthused but cautious and with Findlay having made some friends already. To cut a long and dull story short, we bought the house, sold our flat and completed both sales within five weeks so that Findlay was in situ ready to start Primary 1 at the local school.

Four years on and the garden doesn’t look like that lush green paradise anymore. In my infinite wisdom (again), I directed Bob to pull up all the shrubs that ran the length of the garden without considering the effect this would have on the drainage. What happened was that our clay soil couldn’t cope with the rain and snow and we ended up with a swamp-like mass where our lawn used to be. Added to this, the hens are not exactly what you’d call garden-friendly and over two years they devoured every single green thing left in the garden. After this year’s snow, we have been left with not a single solitary blade of grass in the garden and the worst thing is that it’s all our own fault.

When I looked at our home on google maps recently, I nearly died of embarrassment. All of our neighbours have beautiful gardens and then there was our barren swamp with our bright orange Eglu Cube. Combined with the loss of our hens and my fear that letting the children play outside will mean squished babies, Bob & I decided that it was time to make the garden a priority.

In an ironic twist, Bob’s parents had decided to take a leaf out of our book and grow vegetables again and offered us many of their plants which we collected earlier in the week. Bob dug them into our swamp and I took a few snaps. Apologies for them being cameraphone pictures:

This one probably demonstrates our clay soil the best. In this picture there’s an apple tree, a pear tree and the plants that Bob’s parents gave us (Hostas, Irises and others which I’ve forgotten already!)

Greer’s placenta Cherry Tree

I can’t remember what this is – possibly a lilac?

I *think* this is a blueberry bush

Apple mint

Rhubarb

Blackcurrant bush (which Nairn destroyed last year by sitting on it)

So as you can guess by my exemplary explanation skills, my gardening knowledge still needs a lot of work but I’m really feeling enthused by the possibilities open to us by having this wonderful space available. I’m really embarrassed at the state we have managed to get this beautiful space into by sheer lack of knowledge and so I hope in time that we can turn this garden back into the masterpiece that drew us here in the first place. Wish us luck!

For any of you with disasterous gardens and no time/energy to deal with it you may want to consider Landshare,  a scheme devised by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to match up unused growing space with people who want to grow their own veg but have no access to space. It’s a great cause and one which has my support.

Bob is really harbouring doubts about this paper. Some of you may remember my excited tweets from last Summer when we stayed in a gorgeous hotel in Brighton with the most beautiful wallpaper I had ever seen. After tweeting a photograph of it, my fantastic twitter friends identified it immediately as a £50-a-roll designer brand. Now I adored this wallpaper, but I didn’t £50-a-roll adore it if you catch my drift so I put it out of my mind and decided to forego it until we visited our local B&Q and found a very similar pattern.

At that point, this paper was supposed to be for our bedroom but before we got the chance to put it up we ended up moving out and handing our room over to the girls which left me with a dilemma. My new bedroom is completely white, very calm and I have slept better than ever since we moved in there. I loved the paper, but wasn’t convinced it would work in our new room so being the ever-loving mother that I am I agreed that we’d put it up for the girls.

It’s taken me six months to finally part with it and even now I’m trying to persuade Bob to move our room back. I don’t think he’s going to agree to it, but it’s suddenly becoming such a nice prospect to spend time in the girls’ room. I just hope it looks as amazing as I envisage…

Newer readers may not be aware of our home history. In 2006 whilst on maternity leave after having Nairn I became obsessed with looking for a new home after a series of events at our flat including a fire downstairs that trapped us. The very first house we looked at was this one and it was priced very cheaply for the locale – it needed a lot of work done but in my usual spirited manner I convinced Bob that we could totally renovate the house quickly while living in it with the kids. BIG mistake, because as it apparently the trend I fell pregnant with Erica the month we moved in and by 16 weeks I was on bed rest with her. Three years down the line and although we’ve done a lot of work, the only room in the house which has been properly decorated is the living room.

Of course with four children the living room almost always looks like the epicentre of a large earthquake but I am determined to make it more homely with a priority on freshening up the paint. But… But. We have a problem.

Since we moved in, we have regularly marked off the kids’ height* on the back of the living room door. It’s been the place we displayed the artworks sent home from nursery & school. It was where we pinned the sign language crib sheet that we needed to learn so that we could communicate with Nairn and subsequently Erica before they started speaking. It is filthy and really desperately needs cleaned up and repainted but what am I going to do with our markings? What would you do if you were us? If you have a young family and keep track in a similar way, how do you do it?

*Interesting (to me) points: Nairn at 3y11m is two inches taller than Findlay was at 5y10m. Erica at 18m was three inches shorter than Nairn at the same age. Greer at 9m is 1.5 inches taller than Erica was at 11m. I strongly suspect my children as adults in order of height will be Nairn, Findlay, Greer and Erica. All of whom I project to be 6ft+. Based on the premise that a child will have reached half their adult height by the age of three then they’re all going to tower over me!

I posted a photo in my “A day in the life” stream, showing a project I haven’t quite finished yet and it was picked up and posted on OhDeeDoh which is one of my favourite blogs, ever. I am so honoured – thank you for featuring me!

The project featured is this table which I’ve découpaged for Findlay and Nairn’s bedroom. The kids’ Godfather, Dave, is moving out of his flat and has given me a few bits of furniture that he was going to throw out. He and I are hoarding kindred spirits, can’t see any crap thrown out ANYWAY, one of the things he gave me was an Ikea Lack table which had seen better days but which I decided could be given new life!

I used a vintage annual (the 1991 Bash Street Kids annual, for reference!) and a LOT of PVA glue to stick it down and then seal the top. I had a bit of a disaster with the top which I am hoping to resolve this week – I wanted a hard, clear varnish so that the paper would be safe if the kids were to spill something on it and when I asked someone in B&Q for clear acrylic varnish they gave me Ronseal. I didn’t think anything of it but when I applied it, it cracked the PVA. Disaster! I’ve now got some plastikote clear enamel but it’s been raining here today and I haven’t been able to get the table out to spray it.

I have also left one leg uncovered just now until I decide if I like the legs découpaged or not. What do you think?

I have also decided to start a new feature called “Fabulous Friday” where I’ll showcase fabulous interiors that I’ve found. Doing my research in order to finally make my house a home has been truly awe-inspiring and I’ve found some jaw droppingly gorgeous rooms. If you’d like to be featured, please email me with a link or photo.

In the meantime, can I point you all towards a resource I found today and fell in love with? The fabulous Indie Fixx site has been running an art project called Feed Your Soul and is giving away free downloads of gorgeous prints from a variety of different designers. Free! Gratis! I can’t actually decide which ones I want to use but it’s fine because the downloads are free! I am extremely excited by this and have already selected three for the girls’ room and one for mine.

My feeling is that the colour on the top left (dark cream/light coffee) is too dark for the paper and the white makes the paper look dirty. The colour on the bottom (buttercup) is just the wrong shade. That leaves the lilac on the left and the dusky pink on the right. I’m leaning towards the pink but I do like the lilac too.

The dark pink on the bottom? That’s the colour the bottom half of the room is just now. It was my choice and I absolutely loved it at first, but it’s such a small room that it’s overwhelmed by the pink.

What say you? My gosh, this interior designing malarkey is hard work isn’t it?

My girls share the smallest room you could imagine. It’s an L shape, with a built-in closet making up the missing square. The longest wall has just enough room for Greer’s cot and the head of Erica’s bed. The short wall has maybe a foot of space at the end of Erica’s bed. It is tiny and until yesterday was decorated in a very bright pink that was pretty but a little loud for a baby & toddler room.

I found this gorgeous wallpaper in B&Q the other day and I’ve bought a roll of it to do the biggest wall with the intention of painting the other walls white BUT after giving the walls a quick once-over yesterday I realised that white paint will make the wallpaper look dirty because it’s more of a cream colour.

SO! I come to you experienced people for help. To make it easier, I can paper the wall today and take photographs if that will help but I’d rather paint before I paper so I don’t risk damaging this gorgeous print. What colour would you paint the walls if this was your room? I’ve been thinking of either a baby pink (which risks looking like pepto-bismol) or a light grey (the wallpaper has metallic accents) but that could highlight the less-than-perfect walls.

Ideas..?