21 June 2013

Etsy Finds Friday #23

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Yay it's Friday everyone! Party party time!! Or, in my case, cup of tea and a Phillippa Gregory novel time! Oh I know how to live!

It's the penultimate EFF of 'Other People's Houses' month here, so this post is all the little things that I think would make my living/sitting room/lounge etc etc whatever you want to call it. Did you see it on the house tour? It needs re-painted, it's sort of a pale pinky-beige colour (pretty gross actually) but all of the furniture is neutral and woods, so anything fits in really.

This is Etsy Finds Friday number twenty three - all of the previous Etsy Finds Friday posts can be found here. Please come back next week or follow me on Bloglovin' so you don't miss out on next week's list!


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Look at these bird skull handles - how cool!! They would look fab on our bureau - they're from billyblue22


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This ceramic mobile from Studio By The Forest is so delicate - I would hang it in front of the window so it would tinkle in the breeze.

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Martin has always wanted an old barometer, this 1950s barometer from Biminicrickets is so pretty


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We already have two of these wheel back chairs (from a skip!) but we would love a full set - I like the two different styles here, but would probably strip the paint off. Sorry PaintonWoods!


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Yay maps!! We would need two of these lampshades (there's two ceiling lights in the sitting room) so we could have a northern hemisphere and a southern hemisphere one. Map lampshades from HummingbirdHome2012.


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This antique thermometer would look awesome on the windowsill - it's from Frenchcollectables.

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19 June 2013

What's Been Occurring Wednesday #22

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Hello lovelies!

I hope that your week is going well! It's been a while since I have done a proper update sort of post on here, so; here is what has been occurring in our house:

- we went to a car boot sale and found some fantastic bits and pieces, including books, pictures, clothes for Zoe and this barely-used Polaroid Camera for the amazing price of £3.50! They are £50 odd quid new!:

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- we had a barbecue at my Dad's house which was very yummy and Zoe ate so much food I couldn't believe it!

- Zoe picked me some lovely flowers when she was at her Gran's house one Monday - I love the Peony - I've asked Martin to plant some in the garden.

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-  we went to Birdoswald roman fort and Carlisle Castle with our new English Heritage memberships (a joint birthday present from my Dad). Most of the photos from Birdoswald are on my Pentax film camera (which I need to get developed), but here are some photos from our Castle trip:

I love all of the angles in this photo


I can't figure out who this cannon belonged to - anyone know?

...and the obligatory 'cannon-as-a-rude-bit-of-Martin's-body' photo - it has to be done!


- we both got food poisoning, so Martin's first Father's Day was a pretty rubbish day for us - my Mum came and picked Zoe up at about half ten and looked after her for a few hours as we were so ill! We are all better now though!

- we finished watching the third series of Game of Thrones (OMG!) and so are starting again with the first ever episode and re-watching them all in one chunk! Tiny Bran! Aww!!

- oh and I have eventually finished the the first Game of Thrones book . Yay! I'm now reading The White Queen by Phillippa Gregory, before I watch the BBC adaptation.



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18 June 2013

A House Tour With Joanna - Other People's Houses Month

Hello there my gorgeous readers!

Today as part of the 'Other People's Houses' theme, I have a guest post from the wonderful Joanna from Adventures & Tea Parties - enjoy!


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Hello lovely followers of The Dusty Attic! I'm Joanna from Adventures & Tea Parties and I'm here to take you on a tour of my house. There's a slight catch to the tour however, as I decided to set myself the challenge of picking only one item from each room in my house for Mrs Camera to snap. To make things easier I chose my favourite item in each room.

Now, which room shall we start in? Well, the first room you walk into is...the living room, where my beloved chest sits. My husband bought this for me as an engagement present and I love it! We use it as a coffee/games table and as it's pretty darn big, it's great for stuffing things in that you haven't had time to put away when guests are visiting, tee hee.

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Next up is our dining room, the hub of the house and as a result of this it's a regular tip. In fact the dining room table must have magic powers or something because we're forever clearing stuff away, only for stuff to majically pop up. Above the table is our chalk board, which we picked up from a late night pop up shop in Crouch End a good few years back. It's great for writing notes to each other or to see what "artistic" (i.e. rude!) creations our friends often draw on it, ha ha!

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In to the kitchen where you can find lots of jars I've found, recycled and purchased for storing our ingredients in. I love this retro way of storing food and plan to get everything into jars and tins, rather than being surrounded by nasty plastic packaging!

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Up the stairs to our bedroom where you can find my much loved mirror, which was previously my Gran's. I keep all my jewellery in here and love opening those darling little drawers to choose a pair of earrings for the day.

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Along the landing to the Creative Room as it's now called. This is where I do all my designing, creating and making. My husband does all his writing here too. I have lots of storage boxes, tins, and jars for all my haberdashery but my favourite is the wooden paint box my Mum gave me. I store all my cotton reels in here.

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On to the last room in the house - the bathroom. I actually loath the way the bathroom is decorated - we're currently renting but soon to move to our very first home, so we'll be able to decorate however we like! Despite this, I do have a favourite and yup, it's another storage container! Yes, I do love storage devices! This one is a glass jar, which I keep all my cotton wool in. Again, I like the old fashioned style of keeping everyday house hold items in pretty containers. 

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I hope you enjoyed a sneak peek at my home. Thanks for having me Anna!

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Thanks Joanna - I loved seeing all your favorite pieces! I love that sewing box! I would love to find one of those at the next car boot sale we go to!!
 
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14 June 2013

Etsy Finds Friday #22

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Happy Friday everyone!

Yay - another week over :)  What do you have planned for the weekend? It's Martin's first father's day so we will probably go out for a meal at some point. Zoe has been busy buying her Daddy lots of nice presents for Sunday.

This week I thought I would look for some items for my kitchen. In the house tour last week I showed you all my pretty grim kitchen. My fave item in the kitchen is my Nigella Lawson lemon juicer:

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I love this colour so much! I want to use this colour as an accent in the kitchen, and my plan is to have lovely fresh white walls and ceiling, white subway tiles as a splashback and a new stainless steel sink. I would also love to give the cupboards a coat or two of white/cream paint and new handles. I think all of this would really brighten up the room. It's so dark in there now that you need to put the light on even in the middle of a sunny day!!

What's your fave item on my list?

This is Etsy Finds Friday number twenty two - all of the previous Etsy Finds Friday posts can be found here. Please come back next week or follow me on Bloglovin' so you don't miss out on next week's list!


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Turquoise Kitchenaid
(Shouldn't really be here as it's not from Etsy and it's about £400, so not affordable either, but come on!! How pretty!! And it's the right colour too!!)

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This wooden 'eat' sign from Old New Again would look awesome on the fresh white walls!


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This vintage cream jug and sugar pot from Warm Nature are adorable. I love the look of these - they remind me of blue and white Cornish ware, which in turn reminds me of my Gran.


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What a pretty colander from The Retro Bottega - too pretty to keep in the cupboard - I'd hand it from the ceiling!


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You can never have too many little pots to keep things in and these vintage canisters from La Gypsy Yaya are just right!


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Ooh Pyrex! I do like a nice bit of Pyrex, but we already have so much stuff, I think I will just settle for this tea towel from freshpastrystand instead.


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This ceramic utensil holder from maryjudy is so unusual - and a million times nicer than the one we have now!


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12 June 2013

What's Been Occurring Wednesday #21


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Hello lovely people, how are you all today?

This is my second week back at work and boy is it busy!! Zoe cries every time I drop her off at nursery, which is heartbreaking! I've been pretty quiet on here and twitter because I'm just spending every second I can with her! Hopefully things will calm soon and normality will be resumed!!

As you know, I love peeking into other people's (and other bloggers') spaces - and luckily, just as I was gearing up for my 'Other People's Houses' month, I kept seeing these 'room for improvement' posts popping up in my bloglovin feed. Money Supermarket gave a whole load of bloggers £50 to make over a room in their homes and here are some of the outcomes:


Jo at the Perfect Hiding Place - gingham curtains and colourful photo frames







Oh No Rachio! - your room is so pretty!Look at that little Totoro! And succulents yay!!



Harriet Gray's makeover is awesome I love how she organised her bookcase.



fab illustrated her workspace and it is awesome!!


And here's a look at another craft studio - can you tell I love craft rooms?? Little Miss Crafty's blog


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10 June 2013

Our house! In the middle of our street! (Sorry, I couldn't help it)

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Hello my lovely readers, I trust that your weekend was full of sunshine and happy events!

As you know it is Other People's Houses month here on the old blog, and I figured it was about time that you saw into my little home - so Welcome!!

My plan was to do a video tour around the house, but that was a big fail - I managed to film the introduction (basically me rambling for about 10 minutes about utter crap) but then didn't actually film anything else. So I took some photos instead. These are panorama style photos, so just clicky-click on them to make them all bigger and stuff!

The whole point of other people's houses month is to try and get away from that bare-white-walls, -wood-floor-area-rug out-of-an-ikea-catalogue sort of house tour you see all over the interwebs (especially on Pinterest), and to show that not everyone has a perfectly perfect house. As you will see...



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So, this is the front of my house. I have two front doors, aren't I special? Please excuse the dead hanging basket by the door. And the peeling paint. No, no - no need to take your shoes off, just come on in.

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Ah, here you are! This is the hall, complete with a pile of coats, a walking stick on the wall, and bookcase number one (yes there will be plenty more bookcases on this tour!) - See that map up there on the right? Well, that's just the start of Martin's map wall - all the way up the stairs are framed pictures of maps - old and new, real places and not-so-real. That's the kitchen through that door, but if you just turn to your left...

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It's the sitting room! Or the lounge. Or living room. Whatever you want to call it. This is where I do computer-y things, where we watch TV, play on the X-Box, eat our tea, entertain Zoe and chill. The plants are mostly Martin's as I tend to kill them. The pink thing on the wall is my happy birthday banner (yeah, I'm not taking it down, like, ever!). This is the room fairly tidy, there's usually Zoe's toys strewn across the room, shredded wheats on the floor, and a cat somewhere snoring loudly. Bookcase number two (the bureau) houses cook books, craft books and gardening books. And loads of crap in the drawers.

Follow me out the french doors...


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And welcome to our garden! This is Martin's domain, he spends ages pottering around out here (mostly looking confused). It would be great to have a bit of grass, but once we fix that wall (yeah, it's falling down), we might get a bit of lawn. The big tree in the middle is a greengage (plum) tree, and there are LOADS this year, so there will be plum jam and plum crumble all summer hopefully.

Back inside now...

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Ah, our kitchen. I really hate our kitchen. It's dark, I really don't like the green sink and tiles, there's a mouldy patch where the bath leaked through the ceiling and down the wall.. gah!! I like the floor though. And I'm sure that once the walls are painted and tiles are replaced with nice shiny white ones it will look loads better. The utility room is through that door with the freezer, washing machine and tumble dryer.  Exciting stuff, yes? (p.s. no books in here)

Let's go upstairs...

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Zoe's Room!! Yay! I love this room - I spent hours painting it while I was pregnant - the pattered wallpaper took about four coats to cover up! Yes, that is a mattress on the floor, and yes, I do end up sleeping there most nights. Hmph. That's a gripe for another day. But I love this room - it's so bright and cheery, and is full of toys and books and cute things, like the toadstool money box and felt mobile. Bookcase number three is there on the right, bookcase number four is at the bottom of the cot - you can just see it. But there are also piles of books by the cot as well, as we have run out of room!

Yeah, I haven't taken photos of the bathroom. It's a bathroom. There's a loo, a sink and a bath. With the panel missing because it leaks. The floor is wood stuff and the ceiling is wood too. Blurgh. Also the tiles have hippos on them. Fun!

So, next room is..

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The spare room! Also known as Tony's Room as this is where Martin's friend Tony sleeps when he stays over. Look, there's bookcases five, six and seven, and bookcase eight is just at the far right of the picture. Martin's home brew stuff is in that left corner. This room is fairly plain - just white walls and ceiling. Loads of pictures though. I think Martin is allergic to bare walls as he's always 'banging a nail in' somewhere.

And last stop on the tour is..

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Our bedroom. Blah. I am really not happy with this room, as I said on Friday, I want to redecorate in shades of purple, rather than this red patterned stuff we inherited from the previous owners. Yes, I know I've been here since 2006, I am a procrastinator, ok?!?! In this photo you can see the dodgy semi-naked girl, which is covering up a painted-on playboy bunny (I don't know), and you can also see my AWESOME owl lamp! Yay owls! Bookcase number nine is right in front of you too.

Oh, there's the attic room too, which is Ma-Hoo-Sive, but no photos of that because it does seriously look like a bomb went off. Think a jumble sale and a car boot sale had a baby, then the baby threw up. That's our attic right now. One day when it's tidy I will take a photo and show you all the awesomeness.


So, that's my little abode. If/when we decorate anything, I'll blog about it and link back to here so that you can do a little compare.

I hope that you enjoyed your nose around my house. Spot anything dodgy that I didn't put away? Want to tell me that you hate that carpet or think my taste in tartan blankets is awesome? Let me know in the comments :)

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