job done

It has taken a while but I have finally finished re-upholstering a couple of sofas, a job I started months ago, the fabric was a £5.00 per metre bargain from Brixton market so not much lost if it all went wrong. New sofas prompted me to make a few other changes, new shelves above the sideboard - these are vintage dutch Tomado shelves - hours of fun arranging things, and a new colour in the kitchen. The books just because I love them!

swap shop

I have been doing a bit of trading lately, so amongst the tax bills and other January gloom the postman has been bringing me some lovely parcels which have cheered me up no end.
Stunning origami lamp shade from dutch designers snowpuppe and typo poster from one must dash
who were one of my fellow stand holders at Top Drawer. The colourful box on my trolly of treasures is from Ikea - rather nice I think.

tiles

We have been on a little trip (more about that later) and when I return from a few days away I always want to change the house. I tend to drift between the simplicity of Scandinavian design and the organic, artisan quality of the Mediterranean. These concrete floor tiles fall into both camps. From Swedish company Marrakeck Design they come in lovely cool colours and can be arranged in any number of pattern combinations. Of course we have no where to put them, I would like them on the kitchen wall but we have to keep changing the colour for photographic shoots. This year it has been olive green, blue, back to olive and now this grey which I may keep for a bit. The colour is called 'nothing makes people happy' from my favourite eccentrically named paint shop Colour Makes People Happy.

trendy pie

Skinny sticks of pink rhubarb picked from the allotment this weekend, enough for a very small crumble in my now trendy pie dish. Falconware has gone the way of stripy butchers string. Funny how all of a sudden the most humble object can be everywhere. No lad-style TV cooking programme or cool new cafe is complete without people slurping soup or eating honest burgers from this ubiquitous blue and white enamelware. Raid your gran's cupboard or find it cheap at your local scruffy high street bucket shop. Or buy a boxed set here for £54.99 (!!!!)

blue and orange

Blue is the colour - behind the kitchen shelves, it's quite intense so takes a bit of getting used to but it certainly makes the orange pop.  On the subject of orange, this is my husband's first ever hi-fi, brought back from Wales, a splendid combo of orange, teak and stainless steel. Unfortunately we have nothing to play on it as I was never much of a music collector and I made him take all his prog rock albums to the charity shop along with his star wars annuals - was that a bit mean of me?

The blue is Trelleborg by Siecle paints, available here and is the same colour as my Logpile wallpaper in woodsmoke - just thought I'd tell you that.

Finally....worth watching tonight: The Kids's Speech, BBC 1 at 10.35. About the Michael Palin Centre for Stammering Children where my son attended a speech course this summer, a really inspiring place.

out of chaos

Well, I put half of it back and it looks a lot better, the catherineholm pot stays (sorry lou!) but the green paint may go. It's London Design Week and there is an overwhelming amount to see in a very short space of time, so today I am getting my dose of cool and heading off to lurk around Brick Lane for a bit and take a look at Tent London.

open studio

Back in May this year we had our first open studio weekend (actually this is our kitchen, the studio is downstairs). We had a great time and met lots of lovely people, so a big thank-you to all who came.