As Tidy As It Will Ever Be...

Over the past month or so I've been "sorting" A's bedroom. This has involved re-homing a couple of bookcases from elsewhere in the house and moving some of the other pieces of furniture around a little. Oh, and tidying... lots of! I know many will still consider it very cluttered, but we do have a lot of stuff. She loves reading and has an excellent library of books. I would say that about 80% of her books have been bought from charity shops, an excellent and cheap source of good quality children's books.

The sun was shining a little this morning so it seemed a good time to attempt some photos of her room. I find it hard to take good quality indoor photos without flash. After some trial and error I think it's best to use my camera on the night time setting and rest it on something steady if it's going to be a longish exposure. The photos are still a little dim perhaps, but they'll do! By the way, my camera is a Fujifilm Finepix f100fd.
 
OK, here are some photos of the room in its tidy state (incase you were wondering!)

I was tempted to dig the African Flower blanket out the wardrobe for some staging, but didn't.

Now there's absolutely no more room for any more furniture. As more books come in we'll need to say goodbye to the ones she's grown out of. Of course, there'll be ones which we'll keep, indeed, some of the ones she has now were mine when I was younger. In those days books were relatively far more expensive than they are now so I didn't have many. I like her room, it's the kind of room I would have liked when I was little. I don't think I've imposed it on her though, there's enough of her own personality in it to make it hers.


Anyway, here, for comparison, are the messy photos...

And here, while I'm at it, are two photos I found of her room when we were just beginning the process of converting it from being a spare room...

Unfortunately, I can't find any photos of it as it was when we moved in. Imagine a dark underwater cave - dark blue carpet, navy skirting and cornicing, and dark blue walls. Believe it or not, the yellow, scrambled egg effect sponging was an improvement...

I like...

A Rast chest of drawers, £20 from Ikea.

Then...

Now.

I'm ridiculously pleased with how this chest of drawers has turned out. I did like the original plain pine but I'd treated it with Danish oil which made it take on rather yellowish tone and, well, it was just a bit ordinary.

A little bit of staging has taken place, this is how it really looks normally, piled high with stuff, including...

...the patchwork which I have been working away on when I have a spare moment, but which is growing very slowly.

A reverse view.

Back to the drawers - there was an in-between stage...

I tried the Annie Sloan painted white look, too plain...

I dug out an old stencil from the 1990's...

Hmmm, not keen. I hoped the wax would tone it down, but it remained bright and garish (though the children liked it) and I never even bothered to take a photo of it once fully completed. It irritated me slightly whenever I walked in the room. What to do... I'd seen photos on-line and in magazines where people had used wallpaper to decorate drawers so when N and I went to B&Q earlier this week to buy a towel rail we took a wander though the wallpaper section and came home with a few samples.

To apply the wallpaper I removed the drawers and handles and liberally coated the front of the drawers with some of the children's craft (PVA) glue (too liberally in the case of the last drawer, I had to squeegee out lots of excess glue).

Of the wallpaper samples I'd taken home I liked the blue one with birds best, and the sample was big enough to cover all three drawers with the birds still being in sensible positions. It wasn't wide enough to cover the whole drawer front so I used strips from a second wallpaper sample to put down the sides. Once it was dry I replaced the handles and that was it. All free, except the glue, which we already had and which was from a pound shop.

Now when I walk in the room I am happy.

(Except that the table is now covered with the stuff pile, off to find a home for it all, somewhere...)

Patchwork Progress, Early Days.

On N's first afternoon at nursery (he still says he doesn't want to go to nursery but is usually fine once there) I'd promised myself I'd check out how my hexagons for the quilt are getting on (for obvious reasons it's not possible to do this with children around!)

I thought I'd maybe done about 200...

...but there are closer to 400 of them, hurrah!

Now I see them laid out I think I need more red and green, so will get fabrics in these colours specially. Other than that the hexagons are all made of baby dresses and shirts and some of my old tops.

Covering the little paper hexagons with fabric is a rather brainless activity - good for when you've not much spare time and don't really need to concentrate.

When I have been able to concentrate I've been making this instead. I finished the last crochet stitches last night. I just need to sew in the ends and it does definitely need blocked. Soo frustrating as I'd like to be able to share it ASAP, I'm rather pleased with it!

Today N was at nursery in the morning. Now while he's there I'm catching up with housework duties (and six years of house neglect!), this morning it was A's room. I finally got it in a tidy enough state I was happy to share photos of it and did a little photoshoot of the African Flower blanket in its new home...

Of course, it's only August so it's not required yet...

...so it's removed till needed, and A's soft toys are all reinstated, somehow she manages to squish herself inbetween them all to sleep.

Now to a little catch-up on last week:-

N and I visited the loch again, but this time we headed in the opposite direction to our last visit and went to...

...the park. It may be old and a little tatty, but this playpark is still very much loved by the children as it has a good selection of climbing/spinning/swinging "things".


We'd taken N's balance bike on holiday and he's now got the hang of speeding along on it. I'd definitely recomend a bike like this for a 3 yr old. It lets children get used to balancing on two wheels so that when they upgrade to a bike with pedals they can pretty much set off straight away - no need for stabilisers.

Loch view heading back along the cyclepath.

We also popped in to the local charity shop to stock up on some more books, there's a Jamie Oliver one at the top for me.

Sunny shadows on the kitchen wall catch my eye.

A recent drawing by A, stuck onto one of the kitchen units along with other favourites.

A robot.

And finally, the field out the front gets its second silage cut of the year, the tractor is just visible in the distance, eagerly watched by N.