Category Archives: House

My Top Eco Friendly Products

House, Product Reviews

Over the course of the last few months I have been trying to reduce the amount of waste we throw away in our household and start using more environmentally friendly products. We recycle everything we can to help and between 3 of us, a dog & rabbit we only have 1 bag of rubbish a week at the moment which I think is quite good.

Cheeky Wipes

The first thing I changed was the amount of wet wipes we used, with a toddler things can get messy very quickly and we seemed to get through quite a lot.  These reusable wipes are so much easier, you can just throw them in the washing machine and use again plus they are soft on baby’s skin.

Where to Buy: Cheeky Wipes

Ecover Washing-Up Liquid

Firstly it smells amazing, gently on delicate skin and you only need a little bit to make lots of bubbles.  I would buy this in the future.  Currently priced at £1.50 for 500ml.

Where to Buy: Sea Kelp and Orange scented limited-edition Ocean Washing-Up liquid

Splosh Products

The great thing about this product is you can buy refills which are delivered straight to your door.  It will help reduce waste in the environment.  They smell fresh too.

Where to Buy: Splosh

Modi Bodi Pants

I’m not sure exactly how I feel about these, I love that they are Eco friendly but it also feels like your just wear normal underwear which isn’t a bad thing but then i’m panicking thinking i’m going to leak forgetting I won’t.  They hold up to 20ml of liquid, which is approx two tampons worth.

Where to buy: Modibodi

I’m hoping over time I will find more ways to help the environment and reduce more waste in our house.

What are your top Eco friendly products you use in your household?

  • I was sent these products free of charge for the purpose of this review.  However, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Your Home As A Creative Space

Collaborative Posts, House

Creativity should have a place in every home, even if it is only a small or limited one. Being creative will mean that you are looking after your brain, that you are allowing the chance to truly express yourself, and will act as a very effective means of home therapy. If you have a family, you will also find that encouraging them to be as creative as possible is something that you want to do if you are to keep them on the right track, as it will lead to them having a much fuller understanding of themselves and way of being. In order to make sure of all that, it helps if you make a point of allowing the home to be a strongly creative space. In this post, we will look at what you can do to make that happen.

Photo of Multicolored Abstract Painting

Carve Out A Space

First things first, find some place in the home which you can dedicate to creativity in all its forms. In most cases, this could probably be a corner of a room, or it might even be that you can use the dining table for such purposes. Wherever it is, even if you can’t find a space which you can dedicate solely to creativity, you will want to make it as easy to use as possible. The idea is that you will find it easy to just sit down there and get creating, and that everyone else in your family will find that too. By carving out a specific space, ideally one which is not too affected by the rest of the household and its daily comings and goings, you will be able to champion creativity much more easily and effectively.

Stock Up On Supplies

Depending on what kind of creative ventures you might have planned for yourself or your family, you will want to make a point of finding some particular supplies to stock up on. If you want to really make it worthwhile, you will make a point of finding some supplies for everything – meaning not only will you find some decent Fountain Pens, but also paintbrushes, glue guns, glitter, notepads and whatever else you might feel is necessary. By having as many creative supplies in that space as you can, you will then be able to turn to whatever you want as a means of being creative, and you will find it much easier to be creative in general.

Close-up of Hand over White Background

Make It A Part Of The Schedule

Making time for your creative efforts is hugely important. If you don’t allow time in your schedule for these pursuits, then it means you simply won’t find yourself engaging in them to quite the same degree, so it is essential to ensure that you do whatever you can to do just that. By making your arts a part of your daily schedule, you will be putting the hours in, and that will mean that you can expect to get much more out of it in the long run.

My Favourite Mugs

General, House

Our kitchen cupboard is over flowing with mugs of all different shapes, colours and sizes, yet I only like to use a few of them, the rest get pushed to the back to gather dust.

Here are my favourite mugs that I have collected so far.

We were gifted a set of these as a wedding present and we both said how nice they are.  The handle is the perfect shaped to hold it securely and easily.

My mum brought me this from our little boy for mother’s Day as a little extra gift from him, even though my husband had brought me gifts.  It came with a matching coaster and I love it.  It is a little on the big side and heavy but I still love to use it every day.

This mug was the first mug I received with all 3 of us on it.  I love it, it was included in a review here.

My nephew brought me this mug a few years ago now, so it is special to me.

I love Tea and drink quite a lot when I’m at work daily so was very appropriate for me to purchase this mug.

I brought the set of these for me and hubby after we had our little boy from next.  It’s a small and lightweight mug perfect for those spare 5 minutes you might have to yourself while baby is sleeping.

So there you go my favourite mugs to drink Tea from.

DO YOU HAVE A FAVORITE MUG? OR DO YOU JUST GRAB WHICHEVER MUG IS AVAILABLE FIRST?

Creating Our Photo Wall

General, House

We’ve lived in our home 4 years now, and in those 4 years we have done so much to the house, decorating, rewiring, building work, and a new bathroom last year and more but one thing, and the most important to me is photos.  We hardly had any photos up around the house of us, our families or nieces/nephews.

A house to me is a not a home without memories in the way of photos, so I changed this immediately and decided on creating a photo wall in the lounge.

I wanted all the photos in one place for everyone to see when they visited our home, the first picture frame I ordered was the “Daddy” frame for Father’s Day here and we have built it from there.  I then brought the “Freddie” and “Mummy” frames a few months later to make the set complete, but yet to still fill them with photos.  We built the rest around them in no particular order, and still have Christmas photos from the last two years to frame and put up.

We did have loads of photos but none were printed out as we’ve never got round to it.  The large middle frame my husband gave me for my birthday it’s a professional photo shoot we had done a few months before.

I want to change the end one of the 3 of us at our pre wedding photo shoot as my husbands head is chopped off.  We have got new additions to add of Freddie’s first nursery photos.

We will then move and start with some memories up the stairs and in the bedrooms

Have you got a photo wall in your house? would love to see yours for inspiration.

Adding the finishing touches to our Bathroom Renovation

House, Interior Design

I love nothing more than adding the final finishing touches to a room that has been freshly decorated or renovated.  So once our bathroom had finally been completed this was exactly what I did.  Find below what I did.

New Flooring

It took us 2 months to finally decide on this flooring, we had been let down by two previous companies, and I walked into Solihull Carpets one Thursday after work to get samples, took them home, we decided that night that we found one.  Took the samples back to the shop on Friday, got it order and booked in for fitting the following week and all for just over £100.  Great service, highly recommend this company.

Towels 

Firstly I knew I wanted brand new fresh fluffy towels for the bathroom, there is nothing wrong with our others one but don’t really go with the new colour scheme in the bathroom.  I brought 2 sets one from John Lewis and the other from Marks & Spencers.  They were both in the sale so managed to save a few quid too.

 Accessories 

We were gifted the below items from croydex for inclusion in our bathroom refurbishment. 

Memory Foam Bath Mat – £20.00 

This is a memory foam mat and is so warm, soft and fluffy you won’t want to get off it.  Will be sure to buy another one of these.

Textile Bath Mat – £18.50 

This one is also very soft, they are easy to wash and with them being grey doesn’t show up dirty as easily as other colours might.

Squeegee– £15.37 

Now we just have a shower this is needed to wipe down the tiles and scream to prevent smears and water marks, I do it whilst still in the show but after I have turned it off, obviously.

Toilet roll holder

Unfortuantly the one we had chosen has since been discontinued so can’t link to it but it is square which matches the shower, luckily the fitters put it on the wall for us but you can screw it on or glue it on dependant on what you want to do.

Sainsburys Home Heart Tealight holder – £5

Then finally I saw this one day in sainsburys as I was having a wonder round and fell in love with it and thought it would make a great vase supposed to a candle holder.

What finishing touches do you like to add to your newly renovated room?

Leave me a comment below

 

Our Bathroom Renovation – The final result

House, Interior Design

A few months ago we decided to embark on a full bathroom renovation. It’s something we’ve wanted to do since we moved in three years ago but as the old bathroom was pretty functional it was always low on the list of priorities.  We got all the quotes and prices we needed and it worked out cheaper to buy the bathroom from one company and get it fitted by another, both who were friends of my dads, so we managed to save a few pounds.

Well finally after 8 long stressful weeks I can finally say it is all complete minus the new flooring as we are still yet to decide on a colour and brand we would like, and want it to be hard-wearing.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the bathroom renovation 5 weeks on. It was great to see the progress made each day but I was so excited to see the finished result.  Now it’s complete I thought I would share our bathroom renovation with you. So here it is.

We swapped our ceiling light for spotlights to make it that little bit more modern not to mention they make the room so much brighter.

We chose to lose the bath and have a decent power shower with a large square head and a smaller flex hose head to bathe Freddie in the shower while sitting down.  We had real trouble with the shower as it was going where the original shower was, so the wall was studded out to hold the bespoke screen.

We even opted for a chrome towel rail supposed to a radiator, again something more modern than a radiator that will still give plenty of heat out, but doesn’t stick out.  I hated the old radiator always looked dirty with it been painted.

Adding a cabinet with light & mirror so my husband can do his hair in the bathroom instead of the bedroom now, and stop messing up my bedside cabinet with all his products.

The whole bathroom feels so much bigger now and we are both so pleased with it.

A massive thank you to all the guys especially Matt & Phil at P B Hughes.  Can’t recommend this company enough.

Just the flooring now to decide on then it is onto the next project that I want to start and it’s a big one…The Kitchen.

Watch this space…

Patio Door Renovation

House, Interior Design

When we first moved in to our house 3 & half years ago now there were just a couple of things I wanted to change and one of those was the horrendously heavy big sliding patio doors to the garden.  They used to make our kitchen very cold because all the seals had started to go around the glass so could feel the draft and were cold to the touch.

We’ve had to replace the runners before because the door came of them due to the sheer weight and it got to the point where we were having to use 2 hands and put our foot on the wall to attempt to even open it, that’s when we knew we had to do something soon.

The company doing our bathroom had a window contact so we asked them out for a quote. Within a matter of days we had our quote and it was competitive so we decided to go ahead and get it done with a company called Donmar Windows.  It would take a couple of weeks to get it made but we expected that due to the size of the doors.

The guys from Donmar windows arrived promptly at 8am to start work.  They removed the old doors, then came the task of taking the old frame out, as we didn’t know what the state of the walls would be like I was worried it may make a mess, but they did it slowly & gently, little bits at a time and it came out, with just a little bit of plaster.

When they put the new doors & panels in they had to pack it out because the old one was much wider, but you would never tell now, (unless you go outside).

It took them a good few hours to attach and drill it into position, join them together and make sure that the doors were level, then it was time to put the glass in, they did the little panes at the top first then the big ones.  Once they were all in they put all the seals in and made good of all the edges by putting a trim down each side and along the bottom and silicone all round.

Our thoughts of Donmar Windows & would we recommend them?

Excellent service, great guys, attention to detail and tidied up after themselves and took away all rubbish. Yes we would highly recommend this company.

Our Bathroom Renovation 5 Weeks On

House, Interior Design

On Sunday night me and Hubby cleared out the bathroom ready for an early start the next day.  The builders & fitter’s arrived at around 8am-8.30am on the 29th January.   we couldn’t wait to see our new bathroom in a matter of weeks.

Well, we are now well into week 5 of our bathroom renovation and what a stressful few weeks it has been.  It started off so well, it was stripped out, the floor was taken up to check the pipework to reroute it to make way for the new bathroom layout.  Unfortunately it wasn’t that straight forward when they got the floor up.

29th January 2018

The day started off great, we said goodbye to the old suite and they stripped it out and started removing the tiles off the walls.  The next plan was to get up the floor boards to chase the pipework and that’s where they discovered an issue.  Previous owners had taken massive chunks out of the joists that support the floor.  (Look carefully in picture 1) which then delayed the work as they had to pull up all the floorboards to support the joists.

30th January 2018

It was a hands on productive day as we had to get the floor joists reinforced to just put some pipe work under.  Then we opted for a new floor instead of floor boards to make it cheaper and easier in the long run not to mention flat for new flooring.  The new pipework to house the sink, toilet & shower had been repositioned.  Finally the shower area had been studded

1st February 2018

We had new spotlight put in, the electrics put in for the mirror light cabinet and for the new extractor fan.  Then a new hole was drilled for the repositoned waste pipe for toilet.

 12th February 2018

Not much work was completed as we still had to wait for the new bespoke shower screen to be delivered which was on a 2/3 weeks delivery.  The studding was taken down for the shower as we changed from a quad to a rectangle tray

We had a few weeks of no progress due to waiting for our bespoke shower screen to be made and delivered.

15th February 2018

We had the new bathroom window fitted, it’s amazing how different just having a new window makes a room look so much better.

Right well that’s the progress so far, so once it is finished I will publish another progress post for the finally finished renovated bathroom.

WATCH THIS SPACE!

Our Current Bathroom

House, Interior Design

One room in our home that we’ve never fully updated is the bathroom. We gave it a coat of white paint and added a few accessories but apart from that it has never really changed at all.

The time has now come though to update the bathroom fully and so during the next few weeks we are having a complete bathroom renovation – something that neither my partner or I have ever lived through before not mentioning with a baby! We have planned it all, have found someone to put it all together for us and now we just can’t wait to get it finished.

As you can see it’s pretty grim no matter how much we clean it never looks nice so will be glad of a new one. The lighting is terrible in it aswell so it always looks so dark.  We also decided to have a new window fitted seeing as we are having the rest done.

Lastly, we’ll be having fully tiled walls and easy to clean flooring. I am hoping this will not only make the bathroom a bit more water tight but will also making cleaning easier and should just make for a better experience overall.

I’m aiming to do a post during the work if I can get good enough photos but if not I’ll update you when the work’s finished.

Wish us luck!

This Winter, Let there be light | Litecraft Review

House, Interior Design, Product Reviews, Reviews

With the nights drawing in and the weather going from one extreme to the other every day, I love nothing more than to stay inside my house curled up watching rubbish on tv under a blanket.

When Litecraft got in contact it couldn’t of been at a more perfect time as our current lamp in the lounge had started given up the go and stopped working.

This particular lamp RRP’s at £39 and can be found here with a large selection of others to suit all your home decor needs.

It is neutral yet classy and would fit perfectly into any space.  We never put the big lights on as it gives out a perfect amount of light without it been to bright.

If I was looking for lights/lamps for our house again, I would be sure to look here first as they are good value for money.

* I was sent this product free of charge for the purpose of this review.  However all thoughts and opinions are my own.