easter treats

After seeing Betina's (Chez Larsson) beautifully simple Easter decorations above, I had a search round for some equally lovely (and easy to do) decorations that we could make for our house. My search took me to Martha Stewart's page and these beauties.

The technique looks easy enough for a craft novice (which I am). I love the simple way they have displayed them in the photo and think that a trio of eggs will be adorning my dining table shortly ... along with some of Betina's flags around the house.

white out

After seeing Birgitte Engberg's all white home in Ikea Family magazine recently, I have noticed that I too am drawn to all things white. At this very moment I am working on the practicalities of creating and maintaining an all white zone. Here are some lovely images from LivingEtc.

organic vegetable garden

So the Obamas are to plant an organic vegetable garden at the White House. I say if it's good enough for them, then its good enough for me and Mark. Actually there is an area within our garden (not to the scale of that at the White House) that we had been thinking about having a go at growing some vegetables on. Mark has ordered the seeds and now all we do is wait, or so I thought! After careful research into this it would seem that a vegetable patch is quite labour intensive, not the sort of work for two people that haven't managed to maintain their garden properly for the past three years of being in the house. However, I'm sure we'll give it a go, it will make a nice change to have something there other than weeds and the unsightly shrubs that the previous owners left.


That said, I love these images from mylandscapes (London), they are the ultimate in low maintenance, modern, made for socialising gardens.

sunny side up

My new favourite colour, Yellow, seems to be everywhere.

After posting the lovely sunny pictures below I couldn't help but look around at the new season clothing that is around. I liked what I saw - lots of bold patterns and brilliant colour mixes. So ... I know this is meant to be about my house but I cant resist adding some spring/summer fashion indulgence. Enjoy!

Anya Hindmarch

Boden

bring back the british summer

Sorry, I had to share these photos that we took last September while on honeymoon. Whatever happened to British summertime?

i hate masking tape

The stairs are completed, or at least they should be if it wasn't for masking tape and the little good that it does to keep the paint job clean.

After seeing lots of lovely images for papered stairs we decided to give it a go. The result is fantastic and it really adds the wow factor when you walk into the house. However, I will now have to spend hours with a teeny brush painting over the areas where the grey snuck under the masking tape and went on the rest of the woodwork. Well that isn't everything, the 'stump' still has to be sanded and painted white ...

This shows the during, I totally forgot to take a before and no words could describe how truly awful they were.

Overall we are really pleased, the 'fixing' of the paint will have to be added to my things to do in 2009.