The Importance Of Nutella To Home Renovation

The spare room is finished! And was road-tested very successfully over the weekend by lovely friends visiting from Germany. Yes, I need to take after photographs. No, I haven't taken after photographs yet. In my defence, I'm exhausted after five days of supervising international toddler wrestling over umbrellas, lunch boxes and booster seats (why did they both want to carry the booster seat around?! Ah, the mysteries of the toddler mind) plus visits to Tatton Park, Chester Zoo, and Head over Heels. So photographs will come but first I need to have a lie down and recover my strength.

In the meantime, we've started working on the afore-mentioned toddler's big girl bedroom. The hideous dusty old carpet has been removed with glee, and floor sanding and wall plastering have commenced. Dust city. We've moved her up to the spare bedroom while the work is carried out, a change which apparently she found most invigorating, if the excited squeals coming through the baby monitor at 7am this morning were anything to judge by.

Her new room is going to be raspberry pink, blue, aqua and peach. Yep, I'm still fully embracing colour. And I'm also fully OK with using pink in a girl's bedroom - while the distinction in most British toy shops between girls' toys (pink, sparkly, princessy, dolls, tea-sets, lego cupcakes etc) and boys' toys (bright, colourful, imaginative, pirates, diggers etc) fills me with righteous rage, I figure that if I'm OK with pairing hot pink and yellow in the guest bedroom, then I'm also OK with pairing hot pink and aqua in my daughter's bedroom. If we have a little boy one day and he likes pink, then he can have a hot pink bedroom too. That's how we roll.

Here's the colour scheme inspiration:

Sources: Martha Stewart, Canadian House and Home via Poppytalk, Little Bit Magazine via Somewhere Splendid and Etsy PartyPoms.

And here's the furniture and accessories inspiration:

Sources: House to Home, Pier 1, Ikea, Jenny Lind via Apartment Therapy, Kids Curtain Company and The Company Store.

We've already got a mirrored chest of drawers (currently in our bedroom) the Ikea table and chairs (which she loves, and insists on carrying from room to room with her) and the gorgeous Destination fabric, which I have turned into four huge curtains (why did we buy a house with enormous bay windows? why? and good grief, don't even get me started on all the stairs). We probably won't buy an actual Jenny Lind bed, but I do like the idea of hot pink furniture. I'm also currently stalking wardrobes on eBay with a view to snaffling a French style armoire in need of renovation, and wallpapering the interior.

I also have ambitious plans to paint a huge mural on the raspberry pink wall (one wall will be raspberry, and the other three will be a light teal blue - yes, it will be a feature wall and I'm OK with that) consisting of various famous landmarks - Statue of Liberty, Eiffel Tower, Sagrada Familia, the Pyramids, Big Ben and so on (to co-ordinate with the curtains) and lots of animals (camels, snakes, lions, tigers, giraffes etc). Considering I don't have the energy to take a few simple after pictures of the spare room you may think I have bitten off more than I can chew with this one, but I reckon a few spoonfuls of Nutella (mmmmm, Nutella) and I'll be sugar-high and ready to go. I'll just have a little lie down first and rest my eyes. Mmmmm, day-time naps are the best.

Our Baby Girl's Nursery

Blimey, taking care of a baby is time-consuming. I haven't blogged in a month! But on the other hand, Eva has put on over 1lb, has rolled over from her tummy to her back, has learned how to take Daddy's glasses off, has figured out how to squeal like a baby velociraptor, has discovered her feet (and is very reluctant to be parted from them), has worked out how to transform herself from a sitting position to a crawling position (via a generous face plant), has started grabbing my glass of water and trying to drink from it, has swum freely underwater, has decided the dogs are hilariously funny, and has figured out how to blow raspberries. Among other things. So no blogging, but we've been busy :-)

Anyway, here I am again, and thanks to our recent acquisition of the world's most awesome baby toy (and quite possibly the most hideous) - also known as the hands-free kit for Mummies - I now have the use of both hands for at least 30 minutes a day, which I will try and use to do some blogging.

So let's kick things off in 2011 with a look at Eva's nursery. I loosely based the decor around my favourite poem, 'i carry your heart with me' by EE Cummings, especially the following lines:

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Just beautiful. So Eva's nursery includes a hand-painted mural of a tree, blue walls, a bird mobile, a leaf-patterned rug, black and white family photos, star-shaped fairy lights draped across the ceiling, heart-inspired art work, and a little tin heart hanging from the lampshade in the centre of the room (I used one of the paper lamps from our wedding decor). And of course, lots of books!

So without further ado, let's move on to the pictures...

I 'acquired' the giant teddy bear when I was a student, and subsequently moved him from one house to another for the next ten years. It's great to finally have a use for him! The guitar (just seen) is a Levin that belonged to my Grandpa - and yes, that's Perpetual Paris on the wall. More nursery details to come in future posts!