At last

I finally have some pictures of the flat I can share with you. My parents came down this weekend and we had a wonderful meal with them on Saturday (our first go at hosting a meal!) They brought another load of my "stuff" with them, which warranted a trip to Argos on Sunday to get some new cupboards for the bedroom (no bed yet though). We are extremely lucky in that our flat has access to loft space, so most of my books have been stored in boxes up there, as have the spare chairs and suitcases etc.

I discovered I could take some halfway decent photos with T's phone (though not perfect, I'm afraid!), so that is what I did. I spent half of Sunday and half of Monday sorting through boxes of books, clothes and crystals, deciding what to keep and what to donate to charity etc. Then I had the best fun making it look "right" by placing books and things in various places until it all seemed to fit. I have many photos, so thought I would do one room per blog post - so here goes...

The Living Room


So this is the fireplace (which we bought) to add a focal point to our living room. The room is a funny shape with 5 walls and what looks like a chimney wall but in actual fact isn't one at all. We chose to put the tv and bookcase near the chimney wall and create a new focal point on the side wall. The new fire (free-standing and electric powered) is also a great way for us to avoid using the dreaded storage heaters. In fact, we found that all the storage heaters were suitable for was to display other things, as shown below...


That's our manifestation collage, the one I wrote about early this year - we love looking at it and realising just how much we have already manifested and thought it was appropriate to display it, like so!


This is our sofa (can you see how it all fits in? I purposefully took overlapping pictures to give a better view of the room. The sofa stands between the rocking chair and fire and the manifestation collage). We got our sofa (and cushions and throw) for free off gumtree. The man who gave it to us was very generous and the sofa is in wonderful condition and extremely comfortable to curl up on. The coffee table and end table came from eBay - another great find. The wood is solid and a beautiful colour and we only paid about £30 for 3 tables (the third one is in the bedroom). The go perfectly with the rocking chair T picked up for £10!!

This is the view of the room I get when I sit down on our sofa. You can't really see the picture above the tv very well so I will tell you that it is the most beautiful picture of a lighthouse and seashore I have ever seen! T and I saw it in the window of a charity shop just minutes after signing the contract for the flat and had to buy it. It cost us all of £15!! Seriously, I don't know how we managed to fit our flat out with such beautiful furniture and decorations for such good money but I am very grateful to the star that has been shining on us these past few weeks/months!

Our bookcase is jam-packed (although I refused to let T put two layers of books on each shelf which would have meant a lot of our books wouldn't now be stored in the loft! I just think bookcases should be used to display books, not hide them, so I put my foot down on that one!!) But T, bless him, graciously let me get on with doing the girlie, homely thing and then contributed by putting boxes in the loft and then dusting the tables for me :o) I hasten to add, having looked at this picture again, that T is wearing an orange belt - he is NOT flashing his bum!!

Isn't he a good one?! He then also proceeded to give the Tulips some Reiki, as neither of us had thought to check the water level for a couple of days and the poor darlings were beginning to wilt. I am pleased to say that all but one are now standing tall and proud once more, thanks to his gentle care!!

We were overloaded with flowers this weekend, as T bought me some as a surprise on Friday and I used both of the vases we own to split the bunch between the living room and the kitchen. Then my mum arrived with two lots of flowers from her garden and my Aunty came round with the tulips so I had to resort to using tall drinking glasses to store them in!! I'm going to use my next half-day off work scouring the charity shops for some new vases hehe.

Our flat doesn't know what has hit her this weekend, as she is almost free of boxes for the first time ever (we have a couple more to sort through hidden carefully behind the sofa *blushes*) so she is feeling very big indeed today! She is also full of joy at all the flowers, houseplants we bought today and the window boxes that we brought home last weekend for my birthday. Did I mention that our flat has window boxes running round the whole of the outside wall?? Did I also mention that when we moved in we had a nest with some baby turtle doves in one corner of said window boxes?? What a surprise I got the first day I was here when two turtle doves suddenly peered in the window at me - hehe! We saw the fluffy chicks grow into true adults, and now they have left the nest we are able to fill the boxes again!

As a final treat, I thought I'd show you a picture of my very favourite birthday card this year - the one beautifully decorated by T's niece (16/17 months of age) and his sister! Isn't it just adorable??