In our house, the Christmas tree won’t go up until at least the first weekend in December, sometimes after that. Two reasons; one, that we always get a real tree, and I think we all know that if you favour the tradition of a real Christmas tree then even with the super-swankiest-anti-drop-treated number, if you get it too early then that bad-boy is likely to be dropping and drooping long before Santa Claus comes to town. The second reason is that growing up, my parents never put our tree up until at least mid-December; I would imagine for the same reason; so I like to feel that I am carrying on that tradition.

The dining room has always been the room I have disliked, ever since we moved in to this house (Yep, I know, I am really drawing you into this one with such a positive opener?!)  I have never been able to get things quite right in here; it just hasn’t given me the feeling that it’s finished.  Since we moved it just over two and a half years ago, it’s had two different colours on the walls, I have made two different blinds for the window; I added extra chairs for the table, then we changed the table altogether and added a bench too……now we have too many chairs.  Are you seeing a pattern emerging here?

When we moved in to this house, the kitchen bothered me, always.  It became one of those things that continued to bother me for the next two and a half years.  The plan had always been that the KOD (kitchen-extension of dreams) would be coming.  Initially we thought that would happen after two years, then that turned into three.  KOD is still very much on the horizon, but then something happened that made me realise that I couldn’t just live with our sh*t kitchen (or “shitchen” as it has come to be affectionately known) for a moment longer.  I was approached by a magazine who wanted to photograph our house; brilliant I know, but my first reaction? “My kitchen is sh*t.”  Ok, maybe not those exact words when I wrote back to them, but you get the idea.  So it was time to come clean, show the world the kitchen we had been living with and actually use this as the much-needed kick up the arse to actually do something about it!

I won’t lie; I will be the first to admit that I got the colour choice for the guest room completely and utterly wrong when we initially created that room at the beginning of last year.  I think I wanted to try a warmer colour out, so we went for a Farrow & Ball shade (always!) in New White and, although a lovely colour, it never felt quite right.  I always felt that although it was very cosy in there, it didn’t make the most of the space.