Photo An Hour » January 2016 » 31/01

As I'm feeling a bit more like getting in on the blogging thing, I thought I'd kick it up a gear and do a Photo An Hour.

A few years ago, I did one a month for the whole year and I've been doing them on and off for the whole time I've had this blog, even taking part in the 1 Day 12 Pictures occasionally too.

I do enjoy how they're a little bit of a snapshot into what I was up to at the time. So, without further rambling, here is a Photo An Hour for the last day in January 2016.


9am: // Moon and I are in a pretty solid routine of waking up only a little later than we normally would on a weekday at weekends. Our bed is ridiculously comfortable but it is pretty good, even on a Sunday to feel like you've got up and done some stuff that day. This Sunday was a little bit of a struggle, thanks to the grey weather though.


10am: // Catching Doll in the act – she's actually settled in to the house really well and seems so much happier than she ever was at the flat. Over the winter she's become a bit of an accidental house cat, just because of how the house is, we can't let her come and go as she pleases as much but I think she's cool with it, and actually, she doesn't seem to fancy going out all that much either.


11am: // Taking in a new magazine – I have so much magazine reading to catch up on, Ernest Journal was a nice little find at the Old Fire Station in Oxford. I'll have to head back there to see more of their arts mag collection soon.

Sometimes sitting and watching Sunday Brunch of a morning can do a world of good. And what kind of contemporary couple would we be if we weren't doing that while on our phones? ♥


12pm: // On the road to hit up Banbury for a Sunday mooch.



1pm: // Discovering the lovely Little Amsterdam, Banbury Café of the Year 2015. A lovely restaurant specialising in dutch pancakes, absolute dream for a real-life Sunday brunch.


2pm: // Moon modelling his sweet new cap.



3pm: // Spotting some filming on Banbury town centre, which fooled us into thinking there was a crime scene... I'll tell you, post-Making a Murderer, that fact was a lot more disappointing than it should have been.


4pm // Home again with a few goodies from Tiger.


5pm: // Continuing the Dutch dining theme of the day with a tasty stroopwaffel ♥


6pm: // Playing a new video game, Moon downloaded The Long Dark, which might actually be one of my favourite games ever. I'm not a big gamer or anything but I do tend to dabble, and The Long Dark is not only quite pretty to look at but much more my pace in that I'm not having to shoot anyone and I can completely take my own time - except not actually because I'll freeze to death.


7pm: // Whipping up dinner for the evening, a tasty red Thai curry soup.


8pm: // Sunday night shower with the best shower gel of all time.


9pm: // Sunday night movie, 99 Homes in case you were wondering - you can see my review here.
I'm hoping to stay just as chill this weekend, perfect for this time of year I think, have you got any nice plans?

Home » 1 Year On...

It's a year this week since Moon and found, put and offer in and were accepted on a mortgage for our new home and I can't quite believe how quickly that time has gone.

While working on a few things from Google Drive last week, I found the photos I took from when I was showing my Mum the house that I would then go on to show anyone who asked in the lead up to us actually living there and it's crazy to think that we even went for it. It's not that we've changed all that much about the house, I mean, structurally it's exactly the same but we've had to do so much painting and we're still not even finished!

I guess we just really loved the potential, but I'll tell you what, decorating a house is so far removed from the cutesy painting montages from the movies, like, it's the least fun thing I've ever done. I am really happy with the result so far though and even though we won't have been here a full year until April rolls around, it's still pretty fun to see the changes our house has gone through in the last 12 months.

Living Room: Before + After

When the lovely people at Ocean Finance got in touch with the challenge of making over a room for £50 or less, it couldn't have come at a better time.

Working on making our house a home has very much been a marathon rather than a sprint and a few weeks ago we finally got around to painting our living room. Our friends Richard and Fran were on hand to help and it was pretty amazing how quickly we managed to get things done, they were even sneakily up early to finish up the trim, we definitely owe them more than one.

[Before]
So, obviously it didn't look like this all the time but it should give you an idea of what a blank canvas this room was.



We are planning on putting a fireplace at some point but for now a makeshift radiator cover - what was left to us by the previous owners - will have to do.



Repainting things white never fails to make me feel a bit uneasy. Funny how your eyes can trick you.


So, the deal was that once we got this room painted we would be able to get curtains, put pictures up, finally pick up a dining table and basically just make the room feels like it was more 'us'.

Ocean sent over a voucher for Dunhelm to see what I could find to makeover my chosen room. Dunhelm has been one of my savior shops since we moved, all our curtains have been from there and I just think it's really good for everyday bits and pieces at a great price, it's definitely up there with Wilko as somewhere I'd recommend for general house things.


Pro tip: radiator paint is awful.


In need of so many more house plants!


After we'd tried to put things back to normal post-putting the curtains up.
Now I've had practice with a lot of other rooms in the house, I feel making a room over can be as simple as a lick of paint and a few personal touches, so I wasn't going to go too far out of my comfort range with my £50.




Every meal I've eaten has been here since we put this up on Saturday afternoon. ♥


This little ladder shelf was a TKMaxx find, just what I was looking for and much nicer than the MDF versions I'd been watching on eBay. Now we just need to work out what to put on it...




Most of the voucher went towards the map blind, I chose them because they're a little different but neutral at the same time. I didn't want another set of curtains as we got long curtains for the patio doors and because they're pretty close together I figured it would look weird to have different lengths next to each other. The rest went on curtain rings and picture frames (which we're yet to put up).





This 65daysofstatic poster has had a little re-frame and is looking much healthier now it's out of a bendy clip frame.



We used to have this poster in our bedroom in our flat but it's been promoted to living room since the space above our bed is a little too small for it. I'm pretty happy to have it more out on display now anyway though.


This mirror was one of our first Dunhelm finds, I love the wood.


My mum treated me to this Atlas Moth a few weeks ago when I was in Covent Garden with her. I'm actually a little obsessed with insect taxidermy recently.






I picked up this table on Saturday to match the other one we got when we first moved in. I'm so pleased that IKEA still had them as they're one of my favourite IKEA purchases - they're actually meant to be plant stands but they're the perfect shape for what we need as they don't take up much room.





I guess I'd have to admit that because of all the other things we picked up at IKEA at the weekend, as well as our new dining set (with IKEA bench), making over the room for £50 was a bit of a failure but I think you'll agree that I've certainly managed to put our stamp on it, even if it's from a few different places.

After 7 months of a combination of hard work - and being a bit lazy - we're actually pretty much there with this whole 'nestmaking' (not in a baby way) things and I feel much better about the prospect of hosting our first Christmas, our next milestone.

Would you be able to makeover a room for £50? Which room would you choose?