The Right Lights.

It's no secret that I've been pretty dang terrible at blogging this year, but as I keep saying, I've had a fair bit going on... I know this house 'thing' is a marathon and not a sprint, but I don't think I anticipated it would take this long to turn this place into somewhere that feels like home.

Last weekend was the first time since we've moved that I've felt genuinely comfortable with having guests come to stay, and that's with the clutter that's still overtaking the front room, the fact we have no dining table and not to mention the amount of recycling we have (seriously, no one ever tells you that you'll suddenly amass more cardboard than you've seen in your life)!
It finally feels like we're getting there though, you know? It's not a chore to have downtime any more and we can have the odd evening where we're not unpacking another box or moving stuff from one room to another because it 'just looks better'.


With that being said, with our self-set deadline of the first weekend of August looming, we still have to paint the landing, living room, bathroom, front room, kitchen and hallway - but it's all good because despite running out of steam, we're feeling savvy having painted those first few rooms and we're being a little less ambitious with colour for this next lot - feature walls are fun and all, getting painting done is far more satisfying.

TL; DR: I got a new bathroom cabinet, I put it up in my house, I've lost track of all time.


[Bathroom Cabinet: Teagan (similar), c/o Pebble Grey]
Right, back to why we're here...

I was contacted just after we put in an offer on the house to write about bathroom lighting with the offer of a fancy bathroom cabinet mirror from Pebble Grey and here's my full disclosure policy because a bathroom mirror is one of those things you don't think about needing until you do and I was going to move house and I needed one so of course, I said yes. Plus, storage, I can't stress enough how much I love storage and thinking we wouldn't even have a bed at this point, I needed all the help I can get.

So when the cabinet landed on my desk after a couple of e-mail exchanges, I was pretty excited, I naïvely thought that it wouldn't matter that I didn't put it up in the flat because we'd be in our new house in a matter of weeks. Three months later... Obviously we've now lived here about 3 months and we're only just settling in, so we only actually put up the cabinet a few weeks ago so this review has (some how) ended up being almost 6 months late. But I'm doing this and it's a great cabinet and a great idea so I felt compelled to share anyway, despite the embarrassment.


That slate. ♥



Bathroom lights are usually pretty bright, in fact, I remember reading (back when for a period I was inexplicably obsessed with winding down in the evenings) that they can end up waking you up and making you more alert, a little annoying when it's time to get ready for bed.

I was actually considering, once we'd bought our own place, that we'd either get super-low wattage lights or a dimmer switch but instead, this delightful LED battery mirror came up and I have to say, it lights up the bathroom like the moon and is great for staying relaxed after making the move from the living room to brushing my teeth.





Our little IKEA drill has been the best purchase, but these little piles of ex-wall don't ever fail to stress me out.
The cabinet itself was very easy to put up but we're very much DIY novices so it still took a good hour or so - which included the mild panic that Moon had over whether he'd hit a pipe or not, he didn't, so yeah, easy peasy. I really like the way it looks and even though the light is a simple set of battery LEDs it looks pretty sleek, I'm so pleased.

I feel that the inside of the cabinet is a little bit of a let-down as mirror on the other side of the door is just stuck on rather than having a little more consideration - with that being said, I hardly open it as it's mainly for our medicines and Moon's man things.




Now we 'actually' live somewhere it's been really satisfying to be able to invest in quality pieces rather than cheap but okay. The bathroom cabinet, while sponsored, is a great example of the kind of things that it's worth investing in. Especially if all you need to wind down and get a better nights sleep is some nifty bathroom lighting and, considering the mirror the previous people had before was just that, it's changed the whole feel of the bathroom and instantly made it 10x more functional.

Like I said, it's sort of getting there, even our bathroom window is starting to look like home.




[*I was gifted this bathroom cabinet by Pebble Grey, in case I didn't mention it enough, all views are my own]
Gratuitous Doll pics:

Neighbourhood.

The second half of the day I spent in London with my sister was spent walking along glorious, touristy Southbank. The Festival of Neighbourhood made all the tourists worth it; it's funny how I feel like such a tourist myself when I go to places that are back 'home home' now, even though they were just a stone's throw away when I was living with my mum. I definitely wouldn't say that's a bad thing though, it makes everything feel a bit more like an event and a bit out of the every day, which I guess it is nowadays.


Tiny bottles of champagne, such a cute idea for graduation season.



As it was so hot and my sister hadn't been, after a mosey around the small food market they have there, we went straight up to the Southbank Centre's roof top garden for a drink, it was super pricey, £30 for a jug of Pimm's so we skipped on that and opted for 'pints' of lemonade instead (still £2.50 a pop and from a bottle of Schweppes).

It was lovely to sit up there and soak up the sun and atmosphere before having a walk around and look at all the pretty flowers and greenery. I first went up there a couple of years ago for my 22nd birthday and it's come along a lot since then, I'd definitely recommend it if you're visiting London over the summer.





Wild strawberry - bit obsessed with strawberries generally at the moment.


Reminds of the graffiti we saw in Bristol back in April.






It would be so much fun to get a bunch together and stay in a Living Architecture home, they so beautiful.


I was absolutely dying over the window gardens along the river, they're also worth a look. I was more looking forward to something similar to the beach huts they had on my last big summer visit all that time ago, but these were just as cool - if not more so as they gave me a little inspiration for the potential of my own garden, as well as giving me some new found appreciation.


Long Live Southbank




The type!














Have you seen any of the neat things going on along Southbank recently? It's still one of my favourite places to take photographs even after snapping it to exhaustion during my college years (yikes, that was an age ago!).