I have often wondered whether folk really do choose their pets to enhance their own happiness or just to make their choice of home furnishings and decorating and interior design ideas stand out. I know of at least two families just near here who have ‘invested’ in rather fancy breeds of cat and thinking about … [continue…]
When you’re looking at the subject of home interior decor, it can cover a range of possibilities. Furniture itself can be classed as either soft or hard – for example a luscious all enveloping and squashy sofa is a piece of soft furniture and an essential one at that. The matching armchairs are rather harder … [continue…]
When you feel the need for a change in your home style, it can be very tempting to rush out and do a blitz of all the huge out of town diy and decorating empriums. Coming back with sample cards, paint colours and fabrics all look very exciting and there’s that general buzz of ‘let’s … [continue…]
It would be really lovely to have a change of decoration and furnishings every time Christmas and new year comes around – but of course unless we have the kind of salary that accommodates these whims, this is never going to happen. But there are ways and means of having a new theme when these … [continue…]
There are some truly awesome advertisements on tv these days. Admittedly they’re less likely to be still keeping us in raptures in another forty years time as so many of the very old product ads still do. Who can’t remember the lovely woman from a particular stock cube company who was only just married in … [continue…]
I travel around to visit relatives and contacts all over the home counties – to some rather attractive and capacious houses that in the late ’70s and through to the ’90s, seemed distinctly modern and of their era. We were greatly influenced then by up and coming entrepreneurs – the high flyers just beginning to … [continue…]
I was eating out at a very country pub the other week. I’ve been there before, several years apart, with an ancient relative who only ever eats at top quality locations. Non of the spit and sawdust style for her. Any artisan activity has to be the most expensive. This pub certainly fitted that criteria. … [continue…]
This is definitely the time of year when we start thinking about more entertaining. Lots of fok around for patio parties and bar-b-qs……. that’s all very well but for the person who is responsible for keeping the house and garden in tip top visitor ready condition, it’s not so easy. When you have a busy … [continue…]
When you get to realising you need that new cooker in your life, it can take a bit of organising to actually find the right model, and whether it will fit your kitchen and will there be any wiring or installation complications. . . . I know this sounds trivial but the cooker is a … [continue…]
Travelling abroad for a coule of weeks at a time is the most civilised way of viewing other countries, cultures and customs. If you go for a much longer trip, there can be a tendency to overlook the finer details. Take the way our cousins in the US do up their houses. I was watching … [continue…]
We generally think of spring time as optimum for decorating and generally making changes to the happy household. Naturally the sunlight streaming in does show the marks and grubbiness that may have collected during those duller months since those happy summer holidays. In the winter we tend to work, eat, congregate round the tv for … [continue…]
Knowing that spring is very much on its way, I was discussing the merits of various decorating options with a pal of mine. Now she has a much larger house than mine and each of her main reception rooms are square and generally light filled. My rather bizarre brain doesn’t work with the same logic … [continue…]
You can always tell when Christmas is over and the New Year has finally tiptoed away . . . the television advertisers go absolutely mad with one brand after another with their suggestions for d.i.y projects to be completed or started afresh. Then we have the new bed brigade. Nowadays they seem to come complete … [continue…]
Colour themes come and go – every few years something really exciting will take over the decorating world big time. Such as a few years ago, the grey/black/grey/red theme seeped through every single magazine and home decor article. We couldn’t see anyone’s house on the daytime tv leisure channels without being treated to views of … [continue…]
I have been staying right out in the country – my word, now I know where the phrase ‘out in the sticks’ comes from. This house is surrounded by woods and as much as I love trees, it is a bit weird in the evening watching the shadows of the branches leaping across the garden. … [continue…]