THE most wonderful time of the year!

December in London is charming. It restores my faith in this sometimes grimy and gloomy city. For one whole month (well lets be real, the lights turn on in October!) there is magic in the air and romance in the cold. We rug up in our warm woolies and I for one feel the sparkle of the fairy lights above. 

I have always loved Christmas, even when it was too hot in Brisbane to do anything but lounge around the pool and sleep, I always loved decorating the house and making Christmasy food, even if it wasn't cold and like you read about it in every Santa story. 

Last year we spent the Holidays in Charlotte, NC and New York City. Maddie was 6 months old and we had such a wonderful time celebrating a real American Christmas, complete with grits and the Rockerfeller Tree!

This year though we are spending Christmas in London, with my brother and his family coming to spend it with us. I am so excited. It will be the first Christmas I have spent with my niece and nephews, and this year Madeleine has so much more of a clue about what's going on, I can't wait to see her little face on Christmas day!

On the 1st of December every year is tree decorating and egg-nog day. So we did our decorations and had our good friends over for rum balls and eggnog! (you may have read, I cannot control myself when it comes to eggnog....)

You may have seen our beautiful Bruce (the Spruce) on the journey home...

And now we have proudly lost half of our living room to house this beauty for the next month! 

This year the theme is gold with splashes of soft pink. Randolph the advent calendar reindeer was once upon a time bright red, so he got a little makeover!

And he got a little buddy this year. But little buddy got gold'ed AND glittered!

We needed something for the top of our tree, and according to my husband, it had to be a star. I'm not sure that he has very many Christmas traditions to bring to the overly decorated table, so i'm more than okay with a star atop our tree!! So long as it was gold and glittered!!

 I made this wreath last year and was happy that it still fitted the theme this year because I just think its so cute. How funny does our tree look?! It's like half the living room!!

I made some tissue paper pom poms to hand with the bunting...

I found a really sweet bell-heart ornament (and got an extra one as a gift), but they were red! Could you believe it, red, at Christmas time! Well anyway, I'm sure you can guess what happened to ours!

And our brown paper packages have all been tied up with strings and posted all around the world!

Did I mention that I LOVE Christmas?! It is just the most wonderful time of the year. 

But today, is my husbands birthday, so Christmas is on hold today to celebrate him! Tonight we are off for a date night out, with our first London babysitter watching Maddie. But today we've been busy preparing to celebrate when he gets home. I better write my card now, tough act to follow!

Happy Birthday Husband, and Happy December to all and to all a good night!

master-bedroom mini makeover

Do you love your bedroom? I love Baby M's bedroom but it dawned on me a month or so ago that I really didn't like ours. It was gloomy, dowdy and made terrible use of space. We have a very small flat for the three of us, so my dreams of having a clean and spacious bedroom are restricted to the boards of Pinterest for now!

I didn't want to spend a lot on this little makeover, but did want to put some love and attention into our room, and try and de-clutter it just a little. We have so much stuff that is just everywhere in our house, so I was never going to achieve minimalistic elegance, but I am happy with how it turned out all the same.

So, the before shots.... yep, didn't even bother tidying up for photos!!

Okay so the first thing I did was to re-do the wedding paintings. We have our professional photos in cheapo frames because we've not yet been in a position to invest in proper framing, and as we're still moving around a bit, we just wanted to have the photos with us, so are putting up with cheap frames for now. But, they don't have to look quite so dowdy, surely! I searched and searched for some affordable white frames big enough to fit the photos, but was not willing to commit so much money simply on frames, so painted the ones I had.

Before

After

A few coats of white paint later, how much better do they look?? (Is it completely mad that I feel like I am standing up straighter in the second picture??).

The next little project was the bookcase. I bought a cheap one from Argos in the same colour wood as the rest of our furniture, and ordered some fun striped wallpaper to line the back of the bookcase with. I'd seen this done beautifully on Pinterest (where else) and so thought I'd have a go. It was easy to do whilst constructing the bookcase because I could just glue it on in one big clean piece. 

I really feel it lightens the whole bookcase, don't you?? I also covered some boxes that were to go on the bookcase, to try and keep the clean lines as much as I possibly could! I think it helped too!!

So then I painted the mirror a pale gold to match in with the grey and yellow colour scheme. All the wood in our room is a dark chocolate, so the caramel mirror had to go!! 

What else... oh yes, the photos! I wanted some more photos of us with Baby M around our room, but again, didn't want to spend a fortune, so had some enlargements printed on Snapfish, and painted some blank canvas's grey, and tadaaa...

I hated, HATED the bed lights we had clipped onto our old headboard, and so searched high and low for a suitable replacement. I found this gold lamp and just loved it. 

The final item that I purchased was a new bed! It was SUPER cheap, and I sold our old one on ebay, so I only ended up being a little bit out of pocket, but boy does it make a huge difference. We put up with the old one for so long even though it was too big for the mattress and because of the slant of the headboard and size of the bay window, it was terribly space INefficient. We've noticed so much more space at the end of the bed now, and Mr M can actually walk down his side of the bed without kicking his shins. Happy hubs!

And so the finished product is this:

So as you can see, its still quite busy, but its not a complete disaster anymore!! The guitar needs a new home, but for now, on this chair is far enough out of the clutches of bubs, so will be fine. I'd love to hang it on the wall, but that's a project for another day! 

Our room feels lighter, fresher and more organised. I love the grey with the yellow/gold accents. I actually enjoy reading a book in there now, so whenever I put Baby M down for a nap, I rush in there and curl up under the throw and try and get a few pages into a book (aka Pinterest on the iPad). 

So there you have it, that is my makeover of our bedroom! Its been a work in progress over the past month or so, but I'm really happy with how it feels now. It finally feels like a nice space to be in!!

Door jam cushion

As you  may have read, I really don't like noise! The trouble is, my dislike of noise is only getting stronger, because now it impacts the joy that is naptime and bedtime too! If I have battled for an hour with my 9 month old to get her to have a nap and then my husband the wind slams a door shut and wakes her up....oh boy do I see all shades of red!

There are battles to fight and battles to give in to, and I discovered long ago that trying to get my house to be a silent zone, is actually not a fight worth fighting for. I want my kids to always be able to sleep through anything, and I don't want anyone to ever feel like they can't laugh in my house, ever. But, doors slamming, well that's something that can be fixed (without nagging!).

I found this Tutorial on Pinterest and so made a few door jam cushions for some of the doors in our apartment that are opened and closed regularly.

It was possibly the easiest little project, took all of 5 minutes to do each one, and guess what, THEY WORK!!!! If only there were such simple solutions to all of the other little battles too!!

Lamp revamp

I love mood lighting. I have always liked having lamps in a room to create a warm and cosy ambience, perfect for cosying up with a loved one or loved book. My only problem, lamps are expensive, really expensive! Well, at least they are in London and whilst I could always get one sent over from the US, I worry that with the voltage difference, I would short fuse all of Hampstead.

Here's my Pinterest board of my favourite lamps that are all far more interesting and elegant than any I have ever owned, but at least I hope to one day!!

Without exercising one ounce of creativity or style, I bought a very boring lamp. Very boring. It served the purpose though and for a few weeks I was placated by its presence. 

And then I decided to try something, anything, to make it a little more interesting! Whilst I may not have transformed it into something worthy of my Pinterest board, it at least feels a bit more fun and different. With just one roll of washi tape and a strip of the same fabric that I covered the cushions with, I created the following lamp revamp:

Do you think it is a good revamp or should I just hoof it and save up for my favourite one:

Divine!