The future's bright...

September 16, 2015

Well on the High Street it is at least! On a recent trip to Oxford Street I was struck by how colourful the displays were, so I thought today I'd share what I found. I saw all of these and more on visits to John Lewis, Debenhams, BHS and House of Fraser.

So if we buy what's in the shops now, and let's face it there's a high chance we will, then we'll have colour in our bedrooms, bathrooms, living rooms and kitchens. So let's get started...

Well I'm a sucker for nice crockery (remember these bowls at West Elm) and it was a window display with these items which drew me back into the shop and looking for the homeware department.

CLASSIC AND COLOURFUL JOSEPH JOSEPH (DEBENHAMS)

Another exciting discovery was the West Elm concession at John Lewis. Im still in love with their bowls!

Right moving on - and away from the bowls - the cushions in Debenhams were definitely striking.

AND THERE'S FLORAL CUSHIONS TOO (DEBENHAMS)

Not everything needs to be full on colour for it to be colourful. This photo frame caught my eye and is a lovely way to introduce colour into a room.

While crisp, white bedlinen is a treat (except for when you need to iron it!) there's a lot of colourful bedlinen available too. I was pleased to see there's still quite a bit of yellow around, that's especially useful for me as we have pops of yellow in our bedroom.

CALMING BUT STILL COLOURFUL BEDLINEN IN HOUSE OF FRASER

And then there were the towels! I fell in love with these bobble-edged ones in House of Fraser and did well to leave them on the shelf. The hedgehogs and the ducks were cute and a fun way to introduce some character in your bathrooms. And something I'd not noticed before was towels coordinating with bedding, so you can get the look right through into your en-suite. Clever.

So as you can see, my browse around the department stores in Oxford Street was quite a colourful experience. I love colour - in our house and wearing it - but do you? How do you "do" colour?

Decorating our spare bedroom

September 7, 2015

Today me, my blog and our spare bedroom have been featured on Wayfair, the online home store, in their Inspiration section - see How to Adhere Wall Stickers Like a Pro. Below is an image of the finished room, to see how I stuck the wall art, pop over to Wayfair.

It was quite a job getting the room looking so good. Not only had it become our dumping ground for just about everything, there was also a box we hadn't unpacked since we moved in nearly thirteen years ago (whoops!) and we'd had a bit of a leak above the window. Yes the leak was on our middle floor, but it's all fixed now thankfully - but it did leave us with an unsightly corner.

Those curtains too had to go - they were hung when we moved in, and had come from my bedroom in my last house. You'll remember we got a lovely wooden venetian blind to replace them. Much, much smarter!

Even with the wallpaper repaired there was still a way to go to get the whole room looking fabulous, and we also had to tackle the floor. We decided to go for sanded floorboards, so it was out with the carpet, the hardboard and the gripper rods.

Thankfully the floorboards weren't too bad and I spent a few hours pulling out all the tacks before the professional sanders came in. When they left, this is what our floor looked like:

What an improvement.

With the floor done and dried MOH's job was to add beading between the floor and the gap in the skirting board - a tricky cutting exercise with so many corners in one room. It took him most of one Saturday morning to complete - and in that time I'd painted three walls and done the seemingly never-ending job of cutting in, in Farrow & Ball's Skimming Stone. It's a colour we have throughout the house. This works for us as it brings continuity as you move through our rooms and it also means we have less tins of paint to store in the shed!

The fourth wall - and the largest by far - is painted in Farrow & Ball's Dove Grey, which we've also used in our bedroom on three walls (in there we have wallpaper on the largest wall). With the painting completed it was time for the bit I was looking forward to, adding the wall stickers.

Here they are with MOH's 40th anniversary Naim posters which I had framed by Bernie at Bromley Picture Framing. He did a great job - at short notice too - and I'm really pleased with them and I'd go there again, especially for large pictures. We had planned to use IKEA frames and bought the Stromsby variety. However they aren't truly A1 size and so there was an uneven border of white showing around the edges, and then there was the small matter of not being able to get them to hang on the wall!

Seriously, one evening we spent more time than I ever thought possible trying to hang a very large picture on a single screw, which we discovered barely fitted the hole in the fitting. Neither of us were convinced it was safe, even if we managed to get all three up on the wall - and it was a big if. And after trying to hang one picture for at least two hours, we gave up!

With the now custom-framed pictures hung (much more easily too), now it was time to unbox and start assembling the maze of cardboard boxes we'd stuffed into my Clio on the Friday night. We bought four Kallax units, a couple of drawer inserts and twelve door units. Let me tell you that's a lot of assembling. Each unit has twelve storage compartments - we joined a 4x2 and a 2x2 together, more on that another day though. One unit is for MOH's records, our DVDs and some tools. The other one has been dedicated to shoes - mostly mine and it's glorious!

So that's our spare bedroom done - and another room ticked off the list. What dou you think?

Thank you to Wayfair who provided the wall art stickers for this project.

The Green House - innovations for greener living

August 19, 2015

In almost my last post from this year's Grand Designs Live show in London I'm sharing some of the items I found in The Green House. It was a place that showed off the latest innovative gadgets and green technology and it was like all the best things interactive, so you could really see how some of these might become the norm for our houses.

Let's start with the Microgarden, which is as you might have guessed inspired by origami. It's a kit for a mini-greenhouse, made from a transparent waterproof material which allows you to watch the entire growing process. You might be thinking what's so special about this, but after 10-14 days, without watering once, the microgreens are ready to eat. So it's a fun and innovative first step to growing your own food.

The Urbancone by Electrolux creates healthy microclimates outdoors and it can purify the air around an entire city, as well as in our homes. It lifts up and flies in the air because of its ultra light construction and solar panel wings which when they're moving resemble a jellyfish. It purifies using the filters on the undersides of the wings and it's an automatic, radio-controlled smart device which can be used in areas that need greater filtration.

If you think it looks a bit space age, you're not wrong although I quite like the design of the concept that was on show, however with the RRP at £6,300 I think there's probably a bit more work to do yet.

The Vektra Eco Kettle on the other hand is available now and it's the only kettle that can keep your water piping hot for 4 hours from just one boil. It uses vacuum insulation, like a flask and uses a low energy element to heat your water and then keep it hot. That means more cups of tea from one boil, which I can definitely see the advantage of. The outside stays cool to the touch and as it's completely sealed you could move it around the house with you too. With a RRP of £75 it's probably more expensive than a lot of kettles, but it's a similar price to Dualit kettles, so I don't think that's excessively out of reach.

The EGO Smart Socket allows you to monitor the energy consumption of any appliance from your smartphone, as well as setting timers for automatic switching of devices. You can also eliminate standby time by setting it to turn off appliances which have been left on standby for too long.

Along with the Showertime it can help you reduce your energy use, save money and save the environment too. The Showertime device show your current water usage and sounds an alarm when you have used your pre-determined amount of water. So overtime you have a shower you press the button and the device shows you how much water you've used.

SHOWERTIME AND THE EGO SMART SOCKET BY EFERGY TECHNOLOGIES

The ECOEGG Laundry Egg was born out of the lack of alternatives to chemical laden laundry products that were kind to the skin as well as being natural and effective. It's a complete replacement to regular laundry detergent and contains a scientifically forumulated, patented cleaning pellets. It's these that are the secret to the Laundry Egg's learning power. Each one lasts three years, so that works out on average 3p per wash. It's RRP is £19.99 so could be a real alternative to usual washing powder.

The Mogees Pro is a novel technology that turns physical objects into unique musical instruments by converting the vibrations that we make when we touch them into sound on the fly. It's combined with a mobile app that detects and analyses the acoustic properties of physical objects and augments them to create music.

Now PETE is clever. It's a way to recycle PET bottles and print your own clothes! It really is a special kind of recycling bin and it'll be interesting to see how this develops. Clearly this is just a prototype and not yet available on the market, but watch this space!

And yes, this is a wall of old speakers. While it's visually interesting and unlikely to be something that we'd have in our main living areas, this display was all about The Vamp. There are many bluetooth speakers on the market, but none have matched the sound quality that proper speakers bring. The Vamp is about bring life back to millions of speaks which still exist in our homes and delivering great sound at affordable prices.

It turns any old speaker into a great sounding portable bluetooth speaker, with 10,000 speakers a month being sent to UK recycling centres there's potentially a huge market out there. The RRP is £49.99 which isn't that expensive when you think about it, and you're recycling an old speaker too.

This one, like PETE before is a bit out there. It's called Set to Mimic and it's a set of smart kitchenware that recreates tastes and smells of your food to your preference. By placing a non-invasive transparent gel patch with a microchip on your head, the plate and glass communicates wirelessly with your brain, to make you experience a test or smell from the past by tapping into your memory. That way you can eat a carrot but have the impression that you're eating an ice cream or a steak, which it says makes it easier to lead a healthy life.

I'm not so sure, because if every meal tasted like steak or ice cream then surely you'd be fed up of eating the same thing. I also can't work out how texture comes into play here because carrots, steak and ice cream are all very different. Anyway I don't need to worry about this just yet as it's only a concept. A pretty weird one, but still a concept.

So there you go, a glimpse into eco products that are available on the market today and perhaps some that might be available us to in the future. Either way, there's some very clever thinking going on...