Aubergine, petrol blue and grey patterned tiles at the Ideal Home Show

After sharing the bedroom and bathroom room sets last week, this time it's the turn of the kitchen and dining room. Both of which have similarities, with deep colours, grey patterns and wood. Let's start in the dining room, where the wools have an aubergine feel to them. The unusual addition for me was the green chairs, initially I thought no, but they grew on me.

It was the floor though that was the real winner for me - just look at those tiles. And actually it's the green chairs that make it all hang together, so it just goes to show that sometimes doing something out of the ordinary - and out of what you think your colour scheme is, or should be - makes it work.

I liked the clever wood storage, close to the wood burner. I can see it would avoid arguments about whose turn it was to venture outside and get the next batch of wood for the fire!  Although if we had a wood burner, it would clearly be MOH's job, I mean... man, fire, enough said.

You'll remember we contemplated many wooden tables and eventually ended up with a white glass table (yes, it makes no sense, but we fell in love with it), and we were also contemplating a mix of chairs and benches, so it was good to see them still around.  I liked the glass fronted storage too, and MOH renewed his campaign for new dining room lights.  I'll admit they would go in our space, with our table but I think it restricts how we could use the space, even more than our existing light.  

So he's still unsuccessful, but the room was a hit for us. And I knew if I tried for long enough I'd find a kind of aubergine he liked!

And a winner of a kitchen too

Our kitchens in this house have both been high gloss and they suit our space. This wooden unit and splash back is the closest we've seen to a kitchen that would work. I liked the nod to the grey tiled flooring behind the cooker, but MOH was bemused by the knobs that the chopping boards were hanging from, and the crockery spacers in the open draw.

The big central island was a dream, and full of storage too. One day (I hope) I'll have a kitchen that can accommodate something like this. And a huge larder storage too.  I'm sure though my kitchen would never quite look so well put together, or as tidy, but I'm ok with that as it's a room set and not a real room...

And everyone knows the best cooks are messy cooks, and those that use every utensil you own, right?  Well that's what MOH says anyway!

What do you think - could you live with either of these rooms, or elements from them?

A Christmas table with TK Maxx

As this year has been all about our new table and chairs, when TK Maxx got in touch to collaborate on a homewares post, I was keen to see how I could use some of their christmas decorations to dress my new table in a fun, and probably not so practical way. So on a recent miserable Sunday afternoon we headed along to the Orpington branch, to see what we could find.

I was rather pleased with this Merry Christmas garland. It's on two strings, so normal people could hang them one above the other. Clearly I'm not normal as I spent more time than I should have getting these to stand up on the radiator cover. The Christmas was trickier, as you can see, and some of the letters were refusing and a little skew-whiff. But I don't mind that, and rather like the character this brings to what is usually an undecorated part of our house. 

I think some blu-tak might be deployed!

On the table the jingle bell lights, with gingham bows brought much amusement, as the bells are proper bells. The lights are battery operated and will be great to have on our table Christmas Day for some festive fun.  I'll also be having some of those cute tea lights on the table, even though it will be tough to light the top of his hat.

I was keen to pick up some of these recycled glasses. Not only because they're recycled, but also because our hi-ball glasses are getting tired and could do with replacing. At just £5.99 for four glasses I don't think you can go wrong, and as I'm on a bit of a "drink more water" campaign, having glasses I'm proud to put on the table helps.

And how could I leave this cheeky faced reindeer garland in the shop. It's wooden with hints of gold and cheeky faces, and I know it'll fit in with the rest of my wooden decorations. I also think it'd look good intermingled with my garland of dried oranges, cinnamon sticks and pine cones.

I told you the jingle bell garland lit up didn't I? Here you can see the one of the owls looking on. These have been the decoration of the year for me, they're really quite cute and have migrated to my tree, making themselves perfectly at home.

I had great fun styling my festive table with the decorations I picked up from TK Maxx. You'll be pleased to know that as well as the glasses for water and the water jug, there will also be some bubbles on our table this Christmas, because well, because bubbles were made for Christmas.

The other thing I was keen to pick up was a new star for the top of my tree. I'd converted a beaded star decoration which I've used for many years, so it was time for a change. In the end I settled on this gold diamante style star, with its spring-like base, which makes it way easier than my converted star, especially when the tree is 6 foot and I'm not!

I'm pleased with the items I picked up - the glasses, the jingle bell garland, the reindeer garland, the Merry Christmas sign, the Father Christmas tea lights, the cheeky owls and the glittery star tree topper - and I was even more pleased with the price, all of this came to £38. 

Have you updated your decorations this year?

This is a collaborative post with TK Maxx, who provided a gift voucher for the purposes of this post. All views are my own.

Sharing our chairs

Yes, it's the post I've been meaning to share for a while. We've had our new chairs for what seems like ages now, and I think some of the gloss of having them has gone as it was quite a palaver in the end. We ordered them in January from a very big furniture shop on Tottenham Court Road and expected to wait a couple of months for them to arrive.

We'd hoped they would arrive a couple of weeks after our table at the start of March, but they didn't. They finally arrived, after much to-ing and fro-ing and chasing on my part, in the middle of April. And then one was damaged and needed to be replaced. I was beginning to think this was one of those purchases where everything goes wrong. Finally by the middle of May we had a set of chairs that we were happy with.

I'm not going to name the company - although you may have worked it out already - nor am I going to confirm or deny which it is, but I was pleased they had a robust compensation scheme and through negotiation we ended up with one chair almost free of charge.  So that's something but it's still not the service I expected. I think that's contributed to how long it's taken me to write about these.

Don't get me wrong I'm really pleased with them, but less so the pain that they came with!

So after much research we chose the Eames chairs to go with our white glass dining table, and I persuaded MOH that having more than one colour would be a good thing. Although I ummed and ahhed about the mustard chairs, which we did order. We went for two ocean (blue), two white and two mustard (yellow) and they look great. 

So let's take a look:

I'm really pleased with how the colours worked out and can't stop myself from smiling when I see the yellow, sorry mustard.  And that's meant an influx of yellowy-mustard items into the house, so it really can't be a bad thing, can it?

Now our table and chairs are more contemporary and fit well with our kitchen, we've also noticed how much lighter our dining area is.  Light reflects off the table, rather than being soaked up by the mahogany table we used to have. It looks great with some of our everlasting sweet peas in a milk bottle, and there's been plenty of these this year already. 

But the Alessi Blow Up basket also looks good - you can see just how reflective the table is in this shot. 

The only thing is our table mats don't really go now, they depict a French brasserie and while there's nothing wrong with them they were bought with our last table in mind.  So I have a plan, which I suspect you expected. I plan to make some fabric place mats, and the material I have from Prestigious Textiles matches perfectly. I used a different pattern in the Java range for the blind in our porch earlier in the year.

At the moment I'm not sure if I'll just make a couple of fabric placemats, or make something a bit more complicated where I can slip our existing placemats inside the fabric, sort of envelope. I'll let you know, but isn't the material a good match?

So there you go, finally a look at my dining room chairs. Now I've got the material out and seen how well it matches, I'm getting a bit more enthused about it all again.