Post Comment Love 29 June - 1 July

Hello there and welcome to #PoCoLo, and July!  If you were here last week it was great to see you, if you're new here this week you're very welcome - have a look around and hopefully you'll find some new-to-you blogs to read.

Apologies for the brevity of last week's post, I didn't actually get to start writing it until about 1am last Friday morning after getting home following a day that was, what can only be described as emotional. We'd had the sort of evening where everyone was just about managing to hold back the tears for some of the time and I've explained a little bit more in my regular Monday post.  This week has brought a new learning curve, sadly majoring in palliative care for my FIL.

But there's been sunnier moments too, and quite literally the weather has continued to amaze us doesn't it?  And while last night's football game reverted more to type, that's been pretty balmy too.  What's more in a renewed bid for self-care I've managed to take lunch away from my desk at least twice already this week, and for one of those was joined by my crochet - it seems like ages since I picked it up. 

A while back I had the cunning plan to leave a ball of wall and a crochet hook in my desk so I could squeeze in a bit more crochet if I needed it.  And although this was the first time I'd let myself take advantage of this, I'm certain it won't be the last.

My picture this week is of the ripening cherries in our garden.  I've a feeling they don't look quite as "whole" as they do here as the bird community are making the most of the summer fruits too, but who can blame them.

Blogger Showcase: Daniella from Halo Halo

Daniella is still a student whose perfect night in includes binge watcher her favourite You Tube and says that blogging is a hobby that turned into her passion, I suspect there's a few more of us in that camp, hey?  And we have our first soda and pizza type of person, or so far at least according to Daniella.

To find out more about Daniella and her blog, pop over to Morgan's this week to read the full answers.

Don't forget to connect with Daniella before you go though: Twitter  -  Instagram

An InLinkz Link-up

A map on my wall

It's been a little while since my post on loving maps, and the fear of wallpaper but the good news is the map is on the wall, and I love it.  Things didn't turn out quite as I planned for the actual putting it on the wall part, and so I didn't have to face my fear of wallpapering after all.

I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly my Wallsauce mural arrived, in fact I couldn't believe it was here just a few days after I'd made my choice, they most certainly don't hang about.  It arrived well packaged too, in a sturdy cardboard tube within a wallpaper sized cardboard box. There was wallpaper paste too, and as I discovered a visual plan as well as some written instructions, which are also available online.

THE MASTERPLAN

But because life happens we needed to change our plans of tackling this ourselves. I'm certain we made the right decision as not only were we nervous wallpaperers but our attention, and time, has been taken up by those life events I mentioned on Monday, and neither of us wanted to ruin, or even slightly mess up, what is quite honestly, beautiful wallpaper.

And so we asked our conservatory builders to do the job for us, or the decorator anyway - I use builders as a generic term, and were confident they were up to the job, I wouldn't have asked otherwise.  They were just as keen as us to see what was inside the package that arrived, and so we peeked.  My first view was of Alaska (from Panel 1 of the plan above), and I was smitten, although in truth I think it could have been anywhere and I'd have had the same reaction, because as I said in my first post, because, well maps.

Now the builders had seen the wallpaper, they were keen to see the wall it was going on, which was the tricky bit, as we'd yet to tell them it was the curved wall around our spiral staircase.  Their faces were a picture, and while they might have been a little incredulous they were soon checking the wall for what prep needed to be done.

I know from dad that it's all in the preparation, so I wasn't surprised to come home to a wall with some extra filler.  Actually it was great to see tradesmen taking pride in their work, reading the instructions that came with the wallpaper, consulting with us and confident in their skills to do a job well, that we'd all be happy with.

FIRST THE FILLER, THEN THE DUST

But of course where filler goes, dust follows.  Luckily I'd thought this through and moved the duvet and as much as I could out of the room.  The room was covered with plastic sheets and dust sheets, but my reasoning was if it's not there in the first place it's not going to get dusty, is it?  And that's something I'd recommend, even if a builder says there'll be no dust.  As it's likely your definition of no dust will be different to theirs!

The result which wowed

I'd been keen to follow progress as the paper went up, and cups of tea were made, proffered and gratefully received so I could keep a bit of an eye on proceedings.  And progress was quick, relatively speaking (and definitely much quicker than I would have done) and the paper, and the design got the thumbs up from the builder too.

Even among the dust and detritus it was clear this was something spectacular.  I hadn't thought how having a map on a curved wall would give it a "globe" effect, but of course now it's been pointed out I'm going to claim that as the idea all along, what do you think?

In my first post I shared my potential choices from the world map wallpaper section on the Wallsauce site, but didn't share which one I'd chosen.  This is the Antique world map and is the perfect choice for our room as it tones well with the wardrobe, and as both are things that I expect to be around for some time, that's a good thing.

The more eagle-eyed among you will have already spotted that Australia and New Zealand are missing (sorry guys!) - my wall just wasn't big enough to get you in and I chose to include all of the Americas, rather than cutting that off of the final design.  It's nothing personal, but as we're more likely to travel to the States it made sense to have that on our wall, as I'm pretty sure this wall is now going to become a key tool in our travel planning,

I wasn't expecting to be able to choose where to make the cut on the design, but thinking about it logically it makes sense as not all walls will be the same size, and not all images work if stretched to peculiar dimensions.  In fact the customisable-ness of the image size and position is one of the pluses, and imagine how this could work if you chose your own image. It was also easy to do on the site and to check your design.

You'll see that our map has a textured effect (look to the right of the text South Atlantic Ocean in the photo below) and that's in the wallpaper design rather than actually being raised, and it's very effective and I think adds to the overall result.

I mentioned that we would most likely use this while planning our trips, but it's already had its first use when at the weekend I looked to see where England's game against Panama was taking place in the World Cup.  You can clearly see Nizhniy Novgorod to the right of Moscow in the photo on the left below, and my light switch in China in the photo on the right.  

There's going to be many happy hours poring over this map, which has entirely transformed the room.  You've probably worked out I'm completely thrilled with it already and impressed with the quality and service I received - and I am - but I'm keen to know if you have, or would consider mural wallpaper in your house, and of course what do you think of my wall.

* This is a collaborative post but all views and opinions are my own.

The heady scent of jasmine

The weather at the moment is reminiscent of holiday weather isn't it? And for us that's not the only thing, with the warmer days our garden is full of the scent of jasmine by the early evening which is fantastic. 

Wandering around the garden earlier in the week I realised that our jasmine plants have somehow expanded. There's plants along either side the patio, underneath the non-fruiting cherry tree and at the end of the garden too.  

It "cascades" well and I think looks best with this waterfall effect.  Over winter some of the ends and under branches become twig-like and need snipping off.  Often I do this by hand and the effect is to flatten it more against the fence in the waterfall way that I've mentioned.

This year we've a new "instance" of jasmine flower for the first time.  The jasmine, which thrives in our garden has climbed through the back of the fatsia and into, and beyond, the elderflower, and that's added to our garden's fragrace.

The flowers do at times float down and can be found where you least expect them.

But it's not just the jasmine which surrounds the patio that is scenting our garden.  At the end there's also the mock orange, of philadelphus.  Our tree is full of scented flowers, which looks pretty too.

I'd forgotten quite how fragrant our garden can be.