House tour, dresses, and bright pillows

How's your week going?

There's a few things I'm excited about right now!

Have you seen Eyes on Sparrows blog? I kinda love it, and our house tour is featured there today. You can check it out here.

In other news, today I got this dress from Asos.

Anyone who ships free to New Zealand is a champion in my book. Last time we ordered anything from overseas (shower curtain and 2 yards of fabric) it cost $80 for shipping! Argch...

I also got a little Couch Happy and lumped all my bright pillows together.

The round white ottoman you can just see in the left corner is a great place to plonk magazines. If I could just find time to read them.

And...

I finally bought a proper camera. This is the nikon D3200 and I'm loving it - there is a 'Guide Mode' feature that walks you through each step when you set up a shot - ideal for someone like me who doesn't know what f.stop, aperture, ISO, or anything else is....!

I can't believe I lasted so long taking photos on my phone! What kind of camera do you use?

Amy Butler's home - earthy, arty style

I love seeing inside the homes of creative people - especially when I am a fan of their work.

Amy Butler's fabric designs have been an inspiration for me so it made sense to take a peak inside her home. To be honest I was surprised by how natural and earthy most of it was (not completely bright and graphic like I expected) and I kinda love that about it! Its got just the right amount of balance and plenty of textures and materials. Perfect!

You can check the rest of the home tour out here.

Do you like a rustic, earthy vibe at your place? I do, as long as there are plenty of colours and patterns too!

Bathroom reveal!

It's finally happened!
This is one room I am HAPPY with. I didn't expect to be able to make our little old bathroom look any good without gutting the room and replacing the fittings... but it happened - by accident.

I made up my mind that apart from the shower curtain and the mirror, nothing else would be new. But I had no colour direction and didn't know what I wanted - until I happened to put pinky-purple flowers into the blue glass jar and everything fell into place. I 'shopped' the other rooms in our house and found we have more than enough bits and pieces to make the room look pretty (mostly wedding gifts, and apparently I hoard cute containers...).

Firstly... here's how it looked about 2 months ago:

The curtain wasn't terrible, and it was freshly plastered and repainted.... but you definitely got 'old 1940's and never been updated' vibes.

Replacing the vanity isn't on the cards for us right now, so I needed a fix that didn't require any rebuilding or plumbing work....

And I think I got what I wanted. :)

 
 

Even the old basin looks ok with the shabby-chic curtain and mirror.

This place is old and has a kind of charm that I like - so I'm really happy with the vintage look - it compliments the house rather than trying to modernise it too much.

The mirror balances out the window to the right of the basin, and adds some contrast while the curtain adds texture. The flowers and towels were all the colour needed after that..

Happiness.

Shower curtain: Urban Outfitters

Mirror: Ezibuy

Everything else: lying around.

It's amazing what you can do on a small budget with some simple decoration!
Thanks for reading!

{Click here for more of our house}



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Bathroom and "Our House" page

I've spent some time thinking about our bathroom - it's all old 1940's with the original fittings.

I'm hoping to get it all finished this week and will have a reveal for you then. Woop!

It could still do with a new vanity, shower, and bath... but until then, a few small updates are keeping us going.

You can see it in it's CURRENT state on the Our House page - and the rest will be revealed later this week hopefully.

Any tips for brightening up a simple, old bathroom???

Bedroom reveal - before & after

This post has been a long time coming.... for those of you who don't know, we bought this little house last year and moved in after our wedding 5 months ago. It's a cute little 1940's place and one day we hope to rent it out to tenants.

This picture above is the Before of our bedroom... we LOVE our ginormous marshmallow of a bed. When we moved in one of the first things I did was switch to plain white curtains, but other than that we hadn't touched it until the last 2 weeks.

I saw some yellow fabric from Amazon called Robert Allen Vintage Blossom in Citrine and knew it was me - trees, birds, and the colour yellow are all my favourite things. My mum kindly sewed 2 pillows from the fabric.

We bought these sheepskin rugs on sale and I love them... stepping out of bed onto them is awesome. And the sheepskin ugg boots are my lifesaver.

These teacups were a wedding present from a friend and they ended up being my inspiration for most of the room - a combination of dark + light, with little pops of gold and fuchsia. I also love the Asian influence and carried that through into the pink pillow which is Chinese satin.

The pink fabric was $6.50 and I sewed the cushion this morning in a rush because I'm so impatient. Typical..  The black cushion was $19 at Ezibuy.

This is the whole room from the doorway. It's odd shape means the bed has to go against the window... oh and there is a LOT of wood in our house. All the floors, trim and joinery are old native New Zealand timber.

I'll be honest - this side of the room isn't my favourite. The dresser is usually covered in clothes because the wardrobe is super tiny (like 55cm wide tiny!) but I moved the painting there from the living room to brighten it up a bit and it works for now.

A final before and after:

Thanks for coming on our bedroom tour and seeing this new part of "the Nest Project"!

You can see the rest of our house here