I’ve lived in my little flat in Taunton for nearly two and a half years now, and last month I finally got round to replacing the curtains in our bedroom. The original curtains were exactly the sort of curtains you’d expect to find in a slightly rough around the edges rented flat – a 1970s swirly brown, floral pattern. I remember the first time fiancé went into my bedroom, apologising in advance for them.

Well now they’re gone, and instead we have two pairs of dark, plain pink blackout curtains. It’s nice, because for as long as the old curtains have been there, I’ve never felt inspired to do anything with the rest of the decor, as nothing really goes with brown swirly flowers.

I’ve been desperate for ages to get some new custom bedding or cushions. I really love fabrics that have a romantic, watercolour look about them, and so when I discovered Bluebellgray, well, I was practically foaming at the mouth. They do fabrics, bedding, wallpaper and homewares and it’s all beautiful – gorgeous bold floral watercolour designs that immediately just lift a room.

I now have these two cushions on my bed. (See the new curtains in the background?) It means I can have plain white bedlinen, but still have big splashes of colour.

Slummy single mummy bedroom

The bunny rabbit is Bertie. Sometimes I arrange Bertie into funny positions on the bed so that every time I go upstairs to the toilet I can look at him and laugh to myself.  View Post

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If you’ve not discovered Sainsbury’s yet for clothes and homeware then WAKE UP!! Where have you been?? Living under a rock?!

It’s a well established fact that pretty much half my wardrobe comes from Sainsbury’s, but the rest of the house has been following suit recently as I’m be taking a look at some of the autumnal goodies in the Sainsbury’s homeware range.

Autumn has to be pretty much my favourite season. I’m tempted to say winter, because it just about contains Christmas, but it’s actually the build up to Christmas that I love most, rather than the day itself. By the 25th I’m pretty much done. I like the evenings getting darker, and the smell of mulled wine and mince pies. I like snuggling under cosy blankets, lighting candles, and watching Christmas films made for TV.

*happy sigh*

I’ve got a bit of a mustard theme going on in my living room already, so the Harvest Collection from Sainsbury’s fits perfectly. They do items for every room in the house, but I chose to focus on the living room – think cosy cushions, snuggly blankets and subtle autumn colours.

Now, if you’ve been to my house recently, you might be slightly suspicious about my need for any more cushions and blankets but I say ‘can you ever have too many?’

No is my answer. You can never go into autumn with too many blankets.

Have a look at the range online, but have a rummage in your local store too, as they’ll often have pieces in store that aren’t online. Here are some of my favourite pieces. View Post

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Belle, bless her cotton socks, has always maintained a dream of having an elegantly co-ordinated bedroom, with furniture that matches, and accessories in beautifully soft pinks and greens. What she actually has is an old trunk that we’ve reupholstered about four times, a dressing table I bought on eBay, which Belle then painted white, and some old tin cans that she has painted with pink wood paint, to keep her make-up brushes in.

I call it vintage chic.

Belle calls it Mummy not caring enough to buy her proper furniture.

Life is subjective.

If you’re the kind of parent who really does want to do more than just shut the door on your kid’s bedroom and pretend it’s not there, then this is the competition for you my friends – step on up!

I’m giving away £150 of your finest British pounds to spend with Ollie & Leila, a rather lovely online store specialising in children’s beds, mattresses, bedroom furniture and accessories. They sell the sort of thing that Belle is probably coming to realise, now aged 14, will never appear in her room, because instead I have spent all my money on house plants and mini-breaks.  View Post

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top interiors instagram accounts

One of the best things about Instagram is the fact that it clearly demonstrates that everyone else’s life is definitely better than yours. If not totally perfect.

From pictures of babies who are always happy and cute and never have milk down their front, to intricately arranged granola, everyone else is having an amazing time and you are having a sort of mediocre one, that can be remedied only by flicking through pictures of everyone else’s perfect life while on the toilet. Even other people’s houses I have never been to are definitely way better than mine. If you want to feel bad about your own house and how cluttered and messy it is compared to everyone else’s, have a look at some of my favourite interiors Instagram accounts.

 
The Jungalow

We all know how much I love house plants, in particular spider babies, so that’s why this account is right up my alley. I love all of the fresh, vibrant bohemian decor they feature every day, and basically wish everything they feature was in my house.

 

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Living in a rented house has a lot of benefits – rent doesn’t fluctuate with interest rates, I’ve never had to pay huge legal costs when I move and if, heaven forbid, the boiler breaks down, I don’t need to pay to fix it. I wrote a long time ago about my attitude to car maintenance, (it involves satsumas), and I’m not sure I’d be very good at being in charge of a house.

The downside though is that it can be hard to really stamp your mark on your home. All of the walls in our last three houses have been white and I’ve had to resist the urge to splash the pink paint around. Instead, I try to inject splashes of colour through furnishings and accessories. I am basically Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen in a dress.

I thought I would give you a little tour of some of my favourite colourful spots in my home, to prove that renting doesn’t have to mean boring. View Post

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I’ve had a bit of a realisation over the last couple of weeks. As I’ve started thinking about wedding planning it occurred to me that I very rarely spend any sort of money on anything. That sounds a bit silly, because I do spend quite a bit of money generally, but it’s always on little things like books or magazines or meals out; impulse buys rather than projects.

Thinking about a wedding though I’ve realised how enjoyable it is to actually plan to spend money, to research things you like and don’t like, to consider colours and themes. It’s jolly good fun and has opened up a whole new avenue of cutting and sticking to me – now, at last, I understand why people get excited about interiors and renovations rather than just adopting my approach of buying cushions randomly.

It’s got me thinking then about my home, the bits of it I like and the bits that make me curl my mouth up and quickly look away. If I can potentially plan a wedding, revamping a room in my house is going to be a piece of cake surely?

Here are five things I think it’s important to consider when planning a living room makeover: View Post

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I have been spending rather more time than is strictly necessary lately looking at home furnishings. If I’m not careful, I will start using Pinterest properly, and then we really will be done for. Belle will be foraging for snacks in other people’s bins, unable to pull me away from the latest geometric trends.

I think it comes from living somewhere small. I have all sorts of grand ideas, but no room for any of them. At the moment I don’t even have a coffee table. I know, shocking isn’t it? I may as well live in a shack in the woods. I really want a coffee table though. In fact I have had a bit of a coffee table crush for 18 years now; I had a boyfriend while I was at university who shared a beautiful flat in Bristol with a friend. The friend had this coffee table – it was a big, square, wooden dining room table that had had the legs cut off about a foot from the ground. I don’t often think about the boyfriend, but I do think about the coffee table.

My dream coffee table would be big. It would be just the right height that you could rest your feet on it from the sofa, but also sit on the floor next to it for playing games. It would always have a vase full of fresh flowers in the middle, and possibly a bowl of exotic fruit. There would be magazines galore – nothing too glossy, something with a matt finish and articles encouraging me to ‘savour the moment by roasting my own coffee beans’ or something equally as bohemian and time consuming.

To while away a happy hour this afternoon then, while my potatoes baked gently in the oven and I imagined myself living in a house where I couldn’t see said potatoes from my spot on the sofa, I had a browse through Pinterest and collected 16 of my very favourite coffee table pictures.

I seem to have a bit of a thing about yellow at the moment, so that features amongst the collection. I also love solid wood furniture. Maybe one day, when I’m a proper grown up…

coffee tables

Do you have a coffee table? Is it wonderfully glamorous and covered with beautiful books full of stunning interiors? Or is it piled high with dirty cups and school letters you’ve not read yet?

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Whether you’ve been living in your home for years or just moved in there are always ways to change and adapt to make it more beautiful. Even if you’re renting like us, that doesn’t mean you can’t add a little sparkle. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

Inject some colour

According to UK TV Home a fresh coat of paint on your walls is the best way to make an easy change and I’m certainly a big fan of colour in a home. In fact you could probably use the expression ‘riot of colour’ to describe the house I lived in in Bridgwater for five years. Some people argued that pink and yellow for a kitchen was too, much but I disagree.

If you’re a little more traditional in your colour choices, you can always inject some colour through accessories. We used Authentico chalk paint on a pile of old photo frames to create the picture collages in our new house, meaning the walls stay fresh and white but are still interesting. View Post

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We’re in!

First up, a massive cheer please to my crack moving team – my sister’s boyfriend Aaron and my brother James. Despite not being able to get to me until 3pm on Friday afternoon they had everything packed, moved to Somerset and emptied into the new house before 10pm, including our hour in the pub for pizza and cider – amazing work!

Now we’re here and settling into a routine of sorts, although it is most notable at the moment by its absence. The school I want Belle to go to, the one less than a mile away, is full, so we are having to appeal for a place. We have a hearing on July 15th, which realistically means she is probably going to be at home with me now until September. It’s tough balancing this with needing to work, but we’ll muddle through. I suspect that my idea of ‘home education’ will involve a lot of educational visits to Homesense. (Working out the cost of all the pretty new things I want is definitely maths.)

Not being one to enjoy being surrounded by boxes, I have cracked on and unpacked as fast as I can. I want to make the house our own as soon as possible, to make the fresh start as fresh and as positive as it can be. All this has been helped by the sunny weather and the fact that we have more than our fair share of windows for a house this size – it is much harder to feel sad or regretful when sunshine is streaming in.

Already I have a couple of favourite spots in the house, spots full of pretty things that I can look up at and smile and that make me feel happy to have moved.

These are they:

Coloured wine glasses

 

Spiral staircase

What are your favourite places in your house? How do they make you feel?

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In our house we live by the William Morris mantra – ‘Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.’ That is, we often recklessly throw away things that other people would probably keep, thinking they ‘might come in handy one day’. We have an assortment of pretty trinkets cluttering up our rather small house instead of useful things like pot lids or mops.

The UK is now building the smallest houses in Europe, with an average new build one bedroom house now being roughly the size of a tube train carriage. I kid you not. This being the case, it can often be difficult to know how to furnish your home effectively, with both useful and beautiful things, to make it look less like a tube carriage with beds and more like a double page spread in a Laura Ashley catalogue.

Luckily the latest competition here at Slummy Single Mummy is here to help. I’m giving you the chance to win £150 to spend at Amara.co.uk, a website full of stylish designer homeware, accessories and gifts. From cutlery to incense sticks to garden lighting, Amara has everything you could need for a beautiful and useful home.

Here are some of my favourite things from the site, in case you win and decide to send me a belated birthday gift:

Orla Keily Abascus Tomato Bed Linen.

Orla Keily Abascus Tomato Bed Linen.

Melody rose drangonfly teapot

Melody rose drangonfly teapot

Rob Ryan faux leather coin purse

Rob Ryan faux leather coin purse

There are a few different ways to enter, and every method you use counts as an extra entry:

1. Leave a comment on this blog post telling me what essential/beautiful thing you couldn’t live without at home. Kettle? Diamante encrusted cat ornament?

2. Tweet the following – I’d love to win £150 worth of designer homeware from @AmaraLiving and @mummyblogger http://ht.ly/krzA1  #competition

3. Like Amara on Facebook

4. Follow Amara on Twitter

Just leave a comment to let me know which you do. The competition will close on 15th May 2013 and you can read the full T&Cs here.

Good luck!

As seen on ThePrizeFinder – UK Competitions

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It would be fair to say that I’m not renowned for my colour co-ordination, but the emerald green that is the Pantone colour of the year for 2013 is something I can’t help but feel drawn to.

I love all things emerald, purple and turquoise and if you can spot the colour in a peacock feather, chances are I will love it. These colours feel so expressive – they seem to have a depth and a passion to them that other colours just don’t have. They make me imagine myself as some sort of exotic spice trader, roaming the markets of Marrakech, my long dark hair wafting cumin in my wake and the bells around my ankles tinkling excitedly. Sometimes I have a small pet monkey on my shoulder, wearing a deep purple velvet waistcoat.

*closes eyes just for a minute and inhales the market smells*

For want of a pet monkey, I’ve been having fun this morning looking at all the beautiful green interiors stuff for this year. (I know, I know, I really work too hard sometimes.)

Here are some of my favourites:

"Velvet armchair"

Green velvet armchair from Oliver Bonas

"animal wallpaper"

Animal farm wallpaper by Bodie and Fou

"Colourful children's furniture"

Brightly coloured children’s Furniture from The Range.

"Wine goblets"

Wine goblets from Ines Cole

"owl cushion"

Owl cushion from Donna Wilson at John Lewis

Do you have a favourite colour? Have you spotted anything green this year that you love?

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