The small things that make a house a home

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I’ve lived in a lot of houses in my life.

*pause while I count*

I think it’s 25? Maybe. Anyway, it’s quite a few. Moving house seems to be a bit of a hobby. For me then, a home isn’t somewhere I’ve lived in all my life. It’s not somewhere I grew up, somewhere I can walk around and say ‘that’s where I tripped over the cat when I was seven and had to have stitches.’

It’s not something that’s special because it’s full of memories created over decades, so what is it? What’s that elusive thing that makes any house a home, regardless of how long you’ve been there?

It’s the people in it, of course, we’ll take that as a given, but what else? It’s the stuff I guess. The things you surround yourself with that maybe you have grown up with over decades, dragging them with you from one house to the next.

For me, it’s pictures and plants.

I can move anywhere, to any style of house, and it only feels like a home to me when I fill it with my plants and hang pictures on the walls. I have a lot of plants, and although some of them are just there to make the space look pretty, many of them have a lot of meaning, like Belle’s apple tree, which is now in the ground and quite a bit bigger than in this post.

I have one peace lily for example that I bought when Bee was very small as one of my first ever plants. It was tiny, like her, when I first brought it home from the supermarket, and now, over 20 years later, it fills a huge wicker plant pot in the corner of my bedroom.

I’ve loved watching my Swiss cheese plants thrive over the last few years, and my avocado plant, successfully grown from an avocado stone on about my eight attempt, reminds me not to give up on things, even if they don’t work out the first seven times.

My pictures, like the plants, are a mix of pictures we’ve had for years – like the pen and ink drawing of boat sheds I did in my teens – and others come and go. Some are hand painted, others are cheap posters in thin frames – the variety is what makes it personal.

I have family portraits too – a brilliant collection of Belle as a baby where you’d magically never know she was crying throughout, pictures of Bee and Belle together as older children and now, of course, baby Joey. These are a recent addition, a gift from My-Picture.co.uk.

I know I’m biased, but he IS cute right?

These are 30cm x 20cm canvas prints, which I thought would be a good size to have as a trio, but there are loads of different size and material options on MYPICTURE, and all at very affordable prices. MYPICTURE is actually the number one top rated UK canvas print shop on Trusted Shops and so confident are they that they’re the cheapest too, that they guarantee to beat any other comparable price you find online.

Although they’re cheap, you don’t feel like you’ve compromised on anything. The quality is really high, the colours are bright and sharp, and the frames are good and chunky. There’s really nothing to criticise with my MYPICTURE canvases.

As well as turning your favourite photos into regular prints, MYPICTURE can also make them into things like mugs, jigsaw puzzles, cushions or perhaps a custom face mask. You could even turn your favourite photograph into a towel or a rug!

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo made into a rug before, but I’m on board. Wouldn’t it be fun to make a rug from the face of someone you dislike, like Boris Johnson, and enjoy stomping all over it with muddy feet? Obviously you wouldn’t want them in the bedroom or anything, but maybe somewhere a bit manky, like a shed.

Back to Joey though…

Isn’t he just scrumptious? MYPICTURE is such good value that it’s tempting to just turn every photo I have of him into a canvas and completely fill the house. A bit creepy maybe, but there would definitely be no mistaking it was my home.

What are the things that make a house a home for you? Do you have family photos on the wall? Whose face would you put on your shed rug? Leave a comment and let me know!