Hello Readers!

Today's blog post is DIY related and how to to bring the beach into your home. Nautical prints & accessories are really popular at the moment, and for a room like the bathroom, it can be a really lovely addition to make a room look a lot different.

Our bathroom used to be plain cream walls and our usual bathroom bits around, and not much else. When we decided to try the nautical look in the bathroom it opened up a world of possibilities for the room.

We started by adding some blue to one of the walls to bring in an additional colour which would be needed for when we started to add in our accessories.

Before I go on to show you the bits and pieces we bought to bring the nautical theme into the bathroom, let me explain how my house is built. The house is built on a hill, over three floors. From the front of my house it looks like its two floors, and from the back it looks like three floors. The bathroom is at the front of the house and essentially is underground, with a window coming down what was the old coal hole. Here are two photo's to better explain how it is set up. It still manages to keep the room pretty bright and it means we have an area in which we could make a feature of some of the nautical pieces we bought.

The top picture shows the feature we made, with boats, lighthouses, rope, beach huts and lots of shells. Most of the pieces in here were picked up from The Range, which have a wonderful nautical selection and the pieces are not too expensive. 

In front of the perspex window, we have a beach hut draft excluder. It can get chilly there, especially as the bath is right under the window, so it is important to have something to stop the draft. This draft excluder we picked up from The Range.

In front of that we have these blue letters which spell out beach, but in our house you can often walk into the bathroom and find a different word spelt out.

The other end of the ledge we have this cute little boat, which we also got from The Range.

These curtains are just decorative and I think really make a feature of the window area. The burlap on the bottom was sewn onto the top fabric, and made into curtains by my Mum.

I made this bag with my friend, and was one of the first Servietten Technique pieces I did. It looks wonderful in the bathroom.

A recent addition to the bathroom are these little bags, and I think they are great for holding bottles and look like little beach bags.

These few little decorations (the stitched one made by Mum) decorate the walls, and bring the nautical theme into the room a little bit more.

And last but not least, our sink area. The white pallet wood and the white wicker basket unit certainly bring in a bit more of the beach. Its looks distressed and beach worn, and fits in with the theme of the room.

I hope you like this little tour of our nautical bathroom, I love it I think it is a fun and wonderful theme to play around with. There are lots of nautical themed pieces in the shops, but also it wouldn't be too hard to make some yourself.

Do you have a nautical themed room? I would love to see it, please leave me any links below!

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Hello Readers, 

Today's post I am super excited about, its my entry for the Laura Ashley Room Refresh competition being hosted by the wonder Annie from The Quarter Life Tales of Annie Bean in conjunction with Laura Ashley, with a prize of a £1000 gift card for Laura Ashley for the winner. 

When I first started thinking about my entry for the competition I thought about my own room. I live back at home with my parents now, and I am back in my old room, however, when I came home I updated it and have all brand new furniture and redecorated the walls. My room is pretty much sorted.

So, to cut a long story short(ish) I have decided, with the permission of mum, use our front room as my blank canvas, and if I should be so lucky to win, the £1000 gift card will be spent on her front room so together we can create her dream room, as a way of thanks for everything she has done and all the support she has given me over the years.

So, on with the refresh!

This is our front room...

We essentially have two living rooms, this room (the front room) and our back room in which we have our big comfy corner sofa and TV. The front room has our posh suite in it, but being the room that you first come to when you get in the house (the front door opens straight into this room) it is often full of bags, shoes & other belongings (usually mine) which haven't yet made their way to my room.

We moved into this house 11 years ago, when I was 17, and throughout the years I have been to university and moved back, moved into my own place and moved back. Every other room in our house has been decorated except this one and its the one room that we've wanted to do for years, but we just never got round to it. 

Me and Mum run our own craft business so this room often doubles up as our craft room, so we have lots of crafts bits and bobs, a table as well as boxes all over the place, that really need sorting. As well as being a front room & a craft room (phew!) its also mums office as she works from home.

For this room we're looking to make it functional for crafting and for mums office work, but also for those things to be cleared away and have a home, so it works as our front room as well.

So, how would I refresh our front room?

I started by thinking about the walls, at the moment we have 3 walls papered and 1 painted, sort of a reverse feature wall, and it works well and it would be nice to keep that the same, but brighten the place up. For the walls I went with Josette Carnation Damask Wallpaper with a painted wall done in Pale Amethyst. For the curtains I went with the Lyton Pencil Pleat Ready Made Curtains to finish of the walls nicely.

The sofa and chair we already have are Purple (Sofa) and Cream (Chair) so I wanted to keep this theme throughout the rest of the accessories for the room.

The Jasper Footstool would be a great addition to the room, making it feel more of a relaxing room once the the computer has been shut down and the sewing machine switched off for the day. For those cold winter evenings (although we really don't want to be thinking about those just yet!) I picked the Lemington Polka Dot Cotton Throw in Amethyst.

As I mentioned before, the front mat is often littered with (my) shoes, so this Stair Basket would be a great addition. 

Both Mum and I are HUGE accessories fan, I think little bits and pieces can really help make a house a home. Mum wants to change her cushions and she loved this new Charleston Cushion. Having new carpet is definitely on the list for the front room, but this Hoxton Rug in Amethyst will look great on the current carpet or the new carpet (Mum fancies herself a dark cream/beige colour). When picking our some little extras these Boxes caught our eye, and I think they would look wonderful in the room. And how can crafters like us not buy this Needlework Storage Box.

I have absolutely loved dreaming about redoing this room, it has so much potential, and we have a few bits of old furniture (the sideboard for one) which we are going to strip down and re-paint (and distress) to fit in with our ideas. 

What do you think of my ideas? Would you do anything different? Do you have any great storage ideas? 

Have you entered the #LARoomRefresh competition? Please leave your comments below, I would love to see how you would redesign your spaces!

P.S: If you would like to enter the #LARoomRefresh Competition, get yourself over to The Quarter Life Tales of Annie Bean and you to could be in with a chance to win £1000 to spend refreshing your room for spring at Laura Ashley!

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