BEDM 6: Home sweet home

Today's brief for BEDM was Home Sweet Home:

Talk about what home means to you. Maybe share a room or house tour. Collect a list of your favourite homewares. Or discuss any issues about home ownership or living.

Now, I think it would get a bit sappy if I talked about what home means to me so maybe avoid that.  I daren't give you a housetour because if I am honest with you, my house is a mess! It's not as bad as it was since I spent most of the day tidying it up but I don't know, giving you a tour would just feel embarassing. We rent it and neither of us are particularly interior-designy minded so it's largely filled with clutter not in any particular style.  Nonetheless, I remember asking Char to talk about all the knick-knacks and items on the shelves behind her in her outfit posts once and she did do a post based on this which I loved so I thought what I'd do is give you a few photos of a few items on walls or items on windowsills/horizontal surfaces which we've added over the year and a half we've lived here and tell you about them. Yes, I like to fill horizontal surfaces in case that's what you end up commenting!!



Photo collages
So on three walls in our Front room, we have collages of CBC and I over the years. WOMOTM, my lovely Father in Law did these for us for the wedding.  They always make me smile at the random costumery and dumb poses- esp the top left one where CBC is using my hair as a moustache!
We replaced one of the hideous lampshades with this globe of the world which I bought CBC for his old house.  Globes are cool!


Artworks
Here are some of the artworks around the house.  Framed my TARDIS picture from Janet and that is currently in the dining room though CBC is none too happy about it.  The Regency lady was a charity shop purchase that I love for its genteel prettiness.  The Audrey photos from My Fair Lady need to be properly framed but they just hang out in that frame for the moment in the study.  The bottom right picture of a squirrel was handpainted by my friend M, who is an art-teacher. It was a wedding present- she gave us her portfolio to choose which picture we'd like and we chose a squirrel! After all CBC's favourite nickname for me is squirrel based!  The lamp was a Christmas present and you can see my little boy in Columbia to the right.


Bookcases (IKEA)
Yes, the bookcases in the living room really need a tidy.  I've still got books mouldering in the shed so I should really get rid of some and sort these out.  As you can see, the hats have migrated onto the tops of all three.  On the leftbookcase you can see a fish painting with goldleaf we bought in Dubrovnik which we'd like to get framed and the right bookcase is some of the many shelves of sheet music we own.





Daisy Landing
So called because as you go up the stairs, you are surrounded on three sides by daisy canvases.  All three of these came from Charity shops over the last decade and I love them. I've always loved daisy images. A friend handpainted some watercolour daisies as a wedding card for us and they would have been in the tour too but I need a new picture hanging for them as finally bought a frame for it.
The odd one out is this wicker and rose-quartz heart which was a delightful wedding present from one of my pupils at school. You'll see what her sister bought me later on. The pair of them actually came to my wedding service as their Mum is friends with my Mum.


Landing and Bedroom Windowsills
The bottom two pictures are the landing windowsill which contain my lovely Zentangle from Fat Dormouse and my Sylvanian Families Music Teacher set as well as a random tube-chime.

Above, is our bedroom window sill which has a woodland theme on the left with my Christmas Swap rabbit lamp, a singing RSPB blackbird and a handcut image we received from my Deputy head as a wedding present plus various knitted woodland animals.
On the right, you can see an earring tree which holds my longest earrings, bought this in Felixstowe and a sweetie box full of all my wired hairscarves!


Bedroom walls
Carrying on in the bedroom, you can see our recent hung Beachut hooks, we love these!
The beautiful floral horseshoe was the sister present of the wicker-heart. It is so pretty and delicate.
The woodland themed bunting came from Wilkinson's in the January sales some years ago.
Finally, here's the other TARDIS picture that Gemma gave me in her Snailmail swap with me.



Spareroom
The hydrangea heart was a wedding present from my Mum, it is really pretty- imagine how nice that would be as a floral crown!
The picture top right is from about 12 years ago at a friend's wedding- I love that picture of my Mum, sister and I.  To its right is an image of my old church's nativity in which I am a shepherd!
The window sill holds my wind-up toy collection (Whaaat? You mean you DON'T have one???) and a picture of my little sister and I as bridesmaids for our other sister!
The ring tray was a hen picnic present from church friend and those candles came from my previous headteacher. The Christmas she gave me these,she wrote me the sweetest card which was SO lovely. More wind-up toys flank it on either side!




Other
Finally, a few other touches.  I really like our Ikea shoe bench- we added the pillows and I don't know how I lived without a shoe bench before! It's very useful by the front door even if you have to battle against being strangled by coats above you!

I found the rainbow hooks in a charity-shop today and I was really chuffed over them- only £2 and useful for the bathroom as we don't have much towel rail space!

The musical hooks have only been up a month or so. I've had them for years but it wasn't until our friends came round with a powerdrill and no fear of DIY that we got them up!

Finally, here's a peek at the messy spareroom! Yes, it's a mess!!! I've cleared the bed a bit since I took this photo but it is by no means ready for a guest!


Do  I need to cut down on the windowsill paraphenalia? What do you have on your shelves, walls and sills?

xx