The Interior DIYer
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Sneak peek – IKEA Family Live feature

I’m going to jump the gun and do the thing you’re not supposed to do. I know divulging such information so early will probably give me luck much on par with smashing several mirrors, but feck it. I cannot contain my excitement. A couple of weeks ago I opened my e-mail one afternoon and there sitting in my inbox … was an e-mail from IKEA Family Live. Heart palpitation central.

They were looking to feature our apartment on their online magazine. Emily Westbrooks of From China Village recommended our home {so many gushy feelings were sent in her direction. I hope they reached you, Em!}, IKEA Family Live checked out my website, liked what they saw and got in contact. Lots of excitement and chaos ensued in the general region of my face over the following days.

I had a week to photograph our apartment, complete the write up and send in all the deets. It was a bit tough as that week we had next to no sunshine. Not to mention I had to include a photo of myself. Which reminds me – thank you sooo much to those of you who left the sweetest comments in response to my seriously hairy level of self doubt re: selfies. You sure know how to make a gal feel better. 
Our home will be the November Member {lolz, I’m so immature} feature on the IKEA Family Live site, so there’s a bit of time between now and then for the dust to settle and for me to get excited about it all over again. It’ll feature some exclusive pictures of our home that I am typically too afraid to photograph. In the mean time, I urge you to check out Emily’s lovely home which was featured as the July IKEA Family Live member, and not to mention her uber fun website. 
Happy Monday homies! xx A
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The rug is not the issue


At long last, the rug is down. This hugely fabulous IKEA Stockholm rug hadn’t been in stock in Dublin since … probably ever. One fateful day I checked their online stock checker, and there it was. All 2.4m of it and only 5 in stock. I rushed out and managed to get my hands on the last medium rug. Followed quickly by a sweltering dose of guilt. 

As I wrote two weeks ago, I decided to use my our new rug as an incentive. My embarrassing goal being – I could only put our rug down once I got a job. For anyone outside of Ireland reading this, it may not seem like a big deal, but here in Ireland, the jobs front is horrific. I’m an office zombie by day, and unfortunately like some of the offices I’ve worked with in the past, the company I was working with went bust in April. So I was unemployed, and had splurged on this amaze-balls rug. In order to stay afloat, I quickly turned my guilt into an incentive. Long story short, I landed myself a temp role, so down went the rug last weekend. All kinds of awesome …

Our new rug perfectly anchors my here and there infatuation with black and white throughout our apartment, not to mention it adds a perfect punch of pattern to our living space. I’m a big-time fan of the layered effect, so I may try my hand at DIYing a faux zebra skin rug {I’ve seen a couple of very do-able tutorials out there} and see how it works layered with this puppy. I’m thinking either silver, gold or lavender in stead of the typical black zebra stripes. Yum, yum. But nothing’s set in stone.
Boy, am I smitten. And as it happens, so are our kittehs. 

So far rug has settled in nicely and will  be an especially warm welcome when winter hits our cave of an apartment, and most of our time is spent curled up on the couch with Netflix. 
I hope wherever you are you’re having as nice of weather as we’re experiencing here in Dublin! Lots of dining al fesco and tall, cold beverages. And ice cream. Mostly ice cream. xx A
p.s. Sorry for the cringey employment rant. I try to keep my writing real. Girl got bills to pay.

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Incentive

Roughly this time last month I took a virtual stroll over to the IKEA website. For years I’ve had my eye on their Stockholm rug, but it was always just a dream since they never ever had it in stock in Dublin. For months I would check. Months turned into years. I signed up to be notified of its return, and that too expired. Except for last month. In April they had 5 in stock.  

And boy did I. I went to there. And I got the last medium rug. WINNING. Want to know the awful thing? It’s been standing in the corner of our living room ever since. 
I bought it because I knew it would fly off the shelves. And it did, since it’s no longer in stock again. I should defend myself and say I’m not the type of person to buy something that lush and ignore it {quite the opposite}. I’m using our new rug as an incentive. I have a goal and I can only put it down once I’ve reached it. I know – silly and sappy and childish. It’s not a groundbreaking goal either. But it’s driving husband insane because he says I’m torturing myself by not rolling it out {to which I usually reply with a Big Lebowski reference}.

Am I crazy? Have any of you done something like this? That first question should probably be treated as a rhetorical one. Oh god I hope I’m not the only one …

All that black and white goodness. I got my eye on the prize {and so does Juniper, as it happens}.