The Interior DIYer
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Letter Board from April and the Bear

Do you ever set something aside as a treat for completing a particularly boring pile of paperwork or other such remedial task? I do. A lot. The things I reward myself with are not always things that need to be bought. Sometimes it’s watching an episode of Gilmore Girls, or doing my nails during one of Cora’s naps, but honestly, these days a lot of the rewards I set myself are things like take a shower alone in the bathroom or have lunch at lunch time. Sometimes I set myself fancier rewards and recently one of those things was a letter board from April and the Bear.

I’ve coveted things like letter boards for years [I played with my dad’s letraset when I was young and have since loved the idea of personalising something in font], so when Siobhan started stocking letter boards at the beginning of this year, I waited for months until the time was right and last week I visited April and the Bear [when it was open – huzzah!] and wrapped my hands around it’s dainty frame. 

I of course immediately became paralyzed with what to write once I got my board home [too many options. Do I just write HELLO?], so for now I’m very happy with punching in our favourite movie quotes. That should keep me busy for a few years. 

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Updating our [landlord’s] Ikea shelves

This isn’t a particularly striking nor interesting blog post, but over the past few weeks I’ve been reorganising and updating the stuff on our [landlord’s] IKEA shelves. I styled our shelves like this close to 2 years ago and they’ve barely changed since. Recently, I spent a few minutes each day while Cora isn’t making unrelenting monotonous teething sounds content, so I had a chance to move things around.

I added the second large door back onto our shelves, and it seems I did just in time as 2 days later [on Father’s Day], Cora started crawling. All she wants to do now is crawl and it’s the sweetest and most exhausting thing ever [for both of us].
I also hung up Cora’s Elodie Details playmat. It spends most of the time on the floor in our living room, but when Cora’s asleep, we hang it up on the wall so we’re not walking on it and so the cats don’t get [extra] fur all over it. 

I’m finding it more and more difficult to photograph these shelves [7 years living with them and their yellowedness is making me want to ram them into a wood chipper]. I tried to photograph them over 3 different days, and each time I uploaded my photos onto my laptop, I was underwhelmed. You’ll have to trust me when I say the shelves look half-decent now, but they’re just so tough to photograph. Am I the only one with a tricky part of their home like that? It looks good in real life, but completely impossible to photograph? For now, they look about as good as I can get our landlord’s shelves to look.

p.s. When I was looking at my posts on these shelves over their lifetime, I found this haggard blog post and I take back anything negative I said about these photos today. Woof. 

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Felt ball bunting from Creative Tuesday

Shortly after Cora was born, a long time internet friend of mine Janine* of Made for Me Studio sent Cora the most adorable felt ball bunting all the way from New Zealand. It was made by Janine’s talented friend Lesley of Creative Tuesday, who makes a range of sweet decor for nurseries and children’s rooms. Sweet features from prints to mobiles to wall decals and of course, felt bunting … 

When we first got Janine’s sweet gift, I tried hanging the felt ball bunting in a few places across Cora’s bedroom, but as there’s only one wall to hang it on which is already quite full, it didn’t stand out as much as I would like. I took my time and thought about where else the bunting would look best. I then realised the best [and now most obvious] place was to hang it on the mahogany mirror in our hallway. It’s the centre of our apartment and so many times a day we hold Cora at the mirror and have fun giggling, making funny faces or waving to each other. Cora really loves the bunting and often grabs it, but it’s so long that we’re able to rescue it safely from her tiny grip fairly easily and with no damage done. 

What I love the most about our Cora’s new bunting is it’s decor that can be easily moved around our apartment and when we eventually move, it will be something we can hang anywhere. Plus, it brings some fun and whimsy to the rest of our apartment so all the cute isn’t just in Cora’s room.

Thank you again, Janine. It is the sweetest xx



*Janine and I have been internet friends since 2011. One of my earliest memories of Janine’s kindness was when I got two wisdom teeth pulled and  we shared messages as I recovered. Over the years we talked about so many things and across all the changes that happened in those 6 [!!!] years. Janine even offered for Robert and I to stay with her and her husband Mike [must not forget their fur baby Smooch] when we were thinking of going to New Zealand for our honeymoon [we unfortunately didn’t end up as flights that long scare me, but it’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to go].