The Interior DIYer
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A la carte

This is a story about a sad bar cart, laden with trinkets, looking for love. Our eyes met in Debra charity shop last weekend, and despite sporting no price tag, I brought this baby home for an absolute steel at €10. A good scrub and she was good as new. And may I say, I am pleased as punch it’s a part of our home. I feel like such a fancy grown up. 
As I wrote before, I’ve had a hankering for a bar cart recently. I was so very close to giving up my charity shop search and in fact was close to buying the IKEA Raskog kitchen cart, but I wasn’t willing to part with €60 for it. As they say, patience is a virtue. 

When it came to styling our new cart, I found it a bit of a challenge. When I first started, it kept looking way too feminine. It did look lovely and pretty, but that wasn’t what I was going for. I appreciate all things dainty and pink, but I can only handle a certain amount of it. I found a happy medium by making it as monochromatic as possible, while including a couple hits of red and plum to fit in with our living space. One of my favourite details – our mini skull cocktail skewers placed in a clay pigeon memento from when we went shooting years ago. All I’ll say is I am worryingly good with a rifle. To which I can probably thank our PS3. 

I’ve tried getting my head around what colour our cart is. I think it’s half way between a rose gold and silver. It’s definitely not straight up gold or silver, but it’s a perfect neutral hue that compliments both gold and silver accessories.  
It’s exactly what I was looking for and couldnt’ve been luckier. So much winning with this thrifted find. I can’t wait to decorate it for the different seasons and as Janine suggested, a tea cart. I have so many dainty porcelain pieces waiting to get all up on it. Keep your eyes peeled. 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}.