The Interior DIYer
Uncategorized

Decorating for fall

Autumn has well and truly landed here in Dublin and I for one am not complaining. This past week I’ve been trying to figure out why I love autumn and winter so much, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. I’ve concluded it’s a mash of the following …

– It being cold is a great reason to hide under a duvet on the couch and watch 100 movies.
– Candles. All of the candles.
– Hot beverages such as mulled wine and hot chocolate. 
– I’m 1,000 times more comfortable under a pile of sweaters, scarves and coats vs. being in a summer dress with my bingo wings flapping about.
– Further to the above point, I prefer to be cold than hot. 
– It might snow. Even just for 5 minutes.
– It gets dark early [which mostly sucks], but there’s something about it being dark out and lights being on in shops and in people’s homes. 
– Autumn and winter call for decorating our home in two very different styles, both of which I love.

I decorated our apartment a little this week in preparation for autumn and Halloween. I feel this year that my decor is just a bit … meh. Probably because I didn’t make anything new, but simply raided my accessory hoard for autumnally appropriate pieces [aka, every skull ever] and decorated a bit lazily by adding some leaves that I hope have been spared from dog pee. 

I’d like to do something a little more special with our bar cart and do something unusual in the hallway too, but the cogs are still turning so it might be the Eve of Halloween before I have a decent idea. 

So what about you? Do you decorate for autumn or Halloween? Do you find it a bit too North American? [I’ve heard people here referring to decorating for autumn and spring in that manner, but it’s all I’ve ever known. I love decorating for any season, especially when it comes to the winter months by mixing things up a bit – something to break up the monotony of the darker months].

Uncategorized

Feature this – (a second) burgundy wall

I’m forever amazed when a coat of paint changes a space so much. Within 2 hours you can change the feel of a room for under €25. Or in my case, for free as I already had the paint. Yesterday, to the dismay of Robert who wanted nothing more than to MGSV to his hearts content, I painted the wall behind our TV in the same berry colour as the wall behind our shelves. Yes, another feature wall. I quite resent that that term is used with such hate by some people, but feature wall it is. To them I ask, what did a feature wall ever do to you?

I LOVE A GOOD FEATURE WALL. 
There. I said it.

I am so, so, so, so, so in love with this end of the living room again. I don’t care how lame that makes me sound. The wall behind our TV was just too much boring and too much bland for my liking and for too long. White on white on white. I do like simple and bright design, but not in my own space as I’ve come to realise over the years. 

As I realised with the test patch I painted last week, I think this paint colour looks all kinds of amazing in candle light. Tiger are going to make an absolute fortune in candles from me this year. I know it’s a bit early to be mentioning the C word, but I cannot WAIT to decorate our mantle / shelf for Christmas [this time it’s Christmas Pat :P].

Another reason I wanted to paint this wall dark, aside from the fact that I love this colour, is because I really like the contrast of stark white pieces on dark backgrounds. I don’t know why I took so long to paint this wall because [I think] it looks amazing and really ties the room together. My abstract painting is back up [yay! o/] and I added some simple white candles to offset all the dark. It’s a quick change that made a big impact on our piddly little rental living room, which can easily be undone in an afternoon. 

p.s. Anyone else notice there’s a cat in every. Single. Photo I took? Juniper and Toshi were very needy this weekend. Sorry / not sorry 😛
Uncategorized

Darker bar cart and an autumny update

Autumn is beginning to creep up here in Dublin [not complaining]. The weather was awful this weekend so we were stuck indoors and I had the perfect opportunity to faff about our apartment and nest* to my hearts content. One area I’ve been stink-eyeing for a long time is our bar cart. I’m forever pinning beautiful images of effortlessly styled bar carts, and ours always just kind of looked like a toddler emptied its pockets onto it. 

I moved stuff around, added things that had been hidden in my styling stash and attempted to create a pretty vignette. It’s not completely there [yet], but I’m a lot happier with it. 

Another reason I was prompted to get my cart in order was I got a cheeky and unexpected parcel last week from a wild mane-d vixen, that made me squee. Simply entitled “to my gothic princess“; two Crystal Head Vodka skull glasses. Talk about SWOONWORTHY [they’re actually quite difficult to photograph, but trust me, they’re simply amazing. See one with black absinthe … for photo purposes. They’re amazing, thank you Kimbo xx We’ve already broken them in :P]. 

Whilst I was autumnizing our living room I took out my roller and quickly added a patch of berry paint, which I’ve been kinda dying to add more of to our apartment so I tested to see how it would look behind the TV. I love the idea of dark walls accented with white and bright accessories to balance things out. I think it might work well, but I’m concerned about how dark it will look come winter. I adore it, but I’m still on the fence especially re: possible seasonal affective disorder. At the very least, perhaps I’ll do something about that unsightly cable? As it is, it really brings a certain je ne sais quoi to the look I’m going for. Don’t you agree? 

When in doubt, #CropItLikeItsHot.

*No, I’m not pregnant. I’ve heard of this ‘nesting’ that occurs during pregnancy, and quite frankly, I’ve been nesting since the age of 17.