My little dream . . . . .

So for some time now I’ve secretly dreamt of being featured in a home magazine. I think when I lived at home with my parents there was always a copy of Country Living or Country Homes & Interiors at hand. I remember thinking when I’m older with my own home living in the country how nice it would be to be featured one day?!

I’ve always been influenced with country love, old vintage furniture with a story and that cosy feel. Having been brought up in a cottage with a large garden we were always either inside being creative with my Mum or outside playing in the garden, looking after the dogs, making dens or digging. Living the rural life growing up for me has had such a big impact on my life. It definitely helped with my creativity and also comforted me at different times in my life.

I look at my upbringing as such a happy time in the cottage. My parents have since moved but have still captured that country life in their new home. It’s influences like this that never leave you and I often reflex on them when I’m quietly creating away in our kitchen or on walks in our village, foraging for cow parsley.

Living in a village is so relaxing, such lovely people here in Little Eaton, Derbyshire and were surrounded by bucket loads of countryside. My Husband and my dream was to renovate a house in a rural setting to settle down with our family. We moved into our 1930’s detached home 6 years ago and for the first 3 years didn’t do much at all but save to renovate.

Michael has always know how much I’d love to choose my own interior. One anniversary he bought me a scrap book and a handful of home magazines and said to start our dream for the future. This then moved onto Pinterest and since living here in Derbyshire I met some lovely people including Nicky from Joy Interiors. I absolutely love putting things together with my creative/arty detail but somethings I have asked Nicky to help.

Once we were ready to start, the house was packed up, we rented a lovely barn for 3 months and absolutely gutted the house. It’s a 3 bed, bathroom down stairs, cosy lounge and large kitchen. But the space didn’t work for us so it was a matter of re designing the space and extending above the existing kitchen extension. We extended my daughters bedroom, added more landing, brought the bathroom upstairs & still managed to keep the third box bedroom. Downstairs the kitchen was widened, the entire walls of the house went back to brick, we had a re wire, walls then plastered and new windows throughout.

I will add at this point we saved for a very long time and didn’t go on a holiday for 5 years abroad, until last year. Sometimes you have to prioritise and we’d rather this than to get into lots of debt.

When we first bought our house, I’ll be honest I didn’t really like it at all! But in my thoughts always was what it would look like once we’d finished. I’m quite good at visualising the finished article, close my eyes and I could see the new kitchen, lounge etc, patience has had to be learnt along the way!!! As you can see above we had a delightful 1970’s kitchen and when a cupboard door fell off I made a lovely curtain to make do. It really was worth waiting for.

So I thought I’d do a little intro into our dream which we have almost fulfilled. We have just got the little downstairs bathroom to do and we have completed the majority of the interior. Each room has influences from our love of reclaimed furniture, touched of my childhood in the cottage but also inspired by some modern mixes.

In between my blogs every few months of how my business is progressing, I’m going to chat about little parts of our home. Something new for you to enjoy too because working hard to make our house a home, means such a lot. You’ll see my creative touches and one day I hope, once the house and garden are magazine ready we may just feature. The day I can sit here with a hot mug of tea and magazine in hand I’ll really feel a great sense of achievement with all the hard work and patience.