I Won! All The Details of the Amara Interior Blog Awards 2016 Where I Took Home An Award!!

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If you follow my social media feeds you may well have seen that on Thursday night, at the Ham Yard Hotel in London, I won an Amara Interior Blog Award for Best DIY & Crafts Blog!

Earlier in the year Amara opened up nominations for this annual celebration of interior bloggers, and this blog got nominated for the Best DIY & Crafts Blog Award, along with around 30 other blogs. The next part was the voting stage, so I campaigned furiously to try and get into the final 5 blogs that would be shortlisted to attend the ceremony, and be assessed by the very capable judges who are at the top of their game within the interiors industry. Completely and honesty I thought I had no chance of getting shortlisted as my blog had only been going a few months back then and I was still learning.

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Make Autumn Nights More Cosy With My Top Duvet Cover Picks

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I am a complete sun worshipper, but uncomfortable summer nights all humid and sweaty with no air-con are definitely the worst thing about summer. That's why when Autumn kicks in it feels extra lovely to snuggle down all warm and cosy in your bed. Autumn is therefore the perfect time to update your duvet covers and pillow cases for snooze-season (or, if like me you have a small child, dream about being in your bed rather than it being a reality...) There are some pretty cool duvet cover designs out there at the moment, so I've picked my favorite reasonably priced bedlinen available to buy online right now....

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Craft A Cheap & Easy Sunburst-Style Door Wreath For Autumn

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I'm sure i've probably mentioned this before, but I'm a sucker for a door wreath. They are such a brilliant decoration to celebrate an occasion/season, and they really add serious kerb appeal to your home. Everyone loves to walk past and look at a home with a beautiful door wreath don't they? Autumn provides the easiest and the cheapest opportunity for a door wreath, as you can pick the supplies up scattered all around outside in the street! Conkers, acorns, dried leaves in a multitude of reds, yellows and browns are all great to use on a home-made Autumn wreath, so it's a great craft to do with kids as you can get them to run around sourcing all the bits!

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How To Use Chalkboard Paint In Your Home

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If you have not used it before, then let me tell you that chalkboard paint is flippin' brilliant. You can buy it in tiny pots from the DIY store or places like Hobbycraft for about £3, and you can apply it to pretty much everything. I've used chalkboard paint a lot in my kitchen where I use it on cheap food storage pots to label what food is inside, and turn something plain into something a lot more interesting. I also painted a shopping list board on an unused, thin bit of wall next to our cooker. This has made it easy for everyone in the house to just list what is needed on the board (no random scraps of paper everywhere) for the next time someone pops down the shops. I didn't have to bother finding and buying a 'proper' chalk board to fit this area and hang up. It also gets used and wiped constantly, yet it remains completely durable.

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How To DIY This Pink Velvet & Gold Legged Bedroom Bench From Scratch!

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I have to admit I spend a fair amount of my time online just saving images of pink and gold chairs and sofas. Seriously, if you follow me on Pinterest and look through my boards it's all full of pink and gold decor. Blush pink in interiors has been huge for 2016, and as the metallics trend continues to thrive blush pink and gold has been featured a lot in furniture and homeware by brands such as West Elm. The new Tom Dixon designed resturant Bronte in London is also awash with dusty pink chairs and a candy pink concrete bar. I LOVE pink and gold together, but seeing as I wasn't going to be able to convince my husband that we needed to replace our perfectly fine sofa with a pink number anytime soon, I decided to bring a bit of pink & gold in the bedroom by DIY-ing a pink & gold bedroom bench from scratch.

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How To Buy Designer Interiors And Homeware For Less Than Half Price

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If I was a EuroMillions winner, my house would be kitted out in Jonathan Adler, Se Collections and Julian Chichester furniture and accessories in every room. Since i'm not a gambling person (too tight - 'money down the drain' etc) then the EuroMillions dream is definitely not happening any time soon. Instead, to obtain designer homeware and investment pieces that I love, I am always on the lookout for a sample sale.

Most top designers do a sample sale at least once a year as it gives them an opportunity to shift ex-display, discontinued, sample, excess and returned stock over the space of a few days. Expect heavily discounted items at around 80% off their recommended retail price. If someone brought a lamp that was £800 and returned it because it had a light scuff on the bottom, it could be yours for around £100.

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How To Choose The Right Paint Colour In Your Home, with Farrow & Ball Colour Consultant Joa Studholme

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I think it is always the greatest DIY dilemma - what colour should we paint the room? I know myself I 'ummm' and 'ahhh' for weeks, buying tester pot after tester pot of virtually the same colour, until I am completely confused. Then, I often pick a colour completely different to what I had in mind originally, cross my fingers and hope for the best. If there is one thing that I do know about paint, it's that Farrow & Ball are the best in the business. I know so many people who have used this paint and then just can't ever conceive of using another paint brand again. That's why when Red Magazine invited me to their Smart Women week of workshops to hear Farrow & Ball's International Colour Consultant Joa Studholme talk about how to choose the right paint colour in your home, I jumped at the chance to lap up all of Joa's expert advice.

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How To Throw A Chic Autumn Dinner Party With LSA International Glassware

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If there is one thing to make me add a restaurant to my 'never to return' list (apart from no-reservation policies - what is all that about???), it's serving me a glass of wine in the kind of tumbler you used to get your water in with your school dinner. Being a grown up, and probably paying way over a fiver for a glass of wine, I'm pretty partial to having it in a decent glass. As you can imagine, when LSA International (the official sponsor of the Amara Interior Blog Awards 2016) wanted to gift me some of their glass pieces for making the Best DIY & Craft Award shortlist, I was delighted! LSA International are celebrating 50 years of production this year, and you can see why their products are still regular features on wedding gift lists with their beautiful collections of handblown glass, porcelain, leather, wood and enamelled steel.

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How To Create This Rustic Tree Trunk Chopping Board

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I made this chopping board for my husband at the end of last year. He's quite the foodie and cooks all his meals from scratch (unlike me, I love food but not cooking. When he isn't home I'm more of a G&T and a slice of cheese-on-toast girl).

I love kitchen equipment made from natural materials. I'll watch a Jamie Oliver programme to lust over his bread boards rather than his foccacia. Of course kitchen like this can be quite pricey, but seeing as I live right on the cusp on Epping Forest I thought why not give making our own tree trunk chopping board a go?

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DIY Back Door Re-Vamp With Home-Made Awning

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The back door to our house was needing a little bit of love. Its paint was peeling and it was just generally uninspiring. It also still had a bloody Christmas decoration on it which I had been meaning to take down in like forever. Instead of just giving it a new lick of paint, I decided to add a few more features to really jazz it up properly and give it a bit of 'wow-factor'.

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Make These Urban Concrete And Spray Paint Geometric Place Mats

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I can never seem to find place mats that I like. I'm not into the cork ones, or the weave ones, and I never like images or patterns on the plastic ones. I would rather have ones made from natural materials like marble or wood, but if you are looking for around 8-10 mats then it becomes pretty expensive for such a basic item.

I was recently reading a copy of Style At Home magazine, and they had an article on making your own planters from concrete. I didn't need any planters, but I thought why not try making place mats out of concrete? (I know, bit random, but that's just how my brain works). Concrete as a material is so cheap, so it was completely worth a try, but in all honestly it took me a lot of attempts to get this right. At first I attempted to make the mats out of your basic standard concrete, which failed as it took ages to set and constantly cracked once fully dry (it was hard not to add too much water to the mixture.) Next, I decided to use rapid setting concrete to speed up the process, but didn't really realise how fast rapid setting concrete set (clue: fast - especially in the heat we've been having). I destroyed a nice cake-mixing bowl trying to mix the concrete before I emptied it into the mould, which just set in the cake bowl instead. Eventually I worked out the best way to make the mats, and once I had that sussed it was pretty easy to make them all.

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5 Great Places To Source Good Quality, Unique Pieces Of Furniture & Homeware At Really Low Prices

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If you rent unfurnished, or if you are just starting out in your first home, it can be a really daunting prospect buying all the furniture that you need. You can see why a lot of people go the flat-packed route so they don't plunge into the overdraft; but it is possible to get well made, individual pieces of furniture and homeware at a fraction of the cost. Unlike flat-pack, you will probably still love it in years to come, rather than chuck it out as soon as it needs replacing/you can afford something better.

This week I thought I would share my absolute top 5 tips for sourcing great furniture and homeware at really affordable prices. Unless there is something particular that I REALLY want from the high street, I will always try and source what I need from these five places first. I usually visit each place once or twice a fortnight to see what's new. I also get a total buzz from finding something amazing and unique that costs hardly anything! It's a feeling of being really lucky that it was you who found it, taking total pleasure in what you found, and having absolutely no guilt that it cost you most of your months wages!

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4 Crafty DIY Decor Ideas For A Wedding Or Party

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As August and September seem to be the full on wedding season, I thought I'd share a few wedding DIY's that I have done previously for my own wedding, and the wedding of my friends Jamie and Stacey last year. There is so much cost attached to a wedding, and it's easy to cut corners and make your wedding more personal by crafting certain elements. These decor ideas below can also be used at a party or any event you may be hosting.

Wedding favours and confetti are two things that people often don't bother with as it can be expensive for just a token part of the day. However, if you are anything like me, you'll think it's the little details like this that can take the style of a wedding to the next level. When I got married seven years ago I really wanted good favours on the day, but when I visited a wedding fair beforehand I was pretty aghast to see wedding favours selling for £2 - £3 per favour.  My wedding theme was vintage and I made these vintage-style wedding favour boxes for around £20 in total for 75 people. If I'd have brought them at the wedding fair for 75 it would have set me back £150 - £200!

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How We Made Our Garden Furniture

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How much would you expect to pay for one garden bench made out of a beautiful thick piece of oak? £100? £200? We made four large garden benches that now seat 10 people in our garden for a minimal amount of money, although it was quite the effort. I have to say before I delve into this post that this piece of DIY was not easy! The wood is heavy and it was a joint effort of three people (me, my husband and my dad) to create them. However, if you have people to help and you are determined you can save yourself so much money creating bespoke beautiful outdoor benches yourself!

It all started when we moved into our new London 'burbs home with a gorgeous garden. Our previous Central London home only had a small piece of shaded garden, which you got to by going down some iron stairs, so we didn't use it much. On the list of things to get for the new house was 'garden furniture' as we did not have any. The previous owners of our current house had landscaped the front of the garden in their time living here, and had left four long pieces of left over sleeper wood in the back garden. This lovely wood was just sitting there untreated getting mouldy and eaten by woodworm, but it would be perfect to transform into garden seating.

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Review: DIY Made To Measure Shutters - Are They Worth The Risk?

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As far as window treatments go, shutters are the clear winner for me. Curtains can look overly fussy and fade; blinds often look cheap and remind me of being in an office. Shutters can really block out the light, are easy to clean and should last you a lifetime. They also look GORGEOUS! If you have a period property or pretty sash windows, shutters will really compliment the windows detailing.

When we moved into our current home, I was hellbent on having shutters on the vast majority of the windows. We had solid, Victorian-style shutters fitted on a difficult hallway window in our old house, and they were literally one of my favourite things in that house. We got solid shutters installed again on the bedroom windows and the living room windows, but that really blew the budget. We left the bathroom window as it was, as it had a blind installed and that would do for the time-being.

A year and a half on,  I was hating the bloody bathroom blind. It was this crummy brown blind that got so dusty, but was impossible to clean. It left awful watermarks, and I was petrified with the cord hangings around my toddler son as he loved to play with them. Our bathroom window is lovely in the afternoons as the sun streams in, so I would always pull it up out the way and out of sight. Trouble was it was too much hassle to keep putting down every time someone wanted the loo (and the bathroom faces the street!)

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Before & After: A Budget-Busting Porch Transformation

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I can't emphasise enough how paint and a little bit of DIY effort can go a long way in transforming your home. Even if you do not change anything else in the room, a coat of paint a different colour, or a 'freshen up' if the paint work is looking tired, can totally revolutionise a space.

I was recently hired by my first ever client (YAY! Go me!!) to re-vamp her front porch. Mrs A was sick of coming home to her porch the way it looked, and felt it gave a really bad impression to people visiting her home. What she wanted was a pretty (but not fussy), fresh, welcoming, cheery entrance. So - cue photo time - she was currently coming home to this....

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"Get An Absolutely Fabulous Interior, Darling.." - All The Key Interior Pieces From The Movie

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A double blog entry for me this week as I was lucky enough to attend the premiere of the Absolutely Fabulous movie last night! To be honest I'm still buzzing today about drinking bolly in the same room as Kylie Minogue, Kelly Hoppen, Kate moss, Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley, but I did get over being star-struck enough to lap up all the key interior pieces featured in Eddie's home for 2016.

I'm a huge Ab Fab fan, growing up I dreamed about one day having a beautiful London pad like Eddie as a base to come home to after a drunken party. In the film the layout of the house is still the same but grander, where Eddie has bled ex-husband Mitchell dry for a huge basement excavation....

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