Styling the Seasons • March 2016

I've declared it. It's officially Spring. I am so done with freezing cold days, socks and slippers and lugging logs from the garage to the basket in the fire place. When I say "I" I course mean Rich heaving a heavy basket of wood from the pile under the dirty steps to our office back and forwards! 

I am over the frosty mornings, as pretty as they make the leaves on the grass. My nose is tired of feeling cold! I look longingly at the basket of flip flops in the hallway smothered by long winter boots and when the hail stones battered the car windscreen today on the way home from an emergency dash to a fancy dress shop ahead of World Book Day tomorrow (my smallest boy who doesn't like being centre of attention, finally decided - yesterday - that the only thing he was willing to dress up as was a shark from a book that can only be found in the school library. Bah!) my heart just sank.

I'm ready for pretty jars of flowers on the stove. The roaring fire can retire until late October!

If you haven't joined in with #StylingTheSeasons you are missing a treat!

A monthly link with Apartment Apothecary and Lotts and Lotts sharing a styled corner or surface in your home to show what the month means to you. This month I have updated our fireplace in the family dining room. Gone with the flames and hello pinks and yellows!

I adore planting bulbs in strange containers so I have some hyacinths in an old ceramic jelly mould currently on the stove! We have a mix of greys, coral and mint green in this space. I wish I could be more minimalist sometimes with our accessories but I feel everything looks so bare. I love having curious and random collections, using different old bottles for vases and changing the photos around, interspersed with thank you cards, invitations and notes from friends. 

The only thing I want to change in this space is the rocking chair. It may look nice and contemporary against the vintage victorian coffee table but it's not at all comfortable! The plastic is too hard to relax into and often when we have friends or family to stay we all end up heaped around this fire and I wish we had a more comfortable armchair to squeeze two little bottoms onto or to sink into at the end of the day. 

I kick myself that we didn't buy a second armchair from West Elm which you can't get anymore! What do you think of this matching fabric chair?

I can't wait for the plumbing and rewiring to be done in April - it's going to be the dustiest period of our lives but will be so worth it. We have to move out for a week whilst they rip up floorboards and channel out all the walls so in a way I am glad I won't be there to see it! 

Then we can get some colour on these walls! I wasn't born to live in a house of white. As we renovate each room we want to strip it back to smooth plaster and white walls as a base. To see how the light moves around the room, to live with the space for a while then decide. This room is either bathed in sunlight or as dark as a cave, so what do you think? A pale grey? Or something warmer and bolder?!

And if anyone has lived through a re plumb let me know - do we have to pack up everything we own like we are moving house or can they cover it all with dust sheets?! Aaah!