Real Kids' Rooms (Yeah I mean messy)

I'm always harping on about how much I like real life clutter, especially kid clutter. (I blog about it every few months b/c I'm always thinking about it). It bugs the hell out of me to see a Pottery Barn catalogue where the kids room has a bookshelf with about 3 things on it: some artfully placed books all the same colour, a monogrammed (yuck) container with perfect little wooden blocks in it, and one - yes ONE! - teddy. What I like is to see a bit of mess and things not matching perfectly so it looks like kids actually live and play there.

Although if my kids read my blog - of course they don't, they've got bigger fish to fry like building roller-coasters for hamsters (boy) and thinking about boys (girl) - they would tell you I'm a big fat liar because I'm always nagging them to clean up their bloody mess! Also, as a stylist I sometimes have to create those annoying little perfect scenes that help to sell monogrammed toy totes and other weird things that rich people buy. 

So basically I'm a hypocrite. Maybe I like it better in theory, but if I had my way, all kids rooms would be a riot of colour and pattern and mismatched storage containers and tutus hanging from the ceiling and walls covered in stickers and fairy lights draped over everything.

Here are some fab ones:

Ilse Crawford. Master of all things brilliant and unexpected.

via thebooandtheboy

via theboyandtheboo

via dosfamily

via Milk magazine

via lightlocations

via Elle Decor

And here's what makes me want to vomit:

via Pottery Barn

No offence PB, you just need to hire me to put some life into your boring old catalogues.

Kelly Wearstler: The Kate Moss of Design

Here's why. Kelly can design anything, wear anything, say anything and because she did/wore/said it, it becomes cool and imitable. That's exactly what Kate Moss has been doing for fashion for 20 years, inspiring designers with her innate sense of style and her unique and confident interpretation of fashion. If Kate wears it you can bet it will be in shops the following season, no matter how ridiculous - Uggs with short skirts? Come on! That only looked good on Kate, but still we all (not me - I always resisted the Ugg trend, even though they're insanely comfy) followed suit.

Back to Kelly. She's so damn stylish and incredibly bold and confident in her choices (and also really beautiful which doesn't hurt) that she makes you buy into the whole look and lifestyle. She has managed to make all that awful weird and tacky lacquered furniture from - gasp! the Eighties - seem cool again. But not in a vintage-kitcsch sort of way - in a kind of, sort of, really glamourous way. 

She's made bathrooms clad entirely in coloured marble and stone seem young and stylish, instead of stuffy and OTT (Well it's still OTT but in a glam sort of way). Like Kate (first name basis, me and Kate), it's all about her interpretation and confidence that make it work.

 Even if it's not your cup of tea, you kind of have to respect the sheer madness of her designs.

All photos via Kelly Wearstler

Painted Clawfoot Tubs

I've had a couple of write-ups this week about my bathroom makeover. First on Curbly and then on Apartment Therapy. Damn, some of those Apartment Therapy readers are so opinionated!! There are comments wondering where the toilet roll holder is in the new bathroom and where the shower curtain is! Seriously?? It's a damn photo and I'm a stylist! I'm not interested in showing you where the toilet paper goes. Obviously we use it! Does it need to be in the pretty picture?  Geez.

I shot my house and that room many times for various publictions including Design Sponge and Anthology Magazine and each time it was in varying state of "doneness". The pics Apartment Therapy used were probably taken before I'd decided where to put the loo roll and it wasn't until we styled it for Anthology mag that my husband had built a custom shower curtain rail. So chill, please, Apartment Therapy people! 

Anyway, I thought I'd share some of the images that were inspring me when I designed that bathroom and some that I've seen since.

via apartment therapy

via design crisis

via house to home

via living etc

via apartment therapy

I painted this tub blue in my niece and nephews bathroom:

Here's my nutty neon tub:

And when you tire of your tub...

Vintage Floral Fest

Welcome to all my new visitors from Curbly! There sure are a lot of you wanting to check out my ugly duckling bathroom makeover. It was nasty wasn't it?? We lived with it like those before pics for 5 years! Then we moved to London a year after we finally fixed it up. Oh well. My tenants are now enjoying the fruits of our labour and that's ok.

Anyway, aren't these vintage-y floral patterns amazing? 

I want to plaster a whole wall in the first one and then cover the sofa in the second and make pillows out of the third. All in the same room. Too much, you think? 

via kitschyliving

Julia Rothman

Sorry can't find credit for this one

Fireplace Filled!

So a while back we talked about filling non-working fireplaces with books and logs, but I still wasn't sure what to do with our own empty hole in the wall. We're not going to be in this flat for very long, a few more months at the most, so I've been trying not to do too much (an impossible task for a decorator/stylist). 

On Saturday when I should have been working on more important things, I came up with a quick fix for our fireplace. I turned it into a little reading nook for my kids, with fairy lights, pillows and a blanket.

I'm not saying it's particularly sophisticated or elegant and really it would be much better if you had an empty fireplace in a child's room rather than the living room. But I don't care. I've never been particularly good at being a sophisticated grown-up. It's just a bit of fun.

 When my kids are older I can do grown up things with my fireplace. Much more important to me is the thought that years from now they might say "Do you remember when you made the fireplace my reading nook? I loved that".

My pre-teen even got in on the action.

And of course Gracie had to get in there too, the little flirt.

Thrifting chases away the blues

Despite the fact that it's only the 2nd day of a 4 day weekend I woke up feeling a bit blue. It's the feeling I get when there are a lot of things I said I would do, I need to do, but can't seem to motivate and actually do. 

All week long when I'm at my day job (exciting but sometimes overwhelming interior design project) I make these lists of things I'll do on the weekend. Things like: redesigning my portfolio website; researching a very exciting (but sort of secret, shhh!) future project; looking for a new house; sewing the lining of my coat pockets that have been bugging me all week long by swallowing everything from keys to iPhone to dog treats; and the list goes on..

I didn't want to do any of them today. I wanted to stay in bed and mope. And wake up for an Irish coffee and then go back to bed and mope some more.

Instead of said moping I dragged myself up and went to my favourite thrift/charity shops. Retail therapy really does work. Even better when the damage is less than £15 and I score this lot:

A few yards of vintage Sanderson fabric, a stack of 8 1970's dinner plates, a bunch of little dishes to add to my teetering towers of them. And egg cups - I'm on a mission to amass a collection of these asap.

And this nice little metal table. Terrible dark picture, I know. Much better in person. I also got the jug/vase and teacup. 

I think a new feature of the blog will be "Where's Gracie?" Check her out always trying to get in the picture! It wasn't easy for her to get in that corner, I think she had to squeeze her little muscular body builder frame under the armchair to get in the shot!

Next post: Another idea for a non-working fireplace, conjured up by my nine year old and me.