Home - The Living Room

This is our living room now it's all finished.  Like the sweeping photos of outside I simply stood and took a shot in each direction ..... so a circular tour of the living room. It measures approximately 12ft x 14ft so not a very big room, just right for us though, snugly in the evenings with all the cats and dogs sprawled on our knees and on the floor by the wood burner.

 The top picture is the window, curtains recycled (and fitting perfectly) from Jointers Farm, photos on the window sill of Lovely Hubby's family, my lovely Lavender cushion on our squidgy leather sofa, years old but too comfy to ever dispose of, and a gorgeously curvy candlestick picked up for pennies at the Oxfam shop in the village just before the move.

The bookcase that used to be in my lavender shop back in Cumbria, filled with our favourite books and topped with some of my collection of jugs and a wirework basket, a souvenir of a wonderful day at a Country Living Fair in Scotland, as is the heart shaped basket next to the fire, that's filled with dried poppy heads from Jointers.  Inside the cupboard my collection of Country Living and Vegetarian Living magazines.   The little green chair was destined to go to the car boot sale, but it has shown it's worth so many times and is just the right colour so we changed our minds.

Our little wood burner, it warms this room within an hour and the whole house within two, this and our free supply of wood from just outside the back door will keep us cosy all Winter.

All my fiction books, some read and loved kept to be re-read when I need to relax, and lots never read but picked up cheaply at charity shops and car boot sales, nothing cost over a pound all waiting for spare minutes when I can sit down and dip in.  The lovely wooden bowls and boxes break up the bookiness of it all and all hold happy memories.  Underneath we keep the log baskets for the fire.

A necessary evil, our big television, the smallest LH would let me get away with, but it looks pretty big in this cosy room.  Underneath it our collection of Dvds and some of the larger 'homey' and 'self sufficiency' books all housed in another ex shop fitting, bought from a friend with a shop opposite mine as she was moving out, and squeezed into my tiny shop until the move to Oxfordshire.

Our usual little display of pictures, added to over the years.  It started with the lonely kitten picture, a limited edition entitled 'Where's Mum', bought when I bought my very first home of my own after my divorce. We added the wooden carved Gecko after a lovely trip to the Christmas Continental Market in Manchester, it matches the one on my arm!!  Then the 'Chat Noir' black cat tin picture after our trip to Paris.  Next came the original advert that started this lifestyle change, snipped from the paper and framed for posterity in a little charity shop frame.   To it this with this move we've added a gorgeous photo of the Lake district taken by my brother.

One last turn and we see the Fortnum and Mason hamper we get each Christmas from Lovely Hubbys agency, a truly decadent and much appreciated pressie, with one of the bowls LH bought me for Christmas, hand turned by a man I used to do craft fairs with, gorgeously tactile and useful too.  Above it a print picked up in a sale just after our return from Paris, a wonderful reminder of many coffees and croissants eaten in street cafes each morning during our stay there.

In the centre, sitting on our new rug (bought cheaply at Dunelm Mill) sits my lovely Laura Ashley coffee table.  Bought for me by my Mum and Dad when I got my first home.  Drawers full of bits and bobs and the flap section at the back full of much loved Dvds It's corners chewed by Rosy when she was a puppy and now by Suky, another bit of furniture holding memories and one that we put our feet up each night in front of the tele or with books in our hands, steaming hot cups of coffee on the mats and usually a block of Toblerone to keep them company.

With all the sorting out done for this room, it will remain like this for the duration of our stay here, I'm not one for moving things round, redecorating for the sake of it or for wanting more stuff to replace what we have just to change a colour scheme.  If it gets grubby it will be cleaned, if things wear out or get broken they will be replaced, if I read books or watch Dvds that I don't like they will be popped into the box ready for the next car boot sale, but other than that this is how it will stay.  We can cosy it up even more for Winter with the addition of more cushions or some throws from the other rooms but it will only adapt not be redesigned.

You see our room is full of our things, full of our memories and warm and cosy. We love this room, it may only just be finished but it's been built up over time, layers of our lives, snippets of our memories and yet looks as if it has always meant to be..... now that's what I call HOME !!

Sue xx