Rugs – tres chic and bang on trend

I am on the hunt for a rug – to go in our new library which hasn’t yet been built (its still as they say in the planning stage). The desk that I have been coveting for what feels like all my life is too darn big. My plan to build an extension thereby resolving the problem – husband not so on board with that one unfortunately!

So I need to source another desk and with that of course a rug. Rugs are hard to get right.  I have had no problem with the lower ground floor, a Jonathan Adler zeebra rugs skims our concrete floor and nestles  up to a beautiful hand woven merino wool rug.  Upstairs though I want a grown up gentleman’s club vibe, where I sip whisky, light fires play some jazz and pretend to work. I’m thinking I need something with pattern to break up some of the solid colour but then I am always drawn to blocks of colour. Then there is all that thinking about how one space relates to another – the cohesion of the rug to the exisiting furniture and so on and so on. Decisions, decisions

Some possibilities I am considering below:

Love the palette, love the rug – its  grown up and its beautiful.

Again love love love the palette and love the funky rug. The rug is from the Rug Company and it was shot at my friends house (the photographer Graham Atkins Hughes  and his wife Jo). The most stylish couple on the planet I must say and whats more I can’t copy so back to the drawing board I go!

Question

Question – is it to early to pour my husband a glass of wine, bake him he’s favourite cake and make my case for a desk we just have to have. Its wrapped in leather with the base crafted from old suitcases. It breaks every budget there is but would be beyond perfect for our new library.

Plus to help my case I did some calculations.  If as I am intending to do live to 100 when you divide the price by the amount of years I have left its vertially nothing! Its currently residing at Bluebird and every time I go to stock our concession there I give it a little pat and tell it it will soon be home. So beautiful is this desk that it literally stopped me in my tracks, made me dizzy made my heart beat so fast I thought I was going to die!. As Rachel Zoe would say it knocks everything else out of the park.

We have the day off today, Maud is off to her new school for a few hours and we are off to Ikea to buy a few bits and bobs. We may or may not be speaking depending on how it goes on the desk front – but I wanted to show you how fabulously you can make something from Ikea look beyond gorgeous.  Marie Claire Maison (super fabulous French interiors mag) shot my sisters and her boyfriends apartment beautifully (it appears in their current issue) and one of my favourite shots is of their Ikea floating shelf and our bookcase wallpaper. It just goes to show that you don’t need to spend tons of money to get a totally unique, fabulous look. Obvioulsy when it comes to my desk this argument does not apply – OK – normally it does – today it doesn’t!

A floating lacquer shelf from Ikea looks super cool against our bookcase wallpaper. Prints and quirky finds from flea markets add to the eclectic vibe – love love love it.

My Festive Life

Hugest thank you to Livingetc for featuring me in their December issue yabbering about all things festive. Its a fab issue jam packed with fabulous festive ideas – am feeling very Christmassy indeed. If I could buy my tree now I would!

Its a short post today – am off to Bluebird at this very early hour  (our new concession) for a walk through and a stock take and then stuck in meetings for the rest of the day. Yikes I want to make Christmas cakes and decorate the house instead!.

Animal Chic

I think I am getting a little obsessed – obsessed with dogs that is. Our new range of lighting (still in production I hate to say) is a tongue in cheek collection of dog lights. Its amazing how having an animal inspired product in your home immediately lightens the mood and turns it from plain to playful in a nano second. That doesn’t just have to have be lights of course both Jonathan Adler and Kelly Wearstler are huge fans of placing animals throughout their installations (see below).

Its amazing how an interior that is relatively straight laced gets a big dose of playfulness with the presence of the lifesize dog. Love it – now I just need a piano to put him on and I’m there.

Of course real life ones add oodles of character too here is my dog – taken by the fabulous photographer Ray Man who was shooting my house on Monday for  the Times Magazine.

Excuse her wet beard – she had just returned from her first morning at school and was gasping!

Apologises

One thousand apologises for the lack of posts recently my schedule is becoming more and more frantic and whilst I will try my upmost to post most days with the holidays fast approaching and it being our craziest time of year – there might be a few gaps here and there.

Yesterday I spent the most delightful day with a team from the Times Newspaper – they were photographing me preparing my house for entertaining and the holidays – the feature comes out  in the Saturday Times magazine on the 21st of this month – so hugely excited about that.Maud (my puppy who had been been to school in the morning – it was her first day) was beyond good and modelled beautifully!  Now that I am very much in the holiday spirit I have started to think about place settings since we are hosting Christmas this year. Of course one need look no further than the queen of entertaining Ms Martha Stewart to see some of her fun ideas – I am deliberating between going fun and funky with the settings or glamorous and grown up – oh what to do – decisions, decisions.

Simple, super glam and quite beautiful

OR

Funky and fun, sweet and cute!

 

Apologises

Have just looked at my new post and noticed the font has gone a bit weird which under normal circumstances I would look into but there is a courier bashing on the door, Maud my puppy is tearing up the bin and the phone keeps ringing non stop. The drunken light (we house a series of drunken pieces of furniture in the store) has obviously had one to many over night and fallen completly off the table knocking over everything in its wake! I want to go home and start the day again.

Ramblings

We are producing our own line of lighting which I am incredibly excited about but to say it’s been one of the hugest learning curve of my year is a smidge of an understatement. I wanted to get our lights produced in the UK as opposed to China and beyond but that meant far higher production costs which worried me. It also meant if we produced locally we could guarantee a far superior quality as I could easily whiz up north andmicro manage every step of the way should I need to (being a total control freak this appealed greatly)! And now we have our poodle lamps made by a small ceramic studio in Stoke and I have to say I am so glad we didn’t go down the mass market route. Being handmade there is something intrinsically beautiful about them – ok they are not cheap and therefore not easily obtainable but I think they have an inherent individually that you wouldn’t see if they were mass-produced.This in the most rambling intro ever got me to thinking how like my lamps we want everything in our homes to mean something to tell a narrative. And so below – a few spaces that marry handmade objects with vintage finds. God save good taste even if it means sometimes we have to bash it over the head, knock it sideways and revamp it a smidge with the odd kitsch yet beautiful poodle lamp.

 

Below Julianna Moore’s NY pad which marries hand crafted with vintage with modern – just beatiful.

Planning your space

With the holiday season fast approaching why is that we (I should say I) look over our homes with a most critical eye. We are hosting Christmas this year and suddenly everything looks shabby and half finished. The whole house needs a fresh coat of paint, the ground floor needs to be transformed into a library, the hallway into a cosy little gallery. The bedroom needs to be relocated to another floor and the office to another room – my oh my I am exhausted just thinking about it. Mentioning such plans to my husband over the weekend was not met with the kind of response I was hoping for. Hey ho as they say – will keep working on it. First up on the revamp plan is the study more out of necessity than anything else since we have come to the conclusion that we simply cannot work together in the same room.  Graham is a clutter bug with heaps of mess all ovcr the place (breakfast bowls, papers, and god knows what else). I on the other hand cannot function in such clutter I need my scented candle, a fire flickering in the hearth and some jazz on in the background. So on putting together a mood board for myself I came across this image which I thought would make a very sweet home office. Its cosy not clinical and I like its rustic charm. Whether I can convince hubby this is exactly what we need is a whole different matter!

From drab to fab

Before I start yabbering on about design I must mention that my publishers have just told me that my book is being translated into German, French & Spanish so am incredibly excited about that – thank you Germany, France & Spain – that has brightened up my thursday morning no end.

So onto the business in hand – creating a stylish retreat takes a bit of work and a big dose of creativity but the good news is it doesn’t have to cost a load of money. By hunting around thrift shops and flea markets you can piece together some fabulous unique finds that make you want to hang out at home and never leave.

Suddenly I find myself really into signage and letters – I love how they transform walls adding instant personality. Old letters and signage are quite easy to hunt out on ebay and at flea markets. My sister used some old bus roll signage on her bedroom wall which I adore and I have also just come across a design by Nate Burkus which surprisingly I am rather liking. Mr Burkus’s style is a little too uptight and structured for me but I find myself drawn to the image below. The  painting totally transforms this room and I totally love  the black and white link between the floor and the artwork. Now if I could just paint the walls a colour and unstyle those cushions would totally move in!

My sisters bedroom and her bus roll signage which she has used as wallpaper – clever, clever, clever (lets not tell her that)!

Photography Graham Atkins Hughes

Giftable rabbits

Love this time of year – deliveries are coming in literally every day transforming the store for the holiday season. One of the biggest surprises for my sister and I were the success of our rabbit money boxes – we played it safe and ordered merely a hundred of them first time round and within a few weeks they completely sold out. More are being delivered as we speak but have just found out from the supplier that they are not making them anymore so we have the last 68 left in the world and 20 people are already on the waiting list – which means I only get to have 20 or so in our store and 20 in our concession at Bluebird yikes!

Here they are cool hey!