Furniture

The Laura Ashley website’s sofas section makes choosing your perfect sofa easier than ever. It uses a simple step-by-step process, where you choose your style of sofa, then choose from a huge selection of gorgeous Laura Ashley fabrics, and your new sofa design is delivered to your door.

Choosing Colour

One of the hardest parts of designing a living space that’s perfect for you is choosing your colour palette. With paint suppliers now able to paint-match to any colour you choose, your choices for wall colour are now almost limitless. That kind of choice is brilliant, allowing you more freedom to create your perfect space, but it can be a little overwhelming too. If you’re having trouble visualising your living room in a range of shades, or are just looking for some colour palette inspiration, the Dulux paint site has a really useful Mouse Painter tool that you can use for free. You can upload photos of your own living room, then click on their paint colour range to see the room automatically redesigned in that colour – a way to instantly imagine how your own room would look in that shade.

Chic and Unique

The internet provides a whole new way to seek out furniture and home décor items for your living room that are completely unique. Whether you’re looking for something quirky, classic antiques, or handmade designs, sites like Etsy, where designers sell their own handmade wares, or eBay, where you can get your hands on antique bargains, make for great home shopping options.

Do It Yourself

As well as helping you choose how to decorate your living room, the internet is packed with useful resources to help you out with DIY tasks. From step-by-step guides on how to put up shelving, to tutorial videos on how to lay laminate flooring, if you’re a DIY novice, make use of the DIY help that’s available online and you’ll save on the cost of hiring joiners and carpenters to complete your ideal room design.

While i’ d love to be able to buy a new sofa, at the moment it just isn’t possible – my credit card balance certainly wouldn’t agree and it ‘s not covered by our insurance.

So, this got me thinking – how could I spruce up our sofa, without getting rid of it entirely? The answer that I came up with is: throws. Throws are a great way to cover up fading furniture and to stop even more wear and tear. They aren’t a permanat solution by any means, but for a few months, it will make my living room feel cosy rather than threadbare, so i’ve been scouring the web to find the best throws out there!

Here are some of my favourites! Matching the deep red of my sofa is this lush basket weave throw from online retailer very.co.uk. Plus, I bought 2 of them and managed to save some pennies!

I’m also a massive fan of a lose knit throw, the perfect one comes fromM&S – it’s not red, but I think that it would complement the room well, especially if I add in a nice mix of cushions!

Well I think I might have come up with the perfect solution this year, well for my female friends anyways. It is so simple that I’m kicking myself for not having thought of it before. There is one thing every woman has no matter her style, tastes or budget, that is jewellery. Whether it is a big collection or small, made up of expensive or cheap items we all have jewellery and more often than not no where to put it.

That is why this year my friends are all getting jewellery stands. Not only are these practical, there is finally somewhere to put all those bits on a night and you don’t have to spend hours hunting for a missing earring but it can also be very pretty and decorative.

There are a number of different styles of jewellery stands on the market at the moment. You can get everything from the traditional jewellery box with drawers for each item to moulds of hands to hang your pieces off. There are also jewellery trees and small figures of dress maker’s dolls with hooks to pop your necklaces on. Those are just a few of the popular ones, there are as many different types of jewellery boxes on the market as peoples imaginations let them discover.

Finally the perfect present for friends, sorry guys until they make watch stands it will be the old backup of alcohol or novelty socks!

When buying a wardrobe it is tempting to buy the biggest one possible, but this is not always advisable. Before you step foot in a shop it is important to measure the space you want the wardrobe to go in, along with bed, dressing table and chest of drawers. If you see anything you like while shopping stop to measure it and make sure it can fit in its allotted space. If you are not sure a good way to test if items will fit in your room is to cut out the size of the bases in cardboard and place them on the floor, if it feels tight with just the bases imagine how cramped it will feel with the furniture in there. It’s also important to give consideration to getting furniture through doorways and up stairs; this is where flat packs have the edge over solid furniture.

No one wants furniture that clashes, especially if it is new so of you find a style you like try to get all your bedroom furniture in the same style not just the wardrobe.

Storage is another important aspect of wardrobes, after all this is their main purpose. Before buying a wardrobe check what clothes you have and how best to store them, do you need a wardrobe with a long rail or do you need shelves in there?

So this year why not choose ginger. Now this is quite a controversial choice for cakes but when you think about it who doesn’t like gingerbread? Each Christmas almost every house has a small gingerbread house in it and the beauty of making your own ginger cakes, buns or bread is that you can put as much or as little ginger in as you want. If you know the people who will eat the cakes love ginger put a load in there but if you are not sure or just want a delicate flavour there just add a touch in there.

Ginger is a lovely flavour which goes really well with a lot of others. Why not try mixing it with nutmeg or even cinnamon to give cakes and buns a different flavour. Lime also goes perfectly with ginger flavouring.

With ginger cakes icing is a great way to add a bit of a splash, why not try custard flavourings of icing, or add a bit of custard in to the middle of the cake.

There is so much you can do with ginger cakes why not go wild and try out some flavours you would never consider, you may be surprised by the results.

You only get one mum so why not show her just how special she is with a gift package; why not take a luxury cruise down the Thames or a trip on the London Eye. Or why not treat her to an amazing meal at a luxury restaurant

An ideal option for mothering Sunday is an afternoon tea cruise down the River Thames. This cruise takes an hour and half and will include a traditional afternoon tea with sandwiches, scones and cakes. There will be a live sightseeing commentary throughout the trip which provides an interesting and amusing insight in to the thousands of year history on the river Thames. There is also free entertainment for kids in the form of a face painter to keep the little ones amused while you have some quality time with your mum.

If you are looking for something a bit more different why not treat your mum to a trip to Paris, with it only being just over two hours away on the Eurostar this makes a perfect day trip. Stroll down the Seine and see the Eiffel Tower light up at night.

With my boyfriend moving in recently I thought that storage options might be quite a good idea, not a very ‘sexy’ option but quite practical. I always thought women had a lot of knick knacks but it turns out guys have just as many if not more! The only trouble with that is I have limited shelf and top space in my room so it is looking rather cluttered at the moment. I’m not so unromantic that I’ll just get him storage boxes so I’m trying to find some twist upon the concept and find a romantic gesture to it. I think I might have found a couple of options and a few sideways thoughts that have distracted me slightly. My favourite ‘distraction’ was a photo tree, it is a simple concept where you have bendy wires with clips on the end to pop pictures in, a great idea to fill it with photos of us but does rather add to the knick knack collection!

So I’ve come across a great storage solution that includes the photo idea with the storage solution, you can get wooden boxes that have spaces in the lid to place photos in. These boxes come in all sizes and shapes with compartments and without. These are perfect for the gist, I can add in any pictures I want to help brighten up the room and add his touch to it while providing a great storage solution for his bits and bobs.

After Christmas it can be hard to know exactly what to do with the cards you have received and any leftover wrapping paper. Sometimes you can receive some really nice looking cards that you just don’t want to throw them away but at the same time it seems a real shame to keep them in a box somewhere in the back of a cupboard. The same can be said about wrapping paper, you can get some really pretty ones that it does seem a shame to use them as wrapping paper only to be ripped off the presents and chucked away not to see the light of day again.

However if you think outside the box then it is quite easy to find some uses for both cards and wrapping paper. My favourite use for cards is as wall decorations; you can either put them in picture frames and dot them around the house or why not make a collage out of them. Buy a big frame and arrange the cards in it, this way you can easily group the cards.

With wrapping paper I find the best way to display it is to place it on a frame or even a box lid, simply wrap the frame with the wrapping paper and there you have it. An individual wall decoration that you can place anywhere in your home to help brighten up a plain wall or add a bit of contrast or texture to a room.

This principal can also be used with birthday cards or a variety of everyday items. I’ve seen it done with samples of carpets, very similar to wall hangings, or even with pressed flowers for a bouquet that has sentimental value. The only limit to what you can make to brighten up your walls is your imagination.

We’ve all been there, you think you know who it is your buying for each year and suddenly someone turns up on your doorstep with a present that you didn’t expect. If you have all your presents under the tree it can be a bit awkward to quickly tell them you haven’t wrapped theirs yet and will pop it around later, less so if they can see you haven’t many presents under there! So over the years I’ve developed a strategy for dealing with these unexpected Christmas visitors.

Now these may sound a bit boring but they are great generic presents. Throughout the year I tend to collect mugs, often I’ll find myself in a little village shop somewhere and they will have some mugs that I really like. Now my mug collection is very full because of this fascination and this is how my Christmas gift idea started. I had one on the side and someone turned up, in a panic I shoved some of the sweets I had made in to the mug and quickly wrapped it. Surprisingly they loved it and a tradition was born.

Now I keep about 4 or 5 mugs to one side filled with the sweets I have made for christmas just waiting for name tags to be popped on. These are great not only for my friends, but also kids friends or family friends, in fact anyone that has slipped your mind! But it is worth keeping a note of those who have bought you the present just so you don’t forget them the next year as they might get a bit suspicious if you give them a mug 5 years in a row!

Another downside to country living is that many of the available work and leisure options are based in the city, making it more difficult to maintain working and social life from the country. Country life is unlikely to suit people who enjoy the pace and excitement of life in an urban environment, but represents a preferable option for those who find these qualities associated with city life, stressful. The kinds of homes most commonly available in city locations, such as flats and semi-detached houses, require us to be able to live in close proximity to others for long periods of time – which some find oppressive.

Essentially whether you consider country living to be a better or worse option than city life will depend on whether you prefer a quiet, slower pace of life, or whether your preference is for excitement and proximity to other people.