Homey Inspiration ~Kitchen

Okay, I'm well aware that in buying a home for the first time, particularly with my wage literally just topping up our income many of my ideas are either beyond my reach or well in the future...but that doesn't stop me looking around!I've got some great ideas I would love to implement but we'll have to see how many of them are actually plausible.

The kitchen is an odd one for me, I'm not a great cook, and since Face became a chef I can't even impress him with my paltry attempts XD But everyone dreams of a nice kitchen, right? The thing is, with me being (in my mind) the 'secondary cook' I'm not sure it's really my decision what goes on in there! And as you can see, our kitchen is crazy thin as well, it's called a Galley Kitchen and Face reckons it's gonna be super convenient to just be able to turn around to reach stuff while cooking but I'm not completely convinced! However I'm positive about it and I can see it working- but I have been looking into ideas that will make it an even nicer space x3


Buzzfeed has taken over from whoever posted this originally :x I love this idea of lights under the cupboards above the benches to throw some light on what you're doing. Even though the kitchen has sun-facing windows, I imagine when it's dark out it'll be a case of trying not to get in my own light as I cook, and this would totally solve that problem. At the moment we're also looking to keep the kitchen cupboards natural as it adds to the cottage feel so under-lights will also help brighten the room up a bit. I'm also pretty keen on the plugs too, but I'm not sure of the complications of installing those.


Huffinton Post Talking of lighting, as you can see there is a rather generic light bar running across the ceiling, while although quite nice I also have plans for changing >:D Now I do quite enjoy the whole mason jar fad, but I have a feeling that it's very soon going to be a dated fashion and it does play on my mind as being so hipster-turned-massive it's just not cool. However, these hanging lights ideas really catch my attention and I imagine would look right at home in a kitchen like this, and if I picked the right bulbs may also bring quite a lot of warmth too. I really like the 3 or 4 large metal lamps, but with nothing else metal to bring it together, I'm leaning more towards the clusters of bare bulbs. I've even seen some cool different shaped bulbs in Asda which would really suit this idea...

 
Habitus Living & Jenna Sue Design I hate the tiles that are currently in! They remind me of our work logo and it's something I definitely do not need to see when I think I've escaped the place for the day! So I'm hoping to get the tiles replaced as a top priority XD Even if the other things here may only be dreams or ideals, this one will be a reality! At the moment I'm thinking between one or the other of these ideas. I think white is best to brighten the space, and the triangular tiles are pretty unique and give a really nice look. But I also I really like the idea of the brickwork but I think in our case it would just be too dark. Not to mention I imagine it would be a nightmare to clean! But that's where the white brick-shaped tiles come in...hmmm, I think this is one I'll have to put to Face to see what he reckons!


Savvy Home Blog One of the other really weird things about this kitchen (which you can't really see in the photo) is that despite everything looking so pretty, the sink is like this huge plastic thing, similar to a caravan sink! Very strange and not really suited to the rest of the décor. I would love something like this farmhouse sink instead. It totally fits with the cottage look and you can fit plenty in it, and it's easy to clean! It also reminds me a little of the washroom sinks we used to have in New Zealand when we lived there, even though those were actually completely different :x
Do you see what I mean when I say I'm going to need a lot of monies? I'll keep you updated once we're settled as to whether any of these happen or if I just learn to live with the terrible work-related tiles! What would you have in your dream kitchen?



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Sunday Catch-up ~Random Happenings

Another week gone by already. I can't believe how fast this year is going! And still no true signs of summer, I think I'm going to have to give up on it and just look forward to autumn ;p Anyway, instead of looking too far ahead shall we look back on the week I just had?

Earlier in the week we went to visit Face's parents, they are getting their garden remodelled and their dog Brandy is playing the 'poor pup' role by sitting in the muddy areas and chewing on bits of stick he can find...even though he has plenty of fine toys XD

The garden is getting on now and we've got many, many tomatoes to eat XD Some are better than others but they're all good. Earlier in the week we had a massive fry-up where these guys were the star of the show, I'm looking forward to a few more ripening up x3

My day off was a pretty nice day, with a little bit of sun here and there. Dad wanted to go out and I suggested we head out to Sutton Coldfield to hunt for more of those owl sculptures. We ended up having a really good day looking around an area I'd not been before and we found all the owls but one! In a visitor center was this fox, all posed with the other stuffed animals. Apparently he was road kill, poor thing.

You can tell the year is getting on when the rowan berries start to appear, but they look good anyway, right?

Face's parents have both had new cars recently and so they've given us this car to help us move! It's an estate so I won't have to keep trying to wodge things into my car XD And it's super fancy in the mean time too, at least it seems it! It has a large glass roof, many different electronic features and even a 5-cd changer XD It's pretty cool!
Have you had a busy week too?



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Saturday Scavenges ~Week 4

Well, we all know how this works by now so shall we check out a few of this week's finds?

A Form of Currency / Add Something Orange
When Dad got back from his holiday, he brought back a few odds and ends, including this Singaporean money. It's really pretty and has some nice little pictures on it, so I thought that it could go in here XD I had also considered it for the 'something that was given to you' page, but didn't want to end up with too many coins in the book!
The alteration was pretty easy- add something orange. I decided to do a basic drawing of the Singaporean skyline, including the skytower which is also on one of the coins :]

A Post-it Note / Wild Card
I didn't have to go far to find this one- as I say in the 'story' piece, I got these dead-man post-its from Face for xmas XD They sit on my desk and help me remember which photos I'm editing next.
The alteration was 'wild card', so I chose to find as many post-its to decorate the page with. They are all found at work, where we seem to have quite a lot of this sort of thing.

A Photo of Yourself / Draw the Opposite
I didn't think I was going to do this one easily as I don't really have photos taken, but as I was looking through a photobox I have the other day I came across this polaroid selfie I took with Face around March. It's one of the few polaroid selfies I've ever taken, and one of even fewer that have turned out quite well XD
The alteration I flicked to for this page was to 'draw the opposite'. I immediately thought to draw the same photo with us both in my furry style, but as I was inking it it occurred to me that that isn't really the opposite of the photo, more just an alternate verse...I'm not sure I'm done with this page yet.

Several Different Kinds of Leaves / Age It
I have a weird habit of pressing leaves. I don't do it very often, but every now and then I'll come across a leaf or petal that I just want to keep, I guess it's part of my hoarding nature :x I put it to good use here though as I picked out a few for this page.
I kinda cheated on the alteration to 'age it', as I explained in the book itself, these leaves are from between 2010-2012, I think they're already aged! Not to mention that pressing leaves is quite an aged hobby anyway...

Something Orange / Invent a Story
Finding something orange was easy, these little dinosaurs have been waiting on my desk for me to do something with them for a while! I got them out of Christmas crackers are work, where we buy such cheap cracker the 'prizes' inside are always super lame. But last year, these dinosaurs were included and made my work xmas period XD They are so cute!
The alteration was to invent a story. I really don't like doing things like this, it just feels so lame and it's really not visually appealing. I eventually sucked it up and wrote a little bit in an attempt to do what i would've done when I was about 7 or 8, tell a little story about how all the dinosaurs came to know each other *sigh*
Well, I hope you enjoyed looking into the Pocket Scavenger this week, let me know if there is a particular page you would like to see x3



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Pet Feature ~Dash the Degu

I thought today I would introduce you to one of my babies- Dash the degu!
Pets are a pretty big part of my life, I certainly wasn't very old hen I first started asking for an animal to look after, though I must admit I wasted a years asking for a dog alone before realising that just wasn't happening :x
A few years ago I had a 'pet boom' where Dad seemed to allow me every rodent I requested, and the degus were a result of me asking to get some rodents larger than gerbils after my last pair had died and left behind a massive cage. I'd read up on them quite a lot and and found they could become very tame, so when I saw 4 girls being advertised for only £50 with a large cage, I rung up and was soon going to collect them!

The old owners told us that the four had been saved from becoming snake food as babies and had been happily living together as pets since then, about 18 months later. They hadn't given them names as they were hard to tell apart, so when I got home I started figuring out who was who and assigning names- in order of the photo above- there was Indie, named for music but decided her namesake should be the movie explorer; Juno, the matronly one (who Dash looks lot like now, come to think of it!); Dash herself, named because she used to like speeding away and finally Kendrix, who was slightly chestnut coloured compared to the others :]
Because they came with a cage they were used to I didn't worry about putting them into the cage I had initially planned for them, and they went to live in the conservatory. At first I used to barricade parts of the conservatory off and let them out to run around, which they quite enjoyed, but I didn't really foresee what little escape artists they were! After a few escapes leading to hours chasing them round the floor and furniture, it was decided that they could only come out into ourdoors pens from then on XD

Dash herself has changed a lot over the years. Starting off as a sleek, shy degu, she's now feeling her age a little I think, and has become a little more rotund and fluffy. She's never become as tame as the ones I read about online right at the beginning, or even as outgoing as her siblings, but she certainly has her own charms and moments of boldness, usually encouraged by a treat or two. (How do you think I got these photos? xp)

Considering she's been a solo degu for some time now, she's lasting well and other than a small teeth problem her health seems to be holding up too x3 She hates having her teeth clipped (understandably!) but it must be done and she is unfazed by it at the end when I pass her the biggest degu-safe biscuit I can find so she can go sit in her cage and get used to her new teeth length!
So that's my Dashie! Surprisingly, perhaps, not named after a My Little Pony :x Do you have degus? They seem like a pretty uncommon pet, although the ones at Pets at Home constantly change, so I guess they're getting more popular ^^



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The Big Hoot 2015

On Sunday I had a great time exploring Birmingham with a friend looking for owls! There is a city-wide art installation called The Big Hoot, which encourages people to go on an owl hunt, looking for 89 painted owl statues. Many of them are in the center of Birmingham, so that's where we started, as right as we got off the train the first one we found was in the train station!
Every time we found one I got a photo and my friend scanned the QR code on the base to register it into the app. It's basically just a big game to get a lot of exercise, see quite a lot of Birmingham and ultimately, raise money for the Birmingham Children's Hospital as once the end of September hits all the owls will be taken away to be auctioned in October to raise funds.
We ended up finding a total of 41 owls on Sunday in about 4 or 5 hours! I'll post the others another day, as this post started getting image heavy really fast.
Would you go hunting for owls? I think it's a lot of fun to have an art installation that has so much detail, though it may be the collector in me that enjoyed it most as I went from place to place to make sure I had every one I could get in the time I had xD



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Project Wednesday ~Bonsai

This is one I don't talk about too often yet I actually have quite a collection of!
A few years ago I really got into the idea of bonsai and started reading up about them a lot. I bought my first little bonsai, a 'Carmona', or Fukien Tea from Dobbies. It was adorable and lasted about 3 years before sadly it died of a disease. I don't know what brought it on. My only issue with it was that it had obviously been a lot taller at some point and it's top had been snipped off to make it bush out into a bonsai.

So, from there I decided to stop buying bonsai and instead attempt to grow my own! I have had varying luck with this method as well though. I tried oaks a few times as we have a large oak tree behind our house and although I kept them going for a couple of years, for some reason I couldn't get them past that. It's a shame as I really liked this one with a large twist in one of it's branches. I found it this way out the back of the house around 2008, it wasn't engineered by me!

Basically my ideas for what species to grow as a bonsai now is 'any small tree I find growing in the garden'. I have 5 going at the moment, and not to jinx myself but other than one, they have all been going for at least 4 years now! This one is the exception, it's a yew I bought on sale in Tesco for a quid as when I saw it I straight away thought of bonsai. It's the first tree I've bought since the fukien tea, and this one isn't even a bonsai already XD I read that they should go in the ground ideally for a couple of years virtually unchecked so as to really put on some chunky trunk size, so as I thought I may be moving from home soon I put it in a large pot instead. I'm still considering whether it will actually go in the ground when I move out.

This is one of my oldest ones at about 4 years old, a maple tree I picked from the garden. I put it in the old bonsai pot and that's where it's been since. I have tilted it purposely, but in the last couple of years I've not really been sure of the shape I've been aiming for from it, so at the moment it's in some kind of perpetual fall.

This is my biggest bonsai, and the only one I've grown from seed myself. It's a canadian horse chestnut, so if it ever fruits it's conker shells will be smooth instead of spikey :] I got its conker from a tree in Bridgenorth, the only canadian chestnut I know of. I think at the moment it's about 4 years old, and I'm hoping to keep it this size. I'm hoping in the future it'll get a few more branches too :x

These pair are my two cherry trees. These things pop up in the garden all the time, and so one year I decided to bonsai one. I'd been reading a lot about tiny bonsai, only 5cm tall, so I decided that that's where I would go with it! It was a tiny twig for the first year, so the next year I added a friend, another find from the garden XD Group growings are also a thing with bonsai, although I'm not fully decided if that's what I'm going to end up doing. They hate being this size though, every year putting more effort into growing random branches far beyond the shape I'm trying to maintain. Sometimes I catch them in time to shape them to grow where I want with wire, as you may be able to see here.


You can see how much I've stunted the bonsai cherries when you consider that the oldest of the pair is about 5 years old, the same age as the cherry tree that Dad planted in our front garden a few years ago! I'm not sure cherry was the right choice to try and go this small with as they are fast growers with big leaves, but i am learning more and hopefully next year I hope to have smaller leaves too x3
That's half the fun of growing bonsai, although it's a slow hobby, seeing them develop and shaping them into what they are is a lot of fun!
Do you like bonsai or just think they should be left to grow as they please?



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Seven Awesome Stationery Must-Haves

Stork Scissors: eBay ~ World Washi Tapes: Hobbycraft
Two-in-One Pen/Pencil: Muji ~ Stapleless Stapler: The Journal Shop
Guilded Feathers Journal: The Fox & Star ~ Dino Stickers: Paperchase ~ Kraft Box: Paperchase

I'm starting to feel that crafting itch again, as at the moment I'm only playing with my Pocket Scavenger. I usually have a bunch of things on the go, so it's pretty weird to only do one! However, I do have a Smashbook upstairs waiting for me to be ready to start cutting things out and 'smashing' them in! Many of the pages already have things between them just waiting to be stuck down! :x
Of course, because I've already got all the components to do that I'm thinking maybe I'd like to play with some other things, however I'm trying to save for stuff like fridges and couches now, so I thought I would just go window shopping!
In my mooching about I found seven things that are almost too good to pass up! Just look at these things x3 I've wanted stork scissors for some time now, they have such a cute vintage feel, and in fact I think I may just make an exception to my no-spending rule for these, I can totally imagine myself using them in winter when I'm hoping to focus more on cross-stitching x3 *daydreams*
Aha, anyway, I also found loads of other cute things! The washi tapes are Tim Holtz, a brand that I usually find very 'samey' but I think I can let that slide for these washi, travel themed stuff is one of my weaknesses ;o; Sadly, the price of these puts me off the most, at £8 for the three tapes, ouch!
The pen/pencil combo is a cool idea that I've enjoyed in the past. I bought a pen similar to this last time I was in NZ at Smiggle, and I loved it so much I ran the pen out. Sad times. Another cool idea though is the stapleless stapler, although I may be thinking a little too much of work as this would be really useful! Our stapler frequently has no staples so this would be perfect. I think I would have to attach it to either myself or our desk though as I would fear it disappearing :x
And just look at this beautiful feathers journal, like I need another journal to sit to one side until I decide to write in it 5 years down the line....but the pages edges are even guilded. I think it would've looked even nicer with a few metallic highlights on the cover image to match the pages, and I'm not one for an excess of shiny. The feathers just sell this for me really though...
The journal was looking quite mature, so what better to complement it than shiny dinosaur stickers? x3 How cute are these!
Lastly I was looking at the kraft box as more of a memories box that I could decorate. I've got one of my pinterest pins stuck in my mind- using a box for every holiday we go on to store trinkets and a travel journal of the trip. Maybe I would be the only one to look at them, but I still think that they would be worth putting together x3
Would you like anything from this little collection, or are you more into something else?



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Sunday Catch-up ~Art Week

Well, it's been a good week, and I've got a few photos to put up for a change :]

I had a bunch of night shifts this week which was great for doing whatever I wanted in the daytime, with just a bit of extra sleep-in time XD So one evening, Dad & I went on a little drive around to enjoy the evening and stopped at the Telford Steam Railway for a while. There was even a gent who worked there just doing a couple of things to one of trains and he let us in for a closer look and told us a little info about the place, how cool was that? x3

Another week, more pretty lilies x3 These yellowy ones are the only ones of their type in the garden.

Later on in the week I went with a friend to see 'Hiroshige’s Japan', an exhibit in the Wolverhampton Art Gallery. I'm not sure if I was allowed to take photos...but it didn't say I couldn't, so? Aha. It was worth the look anyway, although it wasn't a large collection. I learnt a bit about wood-block printing and got a lot of wanderlust. This was one of my favourite paintings, showing a man riding his horse into a small village in the snow.

I'm not sure if you can see what's going on here, but basically Face and I took a drive after winning a table on ebay xD When we collected it we hadn't measured the car or the table so it was kinda pot luck as to whether it would fit or not. As you can see, it did! Juuuust. I have a rather small Daihatsu and it still managed to get a full size table and 4 chairs in the back XD Now the challenge is to find somewhere in the house to put it until we move into our place.

Today a friend and I met up in Wolves and went to check out a little car display at Bantock House. There were only like 6 old cars there, all of this type (I don't really know what you would call this kind of spoke-wheeled car) but we had a look and got some photos.

Later we went onto Birmingham and spent hours mooching around the place looking for these owl sculptures that'd all been painted by different artists in varying themes. It was a lot of fun, I like collecting and I like mooching around, so this was my kind of day! We found just over 30 in the centre of Brum, which I'll tell you more about another time :] We then went on to have all-you-can-eat sushi for tea, where we rolled out from about an hour and a half later. OMG sushi is so filling x.X
I hope you had a good week too? Sadly I'm back on a normal shift pattern next week but hopefully I'll find more fun (& cheap things!) to do x3



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Saturday Scavenges ~Week 3

Well, we all know how this works by now so shall we check out a few of this week's finds?

A Drawing (Not done by you) / Wild Card
This one was another work find. While clearing up after an Xmas party last year I can across this doodle on one of the tables, and with the little dog too it was just too cute to pass up and so I put it in the pages of this book when I brought it back home, just waiting for when I was ready to start!
The alteration I flicked to was 'Wild Card', so I chose to colour in the lines of the little pictures x3

A Postcard / Add Polka Dots
My friend gave me this postcard on her return from a daytrip. She found it completely hilarious and was sure I would too...I'm not sure if she realises that the modern day use of the word 'crap' comes from this poor guys surname attached to such a business! Face told her she can't give us a postcard without it being written on, so she even wrote us a little message on the back XD
Adding polka dots was easy, although I went totally uncreative and literally just spotted rainbow colours around. The delight of this page now is the decoration now shows on the page spreads on either side x.X The Pocket Scavenger's paper just isn't made to stand up to felt tips in the way the WTJ's was!

A Fortune from a Fortune Cookie / Add one Never-ending Line
Feeling particularly miserable after a stressful morning (all mornings are stressful to me though tbf...) I found myself in Shrewsbury so I decided to pop into the Japanese market there to have a mooch. I was half planning on getting some japanese tableware but instead just ended up with some snacks, including this fortune cookie. It didn't last long :x The alteration was to add a never ending line, so that was pretty easy too and I threw a few little doodles into the line for effect XD Can't say I've ever had to try drawing a fortune cookie with one line before.

A Napkin / Invite a Bunch of Friends
This is a plain page, and I'm not very keen on it so I thought I would just get it out of the way. The napkin is (obviously) from pizza express and when I flicked through for the alteration I landed in 'invite a bunch of friends' which seemed pretty fitting as Face and I had gone out with a bunch of friends to the restaurant. I'm not sure that's really what it meant, but it worked out too well in my mind to pass up.

A Hair Sample / Add some kind of Explosion
This hair sample came from a fringe trim the other day. In fact, I'm not really big of sticking hair into books and stuff, but since I had it ready to go in the bin I thought a little could come in useful for this prompt. It also shows that once my hair was a pretty light blonde!
The alteration was to add some kind of explosion, and as soon as I read that I thought of fireworks as the lazy way I'd stuck the hair in XD I actually still have some spider-web ink from when I was a kid and I'm sure it'd be perfect for drawing fireworks, just I couldn't find it when I was doing this, of course!
Well, that's some of this week's scavenges XD Did anything stand out to you?



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We Bought a House!

Yes, you read that right, nearly 9 years together and Face and I have finally bought our own house!


I've been saving up for quite a long time now and earlier this year we decided to start looking. When we found this place, it was too quirky to pass up. We're not exactly standard ourselves so it made sense to buy a house like no one else's XD
We put in an offer in around mid-July and it was accepted! Since then things have been slowly progressing, but it was only last week our mortgage was finally approved and a date set for the 'signing off', for mid-September! It is finally beginning to feel real, and I feel I can now announce that it is happening!
It still feels totally surreal, I've never lived away from a parent other than when Dad goes away on holiday for a few months. Maybe put it this way- I've never really paid my own bills other than my phone and car stuff! I'm not very mature for my age, I admit, but it's not that I don't think I can be and I am hoping I'm ready for all the responsibility of owning my own home and keeping on top of everything. I'm already thinking I'm not going to enjoy having to wash my own dishes whenever I eat!
So, shall I show you around a little?

First up is the sitting room, and don't worry, that carpet is going. OMG. The shame is that it's a really good quality one, but just look at that pattern. I think I'm going to have seizures. Maybe I'll try and cover it with rugs or something until we can sort it out!
Other than that, I'm excited for big bay/patio doors that open out into the garden and will cool the house in summer, and let in so much light x3
I'm hoping for a corner couch in here at some point but for now we've been given a leather 3 piece suite off Face's parents, so that will do until I drag enough money together for one I really like!

Moving on, this is the kitchen, it is small but Face is super excited for it, he reckons it'll be really convenient to have everything practically within arms reach. I'm not so fussed, so long as some time soon I can swap out those tiles! The company I work for has a logo which definitely comes to mind when I see these, and everyone I work with has also picked up on it, ouch! Other than that though I think this is a warm room and I can imagine myself pottering about here x3

The house has 3 bedrooms, but one has been converted into a study. Face and I are planning to have one of the smaller rooms each, so I can have all my craft stuff and computer together in one room, and he can do whatever XD I'm not sure who's having which room yet! This one is the smallest room, but is actually a little bigger than the photo makes it look.

It's pretty obvious what this one is all about! It's not long been refurbed according to some of the documents we were sent from the solicitors and it certainly has something about it. I can't wait to get my blue-and-white nautical theme going on in here x3 I've already been scoping out which shops have the coolest stuff!
Well if you can't tell, I'm pretty excited! Remember back to the very first post I made when I said things were going to be happening for me this coming year? Well, you're gonna be hearing all about this for a while, I hope you're ready!



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