Home improvements

I have finally finished my bedroom;

I love it! It's much calmer and peaceful. I need to find this for the rest of the house now or I might just spend my days  in bed! LOL

I do want to get new accessories, I would like a lampshade as I don't have one. Also a bedside lamp as I knocked mine over whilst decorating and have broken it. It's glass so is now quite dangerous. I have spotted a lampshade I like and it is currently on sale for £7.99 so I shall be going back in the week once I have been paid I just need to find a lamp ion the colour I want (purple). I also would like to finish my new purple crochet blanket and eventually I would like a different duvet set with purple tones in it. The duvet is not essential though as there is nothing wrong with the couple of sets I have so will wait until I find a bargain somewhere.

This project has cost in total

£20 for the grey paint

£10 for white paint

£13 for gloss

£17 for floor paint

So a total of £60. However I still have half a tin of white gloss which will be used elsewhere in the house and there is a little white emulsion in the tin and 1/3 of  the floor paint left. All will be used up in future projects. 

home improvements

I have been slowly getting organised to improve the decor in our home. both children's bedrooms have been transformed now it is the turn of my bedroom. When we moved in I said that I could  live with the downstairs decor but upstairs needed changing first. Obviously over time I will change all of the rooms to make them our own. I have bought a tub of paint a month over the last couple of months so that I can decorate my room without it being a large expense at once. Yesterday I bought the final tin- the gloss and came straight home to get started. I have now completed 2 coats of gloss on all the woodwork  in my room, except the door which I want to lay flat to decorate preferably in the garden. I need to sand it down before I can paint it but the sander has just had an emergency repair. The velcro part that the pads cling to came off with the sand paper. I have used my trusty glue gun in hope that I can make the 14 year old sander last a while longer. Once the glue has had time to dry then game on- I will be getting this room finished.
A sneak preview of what it was like before (and partly is now!)

A wonderful wallpaper totally not to my taste! Accompanied by 

Bright red walls. Not quite the tranquil and calm place I envisage my bedroom to be. With the help of my ancient steamer the wall paper was down in a jiffy. Once the woodwork is dry I will fix the walls.

First with several coats of this boring white paint to hopefully hide the red. Then a splash of this;

The colours I am hoping to instil from accessories which I will buy as money allows I am wanting nice purple items, I shall be on the lookout in charity shops and budget shops to find these.

I am in the process of trying to decide whether or not to lay the old blue carpet (new carpet is out of my current budget) or to keep the floor boards bare. They are in very good condition and look good. Just a little sanding needed as there are small paint splashes from previous decoration. I haven't quite decided yet. What are your views on this? 

How do you decorate and add your own personality to a home  on a budget?

feed the birds...

Tuppence a bag!

The birds love our garden! We quite like the birds as well. We have our selection of bird feeders out and refill regularly, admittedly not as regularly as the birds would like. It is amazing the speed at which they can empty a large seed feeder!

We have peanut feeds, tiny seed feeders, mixed seed feeders, fat ball holders, and fat ball slab holders. They eat the lot!

Stephanie and I have spent time making different bird food recently. I realised I would spend a fortune on the fat food balls/slabs so we tried to make our own.

We made a small one to test, the birds loved it so we will be making more of these. It started as a hanging fat ball, but fell off the string in the tree, so I placed it in there.

We threaded popcorn on string and hung these in the tree. They were demolished in a few hours.

 

Stephanie wanted a bird table, so we used some bricks from the top of the garden and a clean flat plant tray. She filled it with some more of the popcorn. The birds loved that!

Is there anything the birds don't like??!!

Do you feed the birds, what do you feed them with, do you make your own?