The Kitchen Edit

When you live in a rented flat and you can’t change up furniture, large appliances or even the colour of the walls, small accessories play a key role in making the space feel yours. Let’s face it, the kitchen is not the most exciting room to decorate, but we use it every day and some objects are even displayed to our guests. It is especially important to pay some attention to decorating a kitchen if you live in an open plan house and you can’t close the door to hide the mess.

Tableware

I think one of the most important thing to upgrade in your kitchen is your tableware. This is something you use everyday and it will also show up in your dining room, living room and even your bedroom if you had a cheeky breakfast (or dinner!) in bed. Not to mention you can't throw a dinner party without some cool tableware!

One of my favourite kitchenware purchases are these mason jars from Lakeland. They look adorable displayed on a mug tree and they quite quirky with the gold stripy straws, that I got from Tiger. Love love love!

Small Appliances

Movie night? Film Marathon? What better to make the night complete than your own popcorn maker. Little quirky appliances like this will definitely impress your guests, not to mention popcorn is a great choice of snacks! Other appliances that would make your guests jaws drop? Chocolate fountain, ice cream maker, juicer, waffle maker, pancake maker and I've also come across a snow cone maker! I have to admit, I want them all!

The MOST useful appliance in the kitchen (at least for me) is the coffee machine. I mean. It's a life saver in the morning and a beautiful treat in the afternoon. This particular machine was a pricy little bugger, but it was so worth it. It's called the Barista Express made by a company called Sage by Heston Blumenthal and I believe it retails for around £550. I know, I know... A Nespresso is much cheaper and it does all the work for you. I'm not exactly a barista, but I'm slowly learning to make different drinks and it's just so satisfying (and delicious!) to make your own coffee.

Storage

One of the most important things in a kitchen is good storage. You will want to hide the cans, the bags and the boxes, but some edible things actually look awesome displayed. Get some handy little Kilner jars and fill them with sweets, rice, tea and coffee or even pasta! Both handy and decorative!

Decoration

Decoration-wise I like to keep it simple. You don't want a lot of clutter in your kitchen, otherwise you won't have the space to work. I only like to decorate here with stuff I actually use, like cute mugs, a chalkboard, maybe a fruit bowl. Saying that I do have a couple of small cacti living in the kitchen and I will never say no to lighting a candle. And of course, if you can decorate your walls, you will have more options to chose from.

Until next time! xx

New flat, new challenge!

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Seven month ago my boyfriend and I finally managed to move out from his mum’s place where we lived for almost two years. After the struggle of living in one small bedroom with one wardrobe in it (which was obviously too small for both our clothes, his stuff just had to move…) , and way too many Lego figures for a twenty something man, it was a breath of fresh air to move into this awesome little two bedroom place. We got some cheap, mish-mash furniture from a friend, and already had a lot of small items to display (Lego……..) so we didn’t have to start off  with a completely empty space. But it has been quite blend, I never thought it would take so much time and money (SOOO much money) to get the place to look somewhat stylish and put together. We’re nowhere near close to it still. Since I have been taking pictures from the beginning, I thought it would be fun to share the progress I’m making and how much fun I’m having with it, especially that I have a feeling DIY is going to come in VERY shortly as I’m definitely not rich enough for the stuff I want. I’m just going to have to be clever with it.

So the flat is in quite a nice new build building in the middle of a small town. Perfectly located for us, not too far from work or civilisation, yet the town has it’s own little shopping street with supermarkets, Boots, Costa… and Game. I’m pretty sure that’s why the boyfriend likes the location so much. The flat has a nicely sized living room opened up with the kitchen. And there’s a breakfast bar. Bonus! We’ve got two bedrooms, one of which we turned into a guest room/music studio/office/game room/beauty room… struggling with space here obviously. Thankfully the bathroom has a bathtub, this was my criteria, and we also have a utility room, where we basically store everything we don’t want to see: tools, hoover, spare mattress, a paddling boat… you know, the usual. We're only renting the place so we're facing the usual struggles: we have to put up with the dull magnolia walls and the blu tech marks on them, we can't actually decorate the walls and don't even get me started on the cheap, worn out carpet in the two bedrooms!

So this is what we started out with, and this is what it looked like after the first couple of weeks: filled with stuff we inherited from our friend, clutter we already had, and some décor we got from Tesco…

This space had so much potential, but as a couple with many hobbies and friends and family living far away, we had to be very careful not to fill it with too many different things. The furniture here messy and cheap looking, but we slowly managed to upgrade it. At this point we had a spare mattress in case a friend visited us, but we are just about to purchase a very compact and adorable sofa bed. That is definitely a major upgrade I cannot wait for!

 

The kitchen was lovely to start off with! I love the wooden worktops and the stainless steel features in it, and it has proved to be spacious enough for a Sunday baking session. We bought bits and bobs in here, but our biggest purchase was a barista style coffee machine, which I now couldn't live without! I'll make sure to include close ups of it in my upcoming kitchen edit.

The bathroom was quite standard, but with some cheap but well coordinated accessories, some nice towels and way too many Lush products, it's starting to look like a bit more of a sanctuary.

For a good while, this was my space to work on and to be in. Again, all the furniture is inherited from a friend, but the lovely and open space has made it so easy to work with. The accessories in the pictures are mainly from Tesco, but shortly after we moved in, I discovered a few somewhat pricey, but borderline genius homeware shops, like Oliver Bonas and West Elm. As we're both on average wages, we can't afford any great luxuries, however I do like to splash out on stylish accessories, I think they make all the difference! 

Unfortunately there are no pictures of the bedroom from when we moved in, however I'm planning to do a bedroom accessories edit shortly, as I had so much fun working with that space and trying to make it more personal. 

Now that you've seen the "Before" I'm excited to show you how I slowly upgraded the place, making it from a rented flat to our first home.

...to be continued!