B A R E: Welcome to Our Home

Location: Home

About: Hi everyone! I thought I'd share a bit of my favourite hobby - decorating and organising our flat so here is a mini-house tour. My boyfriend and I enjoy a good living space and we put a lot of effort in both decorating and maintaining our place. Our flat isn't big so we are very selective of the items we lay around the place. Trinkets we collected from our travels are our most priced decors as well as gifts from friends & family. Please read through this post and you might just take away some useful tips with you :)

T H E  B E D R O O M

All of our walls are painted cream, which is the best colour when your space isn't as spacious as you'd like. Cream/White coloured walls allow a lot of light in and also compliment any colour/kind of furnitures and decors you may have so it is a good starter colour if you decide to go interior-design crazy.  

One of my hobbies is painting and I have to say that most of the paintings around the flat are by myself. I strongly believe that a personalised home is more homely than a home filled with some Ikea-ready made prints as your home is probably the most intimate place in your life. It also saves you tons of money! Do you know how expensive paintings are?! 

As you can see, I hanged this vintage oil-painting of a fishing boat, which was gifted to me by an old friend, on top of our bed as I find it very calming. I follow Feng-shui and it is apparently a terrible idea to place the head of your bed against anys windows due to the belief that the sun/external forces from the outside can suck up all your energy before even getting up, leaving you drained and dull in the mornings. So, I guess there is nothing to lose here! Whilst these lovely cushions have British wild-flowers embroidered on them which I got from the some market in York for £10.

Below, you can see all the little trinkets sitting on top of the fireplace. The plant on the left is called dumb cane (it is placed on the very top because I have pet rabbits and this plant is extremely toxic for any pets) while the plant on the right is an orchid, which I assumed you'd all recognise. While the bleached coral is from the Philippines, which I found on the shore. The tubed-plant in the middle I got from Amsterdam (and yes it's real! it only needs water and light to thrive) but I forgot its name. The nesting doll was the first gift my boyfriend gave me that he got when he was backpacking around Eastern Europe - he got the doll from Tajikistan to be exact although it is a generic Russian nesting doll souvenir that you can get anywhere. Last but not the least is this old-used up peach canned tin  which my boyfriend used for storing blades for shaving - I kinda liked how it looks so I decided to put it up. 

THE CORNERS 

The last section of this blog is about my favourite corners of the house. Simplicity is key. As I am a student, I have very limited budget so I try to stick by the things that we already have laying around the flat and it's usually functional things such as this camp chair that I use when I'm reading a book or when doing my nails. I placed it beside the fire place for cold-days but it is also facing the window so I get a good view of the trees and chimneys! When I am not using it, I just fold it and keep it on the side - again another trick when you have a small place.

House-plants are my babies - I really do not like the idea of fake plants because they're not alive! I love the idea that living things surround me at home - it feels more peaceful to know that things grow and thrive into beauty by looking after them. My favourite house plant ATM is this Rubber Tree, it's just robust and simple.  

I also tend to stack books and place them on the floor - which is a terrible idea if you hate dusting them everyday! But I don't mind and it feels more rustic when things are in unusual places. 

The last but not the least is the corner where this antique bureau is. This bureau was already here when we moved in and we decided to keep it because it adds antiquity to the place. The flower painting that is hanging on the wall was painted and given by one of my patients from where I used to work as a young girl. It has a great sentimental value to me because of the wonderful memories I had when I was working at this nursing home and it reminds me of all my hard work as well as amazing past-experiences. 

Before you judge me, yes, that is a water pipe - a bong! I got it from the Philippines in 2015 at Panglao beach and was sold to me by this proud Rastarian Pinoy artist. The mask is detailed with intricate tribal designs made of hardened clay - it's a masterpiece! I used it as a flower vase but I decided to decorate the flat with its full-form and a lot of people get amazed by it's exotic exuberance ! I think it adds a lot of character in this corner of the house. While the drinking horn is my boyfriend's, which I think he got from Georgia and apparently, he got in trouble for bringing it into the U.K . 

All my friends know how much I love F L O W E R S. So, it is only natural that I have my collection of orchids close to my study desk. As you can see, I repotted them into clear glass pots/bowls with drainage holes that I put myself (I will be creating a tutorial about this in the near-future). 

Thank you everybody for reading my blog!

Alra x