Break Time

Today is baby Briggs' due date, and I am tired! Apart from making some shortbread to celebrate a good friends upcoming wedding I have made nothing. Creativity seems to have completely left me.

So for now I am going to have a break from this blog as I am not doing anything interesting to write about. Once baby has arrived and we have settled into our new life together I am sure creativity will return and I will be able to start this up again. See you soon....

Poorly

This week I've had a really nasty cold so spent most of my time in bed feeling sorry for myself and hoping that Baby Briggs wouldn't make an appearance. Excitingly this chair went up to the shop in Stonehaven but that is all the news for this week.

Of course, my most creative project has been going on for 9 months now. If these two photos of me, in the same dress, are anything to go by there has been a lot of creativity going on! Exactly one week till our due date...

December

March

Bonus Anniversary Post

Today Mr Briggs and I have been married for one year and I just had to put up a post to tell you all about his very own creative, and incredibly thoughtful, project. When we were looking at readings for our wedding last year we came across the sweetest quote from one of my favourite books, which instantly reminded me of us. We didn't use the quote on the day but Mr Briggs remembered it and had an original print made up especially for me. Such a thoughtful present. There were tears!

My new favourite decorations

This week we added some finishing touches to Baby Briggs' room. We had bought some bunting wall stickers from a fabulous website called Ferm Living. I was really impressed by the huge choice they had (we got ours in their sale), their promptness in posting our order out from Denmark, and the fact that the kids collection is not just blue and pink babyish stuff. I would quite happily have any of their kids wallpaper in my home. We then bought some bird stickers to liven it up a bit more (from a website I wasn't so impressed with so I won't mention them here, but the stickers are lovely!).

The beauty of these stickers is that you can arrange them any way you like depending on the space you have (the above picture shows a tree made out of left over bunting strips), they are really easy to put up, and they can be taken down without leaving a big mess on your walls. Perfect.

Winding Down

I spent most of the past week relaxing with a dear friend. She kept me company on the sofa in my hugely pregnant state, helped me bake triple chocolate brownies, she even walked the dog for me and made my dinner! Truly the perfect pregnancy companion.

The rest of the week was spent celebrating the upcoming wedding of another good friend. We had a wonderfully creative afternoon taking part in a fascinator class, making our own fascinators to wear to the wedding. Here is my colourful creation. Now I just need to find a dress to match!

We were also asked to take a memento of our friend so I made a brooch using material that I had used on a previous project for her, and an acorn shaped button to symbolise her own furniture company. The instructions came from a great book called The Crafty Minx by Kelly Doust, which includes all sorts of handmade treasures from doorstops to tepees, and brooches to nappy bags. I forgot to take a photo of the brooch though, so instead here is a photo of Henny, and one of my huge bump taken over a week ago - I'm even bigger now!

A Colourful Week

As I have now officially started my maternity leave, and even had a leaving party with my four favourite Edinburgh girls, there has not been much creativity going on. There has been some shopping though and I am not sure which of my two colourful purchases is more exciting!

First up came this beautiful piece of machinery...

Though as I have made shortbread and lemon polenta cake with the KitchenAid in the past 24 hours I suppose there has been a fair amount of creativity! It really is a classic piece of kitchen equipment. Not only does it look beautiful but it is so easy to use, and amazingly quiet. As we are expecting many visitors after the arrival of Baby Briggs, at least I know it will be easy for me to bake something yummy to feed them all!

Next up was another colourful beauty...

Our orange and grey pram came from the Costorphine Pram Centre, where all the ladies were wonderfully helpful and a pleasure to deal with. Now we just have to practice putting this up and down!

And just to prove I haven't been totally lazy this week, here is my hospital bag all packed and ready to go...

And a very cute photo of Henny...

The Kitchen Project - Part II

The kitchen is finished - mostly!

As you can see we still have the horrible retro floor tiles, the splashbacks haven't been fitted yet and the blind for the window hasn't arrived, but wow what a difference! It is now such a bright, spacious room and we love being in it. The gloss units reflect all the light, the cupboards are so well designed for space that there are even cupboards with nothing in (yet!), and I love the little things like having space under the sink for our bins to fit in. Admittedly, if you spill anything on a white worktop it needs mopping up straight away, but actually I suppose you should really do that anyway?!

And if you're worried that it is all a bit too white, check out the fabulous wallpaper by BorasTapeter from wallpaperdirect.co.uk

On a recent trip to John Lewis we got 4 ex-display Eames dining chairs that finish it all perfectly.

And is it wrong that my favourite part is having a utility room?! Not only does it keep the washing machine, and tumble dryer, out the way, it houses all my cleaning and laundry products (on high shelves away from little hands), the dog food, towels for the dog, wellies, and our new milton steriliser!!

The Kitchen Project

This week the builders have been in to rip out our old kitchen and install a shiny new one. Although our old kitchen looked quite nice it was falling apart in places, didn't have great storage and wasn't really what we would have chosen...

 

So we had an Ikea planner come out and give us some ideas for how to make the space work better for us and then ordered a white gloss kitchen with white acrylic worktops. This sounds like a crazy plan for a couple with a dog and a baby on the way, but we have been assured that the white gloss actually shows things like finger prints much less than a dark one!

The kitchen was delivered in its flat-pack state last Sunday and stacked up in the spare room.

 

The builders arrived early Monday morning and it took them only a few hours to rip out the kitchen, including an impressive piece of masonry.

Because our new units are a slightly different size to the old ones we have also had to order a new floor, but for now the floorboards are gone and there is some rather horrible retro vinyl tiles on the floor!

Here is how the kitchen looked mid week...

And our little cloakroom is being transformed into a utility room...

The kitchen is now mostly finished, and we have been really impressed with the speed and hard work of our builders. They ensured that our oven and sink were fitted so we could use them over the weekend, but until it is totally finished we don't want to cause any mess! This time next week though we will have a brand new finished kitchen, hurrah!!

Sweet Smelling Post Office Table

Baby Briggs' room no longer smells of oil! I ordered some foam and upholstered the piece of plywood in the parcel shelf with PVC to make one big changing mat, which meant it smelt like foam for a while. Then I waxed the table base, which made it smell lovely. Then I lined the shelves with pretty polka-dot scented drawer liners from Laura Ashley. So now the whole room smells like flowers - result!

The changing mat has got handles on so that it can be easily pulled up, in case anything spills down the sides of it!

The shelves have plenty of space for useful things...

...and for new friends.

One of Baby Briggs' many little outifts...

We also put some shelves up that would allow us to display the covers of our books. There is now a very sunny reading corner waiting to be used, I can't wait!