Approved!!!!!!!

Yippeeeee!! Our loft conversion plans have been approved by our local council and they have issued us with a lawful development certificate!! We are so pleased. 3 years ago our neighbours (next door but one) applied for planning permission to do the same thing and were denied (they, like us, had used all their permitted development allowance for their kitchen extension). The law changed last October, and separate lawful development rights were introduced for lofts. We were so excited about this, as we had thought we would have to have a big planning battle to argue the point that a number of homes in the road had already converted from a hip to a gable end roof, so there was precedence for planning to be granted. This amendment has made our lives SO much easier. So now we just need to hash out a party wall agreement with our neighbours (the other side of the semi).

This will be long and protracted (and expensive). We have a very difficult relationship with them, they were not happy at all about our kitchen extension, and will be even less happy with a loft conversion. I am putting it in the very capable hands of a party wall surveyor. Once we have the agreement in place, we can start. Yikes. I will of course keep you in the loop!

In other loft related news (!) the marble tile sample in the shower is remaining unstained, I am going to keep it there until we need to order tiles, but I am hopeful that it will be ok. A forum that I was looking at the other day said that staining occurred after a year so I still feel a little nervous about it, but I also wonder how often this person cleaned their shower? I would be quite happy to wipe it down every day if it meant it would stay unstained.



And because I don't want to post without a picture:


I really want this lamp, and how TO DIE FOR is that view??








Also, we made some cupcakes last weekend













Am off to Ikea tomorrow as they have Rosali bedding back in. I bought a duvet cover and made it into curtains for Miss SLS's bedroom a few weeks after she was born, and have since wished I bought another to use as a duvet cover. Thanks to Lindsay at Notes from My Days (see the link in my blog , not to sure how to create link here!) I learned today that it is back in stock after 7 years!! So I am going to see if I can do a quick dash over to pick some up, and any other goodies that I can find as well!!! I will report back!! xx

Yellow

Great song, tricky colour. This fabric is still haunting me along with the TOAST cushions that I should have just ordered when I saw them. I haven't made it into London to hunt down something similar. I only have one day a week that my youngest is in nursery all day and this week I did Ikea in the hope that they would have the perfect yellow cushion. Nope. So I hit all the shops locally to see what I could find.

Wandering into Debenhams, I spotted a flash of yellow! Sold. Not velvet fabric, but the shade of yellow looked promising. 20% off the already reasonable £15. But they are the wrong yellow.






I am also not sold on having two of them. SO back they go. They are really a canary yellow, and I want an acid yellow.


But I do have a bit of the right shade of yellow in the house.





I have had these over two weeks now and they are still gorgeous. I love the yellow against the grey vase.

Speaking of grey, as I couldn't track down the Chanel Particuliere nail varnish I bought these:



OMG the Berlin is just hideous. I took a photo of my nails varnished in Berlin but there is no way I am posting it as it was really rather cadaver'esque'. When did my hands start looking so old??? I put the Minsk on my toes and it is quite nice, it is a very dark grey and quite cool but not really something I would wear on my hands.

So there you go, that is what I have been mulling over on my Saturday. I hope your Saturday was more productive!!

What's behind door number 1?

You might have noticed the door by our cooker in the pictures in my last post.

That is the door to our larder. I didn't want to have too many cabinets in the new kitchen (although I wound up with upper cabinets, which I hadn't wanted, but found I needed), so Mr SLS had the fantastic idea of tacking on a bit at the corner of the room to act as our larder. Once the building work had finished, we threw in some IKEA shelves and the room became the dumping ground for food, drink, kids art supplies, play doh. You name it, it went in there. The shelves were quite deep and I could never find anything. Inspired by a friend's larder (Janice, that is you if you are reading!!), I decided we needed to refit the whole thing, as it wasn't working for me. When we cleared it out I found 4 half full bags of self raising flour, 3 half used bags of rice, a rather petrified banana at the back, you get the idea ...

Here is the larder before

OMG what a hideous mess. The space behind the bigger shelf on the left was total dead space and the kids 'stuff' had infiltrated in an attempt to keep the kitchen clear of clutter. I used to spend ages looking for things that I needed while cooking.

So I spent ages trying to convince Mr SLS that we needed to do a 'refit'. He didn't really see the need to revamp it, but I was determined. So back to my old friend Ikea, to stock up on Billy bookshelves as that is what Janice had used (I am such a copy cat!). I loved the way the food looked against the black, so I had to have them. We moved the old shelves into the shed where they now hold tins of paint/decorating supplies (this was key in convincing Mr SLS).

Ahhh, lovely clear empty space!!!!

Sadly it meant that the kitchen was a disaster zone...

This was the point of thinking, 'Oh, why did we start this.....' we actually went to bed on the Saturday night leaving the kitchen like this. It was very depressing to come down to it on Sunday morning.

But once we got the Billy bookcases in, I got to get to organising, decanting and making it usable and workable. Here is the final result:

Behind the door my spices have a lovely little home of their own...

Ahhhh, that is better. Now I can find the flour (I have since labelled the jars so I know the self raising from the plain after some rather flat scones!).

I still have what seems like a never ending amount of areas like this in my home that need a good sort out, but at least I find this area much easier to keep tidy and organised!