Bedroom Tour!

I promised ages ago when I posted my office tour that when my bedroom was finished that I’d post a bedroom tour, showing you what the finished room looked like. And I have to confess that my bedroom has actually been finished for a month now but I’ve had no time to sit down and write about it.. until now! So without further ado.. 

With moving home, I thought I’d separate my sleeping area from my working area to help maintain this sleeping pattern that has magically appeared in my life. I’ve pretty much spent the last three years with studying in my bedroom and after reading online that this doesn't help insomnia - something I’ve ‘suffered’ with since I was sixteen. It's something to do with not associating your bedroom with sleep so I decided to do something about it. I chucked all my studying and working shizzle into my office and made sure my bedroom was just for sleep and Netflix bingeing.

The Bed

And this is where I spend almost fifteen hours a day.. Okay, well, maybe not fifteen hours a day.. more like eight, but my parents say I sleep for fifteen hours each night.. Anyway.. this is my bed. My heaven. My happiest place on Earth, apart from Disneyland. 

As you can probably guess, I am definitely one of these who loves cushions. I have got one in practically every shade of purple possible. But I instantly regret it each night when it takes me ages to throw them onto the floor and then each morning when I have to get up half an hour before I should to put them back on my bed again. Constant bane of my life. But they do look pretty so I guess it’s worth it.. 

When I passed my first year of university, I treated myself to a set of white waffle, Egyptian cotton bedding - how adult of me, and it is easily the bestest gift I’ve given myself. It’s so soft and comfortable that I feel as if I’m in a marshmallow when I first get in. It’s fricking amazing. I can’t actually remember where I got it from and I really wish I did because I accidentally fell asleep drunk on it one night in second year and ended up staining one of the pillows with mascara. Heartbroken.

I don't know why I decided to include a really up close photo of my bedding but enjoy the waffle.

The Clothes

I thought my dissertation was bad, until I moved back home and had to merge my London clothes with the clothes I had at home. I was sorting through clothes that I just didn’t want to get rid of so ended up deciding to get another set of drawers. These are just your box standard MALM drawers from IKEA but to say they are so cheap, they are amazing quality. My family have had antique, solid wood chest of drawers before, which were alright, but these are on another level. They fit in so well with my decor, have plenty of depth in the drawers to store all my clothes and they’re such good quality. I would definitely recommend these!

(#RIPKarenMcCluskey)

Then on top of it, I have my television! I wasn’t going to have a television in my bedroom when I started sorting it out but after living in London for three years with constant sirens and traffic noise, I found it hard to sleep in complete silence so decided that putting my television in my room would help me sleep. Plus, it’s always great to wake up and put morning television on and movie days are always a bonus. 

On the other drawer top, I’ve just put a few knick knacks and candles along with my alcohol stash. It usually doesn't look this organised. Usually there's a pile of watched DVDs here too but I tidied them away like a good girl!

And finally, the best part..

The Make-Up

Like most girls, I’ve dreamt of having a proper dressing table since I can remember. My parents bought me a Barbie dressing table for Christmas 1998 and four year old me absolutely went crazy for it! They even subscribed to Sabrina’s Secrets (a 90s magazine about Sabrina the Teenage Witch) that came with a make up item every week and I collected every single one and stored all my make up on the dressing table - never used it as I’ve never been the neatest at painting my nails, but I still loved having the make up and dressing table area in my bedroom. But I still dreamt of having those classic style Hollywood vanity dressing tables like you see in the movies or ‘Keeping Up With The Kardashians’ (lol). So when I decided that I needed a revamp of my room, that was the first thing on my agenda.. and thanks to the help of my lovely brother, that childhood dream became a reality! 

Just look at it!

The dressing table itself was originally in my previous bedroom in the house before I got upgraded to my ‘adult’ bedroom with a swanky fireplace in it, but my brother kindly took it down from that room and put it back up in this room. He then also built the Hollywood vanity mirror using IKEA wall lamps. 

Next are the holy grail make up storage units that are from MUJI! Boy, oh, boy, are they an absolute lifesaver when it comes to making my make up more organised than my life. I’ve stacked three of the two drawer wide boxes with a two drawer wide box with a flip top on top and I can’t even explain how much I love them. It seems like every make up fanatic uses these along with the IKEA plant pots to store their make up and brushes in but that’s simply because they are perfect and so ridiculously cheap considering how good they are. 

Then on the other side of the dressing table is all my jewellery and a few more knick knacks. (Can you tell I love my knick knacks?) I also have a cute pink candle that sparkles when the candle is lit. I always light this on a nighttime when I'm removing my make up as it's so relaxing to watch and just makes my room so cosy. 

And finally, on my windowsill is my docking station so I can rock out to some throwback tunes whilst getting ready for the day ahead. However, since these were taken at night, I was too scared to open my curtains in case there was somebody looking back at me (I'm a wuss) so you'll just have to believe me. 

..and then that’s my boudoir pretty much done!

Hope you enjoyed reading about it as much as I enjoyed doing it all up. 

(I am still decorating all the other rooms in my house, giving them a proper makeover, but I won’t be posting them online as lounges, kitchens and dining rooms are pretty boring!)

Office Tour!

Spring has sprung.. sorta, so I decided that it was the perfect time to get my Linda Barker on. (For all you non-90s babies, she was a famous interior designer who hosted 'Changing Room' - the late 1990s/early 2000s equivalent of '60 Minute Make Over'). And the first room that fell victim to my decorating bug was the office/study/whatever you wanna call the room where the computer is on a desk and you spend hours procrastinating when you should be studying - or at least that's what I use it for. 

Since I have moved back to Yorkshire pretty much permanently now (apart from going back to London for the odd revision lecture at uni and work), I decided I wanted to ‘cuteify’ the room where I’d be spending 99% of my time enduring my final few weeks of uni work and finishing off my dissertation. There is literally nothing worse than having to study in a setting that makes you feel icky and doesn’t inspire you at all, such as the campus library, so I wanted to make it into a homely, cosy setting that would hopefully motivate me into doing my work. And that is exactly what I did! 

It took just over a week to move everything out of it as my family had pretty much made it into a storage come dumping room for junk whilst I lived in London and turn it into a room that I really, really love and don't mind spending time in. 

To start with, I looked online for inspiration of how I wanted the room to look. And as you’ll be able to tell from the final result, I looked at Tumblr. That is one thing I love about Tumblr - it’s full of photos that gives you insane house envy. It’s like the online version of IKEA showrooms. 

“That’s gonna be my lounge.” 

      “That’s gonna be my kitchen.” 

             “Wait, that’ll be the lounge.” 

                                 “No, that’ll be my lounge.” 

                                              “Screw it, I’ll have three lounges.” 

                                                                            “Four lounges.” 

                                                                            “And two kitchens.” 

                                                                            “And seventy-six bathrooms.” 

                                                                            “And six gardens." 

So grab some popcorn, sit back, relax and enjoy a little bit of room porn. (I am in no way a photographer so don't expect Tate Gallery worthy photos.)

This is the overall view the second you walk in through the door. There's a desk, a set of drawers (yeah, I still need to get another nob for the drawers that has mysteriously disappeared) and a shelf. It's pretty basic furniture wise.

So I have a desk that was already built into the room when we bought the house a few years ago and it was a boring wooden colour that had been scratched and scraped at over the years so I thought I'd spruce it up a bit with painting it a boring white colour. But it freshened it up and made the desk appear bigger than it actually is. And centre stage of the desk is my beloved Mac - Mickey. Yeah, I have a tendency to name my gadgets. I'm cool weird like that. Then I just have my pastel pink (obviously) desk lamp that is perfect for when I'm studying at night - which is pretty much every night - and a ceramic pen pot filled with all my favourite pens! I also have my favourite hand cream, Vaseline Intensive Care, to the side as I find it's always good to take a few seconds regularly to moisturise my hands, giving me a tiny break to reflect on what I've just studied - plus my hands are super soft at the end of a long day of studying so it's a win-win situation.

I also decided to treat myself to a new journal for the new office in an attempt to keep my life organised and help me keep a track of what work I have done and what I still need to do. Whether it's gonna work is another matter but I thought I'd give it a go.

Above the desk there is a pretty big shelf that I've just used for display as all my textbooks are currently chilling in a box until I can be bothered to sort out my bookshelf in the hallway.  I've decided to not keep my textbooks on the desk as it'll give me a little break and a bit of exercise trekking the thirty steps from my desk to the book shelf and back again. Plus, it means the office isn't cluttered and I love the minimalistic look.  I've used a set of fairy lights, my favourite flower and vase and a couple of photographs to decorate the space. I also put a notebook and a reading book there, just in case I do start to procrastinate and don't want to sit watching Netflix - like that's gonna happen..

And finally, my pride and joy..

My Cinderella's Castle canvases! 

Last summer I got pretty bored and ended up making a two canvas sets - both Disney orientated - for my flat in London and these were one of them. I'd wanted something like this for absolutely ages and looked online but nowhere sold anything like this and anything I did find I didn't really love. So out came the paint brushes, sponges and the creative cap and I made this beauty. I guess the last 12 months have proved to myself that I am pretty arty-farty when it comes to painting, but I'm not gonna quit the day job just yet..

So that's my office and hopefully it'll make me get my act together and knuckle down for the last 86 days of university. I've also redone my bedroom, which I'll be posting on here too as I'm so proud of it and want to try stay on top of my blogging game!