Lagom Lifestyle

Our Live LAGOM workshops hosted by Ikea have now come to an end, however I don't think that is the end of our LAGOM journey - as I think we are really adopting a LAGOM lifestyle.
I think when we started I hoped that I/we would make some huge changes to our environmental impact, however what has actually happened was that we had not only managed to maintain the areas that we had already been working on (cloth nappies etc.) during what turned out to be an incredibly difficult and stressful time in our personal lives, but also introducing small but ultimately lasting changes that improve the impact of our everyday lives.

Batteries - I no longer buy single use AAA/AA batteries and wherever possible have avoided purchasing anything that requires other battery types.

Cotton Buds - We have moved to no longer purchasing cotton buds that have plastic stems.

Clothes - I have greatly reduced the clothing that I am purchasing and in fact made it 6 months without purchasing any clothing for myself and only a select capsule wardrobe for my toddler.

Plants - Although I haven't been able to get my vegetable patch up and running this year, I have exchanged all of my fake houseplants with real ones - it is a start!

There are still some areas that I will be focusing on in the coming months, namely snacks and snacking. I have managed to reduce the number of individually packaged snacks that my son eats, but I could continue to reduce this further. As a family we are (slowly) moving towards eating fewer packaged and processed foods as a whole, so hopefully we will find more opportunities to reduce our packaging waste in the future.

Thank you so much to Ikea for running the workshops, I had great fun and learnt so much.

Slow Progress, but Progress None The Less

The LiveLAGOM project is a few months in and surprisingly enough things have not been going 100% to plan and 'life' has been getting in the way.

There are some small changes that we have introduced that have had a big impact however:

- Changing all of our lightbulbs to LED has even meant that we were able to pass on some 'task' lighting floor lamps (that were also used as gymnastic equipment by our toddler B, so I was not sorry to say goodbye to them...).

- We have not bought any single use AA/AAA batteries since starting the project and instead have been slowly replacing all of the batteries with reusables as each item runs out.

The area that I have really been focused on however has been decluttering.

Here are some embarrassing 'before LiveLAGOM' photographs - I am sad to say that this was already well into my decluttering, it had just halted a little. One day I may be brave enough to include the real before photos, but today is not that day!

And here are a couple of the same spaces today - I am not going to say that these are the 'After' photos, as I don't think that I have finished, but hopefully you can see some obvious differences.

You can see that we have even added some curtains to our dining room door, which has made a huge difference to help keeping the heat in downstairs.

The biggest revelation however has been the craft room as we have not only had a huge clear out, but have also thought about why the room was never used and how to change that.
- M's collection of train books have now been transferred into some floor to ceiling Billy bookcases.
- Our 5x5 Kallax was then moved to a new loving home.
- The small computer desk has also found a new home and has been replaced with a kitchen worktop attached to a set of Alex desk drawers and Rast drawers that contain the majority of our craft/office related items. It has two of the new Flysta units to hold the rest of my fabric and sewing related items and we even removed one of the shelf supports so that our printer fits in.

I don't think it is just a coincidence that I have been inspired to actually use this previously unloved space and have managed to make a dungaree dress, jumper and purse so far this year!

Living a LAGOM Life

The word 'Lagom' is a Swedish term for 'just enough', IKEA have had a 3 year program of the same name to encourage their staff and customers to become more sustainable and I have been lucky enough to be chosen to take part in 2018.

The participants have been challenged to work towards a sustainable new year's resolution of our choice and Ikea are very kindly working with us to provide £100 of their products to help us succeed.

I have chosen the resolution to reduce our families waste.

I am planning to do this by tackling a few different areas of our home:

Reusable Batteries - LADDA
(I was shocked when I took a quick inventory of how many items that we have use batteries). This also prevents me having to have safe storage for both new and used batteries to keep them out of my son's reach.

Food Waste
My plans for tackling this are three-fold (and two were specific goals in my 101 in 1001)
Meal Planning and better preparation
So I chose two more glass storage containers - FÖRTROLIG to add to the ones I already have, but this time small ones perfect for meal preparation and pre-chopping vegetables ready just to add to any dishes.
Growing our own, so a beautiful watering can BITTERGURKA to sit on our kitchen windowsill, a kitchen rail system SUNNERSTA to add to the side of our kitchen cabinet to grow some herbs and salad leaves for easy access. I was really lucky to come across some large grey stacking pots JORDGUBBE that have sadly been discontinued, but I chose 4 to go on our patio to grow some larger vegetables.

Unfortunately the container that I had chosen that would work best for our compostables (ÖNSKLIG - it is actually a nappy bucket, but is the perfect size and I can clip it onto a kitchen drawer while chopping/peeling lots of vegetables)was out of stock at the time of my personal shop, as were the containers that I wanted to get for my collection of weird and wonderful flours now that I am moving more towards a Paleo style diet. However that meant that I was able to purchase a rug for my front room HODDE. Although this rug does not look particularly cuddly or cosy, it actually makes a big difference to the feel of our living room and as it can be used inside/outside it is very hard-wearing and perfect for life with a toddler (I love that I can just sweep it off at the same time as the laminate flooring).

I am feeling really motivated and the batteries and food containers were put to immediate use. I will post some photos of all of my items around our home over the coming weeks.

What would your households new year's resolution be? 

101 goals in 1001 days

Earlier this year I made the decision that I had to make some changes in my life. I had started doing some bullet journaling a couple of years ago and while looking through some ideas for layouts I learnt about 'Day Zero Project' after lots of consideration I decided to challenge myself to 101 goals in 1001 days.

I decided to start this challenge exactly 1001 days before my 35th birthday. I will list my goals here and will come back and edit this post to create links to any future blog posts about them.

1. Take vitamin tablets every single day for a whole month.
2. Complete the Whole30.
3. Start eating 'paleo'
4. Drink 8 glasses of water per day for a whole month.
5. Lose 2.5 stones - and keep it off.
6. Exercise 3x per week for 6 months.
7. Only use DivaCup and CSP.
8. Improve dental health - floss and mouthwash.
9. Reduce time spent on social media.
10. Set a complete some monthly challenges.
11. KonMari the whole house
12. Help Mum KonMari her house.
13. Redo both bathrooms.
14. Plant fruit and vegetables.
15. Finish the back garden.
16. Finish the kitchen.
17. Finish the upstairs rooms.
18. Finish the downstairs rooms.
19. Redo front garden.
20. Set up garden railway.
21. Finish hexagon quilt.
22. Make all Christmas cards.
23. Make all Christmas presents.
24. Finish knitted socks for Michelle.
25. Make B a toy.
26. Make covers for front room lampshades.
27. Finish dressing all windows.
28. Start front room huge hexagon quilt.
29. Sew a new front door curtain.
30. Pimp up all planned board games.
31. Complete TKGA basics basics basics.
32. Complete Master Knitter Level 1.
33. Complete Master Knitter Level 2.
34. Start Master Knitter Level 3.
35. Finish Technical Editing course.
36. Watch all purchased craftsy classes.
37. Blog weekly for 1 year.
38. Read 1 book per month.
39. Start teaching knitting classes.
40. Capsule wardrobe (as much handmade as possible).
41. Meal Planning.
42. Pay off credit card.
43. Become as zero waste as possible.
44. Write a budget (and stick to it!).
45. Pay back Mum.
46. Cash in all change in the house.
47. Sell all unwanted items.
48. Start homeschool savings pot.
49. Do 6x no spend weeks.
50. Takeaways limited to 1 breakfast, 1 lunch and 1 dinner per month.
51. Scan all negatives.
52. Organise all digital photos.
53. Get up to date with photobooks.
54. Write up family history research.
55. Finish baby books.
56. Finish answering 'life story' questions.
57. Sort a memory box for each of us.
58. Type up/scan all grandparents books.
59. Have a name necklace made from Grandad's handwriting.
60. Have a hair/milk charm made to celebrate breastfeeding journey.
61. Grow out pixie haircut.
62. Try a new hairstyle 1x per week.
63. Have a daily morning routine.
64. Have a daily evening routine.
65. Start wearing some make up.
66. Keep nails long and decorate them.
67. Wear something I have made everyday.
68. Try the curly girl method on my hair.
69. Try to get at least 6hrs sleep per night.
70. Get ears pierced a second time on the lobes.
71. Potty train B, whenever he is ready.
72. Write a homeschooling plan.
73. Keep a homeschooling journal.
74. Take B to stay in Durham.
75. Take B to stay in Oban.
76. Day out to a sandy beach.
77. Day out to the zoo.
78. Day out to Legoland.
79. Take B to the cinema.
80. Take B to London museums.
81. Take part in a scavenger hunt.
82. Have a birthday party for turning 35.
83. Weekly movie night.
84. Weekly games night.
85. Plan and book Disneyland Paris trip.
86. Go camping.
87. Play all the board games that we own.
88. Make bento lunch 2x per week.
89. Go on 2x dates per year.
90. Start anniversary holidays again.
91. 1 random act of kindness per month.
92. 15mins mindfulness per day.
93. Clean up email inbox.
94. Start a YouTube channel.
95. Write a will.
96. Learn to drive (again).
97. Keep in touch with friends and family.
98. Go on a steam train trip once a year.
99. Follow the Flylady programme.
100. Start Bullet Journaling again.
101. Put £5 into a pot for each completed goal.

Wish me luck, I think I am going to need it!

3 years and a quick catch up!

I'm not quite sure why I stopped posting in 2014, the longer that I didn't post the worse I felt about starting again, but I am back!

Just to catch you up, we are still living in the same house (and still haven't finished working on it, but that is a whole other story - and probably blog post), I had my son B who is now 2.5years old - ah yes I stopped blogging because I was very ill when pregnant... how could I forget... I have left my job and am now a stay at home.

I have been through a difficult period of anxiety and depression, but am working on making changes to start changing my life and I think this will be an excellent place to document that.

Bank Holiday Washout

The terrible bank holiday weather meant that we weren't quite able to finish the bedroom.

We still have one wall without skirting board (needs to be cut outside). My wardrobe door needs to be trimmed down now that the floor has been laid (needs to be cut outside). The headboard needs some alterations so that we do t have to mount it on the wall (need to be cut outside).... Spotting the pattern here?

We were able to put up some pictures and our two floating shelves, build our ikea bed and change the door handles in the built in cupboards.

So until it is actually finished here are some more pictures...

Back to decorating...

I haven't posted for *ages* and if I am honest it is because I was just irritated with the whole house. After the loft insulation kept being delayed we just kind of lost motivation to get anything done.

The good news is that the loft is now insulated with lovely new, clean, fluffy insulation and we have boarded it out so my collection of Christmas ornaments can move out of the hallway!

The other good news is that our bedroom has been decorated - I feel terribly guilty to say that all I did was pick the colours and bought the paint. We paid someone to do the painting and papering (it feels terrible to have to admit that!).

Our reasons were twofold 1. We have never wallpapered anything, and weren't sure a ceiling was the best place to start... And 2. It had really become an issue not being able to do it, as we cleared it out months ago, but then because of the delay with the loft having a knock on effect with everything...

It does look good though!

More details when it is finished...

We are not planning on paying for any other rooms to be decorated - but the hallway and it's 15foot wall is another matter.

Storage wars

M and I have been waging war against our loft for several weeks now. Ever since our roof was finished....

...we have been trying to make our loft accessible and ready for our new insulation that is being fitted tomorrow.

Our first problem was finding a suitable ladder. We bought a lovely wooden 3 section ladder and hatch months ago, then found that it couldn't be fitted because of our joist locations, then I spent some time researching other options and we eventually settled on a lovely telesteps ladder, then when we wernt to fit that found out that the fixings don't work now that we are allowing for a higher floor level with the new insulation.

So after much huffing and pouting we have now ended up with exactly what I didn't want from the very beginning - just a freestanding ladder.

It is at least a telescopic ladder, so it takes up hardly any room and we have designed a makeshift safety system so I don't feel quite so terrified carrying stuff up it.

There are also some benefits though - we can use it elsewhere in the house, it was a little cheaper than our other loft ladder purchases and we can move it out of the hatch to fit really big boxes up there!

The second problem was trying to find enough 'loft stilts'. They are screwed onto the joist before the new insulation goes in to allow us to raise the boarding without squashing our new insulation. 

This 'simple' purchase involved an online reservation where it later transpired that there were only 15 in stock (we needed 70+) and then a last minute order so that M could collect and install on Monday night before he went away!

But eventually they are fitted - and ready for our insulation install tomorrow. Fingers crossed that all goes smoothly. I won't hold my breath though - the notorious Yodel (courier with a bad reputation) should be coming as well to pick up that telesteps loft ladder...

Bunting

I have thought about whether I want to post crafts on here as well or keep house projects separate. I have come to the conclusion that I struggle enough updating one blog, so it is not a good idea to start a second...

I recently finished some bunting commissioned by a friend to go alongside I made when her daughter was born.

The only requirements were to complement the John Lewis Farmyard bedding, green bedroom and the yellow and orange bunting that I had made before.

So I purchased a remnant of the John Lewis fabric, the fabric itself looks like this: 

http://m.johnlewis.com/mt/www.johnlewis.com/john-lewis-farmyard-curtain-multi/p619490#page_loaded

I only had about 10cm x 1m so I only had a few animals that I could work with, but I am very pleased with the result:

Fireplace Progress

Easter was a washout projects wise as we both went down with some flu like illness that we are only just recovering from. However there has been progress on the house since my last post! 

Today I will just focus on our fireplace. It still needs quite a bit of work: painting the wall, mantelpiece, hearth, dado rail, spray paint the candlesticks and plant something in the 3 pots. In our house though, that counts as almost done...

Here is the before and after (well during):

The things that we really have done are:

- Gas fire disconnected and removed

- MDF cut to size to seal the hole and painted with a spare test pot

- Cut down a conifer that was in the way of our new shed's foundations

- Cut 1" slices of the trunk 

- Glue to the painted MDF

- Spend weeks looking for a mirror

- Then buy a discontinued bathroom cabinet and hang it on it's side!

I am really pleased with the mirror, it looks very retro. If you didn't know I don't think you would realise that it has secret storage (currently hiding any sweet treats in our house). It does look like there are twice as many though as the inside is mirrored as well.

So there you go, we have been doing something and in truth we have mainly been doing little bits and pieces around the house, but eventually all those bits will add up to a finished house. Or that is what I am telling myself anyway.

Swings and roundabouts

The house is still very much a work in progress. And true to previous form as soon as we make one improvement we find another problem.

On the positive side, I have made a new stag picture, we have finally had the shed roof replaced, I have unpacked 4 boxes over the past week and I have just realised that since my last post we have actually finished a room! Sneak peek below:

However on the negative side neither of our toilets are working correctly (one is leaking into the hallway ceiling and the other has to be refilled manually), we still can't put anything in the shed because it is so mouldy and finally although we have moved a few boxes out of storage there is still a very long way to go:

That is a very scary sight!

Gallery Wall (1st of many)

We have made loads of progress on the front /dining room over the past few weeks. However we have been too busy working on it for me to take photos or update you!

One area that I do have photos of is our stag gallery wall in the front room. Although we have not yet finished painting the bottom half of the wall we decided a great way to tidy away this box of stag artwork/frames was to just get it up on the wall.

We have planned this project since February 2012 when we bought a large hand printed stag artwork while we were on our 'mini-moon' in Brighton. Those few days away we sat down and discussed general themes for our future house - so that we could focus only buying things that worked in one of those rooms.

After that we have slowly collected a group of brown frames, and a couple of 'stag heads' (fake ones) to put together as a gallery wall as well as making some items to go in the frames as we really wanted these to be handmade (and only a couple not by us!).

First of all we laid them all out on our floor and I shuffled them around until we were happy with the arrangement.

Then Martin hung them on the wall - they look great! They will look even better once we finish making the rest of the stags to go in the frames. Since we took this photo we have already completed 2 more pictures (I am aiming for 1 per week) so we don't end up with the empty frames forever!

I will update this post when all of the stags are complete....

Progress

We finally had a really productive weekend last week. Which started off with the fitting of our new door, which has gone from this:

Which although it does not look terrible in this photograph did not open/close or lock (none of which do I consider out of the normal remit for a door). 

But now it looks like this:

And we love it - the old rotten frame is gone, the room feels warmer already and you can see that the new centralised door actually opens out onto our centralised step, so there is a reduced risk of tripping down it!

M spent hours on our beautiful shelves, they look amazing, from the covered over back boiler, which you can just about see in the side of the chimney of this photo we took when we first viewed the property: 

To this: 

They need filling and painting, but they look great already. And finally in this other view you can see that we actually have some paint on a wall and a set up curtains up!

110 days

110 days ago we completed on our house (yes I know my planned post of a 100 days would have been better, but I have been busy!).

We have learnt a lot in that time and have  probably grown up quite a bit as well. The main thing that I have learnt is that I am terrible at estimating! I tend to underestimate how much time something will take, but would rather err way on the side of caution (I admit it I am a bulk buyer) rather than risk underestimating paint/wallpaper/fabric.

The jobs that we have done I am really pleased with and I think I have learnt that I need to reduce my very high standards or nothing is ever going to get finished.

This weekend we put in our new bathroom tap, I was a little worried about it as we are in a hard water area and I think it will get marked very quickly, but I can't deny that it looks great at the minute!

We have also bought the paint for my craft room - I am very excited to get started, but here is a quick sneak peek...

Finally (for today anyway) I have been watching 'The Great Interior Design Challenge' and I am loving it! It is funny to see so many of the things we have already bought in their rooms, button handles/ wallpaper roller / penny tabletop. And I love the architectural history also included in the programmes (also who doesn't like to be nosey about other peoples houses!). Great programme - I always agree with more craft on TV!

We have the technology and a 'water feature'

We have the internet, YouView and a phone line!

I am struggling to think about why we need the internet and I guess the answer is that we could live without it if we had to, but it really is a nice to have. 

Especially with our new YouView box where we can pause and record live tv (yes I know we are very behind the times, but it was still nice that M could pause Sherlock when I poured hot noodle soup down my hand in the rush to see it).

So far so good with the wifi, I am hoping we do not end up with any repeated problems like we had in our last house where the cable connection box was such a mess that every time they fixed someone else's connection they removed ours...

The other exciting house news this week is that M has replaced the broken flush system in the toilet. So now not only does it flush, but it also stops flushing (that was the issue with the old one). 

I don't really have any exciting photos of our router or the toilet flush, so instead here is a picture of our new 'water feature' in the back garden. I should note, this was caused by flooding, not by our old toilet flush failing to stop!

To mist or not to mist - that is the question

Before starting to paint all of our newly skimmed walls, I thought I would do a little bit of research about how to deal with new plaster. I wish I had never bothered!

I don't think there is any other subject that there are so many different 'experts' all strongly suggesting completely conflicting advice/instructions...

* Sand vs don't sand

* Filler before vs filler after mist coat

* 50:50 paint to water / 70:30 / 75:25 or any other ratio you can think of...

* PVA mixed in vs never put PVA near your walls

* No mist coat vs 1 mist coat vs 2 mist coats

Even as far as arguing whether it is a 'mist coat' or a 'miss coat'...

In the end I have decided to go with:

* A first pass of a 50:50 ratio cheap white emulsion to water ( I am not going to use this on the ceilings though, it is messy enough on the walls!)

* A second coat of 80:20 (approx) - starting with the ceilings

* Then 2 coats of the room colour 

So far I have painted half of the room with the 50:50 mixture, it is the consistency of milk so pretty messy. After trying a brush, a normal roller, I am now using a 'radiator roller' and a paint kettle - this has worked the best for me so far.

I didn't think it was working very well at first

However once it had dried overnight, I can see that it did what was expected. The water was soaked into the plaster and drew the paint pigment in

It looks much less patchy, even though I haven't actually done anything different to the first picture.

So now just to get the rest of it done...

If anyone else is interested in mist coats (hahaha) the most useful thing that I found was this YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTuaH-6rGRw

It Is All Go Here...

Well maybe I wouldn't go quite that far, but since I last blogged the shower is up and working:

We are going to redo the bathroom in the new year, so for now it is functional rather than pretty!

Our beautiful moth smoke alarm is up in the hallway - I loved this from the minute I saw it on Pinterest (I am addicted to that site). 

And we are lucky enough to get amazon vouchers with the 'cash back points' from our credit card - so I don't feel too guilty about buying is as it was 'free' with all our other spending!

And M has put our front door curtain up - the woodwork surround and shelf is not yet finished as it will eventually be painted, but it is functional and looks great!

The black lines are duck tape holding it all in place while it glues. We weren't originally planning to put in the cladding and the shelf, but had to because the lintel is impossible to drill into. I used another of my Pinterest finds (I love an over door shelf)  and in fact I think it looks better than if it had just been a curtain rail. 

Plus bonus storage you may recognise that as a theme over the coming weeks...

We are plastered!

Well the whole of downstairs is anyway!

This does make the room look quite dark, but remember that it is all wet plaster currently and it was pitch black outside (this photo will never win any competitions!). It has also served as a reminder that we don't want to paint the room floor to ceiling brown.

In fact these are our planned colours for the front room (on the wall before the new plaster), brown for below the dado rail and cream for above - GWR colours.

And the dining room will be slightly different as well, so of course we also tested those out...

So just a couple of weeks for the plaster to dry out, some sanding, some mist coats and then we can actually start painting!

Home sweet home

We moved in on Tuesday last week, as exciting as it was to be living in our new house, it would have been more exciting if we had water, heating, any cooking facilities and at one low point electricity!

At least our new house has a driveway big enough for the moving van - unlike the rental that we moved out of where we had to park halfway down the street.

In that week we have had a lot of progress, central heating system is now in ( just waiting for the shower and a sink in the cloakroom to be fitted ) - fingers crossed plumbing will be finished this week.

M has taken down all of the doors (many of them had punch marks in) and has started to replace them with the doors in this picture of the hallway on moving day - they were kindly donated to us by M's boss.

The ikea expedit shelves that you can also see on the floor are rebuilt and holding all sorts of stuff in the spare room. And our bargin eBay folding door has been hind in the bathroom and looks great - just needs a lick of paint now.

Basil the Rat

We were trying to get the house in some order last week, before the big move over this past weekend. We were removing the panels that covered the back boiler in the front room behind the fire place when we made an unexpected discovery...

Sadly I do not have a good 'before' shot as I wasn't expecting there to be anything of interest behind the fireplace! But it is between the fireplace and the wall on the righthand side of the picture above. Two wooden panels were screwed into place to allow easy access to the boiler (if they hadn't been painted over...).

We pulled the panels off (to help the plumber along with our new hot water/central hearing system that is being installed this week). And we noticed that about chest height wedged between the 3 copper pipes there was a feather duster.

Yes I know you can all see where this is going from the title of the blog post - but we really thought that is what it was. I did a big melodramatic show of putting on a marigold glove to remove it, but I was very glad that I had when I felt that the 'feather duster' had teeth! 

It has now been (almost fully) removed, but sadly we have realised that it was likely to be a pet. Which is good news for us as it is not a sign of rats in the loft, but instead it looks like it has fallen through the huge hole in the floor in the airing cupboard currently in our bedroom.

Poor old Basil (Fawlty Towers reference) but we will find some way of remembering him when he turn the area he was found into some lovely bookshelves.

I think our wooden mice might find a home on that particular shelf.