This has been an Instagram week of raincoats and snuggles, marmalade and bundt cake, polka dots and salted caramels, with a hint of spring green peeking through.
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On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.
One of the projects we’ve got lined up for this year is remodelling our horrible downstairs kitchen.
The good news is that we have two kitchens in this house. The bad news is that they’re each as ugly as each other – the downstairs one is a relic from the seventies, complete with crumbling cabinets, laminate countertops, ancient linoleum, probably an asbestos problem. I’ll show you pictures one day when I’m feeling especially mean.
I’m starting to consider design ideas and am very tempted to include lots of open shelves. They look good and of course are WAY cheaper than cabinets. 
I’m loving these open steel shelves shown in last month’s Livingetc. I suspect they only look this good though, because they’re carrying half a ton of gorgeous vintage tea plates and spoons.
Source unknown. Love the juxtapostion of white shelves with dark wood counter tops.
I could never keep shelves as tidy and uncluttered as these. From a this tour on Houzz.
It would be nice to have a least some of my two hundred and fifty-odd cookbooks on display. From The Kitchn.
I am, however, intrigued to know what open shelves are like to live with. How easy is it to keep everything clean? Do you have to go out and buy tons of fancy plates and crockery to make them look good? (This is not necessarily a problem). Is it easy to keep them tidy or do they end up with piles of stuff just shoved on them? What are your tips and tricks for keeping them organised?
Tell me all your deepest, darkest, most sordid secrets. No one reads this blog anyway.
The above is from the Seattle house of the architects we’re hoping to use, which I previously blogged about here.
This pantry makes my inner Martha squee with delight. However I have more chance of flying to the moon than achieving such perfection. From here.
Last week was an Instagram week of hearts and flowers, grey skies, cuddly cats and a newfound love of the colour yellow.
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On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.
This was a golden Instagram week of baking, coffee and wintry walks, with a few signs of spring poking round the corner.
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On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.
Our next prompt was to remind us to take a few moments to enjoy the view.
This is the view I have from my desk in a corner of my bedroom as I work. The chair is my knitting chair. We had some lovely sunny days in Seattle last week so I decided to render this in black and white to emphasise the beautiful wintry light.
This is the view you get from that chair.
Our next prompt was to ‘Reframe the Season’.
The hint talked about using a literal frame and focusing about what we put it in, but I couldn’t think of what to do with it.
Then I glanced out of my window and saw the December garden in all its mellow wistfulness. It seems to me that this season is one that we very much experience through the window frame, rather than being out and in the thick of it.
This December I’ve decided to try my hand at putting together a ‘Picture the Holidays’ photo prompt book put together by Tracey Clark of Shutter Sisters via Paper Coterie.
Every day I am emailed a photo prompt to inspire me to take a photo, which I then upload into a photobook on the Paper Coterie site, which I can then have printed if I wish. I know I’m crap at following through on these sorts of projects, but a month of photos seems just about manageable.
Yesterday’s prompt was entitled ‘Holding On To Gratitude’, encouraging us to think about what we’re grateful for. Funnily enough the night before I had gone to sleep thinking particularly grateful thoughts as I’d been reading a thread on Ravelry where people had been asking for good wishes and prayers because they were going through some particularly horrible things in their lives. I know I am insanely lucky in so many ways.
Unfortunately, the things I am most truly grateful for – my health; my bright, beautiful, healthy daughter; my lovely husband and his lovely job; my wonderful friends; even my fabulous blog friends, were either too abstract, or too absent at school or work to be photographed yesterday.
Instead I hit up on something rather random. When you’re doing the Dukan diet you do become incredibly grateful for that morning cup of joe, which is permitted – oh joy! – if made with non-fat milk. This photo for me sums up the warmth and comfort of home; reminds me how lucky I am to be able to afford a fancy coffee machine to make fancy coffee in a fancy mug; makes me think of my husband, and of Seattle, where I’m so lucky to be able to live. And in a literal interpretation of ‘hold on’ I like that this pictures is full of handles. Oh well, it made sense to me.
What would you photograph given that prompt?
In a spectacular photography fail yesterday, I took my camera out last night to see the Christmas Ships without its SD card. So you’ll just have to image the fabulous pictures I would have taken of my daughter’s shining face as she gazed at the lit-up boats, next to blazing bonfires, against the sparkling backdrop of downtown and the Space Needle. They might have been a little more appropriate for the above challenge too. Grrrrrr.
Oh and Dine & Dish is doing this too, go to her blog for a different perspective on things.
I thought you might like to see how nice the Missoni for Target cube looks in situ.
I am so pleased with it. It’s sturdily built and covered in printed cotton canvas with a cool contrast piping detail and provided a useful extra bit of seating at a recent dinner party. If Target manages to get more in stock it seems well worth the money. In fact I’d go as far as to say that it might even be worth braving eBay to get hold of one (or one of the other fabulous designs). Apartment Therapy agrees with me.
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Unfortunately there’s nothing like putting taking photos of a corner of the house to highlight stuff that still needs to be done. Highest priority currently is replacing the ugly-ass front door and I still need to do something about the jellyfish light fixtures and find a striking bit of artwork for above the sofa. I’ve also been looking for a throw to cover up the huge telly (given that our basement with TV room remodel is not looking like it will be done any time soon). This could be the perfect opportunity to actually start crocheting the Babette blanket, instead of just hoarding yarn for it.
Still, it’s looking a heckuva lot better than it used to.
I’m back! Did you miss me? Sorry, I disappeared so abruptly. I got all caught up in preparations for our trip to Del Mar and Dana Point in Southern California, then we went on the trip, which was very lovely indeed thankyouverymuch and now I’m back in rainy Seattle.
Blossom watch was a complete bust. I thought the tree would be fully out before we left, but the incredibly cold and rainy spring we’re having here meant that it didn’t bloom properly until we were away.
Here’s a pic from today though. Here’s hoping that this spring warms up soon so that these get a chance to turn into cherries.
It’s that time of year again, albeit about a month later than last year on account of the cold, wet and generally crappy spring we’ve been having here, but it seems that our enormous cherry tree is about to burst into flower again.
This is dedicated to all of you who don’t have 100 year old cherry trees in your back gardens.
