birthday books & etc

Each year I receive a book gift voucher from someone or other. This year my two brothers and sister in law gave me an amazon voucher which I have almost finished spending. I bought:

well, this one is a dvd box set

... but what a great birthday present!!

images from amazon

May calendar

I've been so busy lately I forgot to upload my May calendar. The 2 images are from Wood & wool stool on flickr. She also has a wonderful blog here and website here.

Doshi-Levien

Doshi Levien are a very successful design duo based in London. Although they both studied furniture design, their work has covered many areas of design and is a hybrid of Indian hand-crafted textiles with industrial design and craftsmanship, creating a unique look. They've created installations for the Wellcome Trust, design for Nokia, product design for Tefal as well as many other top clientelle.

My Beautiful Backside sofa

Principessa

Charpoy

Paper planes

flickr faves

I do spend a lot of time - too much time in fact - staring at the pages of flickr. So here are some of my favourites with no particular theme. You can view them here.

puremotif

majlee

majlee

moodboardblog

majlee

moodboardblog

moodboardblog

karaku

such pretty things

craft and creativity

jenny b allsort

redecorating

This is our existing home office and a close-up of the bathroom-tiled fireplace taken a couple of years ago. It's an absolutely chaotic space where we can't move without knocking our legs into something painful. Once we find somewhere else to work and move the office out of the house I'll be able to turn this room back into a peaceful sitting room. I've gathered some ideas but don't know whether I should go rustic or country, Scandinavian or Moroccan... anyway, I've got plenty of time to figure it all out! Here are some of my favourite living/sitting room looks.

location collective

wary meyers

house beautiful

southern living

australian country style

inspiration

I always find red inspiring. I've started a new still life painting of red-ish items from around the house. It's something I've been wanting to do for ages. Next on the still life painting list are Asian and Oriental crockery items - they are just so beautiful! The red Gerbera in this image has just re-flowered - it's a pot plant I bought in the supermarket last summer which has survived in my kitchen throughout the winter, not the least from much daily watering and tlc.

happy monday

Tomorrow is bank holiday Monday and I'm planning to get some creative projects moved forward to the next stage. Some things are stagnating and need a bit of a shove and a fresh burst of inspiration. There's nothing like being able to spend all day just focusing on being creative!

image from lifelovepaper on flickr