Our Little House in the Country

I love adding seasonal touches around our home throughout the year.  At Christmas I go all out and there is a tree in every room! For Valentine’s Day we added a heart or two and a couple of ribbons (see below). So now that Spring appears to be here, I thought that it was time to add a few Spring details to our kitchen.  I’ve placed some Spring flowers throughout the house but as we will be decorating for Easter in a couple of weeks I didn’t want to add too much.

We have quite a large garden so I took most of my inspiration (and daffodils!) from that.  These two photos were taken this morning as we were getting into the car to drop Doodles off at school.  A beautiful crisp frosty morning here, although sea fog is beginning to roll in as I write.

Here are a few of the touches I added to the kitchen to “Springify” it a little.  When we bought this house the kitchen was a tiny galley kitchen with an equally small adjoining living room!  (unfortunately we forgot to take before photos – what were we thinking, I am constantly taking pics!).  Anyway, since then we have done A LOT of work to the house, extending it, knocking internal walls etc. So now our kitchen is a living/eating/cooking space with a huge window opening onto our back garden and the fields beyond and a lovely slate and oak fireplace with a solid fuel stove which makes this room really cozy and also heats the water and some of the radiators too (it has really reduced our oil heating bills by installing it)

I’m constantly trying to make our home as child friendly as possible while also maintaining a little style about it.  The teacher in me usually comes out when designing the child friendly elements.  We have a book rack in the living area of the kitchen, and every few weeks I switch out the books, usually basing the selection on a theme, so as you can see we have all our Spring books out on display and in easy reach of the children.

You may also notice that there are little labels on various items and appliances around our home, this is to promote a print-rich environment, encouraging our little people to read and familiarise themselves with common words (more on that again!).  The easel is in constant use – it has a black board, paper roll and a white board so Doodles and Oodles are regularly to be found creating masterpieces at it. The basket below it houses the books D and O borrowed from the library, they have tonnes of books so it helps to keep these separate.  Other child friendly element that you can’t see today include a miniature play kitchen, a child sized table and chairs as well as a toy box and cupboard with all their art supplies.  I’m planning a post very soon about how we have tried to make our home as child friendly as possible.

This is just a tiny glimpse of our home.  Hope you will come back again soon to see a little more from our lives at Our Little House in the Country!

A brief glance of our Valentine’s Decor 2014