Monday 29 February 2016

WIN a £50 Voucher to Spend on Glassware at Houseology


Today I'm bringing you a fantastic giveaway, courtesy of Houseology...

First class designer furniture, lighting and homeware store Houseology are this week launching 'My Houseology', a fantastic new platform that will allow their customers to share photos of their recent purchases in their new homes! As well as inspiring others with interior ideas, this will also give users a platform on which to share their style with like-minded people. 

On top of that, each month, their panel of "Houseologists" will choose a winning image and the winner will receive £500 to spend at Houseology - how cool is that? If ever you needed an incentive to share your Houseology purchase photos online, then this is a pretty darn great one! I'd love to be let loose with £500 to spend on their amazing website...

To celebrate this exciting launch of My Houseology I've got a £50 voucher to giveaway to one of my lucky readers. You can use the Houseology voucher on any of their amazing designer glassware collection...including pieces from fabulous brands such as Chef & Sommelier, LSA and Waterford.

All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning is fill in the Gleam App below...

WIN a £50 Voucher to Spend on Glassware at Houseology

Here's a little taster of the sorts of things you could spend your voucher on if you're the lucky winner...


Rose Gold Edge Red Wine Glasses - set of 2 £40 

LSA Polka Champagne Flute (set of 4) - Pastel £30

LSA City Bar Champagne Saucer & Walnut Coaster (set of 2) £45


WOW - I genuinely have a wish list as long as my arm - SO much gorgeous stuff! 

GOOD LUCK everyone! 

Mrs B

xxx

Incase you missed it...last week I shared my review of the brilliant Kids Play Tent by Ferm Living from Houseology. If you've never checked out their ranges before then be sure to have a peek. 


Kids Play Tent review from Mrs Bishop
Disclaimer: Many thanks to Houseology for supplying this fabulous £50 voucher prize.

SuperLucky Blog Giveaway Linky

Wednesday 24 February 2016

The Bishop Abode: Nursery


If you're anywhere as near as nosey as I am, you'll love nothing more than a good gander at other people's houses. I adore interiors and love to see the choices others make within their homes. I appreciate all sorts of styles/themes and colour schemes from the über-modern minimalism and monochrome, to shabby chic and more vintage inspired looks.

I regularly find myself lost in other bloggers' home posts, interior Pinterest boards and the such. I spend longer than I'd care to admit 'virtual window shopping' online for homewares and furniture, and adore redecorating rooms in our own home, or giving them a little spruce up when the budget won't stretch. 

A few months ago I shared Bert's 'Big Boy Room' with you - and although we didn't have the budget to go the whole hog and properly re-decorate what is/was our 'spare room', we gave it a new lease of life with some cool accessories etc. It is all ready for him to move in to and we hope he'll be tucked up safe in his big boy bed before his baby sister joins us in the summer. 

With Spring in the air, the sun shining, my favourite flowers blooming, my baby belly growing at an alarming rate and my need to nest well and truly kicking in, I thought that it was a good time to start a new little regular feature on the blog: over the next few months I'll be sharing a little insight into our home with you all. Room by room I'll give you a virtual tour and share with you some of my favourite parts of the house. I love my little home and although there's still plenty I want to do to it, I think you'll enjoy seeing what we've done so far...

Our Home:

So, our house is a three double-bedroomed semi in a quiet close in Bedford, Bedfordshire and we've lived here for coming up five years. 

Downstairs we have an entrance hall with cloakroom/toilet, which leads into a living room, we have a large kitchen leading into a separate dining room to one end, and a small office leading off of that. We have a garden with large patio, lawn, pear tree and brick built outhouse/shed. 

Upstairs we have three double bedrooms and a large family bathroom with separate bath and shower. 

Plenty of space for our little family of 3 (soon to be 4!).

The Nursery

The first room I want to share with you in this series of posts is the Nursery. It's still being used by Bert at the moment, but once he's moved over to his big boy room it will be all ready for baby girl Bishop when she arrives in the summer. 

We redecorated this room completely shortly before we had Bert and tried to make sure it was gender-neutral, hoping that we'd go on to have other children after Bert. Here we are 2.5 years later awaiting the arrival of baby number two, and I'm pleased to say that I still love this room just as much as I did when we first decorated it.

We decided on lovely bright colours and a beautiful feature wallpaper from Osborne and Little by Quentin Blake (my favourite illustrator) - the paper is called 'Cockatoos' based on Blake's famous book of the same name, and I totally adore it! Isn't it fun? 

The Bishop Abode: Nursery 

When purchasing the paper I also bought some 'Cockatoos' fabric to sew some cushions to match, which now live on the daybed. We then went on to accessorise the room with multi-coloured marvellousness - like the fab striped bed cover set from Emma Bridgewater (another favourite of mine), bright bunting, and a hanging/flying wooden parrot. 

Homemade cushions in the matching 'Cockatoos' fabric

As well as using fabric to accessorise the room, I also used offcuts from the wallpaper to frame some A4 sized sections and sit them on a floating shelf from IKEA to brighten up the non-wallpapered plain white walls. I also painstakingly cut around individual cockatoos from wallpaper offcuts and pasted them cheekily around the nursery - hiding on shelves, skirting boards, light switches, above the clock etc - just like in the storybook I wanted to give the effect that the cockatoos had flown right off the wallpaper and were hiding in and around the nursery. 

I was so pleased with the final effect...

Framed wallpaper offcuts and cheeky hiding cockatoos...

Orange cockatoo found his way to the light switch...

Black cockatoo perches on the curtain tie back....

Blue cockatoo sits atop the clock...

We added more floating shelves on another of the plain white walls to house Bert's cuddly toy collection, which hides behind our beloved dolls house. The dolls house sits atop an extra large white chest of drawers. 

Cuddly toy shelves and more pesky cockatoos! 

The dolls house and gorgeous 'BERT' fabric covered letters. 

We wanted the nursery space to be multi-functioning - obviously it needed a cot and storage, but we also wanted it to house a day bed which could sleep adults too if necessary: this is particularly handy for sleepy mums during night feeds, and also for guests as we often have 2+ guests staying with us as most of my family live in Surrey and regularly come up to visit, so one spare bed really isn't enough for us when the hoards arrive! We went with an IKEA daybed which pulls out to a full kingsize bed, which is the perfect addition to our nursery space. 

Bert's cot - complete with his pink Peppa Pig bedding that he chose for himself! :-) It is SO weird to think that there'll be a baby girl in there soon!! 

Who wouldn't feel happy in a room like this? 

I'm so excited for what the Spring and Summer will bring - I find Spring such a joyful, inspiring and exciting time - I'm usually my most motivated during this season, which is a good-job as I'll be in full-on nesting mode before long I'm sure. Spring cleaning, baby clothes sorting, and generally sprucing up our home in time for our new little bundle: fun times! 

Mr Parrot adds some extra charm, don't you think? 

I hope you've all enjoyed this virtual-tour of our nursery, let me know what you think in the comments below...

Next in this series of posts I plan to share our master bedroom and then our kitchen/dining room... 

Watch this space interiors lovers!

Mrs B

xxx
Home Etc
Life With Munchers

Friday 12 February 2016

Kids Play Tent by Ferm LIVING from Houseology *REVIEW*


This week Bertster was sent the most beautiful tent from the wonderful people at Houseology

If you've not heard of it before, Houseology is a beautiful online interior design store, with the most incredible ranges for your home. I've been a huge fan of their site for a long, long time and have followed their social media channels ooh-ing and ahh-ing at all their stunning pieces for months - so I was more than thrilled to collaborate with them for this review. 

The B-Man, like most children, is a massive fan of making dens and tents. We regularly have to remodel our living room to make him a tent to hide in and usually this just comprises of a snuggly blanket and some cushions perched precariously between the big and little armchair...

In his homemade tent - watching his Kindle with his soft animals. 

Where's Bert? ...Reading in his homemade tent. 

As much as building dens and tents is really fun as a child, it doesn't quite have the same effect as a proper, real-life, fit for purpose tent - with a stable roof, and plenty of room. So when Houseology sent us out the brilliant Ferm LIVING Kids Tent we were more than just a little bit excited. 

Over the weekend I showed Bert a picture of the tent and told him that the postman would be bringing it for him as a special treat on Monday. Lo and behold as soon as he woke on Monday morning he said "postman bringing my tent today Mummy!" - toddlers don't miss a trick. 

Every time the doorbell went on Monday he cheered "My tent! Hooray!" just to be disappointed with other parcels and visitors etc. Thankfully, by 10am it had arrived, and by 10.15am he was inside his new abode with about a million soft toys!


Erecting our Ferm LIVING Kids Tent...

The tent comprises of 6 meter long wooden batons and two further batons (for the top) which are joined by hinges. Then there's 8 'L' shaped plastic joins and then the beautiful 100% cotton canopy/cover. It's all packaged neatly into a matching cotton drawstring bag and comes with very easy to follow instructions. I had the tent frame up in less than five minutes, and hubby helped me to secure the canopy over the frame - at 24 weeks pregnant that's not bad - and reiterates how straight forward it was to put together: not a single swear word at impossible instructions or messing around with tools etc. Fab! 

T'ah D'ah! Bert was more than chuffed with his fabulous new tent.

Bert was cheering and squealing with delight as he watched me put up his tent...we lined the floor inside with blankets and cushions and he dived straight inside! The tent has window openings on either side, with little blinds that roll up and secure with ties. There are also ties to help secure the cotton cover to the frame and keep it balanced. 


Our tent is the grey/white stripe with yellow detailing version (grey and yellow is one of my favourite colour combos!) so not only does it delight Bert, but it's also extremely pleasing to the adult eye and makes a rather beautiful and impressive feature in the room. It's not gaudy or gender specific - just practical and beautiful. The tent is also available in a black/white stripe colour way with coral detailing.

Peep-oh! I think he likes it...

"Hi Mummy!"

I can't tell you just how impressed I am with the quality of this piece. At £119 I know that it is most definitely at the high end of the play tent market price range, but in my opinion it is worth the extra spend. It is so beautifully crafted, sturdy and wonderfully presented that I wasn't remotely disappointed. Pair that with a) how easy it is to put together and b) that it folds flat, or collapses completely and can be popped away in its drawstring bag, and I honestly think it makes for the best play tent you'll ever buy! Your children won't grow out of it in terms of it's look - it's not themed to a specific character, or phase of childhood - I could see Bert enjoying this as much when he's 10 as he does at 2.5. 

Little Bert in his fabulous new den. That's better than blankets over the armchair, hey Bert?

Once Bert has gone to bed and we want to turn our living room come play room back into an adult space again, we simply fold the tent and slide it in behind our armchair, ready to get out again in just a few seconds the next day. It would slide easily under a bed or could be a main feature in a child's bedroom or playroom, staying up all the time. 

Joined by 1000 soft toys...naturally! 

Bert happily spent the whole of the morning the tent arrived inside it - watching his favourite TV shows and popping all his cuddly toys in and out of the windows. Before long, even the cat joined him...

Pickle our British Shorthair wanted in on the new tent action! 

It occurred to me how wonderful this tent will be in the spring/summer months when we want to play outside, I can just picture Bert eating a picnic inside it in the garden with his friends, or his new baby sister (when she arrives) keeping out of the sun underneath its shade. Come on summer! 

Nappy only time in his new favourite place. 

Needless to say, any time we've spent at home this week has been spent inside the tent. It is the first thing he asks for when he comes down in the morning, and Daddy has to come straight into the tent when he arrives home from work at night. The novelty most definitely hasn't worn off yet. He loved having friends round to play this week, and hiding in the tent with them. Seeing little people's faces when they're confronted with the tent is wonderful - their eyes light up! I'm almost a bit jealous, I'd have loved this as a child myself. 

Before long, Bert discovered that the window openings in the tent make the most perfect Puppet Show Theatre, so we've had all sorts of puppet show performances happening all week - here's a little clip of the puppet master in action ... 

"Welcome to the Puppet Show to the Dinosaur!" hahaha, bless him! 

If you're in the market for a super play tent for you little ones, grandchildren, nieces/nephews and you've got the budget for this, then go for it! It will make a wonderful investment and watching their little faces when they see it for the first time will be priceless. 

For more information and for more lovely products from Houseology then head to their website or follow them on their social channels:

Houseology on Facebook
@Houseologists on Twitter
Houseologists on Pinterest
@thehouseologists on Instagram 

I'm off to eat my lunch now, in the tent of course!

Mrs B

xxx


Disclaimer: I was sent the Ferm Living Kids Tent from Houseology in exchange for a fair and honest review. All words and images are my own.