So we up’d the offer a tiny bit, and again it was rejected.So we decided to leave it a that. We said we were still interested, but that we wouldn’t be going any higher than that. That was in Feb this year. We carried on looking but didn’t find anything we liked. Then in late April we got a call saying that the vendors had found a house they wanted and that they wanted to have an offer secured on their house before they put an offer on this house (to give their offer more strength). So we went and had a second viewing, still loved it to bits, but decided that we were confident that our last offer was fair, so said we were still very interested, but wouldn’t be increasing it.

Again, they rejected this offer, but went ahead and put an offer on the house they wanted anyway, which was reject (for being too low – how’s that for karma!).

Then about a month later we got a call saying they’d found another house they wanted, and were we still interested in the house (which we were). They put an offer on this house they wanted, it got accepted, so they in turn accepted our offer.

6 weeks later we were in!! It’s our dream house – I love it so much. I’m so glad that we were patient and didn’t bow to the pressure to increase our offer. We’re very happy with what we paid – it was by no means a crazy bargain, but we’re confident we won’t be falling into negative equity any time soon.

We moved in at the beginning of August, and although it was in a perfectly good condition, the decor wasn’t really to our tastes. So we’re in the process of painting every single nook and cranny. It’s taking ages!! But all we have to do now is the spare room and our main bedroom.

We moved from a fully furnished flat into this house, so we didn’t have much furniture. The first two and a half weeks were spent sleeping on an inflatable bed – not good! But we’re slowly but surely getting there.

I absolutely adore my new kitchen. It’s got a lovely white units, a range oven, wooden worktops and a belfast sink! The worktop needed work though – the old varnish had worn off in places so it looked really patchy, and the bits that did still have varnish on them were all sticky. So I spent about 6 hours one day removing this varnish (I might do a post later about how I did it – for now the memory is still too raw and painful – it was a horrific job!). So now I’m in the process of oiling it. I don’t want to put varnish back on it – I want to keep the natural-ness of the wood.

Once all the coats of oil have been done and I can put my bits back on the worktop, I’ll take a picture. It was an orangey/yellow colour when we moved in, but I painted it a lovely olive green. I just love it!

And… we got engaged!! So I am now planning a wedding as well as sorting the house out. We’re doing the deed next May, so there’s not too much time to waste. I’ll be doing lots of crafy homemade/DIY wedding bits, so no doubt that will feature heavily.

I’m going to try and make a concious effort to post on a more regular basis, so do make sure you come back soon!

V, xx

But also, I was getting a bit fed up to be honest – fed up of planning my dream shabby chic home, but not actually having it!

However… the house hunt has now started! We got a mortgage offer in January and have now started to look for houses in our local area. It’s tough though because there’s not really much around. We’ve been very selective in our geographic area, and there’s literally 11 available properties that match our basic requirements. We’ve seen about 6 of them, a couple are buy to let and a couple are so ugly and in need of complete renovations. We’re willing to take on a little project, but only a little one.

We saw two houses this weekend and the one on Saturday is ‘the one’! We love it.

It’s perfect inside – you could move in straight away and not have to do a thing to it. There’s fireplaces in all of the downstairs living areas and proper wooden floorboards throughout. And the kitchen is gorgeous – we wouldn’t need to do anything to it. All the rooms upstairs are really good sized too. The only downside is the bathroom is a bit on the small side. But there’s a loo downstairs too, and the garden is really nice – nice and small and manageable. It’s all south facing too. And – I forgot this bit – it’s detached! Woohoo!

So we offered on it this morning (is that the term?!). I don’t want to risk saying what we offered or linking to the house on RightMove in case there’s anyone else out there who’s wanting to buy the same house. This is what I’ve realised – it’s one big poker game. I don’t like it. But in a nutshell our first offer it was rejected (no real surprise) because they were hoping to get closer to the asking price. So I told them there’s no way we think it’s worth that and we certainly wouldn’t be offering that at all. I said we’d think about it, but that we’re in no real hurry as we can stay in our flat as long as we need. So I said I’d discuss it with the BF tonight and I might call him back tomorrow.

Then the estate agents called back an hour or so later and said that he thought we should know that they’ve found another property they’d like to buy (I had been told they’d already found a place, so I don’t know if this is a new one, or if all of this is total bull), but that this new property they like is actually a lot less than they thought they were gonna need to spend, so they might not be so reliant on getting the asking price for their house. So I said that that was interesting, but in actual fact what they’re buying isn’t important, it’s the value of what they’re selling that’s key – why should I overpay on their house so they can buy something bigger?! (was getting a bit stroppy by now!!). He just said that he didn’t want to put us off totally by giving us the impression that they wouldn’t accept any lower than their asking price.

So now it’s our turn again… make another offer if we want, but how much?? That is still to be decided….

Another quick update… I’ve been going some jewellery lessons at the local college. I love it; been making lots of lovely things. I’ll take some pics and post them soon too.

I haven’t yet got a plan of exactly where I’m going to put these tins, or if I’ll store anything in them (although I doubt they could hold much – it’d have to be something like buttons or something else non porous that won’t get affected by the general mankyness of the tin!). But I’m sure when I eventually find my dream home, I’ll find somewhere to put them all! And what shabby chic home would be seen dead without a vintage Oxo tin – it’s about as much of a shabby chic staple as a Cath Kidston tablecloth (not that I’ve got one of those…yet!).

So anyway, building upon this rather tenuous link… I baked this cake for my best friend Ann-Marie. It was her birthday so since I love baking I said I’d make her a very special birthday cake. I used a Victoria Sponge recipe from my Tanya Ramsey cookbook, which came out perfectly.

I then sliced it in half and filled it with homemade chocolate butter cream icing and spread a layer of the icing on the top. Then I split Kit Kats in half (so I had two fingers stuck together still), gave it a lick of the icing and stuck them to the side of the cake. I felt a bit like a brick layer doing this bit!! I used two multi packets of Kit Kats to do this (I should make this disclaimer now that this is NOT a healthy cake by any means!!). Then, I got two big bags of M&Ms (no peanuts) and poured them into the top of the cake. I initially only had one bag, but amazingly it didn’t quite cover the top properly, so I had to dash out to get another bag!!

And the result was amazing!! Ann-Marie loved it. She said it was the best cake she’d ever had. And I have to say I was actually pretty chuffed with it myself!

Leave me a comment if you want the recipe for the Victoria Sponge, it really did taste delicious.

So after scouring local shabby chic shops in Southampton, Winchester and Chichester, I eventually turned to ye old trusty – eBay! As I said, it took a while to find a bowl that matched my shabby chic expectations, but I think this one really hits the nail on the head. And it’s Wedgwood too which is always nice.

It’s got lovely little ram heads on either sides, which also double up as handles/grips when carrying the bowl (not that I’m really going to be carrying it much!). It’s a good size too – holding about two bags of apple, and a load of other fruit and grapes quite well. Overall I’m really pleased with it. It was well worth the wait!

It turned up earlier this week, and my oh my, it did not disappoint! I showed incredible will power and didn’t eat it until later in the evening – and I even shared it with the BF! Aren’t I good?

So it was a chocolate brownie with pecans and white chocolate, covered in a thick layer of chocolate. A bit like the old  ‘if you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join out Club’ (only I had a Club the other day – they couldn’t use this strap line anymore, there’s was thin, tiny layer of chocolate on the biscuit! Rubbish!). Anyway, back to this delicious brownie… basically, it was delicious! I’d never seen or heard of a brownie covered in a thick layer of chocolate, but it’s a bloomin brilliant idea. And the actual brownie itself was all moist and luscious!

You can find out more about Lucky brownies on the Lucky’s London website: http://www.luckys-online.co.uk/.

Remember to follow me on Twitter @LoveShabbyChic!

And if you wanted to reminise about the good old times, when Club’s actually did have a lot of chocolate on them… watch this:

Her fabrics are great – really kitch. I love how you can buy the fabric and make items yourself or just go ahead and buy pre-made items. I’ve got a wonderful tea pot and four huge matching mugs which my sister gave me for Christmas last year. It’s a great item and the mugs are massive!! I’ll probably post an item about those in the future too!

The shop in Winchester opened in July 2009 and as far as I know it’s doing really well (this is based on the fact that it’s always mega busy every time I go in there! Not a terribly scientific way of measuring business success, but I think it’ll do!). It sells a really wide range of the Cath Kidston items - fabrics, clothes, bags, accessories, crockery – pretty much everything. It’s a really large shop and they’ve done it out really well – everything from the wonderfully branded receipts, to the patchwork curtains in the changing rooms. The staff are nice and knowledgeable and overall it’s a great shopping experience.

I really want to sew a patchwork quilt. Has anyone done this? I think it’s something that’ll take hours and hours, but I don’t think it’s technically too difficult. I did do a dressmaking course a couple of years ago at Itchen College and made a dress that was very Cath Kidston-esque. I’ve put the Cath Kitston Sew book on my Amazon Wish List so hopefully someone kind will buy it for me for a Christmas present!!

If you’ve used any Cath Kidston fabrics to create anything fabulously shabby chic let me know! Send any images to me and I’ll feature the best in a future blog post.

Image courtesy of LiveLifeLove.

These tea, coffee and sugar jars look just gorgeous! I have seen them sold on eBay, but since T.G.Green have made so many different versions of this in the past I worry that if I bought them separately they might not match properly. So my goal is to wait until I actually buy my house and splash out on these as a little shabby chic present to myself (as if the house itself won’t be present enough!!).

I’m going to have to be careful not to go to OTT on the whole cornish blue look – I’m aiming for a few bits I can put on a display dresser and a few bits I can actually use. These jars will be used – I’m thinking they’d look nice on my kitchen worktop maybe.

Do you have these jars? Send me a picture if you do and I’ll add them to a future post. It’s always great to see how others display their collections.

So this is an older sugar bowl and has some marks on the inside (although I think with a bit of scrubbing a lot of this will come off). I don’t think I’ll be using it as a sugar bowl since we don’t really use sugar in our household. The BF doesn’t drink tea and coffee anyway, and I don’t take sugar in my tea (and recently I’ve been taking to drinking green tea – it’s actually really nice and has some great health benefits – I’d recommend you give it a go!).

So I’m not sure what I’ll put in it. I’ll probably leave it empty, but I like the idea of keeping something in it – it’ll look a bit empty and sad if I don’t. Maybe loose change – that’s always handy to have lying around the kitchen.

Any suggestions would be gratefully received!! Leave them in the comments. Thanks!

I’m going to get some herbs or some kind of plant to put in it. I think it’ll look lovely on a shelf or windowsill in my kitchen. Unfortunately I don’t have a very good track record of growing or keeping herbs alive, so I might have to cheat and get a good quality fake plant to put in it!!

I am also tempted to buy a newer, usable one, as I think the idea of having some fresh bread with ‘Hovis’ stamped on it is quite a nice idea. I’ve got visions of having people round for lunch and carving up a nice freshly baked loaf…. I can hear my friends gasps of delight already…”Oh wow – isn’t this great, this loaf has ‘Hovis’ baked into it! Such a great idea”!!