Happy Christmas everyone!
I hope the stockings have been ripped open and chocolates are already being eaten. I just wanted to drop in to really briefly wish you a happy day, whatever it is that you are up to and however it is that you celebrate. Wishing you all a belly full of food, lots of laughter, silly hats and a cosy evening with loved ones.
Lots of Christmas kisses to you all!
Katy xxx
I always think that Christmas and Scandinavian style go hand in hand and where better to bring those two things together than on the dining table? I’ve never been a massive fan of the traditional red, green and gold of the festive period so I have been on the look out for more pared back tableware but pieces with lots of lovely textures that help to soften the hard edges of winter light and weather.
The perfect Christmas table by ALSO Home
To create that Scandi feel go for beautiful ceramics, warm wooden serving boards, touches of blue, the natural texture of baskets for bread, linen table cloths and napkins and lots and lots of beeswax candles. Here are some of my favourite pieces that would help to make any table this Christmas look and feel amazing…
Sue Pryke’s tea pot – Simple Shape / Handmade oak serving platter – ALSO Home / Seagrass basket – ALSO Home / Linen tablecloth – ALSO Home / Natural beeswax honeycomb candles – The Future Kept / Hand painted dinner plate – ALSO Home / Monochromatic dinnerware – Heals / House of Rym -Tea & Kate
Oooo, it’s making me feel all festive and excited for the next few weeks!
Katy x
*This post was written in collaboration with ALSO Home.
You may have noticed that things have been a bit quiet around here lately. If you read this post last year, you will know that Jules and I have been struggling to conceive for the last four years. Last August, after our fourth round of IVF had failed, I made a wish on the tree above that our two remaining embryos that were frozen that same day would one day become a baby. I can not quite believe that I am writing this – I am still in complete shock and none of it feels real – but nearly a year later my wish has come true and I am so pleased to be able to tell you that I am 13 weeks pregnant.
I really want to share this with you because the love and support so many of you showed me after I wrote my last post about how much I was struggling with our IVF journey helped me more than you will ever know and I hope that by writing about my experience it may help others. I gave myself permission to have a break from IVF after that, looked after myself, had some fun, reconnected with friends I hadn’t seen for months, in some cases years, because I had been hiding away throughout the treatment. We enjoyed ourselves for the first time in a long time and not every dinner at a restaurant ended with me in tears after the discussion strayed to IVF. We spent eight months with not a single hospital appointment, no discussion of treatment but we began that break with some intensive IVF counselling. It was a gruelling process but we came out the other side feeling so much more positive and with a far greater understanding of each others feelings and anxieties. We agreed with each other that our next round of IVF using our two frozen embryos, that we planned to do when I felt ready, would be our last.
By April this year I felt like a different person. I felt like I had reclaimed my life and could be so much more present than I had been for the last few years. The break did us both the world of good (even though Jules is still annoyed that I made him makeover our kitchen and living room in that time – ha!). I was ready to start our final round of IVF and the whole process felt so different to the previous four rounds of treatment. Firstly, it was our first frozen embryo round so it was far less invasive and involved very few visits to the hospital. Physically, it was so much easier on my body as they didn’t have to stimulate my ovaries to produce loads of eggs; not being pumped full of strong hormones made it far more bearable. The hardest part of the process was the day that they thawed the two embryos and we had to sit at home waiting for a phone call from the hospital to tell us whether the embryos had survived the thawing process (about 10% don’t survive). We got no phone call, which we took as good news, and went in at lunchtime for the embryo transfer. The doctors told us that both embryos looked perfect and they transferred them both. Jules and I promptly took ourselves out to lunch and then I went for an acupuncture session at Zita West (I would really recommend it). And then the two week wait to find out whether one or both of the embryos would implant began.
I was on a complete high for a couple of days and felt so incredibly positive but on the second night stomach cramps began and continued throughout the night and kept me awake. I had had the exact same experience during the last round of treatment, which failed. I woke up the next day and for a split second thought it had all been a bad dream. I was convinced the treatment had failed and I would begin bleeding any second. I cried and cried and cried that day and didn’t leave my bed. All the while Jules was his usual positive self and refused to allow me to give up hope. The next week felt like the longest expanse of time possible. I caved a couple of days before I was supposed to take the pregnancy test and did one at the crack of dawn. My heart sank through my chest as no line appeared. I picked up the stick to have a closer look and I squinted really hard and there was something there. Maybe not visible unless you held it up to the light or angled it a certain way, but something. I marched into the bedroom (it was about 4am) and switched on the light and shoved it in Jules’s face and told him to look. I’m pretty sure he didn’t really wake up but confirmed there was something. Obviously, I couldn’t go back to sleep after that and just kept staring at that stick. I then got on the internet – massive mistake. My one piece of advice to anyone undergoing fertility treatment is DO NOT GOOGLE ANYTHING. Seriously. I ended up in some hideous forum about faint lines on pregnancy tests after which I concluded that the line should be far darker nine days after an embryo transfer and what I was seeing was traces of HCG hormone after a chemical pregnancy. More tears.
The next day, one day before I was supposed to take the pregnancy test, I did a digital test at about 5am. I was so ready and prepared for it to be negative and I could not believe it when the word ‘pregnant’ appeared. We went for a dog walk and I refused to believe that the test was accurate so on the way home I picked up another test that I did as soon as we got home. The test took three minutes to work and there was no line at all for at least two of those minutes – I shouted at Jules, “I told you! It hasn’t worked – I knew it!”. But then a line appeared, still very faint but definitely a line. The next day I did two more tests, obvs!
That first week after we found out I was pregnant was the worst. Throughout the last four years, having a baby was all about getting pregnant with not much thought beyond that. I had never thought about what would happen next and I was suddenly faced with the absolute crushing fear that a third of IVF pregnancies end in miscarriage during the first trimester. I was completely paralysed with anxiety that something was going to go wrong: I couldn’t focus, concentrate, feel any joy. This was our only chance of having a baby; miscarriage became the only thing I could think about whilst trying not speak, hear or read the word. I began to obsess over what symptoms I was or was not feeling. If I went a day without a wave of nausea I was certain that it was over. I was a mess.
We had an 8 week scan booked in with the IVF unit (we had our treatment at Guy’s Hospital ACU, which I would recommend). I can not explain to you how nervous I was. Luckily, one of the lovely nurses who had treated us was doing the scan and she was as nervous as I was and she could not have been kinder or more reassuring. She grabbed my leg and swung the monitor round and exclaimed that everything was ok. Jules and I both burst into tears.
The time after that went so much more quickly and and as every day passed I felt a little more confident. However, I was terrified before our 12 week scan and I have to admit I didn’t enjoy a single second of that scan and the accompanying screening for various syndromes. I think I have to accept that I’m going to find this pregnancy pretty hard as I don’t think my anxiety levels will drop much; it feels as though so much is riding on this.
If you are going through or about to go through fertility treatment please do get in touch and feel free to ask me any questions about my experiences – I have found sharing as much as possible has really helped me. Before I go (and I promise to get back on the blog as much as possible now I feel far less sick than in the first 12 weeks) I want to thank again those of you who have sent messages of support, shared your own fertility stories and sent positive vibes my way. You really have been amazing and made all the difference. I’ll keep you updated on how my pregnancy goes and the nursery plans, of course!!
Katy x
I started a living room and kitchen makeover waaaay back in January. Whilst most of the big stuff was done by February, after a few crazy DIY weekend sessions, everything started to drag after that due to delays in furniture deliveries, which meant I couldn’t pull the whole room together until last month. However, it is finally done and I love it, which is the main thing. The flat as a whole feels so much more cohesive and fresh now and even more importantly, the room works so much better on a practical level, which makes Jules very happy.
Today, I just wanted to remind you of what the room was like ‘before’ and show you a few snaps mid-decorating and then I will share the full room reveal later on this week, so keep your eyes peeled.
What I didn’t like:
– I didn’t buy any of the furniture for this room; it was all stuff from my previous flat. Therefore, it never felt like it quite fitted and a few of the pieces were too big for this space.
– I got tired of the mish-mash style and craved simplicity and a calmer vibe.
– The teal blue loveseat blocked out too much light from the south facing floor to ceiling window, which always felt a bit criminal.
– From a practical point of view the room did not work. The sofa was too small for all of us (including Otto) to sit on together comfortably (I like to lie out). The rug was being destroyed by Otto as it is so thin and delicate and it showed up his hair really badly. Also, the position of the dining table didn’t quite work because I would sit at one end and Jules would sit in the middle and because we weren’t directly facing each other it wasn’t very conducive to chatting or lingering after eating.
– There was very little storage.
What I sold:
– Teal loveseat
– Sofa
– G-plan sideboard
– Hanging pendants
– Wall mirror
– Lloyd Loom chair
– Large ceramic table lamp
– Retro yellow table lamp
– Gave back my mum’s school trunk to her and kept the kilim rug for the future when I have a house big enough for a dog-free room 😉
I packed Jules and Otto off for a week to stay with his mum so that I could paint the living room, kitchen and re-paint the floors white (they were pale grey). Big clumsy dogs and paint don’t mix very well so I had to get it all done before they came back. By this point I had sold most of the furniture, which made it so much easier on a practical level, but once I had cleared out the remaining few bits I had a blank canvas to get started on the paint job.
After attending the preview for the nine new Farrow & Ball colours I fell in love with Peignoir and decided that it would be the perfect colour for the living room. I have to say, after using quite a few different brands of paint, that using Farrow & Ball paint is a completely different league. The ease with which if goes onto the walls and how smoothly it dries is something else. I really believe it is worth every penny, especially if, like me, you do the decorating yourself. I only had to do two coats and even Jules was pleasantly surprised at how professional the finish was when he returned (I am a bit notorious for rushing jobs like these so he was anxious that I wasn’t going to do a good job of it!).
Normally, I would have started by ‘cutting in’ but for some very good reason, which escapes me right now, I had to start by rollering the walls. It all worked out well in the end though. These are terrible snaps that I kept on sending Jules as he was anxious about Peignoir being too pink. It is very grey a lot of the time so he really likes the colour.
Once I had finished the walls I re-painted the floors white as grey floors with Peignoir felt a bit muddy and crisp white woodwork and floors helps to keep it feeling fresh and modern.
So, I will be back later on this week with the final reveal of the room and the new furniture and accessories that I have chosen for this space. The week after that I’ll show you the kitchen makeover, which goes off the living room to the right (as you can see in that picture above).
Katy x
Last weekend I was lucky enough to attend the second Function+Form event hosted by Tiff and Annie with the brilliant houzz team and a group of some of my favourite fellow bloggers. We met at Ottolenghi for cake and coffee before a very exciting morning of touring two beautiful east London homes – my favourite pastime.
We visited two very different homes but there was so much inspiration to be had from both. I walked away from interior designer Laura Lakin‘s home with major house envy: I loved the space, light and monochromatic scheme of the Hackney loft in a converted school house.
Laura wanted the the architectural features such as the windows to do the talking in her flat so she kept to a black and white palette and the simplicity of this really appeals to me. Clever design such as the internal window to break up the second bedroom and living space keep the light flowing throughout and creates an illusion of more space.
I fell in love with Laura’s artwork collection especially this piece by Kylli Sparre that she has hung above her bed.
We also visited architect Chris Dyson‘s Georgian townhouse in Spitalfields. I often walk down the streets in this area and wonder what the houses behind the facades are like so I really enjoyed the opportunity to nose around this beautiful home.
The kitchen/diner was my favourite room in the house located on the top floor with terraces on both sides. Such a clever use of space and the kind of room you would spend all day in.
My favourite kind of day and I will admit to coming home and making a couple of purchases and tweaks in my own home after being inspired by what I’d seen.
Thank you so much to Tiff, Annie, the houzz team, Laura Lakin and Chris Dyson, as well as the fabulous group of fellow design bloggers who attended the event for making it such a wonderful day. If you are interested in future Function+Form events you can register your interest here.
Katy x