Bella has been busy playing...

The Little Teacakes constructed a great many paper aeroplanes before school yesterday morning...I later found Bella sleeping in amongst them. She looked like she had had an exhausting morning of fun.

We had our own afternoon of exhausting fun. After we came back from lunch, I was in the kitchen baking cakes, when I asked Mr Teacakes if he wanted to come and chat to me. 'I really do, but there's no sofa in there', he said from the play room/office room/garden room. Such a simple comment....two hours of moving furniture later and the sofa was in the old dining room which is a part of the kitchen, where he could lie and talk to me while I baked, and where the children might later sit and read and keep me company. And suddenly we find ourselves with a proper grown-up sunny dining room. Gone is the odd mix of a room that didn't quite know what it was. You can see how it used to look at the bottom of this post here, which also shows before and after pictures of how the rooms first looked just after we'd moved into this house.

What I especially loved about doing this is that we happen to have a garage full of old furniture and bits and bobs that we have amassed over the years, and every time we change things around it allows for things to be rotated. This large painting (above) that we couldn't find a home for has now been brought inside. I bought this directly from the artist when we lived in London and I've always loved it.

These reflections on water that my aunt photographed and had block-mounted have been brought inside.

And this old lamp will be nice in the window once I've bought a new shade for it.

The tapestry created by my incredibly talented mother in-law of our old house has now been hung over the desk. When we first moved house, as lovely as it was, neither of us had wanted it up...without the distance of time and having settled completely into our new home, it didn't feel right. But now it very much does.

We also found a little wooden stationery holder which will be perfect for storing all the children's art supplies in so that they can easily transport them over to the table (and importantly, easily transport them back again afterwards). We are gradually replacing the dining room chairs with older, more characterful ones than the Habitat lovelies that we bought several years ago. I bought the one on the right at a friend's vintage yard sale last week for £12.

I am completely in love with our new dining room. Our old dining room, being in between this room and the kitchen (which is a very open plan area) had felt slightly dark and gloomy in the middle of the house, but with the sofa there instead, it just feels warm and cosy...no pictures of the sofa area yet though as we've decided that our ten year old sofa may need to be replaced with something lovely. I also need a chair to put here in the corner near the glass doors:

This completely beloved chair that I rescued from a skip, sanded, varnished and reupholstered (very badly) in our first year of living together in London is up for consideration. We've now removed the old upholstery as I think really it needs to have all the webbing and springs replaced. I'm really tempted to do it myself....

....but I'm wondering if it may be too big a job for me.
We had such fun doing this...and I feel that I am now thoroughly justified in my hoarding ways. Mr Teacakes has not outwardly agreed with this, but he did express some delight each time I appeared from the garage with more forgotten treasure.

Florence x

The eagle-eyed may notice that we have not one, but two ride-on bees in this room. No, it's not a playroom any more, but these wooden bees are so much fun and so lovely to look at that I can't bear to put them away until the children have completely finished with them. If you're interested in finding your own, they're called Wheely Bugs and are mounted on castors that glide easily on carpet and wood and do a thrilling 360° turn.