The first thing that attracted me to my current flat was the windows: full height, south facing and stretching across two walls of the living space. Being six floors up I can see the horizon, which feels like such a luxury in central London. They are always the first thing visitors gravitate towards so that they can check out the view. Honestly, there is nothing I love more than being curled up on my sofa on a miserable day with a blanket and being able to watch as the weather rolls in and seeing the rain clouds in the distance or the fork lightening over London. It always takes my breath away how big the sky seems and being able to see so much of it is something special.

Image via: I Love Bokkie

Obviously I would prefer that our views were of woodland, rolling hills or water as far as the eye can see rather than the neighbouring apartment blocks and the towers of Canary Wharf in the distance but you can’t have everything in life, right? The house on the sea or the cabin in the woods will have to wait. The fact is having views of any description in the middle of a city is a big bonus and makes a massive difference to how spacious the flat feels. When we moved in I was determined not to cover up an inch of the glass and so they remained blindless and curtainless for a good few months, which seemed like a great idea at the time. I have always loved waking up to masses of light as I am such a morning person and it is the time of day I feel most energised so walking into a living space flooded with light always makes me happy.

However, the joys of being blinded by the light from the windows and being caught one too many times by our neighbours in less clothes that we would like meant we had to re-think the whole “our windows are amazing and it would be a sin to cover them up” thing. I think it was one Saturday morning when we had had one too many drinks the night before and we couldn’t escape the pounding heat and rays of the sun sealed it for us. We needed some way to cover our windows in as subtle way as possible.

We decided to go for blinds as curtains offer no flexibility – they either have to be drawn, completely blocking out the light and views, or not drawn. Whereas there are some very clever blinds out there that can give you the best of both worlds and you can control the amount of light/privacy. Luxaflex have a great collection of blinds that fit the brief, for example their newly launched Twist shades. With two layers of fabric the Twist shades allow you to position them completely open, half open or closed so you control the light, how much of the view you can see and how much privacy you have (I’m telling you, some of our neighbours really need these as we see far too much of them!). See how they work here…so clever.

Interior shutters from Luxaflex

Another stylish option is interior shutters as these are much more flexible than curtains as you can tilt open the louvres as much or as little as you need to and they create a real focal point in a room in the way that blinds can’t always. I’ve hankered after shutters for ages as I love the way they look as well as their practical features.

So, back to beautiful windows that you would definitely want to make the most of…if we ever build our own house one day I reckon the position and size of the windows will be one of our first priorities.  Until then though, I will have to make do with our inner city view and cover up the windows as and when we need to.

I have been making a Pinterest board of beautiful windows for lots of inspiration and I will be adding to it over the month. You have to take a look as it will make you swoon…

Click through to the Pinterest board.

Sorry, hope those views haven’t distracted you too much! Watch out next week as the lovely folks over at Luxaflex will be offering a great prize for one reader to help make the most of your windows.

Katy x

*This post was written in collaboration with Luxaflex.

One of the things I like best about the arrival of the colder months is the chance to cosy up indoors and enjoy long dinner parties with lots of candles, red wine and yummy food. It’s so lovely to gather friends and it is easy to make it feel special by making a bit more than the usual effort on styling the dinner. I have the perfect recipe for you to use for dinner parties, which will give you the extra time you need to prepare a beautiful autumnal table.

I’m a big fan of Robert Welch knives (remember this post?) so I was thrilled to be sent a beautiful new set of Malvern Bright cutlery that adds a touch of style to my table. I would always recommend investing in a set of good quality cutlery as not only does it look great but eating from it is so much more pleasurable. This limited edition 30 piece set is great value and you save £39 compared to individual retail pricing and it is completely dishwasher safe (a must for me).

To style my table, once I had decided on my cutlery, linens and glasses, I spent a few moments printing out the menu for the dinner but you could just add a simple name card. The pink of the glasses and the pink salt adds a bit of warmth to the table (you know how I don’t like dark colours so this is my nod to autumnal colours).

A very quick, easy and cheap way to add a bit of decoration to the table is to use a few stems of Eucalyptus, with the added bonus that it smells amazing, and a few gourds nestled amongst the foliage to add an autumnal feel.

I remembered that last week I found Jeska’s tutorial to gilt seashells and although I didn’t have time to do that I thought the shells would make lovely little pinch pots for salt and pepper.

I really like the simple and classic design of this cutlery range and it feels really good to hold, too. As an added bonus you get six free steak knives with this set.

So there’s my easy to style Autumn table and as promised, you must try out this recipe by Nigella Lawson for Asian flavoured short ribs: it tastes so good, can be prepared up to three days ahead of time and it is impossible to get wrong. Do it – your friends will love it! I’m looking forward to thinking of Christmas table ideas now using my new gorgeous cutlery.

Katy x

*This post was written in collaboration with Robert Welch.

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As I explained last week I lost a lot of images from older posts whilst meddling with my blog design (ooops!). Therefore, I have been spending my spare time trying to upload the original images back into my archives and although a painful process it has been nice at times re-discovering posts I did a few years ago that I had forgotten about.

As it turns out, one of my most popular posts (it has been on Buzzfeed over and over again and pinned over 100k times – I know!!) is one about kitchen storage ideas and how I use the inside of my cabinet doors to give us more space in a small kitchen. Now, the photos are a bit ropey and the cupboards a little messy compared to how they look these days after my minimalism challenge but I thought you might want to see these ideas again if you didn’t see it first time round over three years ago…

Ikea hacks

1. Three years on I still LOVE this idea and it has helped so much in daily cooking and you no longer hear me scream “where is the f**king lid to this pan???”. Do it immediately if you haven’t already.

Screw these GRUNDTAL rails to the inside of your kitchen cabinets as the perfect way to store pan lids.

2. The versatility of these BEKVAM spice racks is great and we have three screwed into the back of our main food cupboard, which provides valuable extra storage space.

Be careful to choose screws that are short enough that they won’t damage the outside of the cabinet door.

3. This is probably the image that has been shared most widely from my blog (shame it’s not aesthetically pleasing at all!). These KNUFF magazine files are a great way to add space for cleaning materials or we use them for cling film and foil as this frees up a whole kitchen drawer.

Be careful where you decide to place these as if you want to store something tall in them you will need to mount them fairly low down on the door.

4. VARIERA shelf inserts are a great way of using wasted space in kitchen cupboards and they effectively double how much you can store.

Such a simple way of adding more storage space.

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Hope this is helpful for those of you who missed it first time round and if you do need more storage in your kitchen you really should try these ideas as they have made a massive difference for us and three years on we are still using all them.

Katy x

Last week and this weekend were the worst! I got all over excited at the beginning of the week about changing my blog theme and not being the most patient of people decided to change it at 9pm one evening. Jules warned me to do a back-up of my blog content before I made any changes and so I installed a new back-up plug-in and annoyingly it wanted to run all night. So I went to bed and woke up to no blog. Nothing. Nada. We tried over the next 48 hours to retrieve it and eventually managed to wade through the corrupt files (still not sure exactly what happened) and reinstate the blog. However, as it turns out I have lost three years’ worth of images (from pretty much all my posts before the start of 2016). It was my birthday on Saturday and I had to cancel my party and we worked solidly throughout the weekend to try to piece together what is left but I have days and days of work left to do to upload the photos that are missing – luckily, I’ve always been quite good about filing my photos.

I’m trying to escape for a couple of hours from the hell that is technical issues and so I thought it would be nice to share a bit of nursery inspiration with you – I’m floating into my happy place and blocking out the last few days 😉 I have made a good job of clearing out our home office and selling the furniture and accessories from the room so we are ready to start painting and then choosing a few new pieces of furniture and finally bringing it all together. So, here is a taste of the look I’m going for: simple, light, calm colours, lots of natural wood and baskets against white, texture from textiles and a few vintage touches. I think it will be a room more for me to begin with whilst the baby is teeny tiny and then as she gets older we can add to it to make it more about her.

Lovely inspiration from these simple spaces…

I love the white backdrop and how the toys are the main focal point. Image via: Ukkonooa

Calm accent colours and texture introduced through textiles. Left image: A Merry Mishap Blog Right image: Avenue Lifestyle

We definitely want a daybed in the nursery and I think it will be a good way to introduce some colour with quilts and cushions. Image via: Bolig

Light, bright and airy with dots of colour – I don’t want this room to stick out like a sore thumb…yet! Image via: Petit and Small

I really love the way these dark greys have been used. Left image: Hartendief Right image: Emsloo

Vintage touches will hopefully give the room a bit of character and the raw wood creates great contrast against the white backdrop. Image via: Bloesum

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Right, I should probably get back to re-instating three years of work that’s vanished into the ether – sob. If anyone is looking for a specific post drop me a line and I can put it to the top of the priority list to fix.

Katy x

P.S. At least I finally have a new theme, although still lots to tweak – do you like it? (please, please, please say yes!)