The Halls are Decked!

You may remember my post from last Christmas where I shared a few photos of our little flat all decorated for the festive season... Well looking back on the blog has made me feel a little bit sentimental. My final words in that post were: "maybe next year we'll have a house to decorate! Now there's an exciting thought!" and here I am, just 12 months later, sat on the sofa in our very own home. I feel incredibly lucky that our dreams came true this year and we were able to finally become homeowners, it's something that many people my age can only dream of so I'm making a conscious effort to remind myself often of how fortunate we are.

Anyway - I thought I'd do the same as last year and share some photos of our home adorned with Christmas decorations. I'm so excited about our first Christmas here and even though we aren't celebrating Christmas Day at our house, it's nice to enjoy some festive sparkle and decorations at home whilst counting down the days...

Project Grey Kitchen: Our Kitchen Makeover

The open-plan kitchen, dining and living area was the first part of the house that we wanted to get sorted first. Our house is only four years old so it's very new and structurally doesn't need anything changing, but we were reluctant to move in all of our belongings before painting the walls exactly how we wanted them. Avoiding paint splashes once all moved in would have been much more of an ordeal, so painting first seemed more sensible. Luckily the majority of our furniture was in storage at my parents', so we didn't have to worry about paying hefty storage fees and this meant we weren't under any pressure to get things finished quickly. That said, we couldn't wait to get going!

Our house and the house next door were built as a pair in 2011 and are identical but mirrored. All of the fittings, floors and windows are exactly the same. Goodness knows why but the kitchen, dining room and part of the living room were painted in a dark, chocolate brown with chocolate brown interior doors throughout the property to match. I assume that the designer wanted the houses to feel rather contemporary but it was such a poor choice of colour given the size of the house. It made the whole of the downstairs feel incredibly dark and the first time we viewed the house I remember saying to Rob "the chocolate brown has GOT to go!"

Christmas Tree Oh Christmas Tree

Happy 1st December you lovely lot! The Christmas Tree is officially up and our living room is full of sparkle and that wonderful smell of fresh Nordman Fir. You just can't beat the smell of Christmas, can you?!

Our New Home

So where to start?! I've been away from blogging for so long that I don't really know where to begin with telling you all about our house purchase and our experiences as becoming first-time buyers. It's been the biggest, most exciting and emotionally draining whirlwind and one which I hope not to have to go through again for a long while! So it would probably be sensible to start from way back in April of this year, when we moved out of our beautiful flat in Greenwich and in with Rob's Mum, in East London.

I had mixed emotions about moving out of our flat. It was the first place since living with my parents, that had felt like a real home to me and Rob & I had created so many happy memories there. We had fallen in love with Greenwich, a place which will forever be close to my heart. It was an ideal place to live, albeit an expensive one, and for me it was always going to be difficult leaving. But, {and I like to think that this was a wonderful bit of fate} a few weeks before our impending move-out date we found the most perfect house. We had been searching for just over a year{!} and the areas of our search kept changing; initially in central London, then out into beautiful Kent and then back towards London. I scoured the Rightmove app every single day for what felt like months, for properties within our budget in various different areas. We looked at houses, flats, more houses....  And when a modern, semi-detached two-bed house with a garden & car parking space appeared on Rightmove I literally jumped with excitement and organised a viewing. Luckily we were the first people to view the house and made an offer that same day.