Home Etc: Our New Cleaning Rota

For the last little while I've been trying to get a handle on how I approach keeping our house neat and tidy. We are very lucky to have the space we do, but recently I've been a bit worried and stressed by the clutter, and wanted to put a new rota in place so I could keep up with everything. I also wanted to create a system that meant we had less to do on weekends so we could relax, or work on any bigger house projects then.

I should probably add that Matthew is an absolute housework marvel - he's such a great gardener, sorts laundry like a boss, washes dishes every day and is better than I am when it comes to hoovering! In this season, however, when he's out at work for so much of the day during the week while I work from home I wanted to create a rota where I could clear most of the stuff during the weekdays. With no commuting and fewer pulls on my time of the same urgency, I wanted to take up more of the work so that when we do get time together we can have more fun, with fewer chores to do!

I've experimented with rotas for keeping the house tidy, both monthly ones and weekly ones, but I've never quite hit a rhythm. So this time I thought I'd pitch myself something between the two, with a fortnightly rota. With all the shopping, cleaning and little tasks like popping to pick up parcels or get the dry cleaning, this works out at a very sensible five tasks a day, plus one each on weekend. With a few 'daily dos' as well, this should cover everything, with more time available on weekends when bigger jobs or tasks like spring cleaning, charity shop runs, or getting the Christmas decorations up emerge. I'll keep you posted!

How do you organise your cleaning and tidying?

Linking up as ever with the Home Etc lovelies.

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Home Etc: A Glimpse at Neptune's A/W collection

Last month, in amongst all the Christmas in July fun (posts on all those events to follow once we're heading towards to festive season), I was lucky enough to go to Neptune's preview of their Autumn/Winter collection. As a huge fan of their beautiful products and always up for some home product perusal and styling delights, I was thrilled to be able to head over to check out the range. Here are a few (well, slightly over a dozen!) of my favourite shots from the day. 

I loved the smooth, clean lines of this tablescape. There were terrariums and succulents aplenty on display throughout the three floors of the showroom (a gallery in Bloomsbury had been transformed into a Neptune beladen haven for the day!).

These beautiful art deco style martini glasses caught my eye, perfect for pre- or post-dinner drinks, don't you think.

I really enjoyed the clean lines of this drinks trolley. It felt pretty, but industrial and masculine at the same time.

St Germain is fast becoming a key cocktail ingredient for me when devising cocktails - I love the sweetness and brightness it can bring to proceedings, so I was delighted to spot it while touring the showroom.

Gorgeous, squishy, inviting sofas, in the gorgeous mustard shade and the grey 'Smoke' they've added to their roster for the new season. I adored 'Smoke' - much of our home is kitted out in blues, greys and neutrals, so it was very much in my taste!

This beautiful desk worked with the same chrome and glass of the drinks cart. Perhaps a budding Don Draper could combine both in his study?

A nest of tables repurposed into inventive shelving. Throughout the space furniture was being used in so many different, interesting ways.

So very pretty, no?

I loved these bold, artful mirrors - we are looking for one for our dining room at the moment - as it's the centre room of a dark terrace some more light is needed - and these are firmly on my list as an option. Those painted frames really add a certain something.

These goblets are fabulous, aren't they? Very Game of Thrones!

This cool blue dresser is so charming. I loved this piece, it was so solid and well made. I also loved how the shelves were supported on notches in the wood, rather than with pegs or nails which can go missing, or be tricky to adjust. An idea which manages to be both simple and very clever!

This enormous vase would be so pretty for lilies or branches in a hallway or on a sideboard.

I loved this huge lamp - perfect for a reading spot on chilly evenings (a.k.a. exactly where you'll find me most winter nights!).

Coffee tables repurposed again in the kitchen space! Loved the cabinets here, which were really top-of-the-range and utilised space so well. I'd love to have a custom built kitchen where you can have spaces for all the things you like to have around when cooking and baking.

Stacked tables as an unusual and utilarian island.

And last but not least, some beautiful kitchen accoutrements - I think one of the gigantic mugs will have to be purchased soon for morning coffees.

The space chosen really showcased the brand and the products beautifully. I loved the styling and mood of the whole space; the combination of comfort and ease coupled with clean lines and mixed textures is very much within my aesthetic. I'm excited to return to Neptune soon to pick up a few pieces from the collection for our home.

Linking up with the lovelies at Home Etc:

Thank you very much to Neptune for inviting me to this event.

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Recipe: Super Simple Berry Parfaits

I love creating super simple foods to enjoy at home. For me food and eating is all about community, great ingredients, awesome flavours and sharing, whether it's a quick, tasty supper, a fun dessert, or a decadent brunch. 

These berry parfaits are beyond easy (I don't use the title 'Super Simple' lightly!) and make a yummy breakfast or a light, sweet pudding. Perfect for enjoying those gorgeous summer berries! I like to serve them in tumblers or wine glasses so you can see the colours.

Ingredients

Blueberries

Strawberries

Plain natural yogurt

Granola (I either use shop-bought - both Sainburys and Waitrose do delicious granolas, or make my own using this BBC Good Food recipe)

Method

1. Wash your berries - the amount will depend on the size of your glasses or bowls and how many people you're serving. Make sure your blueberries are stem free, and slice your strawberries into quarters. This is literally the most difficult part.

2. You're ready to assemble! Add a dozen blueberries and three strawberries (they are already quartered, so this will be 12 pieces). Top with two tablespoons of plain yogurt, then a tablespoon or two of granola.

3. Repeat step two.

4. Serve, and enjoy a light, pretty treat that is oh-so-simple to create.

Do you have a super simple go-to?

I'm linking up with the Home Etc linky again today - I tend to do so for interiors and decor, but sometimes people link foods, so I thought I would this time around. Visit the linky for a wealth of great home posts!

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The great study project, part 2

I wrote last month about our house project, to change two rooms. making what was my study into a spare room, and the spare room into a new study for me. This project is a definite labour of love, and getting it done around everything else is a challenge! However, progress is being made and I'd say we are well over 50% of the way. Of course, this now means that we are in the 'eek!' phase, where it looks worse before it gets better!

This is the former study, with the piles of stuff ready to be stored away, thrown away or recycled/donated. It's times like this I really wish we had a car!

Probably the most together of my spaces - love this long desk (actually two Ikea dining tables) with plenty of roomfor writing, taking notes, and creating. The skylight is wonderful - loads of light spilling in!

The pile is receding a little more every day, but when you're a stationery fiend like me there's always a lot of sorting through to do.

So. Much. Stuff. I may have to get Kondo on it!

Please excuse my slightly-burned ironing board - the high heat needed for cotton shirts is a little punishing!

Now there's a little shelf space created, there's more room for things, so I can definitely peek at the light at the end of the tunnel. I better get back to it now - looking forward to cracking and a getting it donw, and showing the finished rooms here before too long. Wish me luck, please!

Linking up with the Home Etc. team - such a great linky for tips, tricks, and swoonworthy rooms. And then  posts like mine, haha!

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The great study project, part 1

Warning, many pictures of a very messy workspace ahead.

I'm a very lucky girl, in that I get to have my own little office in our home. Space to write, create and craft is such a treat, and one I'm so grateful for. I've enjoyed having a study on the first floor of our home since we moved across in 2012, but as my life and work has changed, so have my workspace needs.  Which is why it got quite this messy....

Boxes of resources, craft supplies and things to store, but not enough space to do so.

It also didn't help that the window in this room in Poppet's favourite thing, meaning that I'd be grappling with a tricky paragraph and being harassed by a loud, angry (but still adorable) cat mewling to come in and be fussed at the same time. Cats don't really get the writing process. Or at least, my writing process - Poppet has a dab paw for the written word.

While I was teaching the set up was perfect, but now I wanted a new space with better storage and more room for writing and photography. So we decided to start the long (it's taking quite some time as I chip away at it!) process of moving all this stuff, plus the boxes I brought back from my old classroom, into my new study on the top floor. I'll be doing update posts on the midway point and the finished work later this month!

We bought two big Kalla units for extra shelf space in the new room. Matthew is so sweet, I think he's finally made peace with the fact we'll always have a lot of books around...

This is the view from the far corner of the room.  Once I've cleared the other things away, my desk will be underneath that big skylight - I'm so looking forward to having a workspace so flooded with natural light!

So that's how it looks now - expect a midway report soon, before the finished room is ready to share! I have such big plans for this space.

Do you have any big home projects on the agenda this month?


I've linked up with the Home Etc team, if only to make people laugh at the current chaos.

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Sitting Room Daydreaming

A snippet from my 'Sitting Room Daydreaming' board on Pinterest

I like our cosy sitting room.  It's where Matthew and I curl up on the evenings we have time for a little boxset viewing (currently watching: Parks & Recreation).  It's where Shona and I settle down with a Dominos to watch a chickflick (recent films include Josie and the Pussycats and The Devil Wears Prada).  It's also one of the cats favourite rooms - as it's south-facing it gets the best of the sunshine and Fry can often be found basking in a sunbeam!

It's a large room, and at the moment it's a room of two halves, with the front half being the sitting room and the back half being a home gym of sorts.  We might split these rooms with a curtain or wall at some point, but for now they flow through together.  We might move the home gym equipment down to the basement and make one large room (this is currently my favourite option, but will require saving up the pennies for a good while!).  While we do so, I'm having a great time thinking up what I'd like to do, even creating a Pinterest board to collect furniture, accessories and other things for a dream sitting room.  It's entirely wrong how happy an hour or two daydreaming about this can make me!

The good folks from Fishpools asked me if I'd like to do a post about this, and I happily acquiesced - it takes very little persuasion for me to talk about home improvement dreams.  The next project around here is my study, but after that I think the bathroom, hallway & sitting room will be next on the list!

A few favourite finds for the sitting room so far?  I love the idea of this piece of room art (from Not on the High Street), with all the destinations we love on it (Edinburgh, where we met; Mogan, where we got engaged; London, where we married; and all the other sweet destinations we cherish).  I'm a little bit in love with these cool grey shelves (from Ikea).  While looking through the Fishpools site I loved the Alexa sofa.  Getting a sofa into our terraced house will be a labour of love - with a narrow dorrway it will involve taking the front window out, but I love for the day we can curl up on a lovely, cosy sofa!  I really like this chic little yellow side table from John Lewis - I love to have little splashes of sunshine in my decor!  Last but never least, I feel like every Austen fan needs a Pride & Prejudice cushion (from Etsy).

Spring always gets me excited about home changes and I think it will be a busy season around here - budgets and shopping and boxes, oh my!  From tiny jobs (cleaning out the junk cupboards in the dining room!), to medium ones (installing a new extractor fan - oh, the glamour!), to bigger projects (more on the big study move later this week!).




Disclaimer: this post is sponsored by Fishpools, but as you all know, I need very little provocation to hit Pinterest and do a little home planning!

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April goals!

Happy April!  It's April Fools, so I hope any jokes played on you this morning were of the hilarious and kind sort, rather than the cruel and odd.  Here on the blog it's a new month and I'm so excited for some of the adventures ahead, with visits and afternoon teas and books and all kinds of things to look forward to.  And goals, because that's how we do!

Here are my goals for the month ahead.

Having got back on the weight loss train, I would like to lose ten pounds this month.  This would get me to a weight I haven't seen in two years!

I'd like to arrange one or two more interning experiences for later in the year.

Move my study/home office from its current room to a new location in the house.  This is a HUGE project including many boxes, visits to Ikea, furniture building, planning and tidying.  Bring it.

I would like to spend several days working with my new camera to work out the best shots. Technology time!

Donate another 35 items we no longer need to charity.

I would like to blog at least 20 times this month.

(this is genuinely one of my favourite gifs ever.  So funny!)

I have five big tasks on my scary list of bureaucracy and paperwork.  I would like to complete them all by the end of the month.

And also a little:

I would like to read six books this month, to get my yearly total up to twenty, on target for sixty at the end of the year.

Here's to a busy, fun month.  What do you have planned?

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Weeknight Supper Inspiration: Summer Vegetable and Chicken Stew

A couple of weeks ago I was very kindly invited to attend a products event for Zwilling and Staub.  It was such fun to look at all the ranges available and to dream up a wishlist of products I can covet - the Zwilling asparagus pan and Pro Chef's knife are especially lustworthy and I was also very taken with the Staub Cocottes.  These cast iron beauties come in a range of colours and styles, and I loved both the look and the feel of the pans.

Imagine my delight when I was then lucky enough to be gifted one of the oval cocottes, in graphite, to use at home!  The cocotte I received is perfect for cooking a meal for two to six people (depending how hungry they are!).  The day I returned from holiday in Spain it was awaiting me, so I devised a quick and simple supper to try it out - I fully intend to be using it a lot, especially when autumn, the season of soups and stews and roasts, rolls around!

Below is a little flipagram of my (incredibly quick and easy, thrown together with what we had in the fridge and pantry) Summer Vegetable and Chicken Stew.  Recipe after the vid.

Loved playing with my new #Staub cocotte! #cooking #dinner #flipagram #food #yummy #tasty #goodfood #eats #delicious #foodpics #tasty #flipafood

A video posted by Claire Roper (@cmclaire) on Jul 14, 2015 at 12:33pm PDT

Ingredients:

1 medium courgette (or zuchinni, if you hail from the US), sliced
1 green pepper, diced
2 chicken breasts, cubed or in chunks
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato puree/paste
1 sliced chili (we had a red jalapeno in the fridge, but I'm sure any mid-heat chili would work well)
1 clove garlic
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Method:

1. Put your oven on to preheat at around 160 degrees C (around 320 F).  Heat a little olive oil in a pan.  Add your courgette and cook for a couple of minutes.  Then add your green pepper.
2.  Add your garlic and chili, then add the chicken.  You're going to want to cook this until slightly golden and cooked on the outside - as it's also going in the oven to cook through there's method to the madness.
3.  Add your tinned tomatoes and tomato puree.  Stir through.
4.  Once all is combined, pop your cocotte into the oven for an hour.  Ignore studiously.  The cocotte has a brilliant dimpled underside to the lid which really helps to baste the food as it cooks and keeps it moist.

We had our stew with rice, but I think it would be just as tasty with greens or wholemeal bread.  A little cheese or sour cream on top would be yummy too.  I was really pleased with how this improvised recipe came together - let me know if you give it a try!


Linking up a year on with the lovelies at Home Etc.

Disclosure: I was gifted this cocotte - all opinions and thoughts are my own.

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A Spare Room Makeover

Earlier this month, one of those lovely moments when life just falls together beautifully happened.  Matthew and I spent the first Bank Holiday weekend in May clearing out lots of stuff from rooms, piling up donations to the charity shop and generally decluttering like mad things.  Once we were done I looked around our front spare room, previously the home to eleventy million boxes o' junk and said "I'd love to makeover this room soon."  I closed the door and toddled off the make a quick spreadsheet to see when I could afford a few bits and bobs.

I love me a spreadsheet.  Almost as much as I love making rooms friendlier and prettier.  I set myself a budget and looked forward to giving the room a wee spruce in a few months.

The next morning I got an email asking me if I'd like some items from Asda, to improve a room in our house.  Either Big Brother really exists or I was just a very lucky badger! The George range has created four looks for the current season (Eden, Desert, Meadow and Shore), and after a very happy half hour looking over the ranges I decided the Shore range was perfect for our spare room!  We've used Asda items in our hosue before so I was very happy to return to a tried and true brand.  Here are a few shots of the finished room - I can't wait to have guests to stay!

Love a good stripe!

The lampshade that had been here was a £2.50 reduced one from a bargain bin.  I like this clean, crisp one so much more!

Always love a good bit of storage!  I'm going to look for something beachy/nautical on honeymoon for the hurricane and the baskets will be great for stowing guest room toiletries.

How chic is this lamp?  I'm trying to be mature and not just snaffle this for my study!

Cute, cute nautical cushions.  Such a fun part of any room!

Plus two of these cable-knit bad boys which are really soft and squidgy.  I can see me curling up with a cat to read in this room....soon.

This blanket is lovely - it's already journeyed out of the spare room on a picnic in Hyde Park!

Decent bath sheets are always a joy to find, and the matching hand towels are great too.  I thought these wicker baskets worked well as a storage place for them.

Love these tealights...

...and these candles!

I think the detailing is so pretty - this would be a fun gift too!

Isn't this little beach hut doorstop grand?

This lantern will be great for candles with the cats around - I love containers where they can't brush near to danger.

This Bristol-blue vase is gorgeuos and goes with so many of my other blue bits and bobs.  The bottles I might use for shampoo, conditioner etc.  I love making guest rooms cosy!

As is often the case with a project, a job is still to be done - I'll be pinning up these pegs next week.  Such a cute motif and great for hanging up a few hangers for clothes which may require doing so.

I'm so pleased - it feels cosy and inviting.  Compared to the chaos that was there it truly is a sea change.  Fnar fnar.

I do love a bad pun!

Looking forward to having visitors soon!

Thank you to Asda for providing me with items from the Shore range to complete this makeover.  Such fun!  All items highlighted can be found on the page linked to.

Linking up with #HomeEtc - inspiration everywhere!

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