The Only Girl in the House

Green Velvet Sofa of Dreams | My DFS Bailey Sofa

Green Velvet Sofa of Dreams | My DFS Bailey Sofa

Let me start by saying, I’m incredibly grateful for all the awesome experiences and offers I get from writing about my family and home. But, if I’m completely honest, free stuff doesn’t pay the bills, put chicken fajitas on the table or clad my children in Adidas as they desire. There’s only so much stuff we can fit in our house along with the 7 of us – so, a lot of “gifts” end up being re-gifted or on Ebay. When I initially got the email from DFS asking me to “pop to Milan” for design week, then style one of their sofas for my blog, my first thought was “Eeeeeekkkkkkk YASSSS!” but my second – we really don’t need another sofa, I’m happy with the ones we bought 4 months ago (from Ebay), but I suppose I could sell it for a few hundred quid after I’ve snapped it for the blog!

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Where Did You Get That? | My Monochrome Must-Haves

Where Did You Get That? | My Monochrome Must-Haves

It might be a beautiful picture of my cherub, I’ve captured a darling moment and captioned it with squishy, vaguely comical, words – but there’ll always be a couple of beady-eyed, interiors magpies commenting: “Random question, but where did you get your [insert monochrome home-ware of choice] from?”. Truth be told, I’ve done the same a thousand times over – sod that kid picking his nose front of frame, tell me where I can get THAT cushion!!! So, whilst a vast amount of the shiz filling up my home was salvaged from a car boot sale or eBay, here’s my most asked about home wares from our monochrome family home that you can actually get your hands on, plus some I’d love to throw into the mix!

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Top Sofa Trends from Milan Design Week 2017 | With DFS

Top Sofa Trends from Milan Design Week 2017 | With DFS

My inbox can be a dull place to hang out most of the time, then, like a rogue Jelly Tot lurking at the bottom of your handbag, a little wonder can appear. The email from the DFS HQ asking me to head over to Milan to garner some design inspiration and soak up the lastest interiors trends from Salone del mobile (Europe’s largest design exhibition) with their design team was one of those Jelly Tot discovering moments.

You might think going to Milan Design Week with hopes of returning with concepts suitable for a family home, is the equivalent of bumbling along to LFW to find a suitable outfit for the school run; but the DFS design team trot the globe to ensure their sofa collections offer the very latest in interiors trends, whilst using their years of experience to ensure their sofas are befitting of family life.

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What to Expect from The Only Girl in the House | Mission Statement

What to Expect from The Only Girl in the House | Mission Statement

When I hit the very scary “publish” button for the first time two and a half years ago, I had the intention of bringing stylish family interiors to the masses. But I found bringing my interiors day job into my hobby of writing like latching on a creative leech to the heart of my ju-ju – it sucked the life out of my writing. In addition, I was about to drop our boy number 5 into the world so my brain was addled with all the new amazing baby garb that had been invented/re-invented since 2008; we were living in a rather uninspiring, dark rented house – so taking swoonworthy interiors shots was like trying to catch the slippery soap in a lukewarm bath (impossible) and I found it piss easy to bemoan life with a brood of boys to anyone that would listen, whilst struggling for my next interiors post subject matter. Something had to change – and it did.

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Going Green | House Plants for a Family Home

Going Green | House Plants for a Family Home

It was only last week, after about 53 minutes of finally moving back into our newly extended/renovated family home, that Mr Only Girl turned to me and whimpered, “I just wasn’t expecting it to be quite so black and white!”. I’m not sure quite what he expected, given that we’ve both been privy to our joint Pinterest “house renovation” board for well over a year, jointly selected a white kitchen, black flooring, white bathroom, black bathroom furniture and a charcoal sofa. Said Pinterest board provides endless scrolling fun of Scandi-inspired interiors, awash with white walls, black accents and the odd smattering of birch ply – so his insistence that this was all “a bit of surprise” was met by “I just don’t think you’ve been paying attention!”. That said, as I wandered from room to room I noticed there was an element missing – something that my Scandinavian muses hadn’t overlooked but was such an integral part to their home design, it was like a camouflaged, subliminal message from the super stylish sanctum: House plants.

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