Decorating on a budget

It's not finished yet but it's looking good enough to show. The walls that we started a few weeks ago, and stopped for visitors and when we got our colds, are finished; we still have to paint the skirting boards, trims and doors. The walls are a lovely pale lemon yellow called Milk Maiden, the doors will be a bluish grey called Smoke Rings.

We had quite a search for fabric for our curtains. I rang all over the Sunshine Coast, went to a remnant place in Brisbane and searched online, but finally my sister found exactly what I wanted at Ikea in Sydney. It's a cherry red and white check pure heavy cotton. I'm recycling the linings on the old curtains I have hanging now and I'll make the curtains when my sister comes to visit soon.

Apart from the paint and fabric I wanted to use what we already had here to change the look we had. I found a few red "things" around the place - an old red Japanese wooden box, some red China from the dinner service I bought in Germany at the end of the 1970s, red felt trims on a lampshade skirt and I'm going to make a few more red fabric decorations that I'll add to the wall with the prints. As you can see, there is a fairly big gap between the top prints and the one below, I'll add a tiny swag of check hearts there. That's the plan, anyway. I might make some red check seat cushions too.

We still have to paint this shelving unit. It will probably be an off blueish white, or if we have any Smoke Rings left over, we'll use that. That's the good thing about decorating your own home, you can do exactly what you want and have no one whispering in your ear that you should go and buy new shelves.

This is an old lamp that has a plain white shade. It was too bland for this new look so I made a little skirt to just fit over the top of the shade. I cut out some red felt flowers shapes and added them. I think it looks quite nice and just shows what you can do with a little creativity and a sewing machine. When I finish the curtains and other little red touches, I'll take another photo to show the finished room. BTW, if you click on the photos they will be bigger.

Is anyone having problems loading my blog this morning? It's very slow for me and I'm not sure if it's my computer or the blog - although other blogs seem to be opening just fine.