Chadwick & Co - Coffee House and Kitchen in Barker and Stonehouse

Following a late-night (early morning) watching WWE Wrestlemania at the end of March, myself and Matt both had Monday off. With this, we decided to visit the brand new Barker and Stonehouse store. We are big fans of B&S owning many items from the shop. The items they sell are unlike anything available in normal furniture shops. It fits our style perfectly as we love chunky wood, industrial metal and quirky accessories. Walking around B&S in Middlesbrough always made me excited so you can imagine what I was like walking into the newly opened shop on Teesside Park, it's MASSIVE!

In the new store, they have added a café on the top level. B&S have partnered with restaurateur, Daryl Chadwick, to run Chadwicks & Co Coffee House and Kitchen. Daryl has been a part of some of Teesside's top restaurants including D.P Chadwick's in Yarm and Café Lili in Norton. Now he has turned his hand to this new venture and created a menu full of treats for B&S's customers. We were very peckish so headed on up to see what we could have.

Up on the top floor is lovely as you get to look over on the store and also out of the large glass windows. All the tables and chairs featured in the café are available to buy in B&S which I thought was a nice touch. There isn't a huge menu here so we both decided on a piece of cake. I chose chocolate and pistachio gluten-free cake and Matt chose carrot cake accompanied by a pot of tea to share. When the cake arrived I did think the portion sizes were a tad on the small side but once I started eating I could see why. It was so tasty but very sickly. I didn't manage to finish mine! Matt really enjoyed his cake and loved the large pieces of carrot on top.

I will definitely be back to have some more cake and maybe more of a savoury snack. They also do afternoon tea which looks amazing so I am sure that I will be visiting to try this.

Have you visited yet? What did you think?

The Living Room - styling our home

Since moving into our new house we've been working tirelessly to make it ours. The first two rooms were the bedroom and the living room. We are really happy with what we've achieved so I wanted to do a post to show it off! Here is what it looked like when we moved in...

Photo from Rightmove

We basically stripped the wallpaper, painted every surface, had the carpets cleaned (we are clean freaks!), changed the light fixtures (we have a dimmer!) and added our own furniture. Here is what it looks like now...

As you can see we've gone for a dark grey accent wall with white furniture but also some wooden furniture. With the light shades, we've added a pop of mustard colour which we hope to couple with some accent pillows to finish the room.

We decided to have a two-seater and a chair on one side of the room and the TV, unit and bookshelf on the other with the coffee table in the middle of the room. The TV is up on the wall which looks super cool and I think it helps keep the room looking spacious even though we have quite a bit in there. We've also got a small dining table coming from Baker and Stonehouse for the right corner as you enter the room but that probably won't be here until July as it is a 20 week lead time!

We've added many little things to the room like candles, flowers, DVDs and books to personalise our space. We have amazing double doors which open on to the garden in which we get the sun all day so the front room is always toasty. This means we need to get some blinds which we will probably be getting soon.

As I say, overall I am really pleased with what we've achieved as we think it looks really stylish and modern but still very comfy.