The nine best bits about having your own home

Me and my boyfriend have recently moved into our own home. We love it. We've decorated the living room and bedroom to how we want it and now it is a case of saving up pennies to get the rest of the house done! Over the few months that we've been in, we have appreciated the little things about being in the house by ourselves. In my opinion, these are the nine best bits about having your own home.

1. You can wear as many clothes as you want - I don't know about you but my mum always wanted me to get the wear out of my clothes before putting them in the wash. Now that I do all the washing I can wear something for five minutes then decide it needs a wash. In the end, it is just more work for me but then again I kind of enjoy the washing...
   
2. Knowing all the post will be yours when you get home - It was always a bummer getting home to see lots of post on the floor but see that none of it was yours. Whenever I get home now all the post is either mine or Matt's but the problem is with the digital age is that we barely get any - instead, we get emails!
   
3. Your own style is in every room of the house - As we are the ones paying for the house we get to decorate it to our taste. It wouldn't be the same if say I decorated it all, or if Matt decorated it all but I think we have a happy medium which is sleek, classy and modern.
   
4. No one messes with your TV recordings - When I watched the main TV at home and had recordings set anything could happen if there were two going at once and someone wanted to watch TV. It was either your recording or another that would be deleted, and would they find another time it was on and set it for you? Sometimes but not always and then you've missed an episode! Now I get to set what I want safe in the knowledge that Matt won't delete it - although I do make sure I have only one recording going at once!
   
5. No one stealing my clothes - At home, I would notice that a lot of my clothes would mysteriously disappear from my wardrobe and appear in my sister's. I wonder how that would happen... but then what was worse is that because Mum saw her wearing them she would give the clothes back to her when they were washed. Err Hello they are mine! Now obviously I don't have that problem! There is a good 10 minutes between my wardrobe and my sister.
   
6. Not getting moaned at for using too much water or electricity - As per point 1, we now pay for our bills so we can use as much as we want and know that we will have to face the consequences in the end...
   
7. Picking whatever food you want - Luckily for me, this means being able to pick up more fruit and vegetables to cook meals and having more choice. Also picking up pop tarts and biscuits, but shhh!
   
8. Having lots of space - We've both gone from having a bedroom (Matt's was like a shoebox) to having a whole house to ourselves so it is a huge difference for us. Having so many rooms is great as we can go where ever we please with only each other to answer for.
   
9. Being with your boyfriend - Obviously, you can have your partner around your house when you want at home but you have to ask or let people know they are round and we both had our own homes to get back to. Now we've got only one and can see each other all the time! This has to be the best perk of having your own space!

What do you think? Do you agree or do you have any others? Let me know!

If you don't have your own house are you looking forward to the above nine points?

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.

The bathroom - styling our new home

After moving into our new house we gave it a complete cleaning blitz which included getting stuck into the bathroom. When it was cleaned to our standards we got to adding personal touches to make it feel like ours.

We chose a set from Dunelm Mill which feature cute nautical icons on each accessory. There is a toothbrush and toothpaste holder, a soap dish, a toilet brush holder and a set of tea light holders. In addition to this set we added a small mirror from Ikea and some tea lights in jars that I've collected. I love having candles when I'm in the bath as it creates such a relaxing atmosphere. Having tea lights in empty jars is a cheap but very pretty way to bring a quirky style to any room.

This is our shower curtain which features a huge map of American in a lovely deep turquoise colour. Having never had a shower curtain before I was keen to buy one that was interesting and quirky, this certainly fits the bill. We bought this from Urban Outfitters and although not the cheapest I think it will last a while!

In the bathroom, we have a bath/shower which is pretty standard. To this, we've added a corner shelf from Ikea which is so useful for keeping shower items tidy and out of the way. I love having the extra storage for all my different shower gels and shampoos!

This is going to be our bathroom for the foreseeable future until we can save the money to get a new one. I will definitely be on Pinterest between now and then to find ideas for my new bathroom. For now, I am really happy with what we have. Taking a relaxing bath in here will be lovely.

The big move.

I'm not sure if you've noticed but I've been blogging a lot less lately...well I've just moved into my first house with my boyfriend! We took some time off work to get the house cleaned and painted and finally moved in on Wednesday. It was all pretty stressful with people everywhere but they really helped us get the house to where we wanted it for our move-in day.

I packed up my room in my Mum's house and it was sad to see it empty and know that I wouldn't sleep there again. It is a weird feeling but I am happy in our new house and I can see us doing well. I can't wait to get everything unpacked and give it all a place in the house. At the moment the spare room is just a storage facility and as I didn't see a need to label boxes at the time I do not know where anything is. Clever...

In the collage above, in the middle is our new house the day we moved in, then to the right is our food hamper from Matt's Mum and below that is the first new home card we received with some yummy chocolates. After that is me in my empty room at my Mum's house, the blue and grey room is our newly painted bedroom ready and awaiting furniture and lastly is our Friday night tea courtesy of our new toastie maker!

I have a few more house posts to come when we have put up a few more pieces of our Ikea furniture so keep an eye out.

Ideas for a potential new house

Last week me and my boyfriend starting looking into buying a house a little more seriously. We've booked an appointment with a financial advisor and even went on our first house viewing. All very serious and very exciting. I'm not sure if this is just a girl thing (as Matt has no interest in this for now...) but as I've looked more into houses I have been thinking more and more about how I want different rooms of the house to be decorated. Now we don't have an endless budget so whatever I pick may just be a dream but I think there is always some way you can get what you want. I've been trailing pinterest looking for ideas for the house and below are a few of my favourite picks!

Kitchen

In the kitchen I am really a fan of large 'brick sized' tiles as a back splash although I am not sure what colour I'd go for. As well as this I want my kitchen to be slightly grunge and would love some exposed lighting like the second picture. Lastly I have to have some creative storage in my kitchen. At home I hate having to rummage through the cupboards to find what I want. I need some clever ways to store things that makes them easily accessible.

Living Room

For the living room I am really keen on a sort of retro vibe to it with clean lines and a sofa like the one in the third picture (although I don't know how comfy that would be). I am in love with having a photo frame wall, whether this be in the living room or going up the stairs. Finally I would like to think that we could have some quirky up-cycled items in our house just like this cool coffee table in the second picture.

Bathroom

I'd like to keep the bathroom quite clean and white, maybe with some sort of accent colour, I'm not too sure on that. What I am sure about is that I need lots of clever storage! The amount of beauty and shower products we have between us is quite substantial so we would need some interesting and sensible places to store it all.

Bedroom

The bedroom is the room in which I have the least ideas. I want the bedroom to be somewhere that we both like so I don't want it to be girly but I also don't want it to be cold and masculine. I want something very bright, maybe slightly retro with a few bold colours but most of it clean and white. I'll have to get approval off the boyfriend first though ;)

What do you think? Any ideas that you like? Do you have any house posts? Link me!

> To see how our bedroom, bathroom and living room actually turned out click the links!