Home is where the heart is

It's pouring rain outside and last night I used a hotwater bottle for the first time this season. It's the time of year when I start thinking about those snug days, or evenings, I'll be spending at home over the coming months. Evenings with hot milk and honey and a good film, or afternoons with homemade soup and embroidery. At this time of year it doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing, whether I'm having a weekend away in the North or I've gone for a nature walk for a couple of hours, I always look forward to coming home.

For me it's the personal things around my home which make it a happy and calming place for me to be, little pockets of my home which I can look at and feel appreciation and happiness. Though, there certainly are pockets of my home which I look at and feel less than happy (the cemented holes in the ceiling which I haven't bothered to paint over for example!) but when I look at those dusty areas I try to remember that my life just isn't going to look like a magazine shoot, for one my life and my home are real. So without further a do, I'll show you around some my favourite little pockets.

Starting with the hallway. Hats and shopper bags hang on pegs. Daniel won that medal for playing football. The straw hat is a traditional boater which I bought at a market to wear when hosting The Winter Entertainment Club and the camera is from when I was a teenager.

Lets go into the kitchen. Almost everything in the kitchen belonged to my Gran. Almost everything has a childhood memory of Summer days at my Gran's cottage attached to it; the biscuit tin which seemed to have 30 biscuits on our arrival and none by the time we went home, the glasses she would drink apple juice from every morning and say 'ah, nectar', almost everything has a memory of those summer weeks in the countryside. Above is my wall of birds, I've only managed to collect three so far, but I still love them.

The kitchen is my favourite room in the flat. This is the stack of mixing bowls. Those plates and bowls at the bottom also belonged to Gran and bring back memories of stews and casseroles and crumbles, all the foods I wasn't fond of as a child but love to cook now. I collected all the mixing bowls and pudding basins once I new we were moving in and now I use them for baking.

Everything in the kitchen is old and that's just how I like it.

This is my bedroom door and over time I've added special things to it. You can see a note to Daniel, a tiny swedish picture, an old cracker jack toy my friend brought back from America, a hand sewn russian doll by another friend and a bouquet of dried heather which I collected when we went on a big hiking trip together.

In the bedroom. A huge stack of vintage suitcases are full of all sorts; crafting materials, paints, twigs, shells, my Grandma's hankie collection, dress making patterns, audio tapes, and one suitcase that I never go in is filled with every letter I've ever recieved. The first post I recieved is in there - postcards from Gran on my birthday each year, letters from my childhood penpals, and teenage penpals, love letters, one line letters from Grandma, each letter that has gone through my letter box, treasured.

I often find myself wishing that my home looked like the pictures I look at on blogs, or like the pages of my favourite magazine, World of Interiors, but really, I like it just the way it is.