My new family room

When I went on maternity, I decided to take on a new project other than my son. I decided to redecorate the entire flat. I live in a converted Victorian House with a big garden. I am lucky enough to live in a nice part of London Town. In fact, a Bloomberg report stated that the borough I live in has the highest rise in house prices from 2013. It is a family oriented area - a lot of young families in the middle class Crouch End area; there is plenty of entertainment in the Tottenham area; Finsbury Park is great for walking/jogging or just feeding ducks; Wood Green offers high street shopping from H&M, Nike and TK Maxx; Alexandra Palace hosts concerts and summer fetes in their extensive gardens; Muswell Hill has a lot of trendy cafes and restaurants and 2 miles away is the rather expensive Highgate area with its renowned Bishops Avenue (aka Billionares Road). Basically, I can see why this area is the most sought after location and I feel very fortunate.

During the 12 months, I went to visit few homes through the NCT class that I had joined during my pregnancy. I have previously written about these 9 amazing couples. Some had ground floor flats, some first floor in the Crouch End area, one couple has a cottage in Finchley and another couple has full Victorian house that they are renovating. I was most impressed by the huge Manor House in Highgate with its well groomed garden and a gate leading onto Hampstead Heath. All their homes were beautiful and represented the couples. I drew inspiration from this and set about trying to find pieces of furniture that I could love and cherish for a long time.

I started with the family/living room. It took 6 months to throw everything away and start from scratch.

For those who know me or follow me on Instagram, you will know that I like art and I like to travel so it seems fit to combine the two in my home. When I was in Vietnam and Hong Kong, I bought some paintings. The paintings with boats are of fishermen on the Mekong Delta which I sailed down over a course of 3 days in Vietnam. I bought a painting in Hong Kong which represents the tall modern apartment buildings which tower over and are replacing the traditional shanty towns. The paintings sit above my occasional cocktail chairs.

On the opposite wall, I have decided to start a collection of memories. I enjoy taking photographs and I take many but only the best ones get edited. I used Photobox to print out good quality photographs of different sizes and I bought most the black frames from John Lewis and Photo Frames and Art. I decided to go with black, rather than white because the walls are painted in magnolia and I felt the contrast would work better.

One of the first things to consider when decorating a room is the theme. What theme are you going for? Traditional and cosy? Contemporary? Rustic? Scandinavian? Before I had a child, I had a minimalist style of decorating. Once my little one came along and he required books, toys and play dens, I realised that colour would be better for his senses and for us as a couple as we could mix in whatever colours we liked. I set about trying to find the right colour. Pink? Blue? Grey? Black? I toyed around with so many ideas that it finally hit me that if I went for an eclectic style, I could add as many colours as I liked and I could incorporate various styles. I found these chairs on Twitter by chance. I followed Florrie + Bill for a while then one day, I got lucky. One of these chairs went on sale. Bingo! I negotiated a deal where I could have a pair of chairs and 3 months later, voila!

In the middle of the chairs is a black mirrred cube which stores CDs and DVDs inside. I bought it from Habitat over 10 years ago. I placed 2 ornaments on it. The first is a Buddha statue that I bought for next to nothing in Thailand 7 years ago on my very first visit there when I travelled around the world. The lamp is my favourite piece in the family room. It draws a lot of attention from visitors and is a good conversation starter. I bought a pineapple lamp from Next back in January. I was specifically looking for a pineapple ornament. Over the years, pineapple ornaments have come to represent hospitality and welcome. If you give someone a pineapple, it is a symbol of friendliness and graciousness. I could go on and on about pineapple. I really could not tell you why I am so well versed in the history of pineapples around the world. I blame the early morning feeds when I needed to occupy my mind with anything other than milk and nappies. I digress. The pineapple lamp came with a standard circular shade, which was a cream coloured linen. I did not like it! I set about trying to find a shade and came across this interesting concept on Etsy. The lamp shade is a birdcage. It is by Kekoni Home. My son is obsessed with it and is forever trying to pick at the birds and understand what they are. They are colourful tropical artificial birds sitting on twigs. A genius idea!

Going back to the black cube, you may be asking why I am keeping CDs and DVDs in a modern digital world but I'm still quite old-fashioned. If I had my way, I'd have a turntable and LPs. Believe you me, I searched for a turntable and I did find one. Urban Outfitters sells a few candy coloured Crosley record players. There is a beautiful mint coloured one covered in velvet fabric. Lush!

I settled on a CD player from John Lewis, by Pure Evoke. Behind the tall green plant that I bought from Ikea is a CD player. It sits on a black mirrored cabinet which I bought from Habitat at the same time as the black cube sidetable. It is actually a coffee table which I turned to stand upright. I am hoping to upcycle it and turn into a storage cabinet with shelves so watch this space. At the moment, it is the resting place for the remote controls and the baby monitor out of reach of my little one.

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The final piece of furniture that I bought is this beautiful sofa from Leberta London. It is a family-run business in north east London. I found them through Houzz, after I had gotten tired of DFS and Sofology's generic and non-collective sofas. If you are looking for a unique sofa that is reasonably priced, look no further. Leberta will customise their range to whatever sizes you require.

The other accessories are a rug from Ikea and a pouffe that I bought in Fez, Morocco. The cushions and curtains are from various local homeware shops, such as Anthropologie and Oliver Bonas. At some stage, I'd like to replace the curtains as I saw some beautiful fabric at Designers Guild.

I would love to know what you guys think and if there are any recommendations you can give me for a new rug, for example.