I spent the day at Home on Monday, where I was eyeing up new trends for 2012 for the Guardian. It was an amazing show - they have obviously worked really hard to only get quality designers and brands in. While you can't buy what you like at a trade show (it's not open to the public), it is great for eye candy and you don't have that market traderish crowd selling you stupid kitchen gadgets like some so-called 'interiors' shows do. Anyway my write-up about it all is here, but here's some more pics of things that caught my eye...
Ferm Living
Home London 2012
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Posted on 20 January 2012
Searching for squashy comfy cushions
On our grey sofa, we have these cushions, which I haven't had time to take a picture of so I shall describe instead. Hand embroidered flowers, in red and cream silk threads dotted with little mirrors in the threadwork at the centre of each one, they were passed down to me by my mum, who in turn had them from her mum. Actually, that's a bit of a lie. They weren't so much passed down to me as I spied something (a bit of mirror) in the airing cupboard, thought "Ooh, there's something shiny", stood on the edge of a shelf to reach for it, nearly broke the shelf, pulled the cushions out, made a mess of all the other linen in there, thought, yes, they looked nice and stuffed them in a bag to take them with me to London. Great tactic for stealing stuff from your mum's house, works every time.
Anyway. The cushions are lovely, but they are old. Some of the small bits of mirror are falling out which as well as leaving gaps in the embroidery is also a potential health and safety issue for, er, small nephews and er, grown ups too. Every now and then, R will be sitting on the sofa, struggling to get comfy because a small shard of glass may or may not have inadvertently cut through his jeans. It makes me feel bad and so this lengthy preamble explains why I am currently spending my hard earned money and valued time doing something very important called cushion shopping.
Today I ordered this one from Roddy & Ginger although really it's not to replace the existing cushions, but more to join the owl on the green snuggler armchair. Which wasn't what I was looking for, but anyway.
but a pair of these would go very nicely, thank you, with our charcoal grey sofa...
I don't have a bolster cushion but if I did, I'd love this print from ThirtyFive Flowers
This is awesome (and on sale!), but I know R will probably hate - one owl cushion is pushing it; an elephant called Elle would probably push him over the edge.
Although check out the rest in the range: Mr Franck the Fox! Aristo Katt! - I would gladly share the sofa with this lot
On a more grown up note (tis a living room, not a nursery. Not that we need a nursery. Just to make that clear), I do very much like Ferm Living's geometric designs...
But perhaps not enough to spend nearly £56 on. Luckily, that same Etsy seller, ThirtyFive Flowers, has something similar for a lot, lot less, although she only has one of them and I suspect that now I've blogged it, it'll sell out by the time I figure out which ones I want to buy.
I have long loved these (we have the bolster ones in the bedroom) but it'd be pretty boring if we had the same ones in one room as in the other too so that these rules out
While these are pretty gorgeous too
Posted on 13 January 2012
Perfect Victoria Sponge Wedding Cake
Posted on 10 January 2012
Calling all interiors journalists and editors...
I've lost count of how many "How the fashion editors dress"/"What our fashion team wears to work" features ever since the likes of The Devil Wears Prada came along and made working on a magazine seem glamorous. But as someone who is always peeping through windows to see how other people live, I'd rather sneak a peek at what someone's entire house looks like, not just what the contents of their wardrobe are.
So with that in mind, I'm collating a little feature project for a newspaper, asking interiors magazine writers, journalists and editors, the people behind the magazines we all buy and devour, if they wouldn't mind sharing how they live for once... so if you're someone who works for an interiors magazine, and lives in an interiors dream, then please do get in touch - tweet me @huma_qureshi and I'll fill you in with more. Thanks!
Posted on 9 January 2012
Hand stamped thank you cards


Posted on 7 January 2012
New house updates
The first thing we did was put up shelves on either side of the window for my book collection which, yes, are organised by colour (ahem). The snuggler armchair was a total impulse purchase and totally unplanned (and unbudgeted for - ouch) but it's turned out to be a favourite buy... the perfect home for my beloved owl (more owls coming: watch this space). The print above the snuggler only arrived today, but I fell in love with it when I found it on Bodie and Fou.
The hallway is our little gallery space - and I can't live anywhere without a chalkboard door so here it is behind our front door. Since I work from home (my writer's bureau is in the lounge, next to the snuggler armchair, but it's messy and I don't know what to put above it yet so no photos for now), I need all sorts of motivation so currently scribbled on the blackboard is this quote found on the Pinterest board of a lady called Judy who I happened to interview for this piece in the Independent today about working from home in style.
The main bedroom walls are pretty bare for now, as I continue my quest for prints to hang above the bed and wait for our wedding photos to arrive, but we do have a feature wall with the Miss Print wallpaper (remember? In the end, we opted for duck egg blue).
I adore the slightly mismatched lampshades from Sasha And Elisabeth - we deliberately didn't want anything too catalogue-perfect (a "look" I detest with a passion) so the bedside table lamps aren't identical. I love the random red bird on this one (which happens to be on his side).
Posted on 6 January 2012
Um, hello, I'm back

(image above from Paper Michelle)
I don't really know where to start this post, seeing as I haven't blogged since August 21st, which was nearly three months ago. For this I feel terrible, because there's nothing worse than those blog posts that start "Gosh! Hello readers! Sorry I haven't blogged for ages - been busy!" but in my case, I hope that at least my excuses (packing, getting married, moving flats, going on honeymoon, getting back into work) at least seem vaguely valid.
And so here it is: in the last three months, my life has changed on basically every level. It's not been so much a whirlwind, but more a very ready change of direction. Her Little Place is now Someone Else's Place, and my new home is Ours, so it's out with the floral rugs and Eastenders and in with living a new life which isn't just about me, but where someone special is always in it. It's taking in the big three-0, growing up, growing together and enjoying it all. People ask me what it's like: I tell them it's calming, peaceful; our new life is quietly content. Being married is a good influence on me.
There's a ton I could blog about over everything that has happened - the wedding eye-candy of invites, cakes (plural: try a ten-tier victoria sponge), flowers; the colour; the photos; the videos...but I can't quite whittle this huge, mammoth day into just the details (sorry). Somehow, talking or blogging about my wedding cake doesn't really give this turning point justice. Then again, I could always blog about the honeymoon, Rome-in-the-autumn, driving with the top down, our creamy, dreamy little boutique hideaway in Puglia, the pomegranate trees, the olive groves, the burnt orange sunsets... now that really was something.
And now there is real life, of what to make for dinner and settling into routines, and the bringing of families together round Sunday roasts, and work, trying always to write, battling with ideas that might make a sale vs ideas I'd simply like to write, hoping for 'another' big break and that next year will be as fruitful as this one.
So as the year really does come to a close - there's not even that long to go, jeez, it's December on Thursday - my thought for the day is this:
This time last year, nothing I had done this year - whether it was getting married or suddenly, totally randomly being pulled out of the blue to be on national radio every week - was expected, or predicted, or at least not by me. This year has proved to me that at every turn there is an opportunity, a new beginning, a promise that waits for you, and that when things are crappy, there's always bound to be something better round the corner. That you must have faith, and faith brings everything to you. Face it; the cliches are true - beyond all the cheesiness, every cloud does have a silver lining, when life brings you lemons, you might as well make lemonades and everything really does happen for a reason. I'll be blogging more in the new year (promise), maybe not always about what you're normally used to finding here, but in the meantime, I leave you with this:
2011. Best. Year. Ever.




















