I feel like all I’ve talked about this year is my bloody dining room.  Promise at some point soon, I’ll stop banging on about the dining room but I had to share some of the changes with you that I made just prior to the photoshoot for 25 Beautiful Homes because once I show you the ‘behind the scenes’ pics (I actually got some this time! Woohoo!), all surprise will go out the window.

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram (yes, I’m a social media whore) and you have an eagle eye, you may have spotted these changes already but if not, then hopefully you’ll like the look of some of my tweaks!

First things first, remember how ugly my new chairs were?  Well, it’s amazing how things get done when you’ve got people coming around to take pictures of the place.  And plus if you add to that near-hysterical pleading for your boyfriend to paint them in his bodyshop NOW because OH MY GOD PHOTOSHOOT PANIC PANIC PANIC, it gets done even quicker.  Not that I did that or anything.

So, happily, the chairs have finally been painted white to match the others.  It’s not a huge deal to me but when the chairs finally were delivered, I was a little disappointed that while the 4 armless chairs were faux bamboo, the end chairs were real bamboo.  This doesn’t really affect the look of them too much because they fit well with the others and they were in relatively good condition but they aren’t as well made as the faux ones, so in the back of my mind, at some point, I’ll like to replace them with proper faux bamboo.  Regardless, this is how they are looking now…

It is so nice to have 6 chairs around the table (despite the state of my floors – DEAR GOD), it really makes the dining room look more complete.  For now, I just used a couple of cushions to liven up the chairs but eventually, I’ll need to get some proper seat cushions made and I haven’t yet made up my mind what fabric to choose (why is choosing fabric so incredibly hard?!).

Adding to that look of completeness, I finally got some window dressing! *throws confetti*  It’s only been 2 1/2 years.  Ahem.  My original plan was to use the Chiang Mai Dragon fabric I had to create a roman blind.  Well, the more colour and pattern I added to this room, the more I came to the crushing realisation that the fabric just wouldn’t work in here.  Sob!  I love using patterned tablecloths and it would have severely limited that enjoyment of being able to change up the look and feel of the room just by changing the tablecloth.  So that fabric will have to be saved for a future project.

What I decided was to use something that was a lot more neutral and would work with the rest of what was going on in the room.  When I was at IKEA, I spotted some dark grey linen-y look ready-made panels that I knew would match the dark grey paint in this room.  I matched it to an inexpensive bamboo roller blind to add some layer and texture and hemmed the bottoms of the panels.  All for less than £35.  Get in.

It’s so hard to get a decent picture because the (surprisingly) sunny day blows out the window but you can get the idea here…

And with the roller blind down a bit (so hard to get good shots, all apologies)…

I’m pretty happy with the overall effect it has in the room.

I’ve also made a couple small changes to the gallery wall, namely to bring in the two new prints I got in Stockholm as well as incorporate a few more splashes of colour on the wall.

Both prints are little reminders to myself to keep moving forward and challenge myself in my life.  I love typographic prints, don’t you?  Especially typographic prints with naughty words.

As you can see, I also painted little tiny canvases (just on the cardboard backing!) similar to my large canvases to sit in my ornate gold frames to pull some more colour on this wall.

I added some little blue pots with plants (fake ones! Egads!) from IKEA (it was a pretty successful trip, what can I say) and painted the frame around the ampersand symbol blue to match.  And never one to shy away from a bit of sparkle, I spray painted the ampersand gold and jigged a few things around to make it work…

So here’s what the whole wall looks like now.

Including a few splashes of blue ties it nicely with the canvas art and adds some depth to the room.  I still want to add more art to the gallery wall to make make the whole effect floor to ceiling.  However, I probably only need about 4 more pieces for it to be complete!  Hurrah!

Finally, I finished everything off with a bunch of gorgeous colourful tulips.

So that was what the room looked like for the shoot.  Considering I had merely a week to prepare myself, I could really only tweak a bit but I’m pretty happy with how the room is shaping up and I like the addition of more colour in the room to liven it up and make it look all the more layered and interesting.

I’ve got more things to share with you (in different rooms no less!!) plus of course the behind the scenes pics so stay tuned!

Also, just a little reminder if you are in the UK, to make sure you enter to win a gorgeous velvet love seat like the one I have in my living room – it’s the first time I’ve done a competition for the @Home blog and I really want it to be a success and give my readers back a little something that I absolutely love.  The competition ends on Thursday, 21st February so make sure you get on that quick!