036. Buy a dressing table and finish the guest room

Before Christmas the 2nd bedroom was a mess! It was a dumping ground for, just, stuff! Everywhere! Look at these pre-Christmas mess photos:




It's took a little while and a threatening visit from my parents to get us finally finished off in here. Look at how wondrous it looks now!

Completely full of IKEA, but I love it! I wonder how long it will stay this neat?

036. Buy a dressing table and finish the guest room

I finally got my dream dressing table. It's from IKEA and is from the Hemnes series. The drawers are also Hemnes and it all fits together beautifully.

The drawers and dressing table are now full of all my wonderful beauty bits and pieces.

The guest room isn't exactly finished, but this is as good as it's going to get at the moment. Now we've just go to decide if we want to keep the bed, or ditch it for a sofa/sofa-bed instead.

033. Throw away lotions, hair products, beauty stuff I don’t use

I got my beautiful drawers from IKEA last week which meant I could finally begin organising my life! After Christmas and New Year shopping, plus the collection of toiletries I acquire from work I really needed to sort out what was good to keep and what was old and had to go. I'd chosen to have one drawer dedicated to all toiletries, creams, lotions, potions, etc.

This is what my toiletries drawer looked like before it got full, below you can see it in it's full beauty!

Back row L-R: Body lotions and body butters; more lotions, hair products and body spray; sun cream and travel toiletries

Front row L-R: hand cream; face wipes, cotton pads and hair removal; facial moisturisers; cleansers, toners and make up remover

You can see some close ups of each section in the picture to the left (click to see bigger on my Flickr page).

The majority of my collection is Nivea when it comes to moisturisers. Recently I've been using more medicinal lotions because of my eczma, but I do like Garnier body moisturisers, especially the Summer Body gradual tanner.

I don't think I need to be buying much more, I think I've got enough stuff to last me all year!

036. Buy a dressing table and finish the guest room

After a day shopping in Westfield Stratford and a stay over in an Essex Travelodge it was time for a visit to IKEA to finally buy a dressing table and drawers. The time has come to finish the 'guest room' and get it looking pretty and organised, just like we did with the office last Christmas.
I settled on the perfect IKEA Hemnes dressing table and chest of 6 drawers to match. We have Hemnes living room furniture as well, it's one of the series that IKEA make that's solid wood and it's important for us to have long lasting as well as good looking furniture.
Unfortunately the Lakeside branch had sold out of the dressing table, but we did manage to get the all important chest of drawers. So much more about tidying the guest room is about replacing my broken drawers and organising all my things into a new set of drawers that it was more important we came away with those.
We also picked up an Ingolf chair to go with my dressing table (when we order it online) and a few other bits such as frames and three packs of the Skubb boxes for inside my new drawers.
When everything has arrived, been assembled and is looking perfectly tidy, I will share more pics! The above pics were taken in store today, I really love the fairy lights around the mirror! I think that might be a step to far.....

035. Buy shelves and organise the office

My shelves are full, tidy and organised! And those boxes finally have their home.

Here's a closeup look at what I have on my shelves:

Look what I got!

Look what I got! a photo by miss.cherie_xx on Flickr.

I finally got the boxes I wanted, after so many false starts and incorrect deliveries!

034. Buy curtains for the office

My parents came down to visit us today, they brought with them tools, nails and a drill to hang all our pictures, shelves and new curtains. The previous tenants of our house left in one curtain pole in the office and it's the only room without an electric heater under the window, so it was perfect for fitting a pair of curtains. My Mum measured up for us and we both went down to Dunelm near the city to pick out a pair of curtains in the size we needed.

My Dad also fitted the IKEA Lack shelf that we've had for a long time. I'm hoping to get a wireless speaker/sub set to go on there for the PC - the speakers we have now are ancient and buzz because they're so close to the wireless router.

I'm really pleased with how the office is all coming together now. Just gotta get those boxes and fill the shelf with lots more Disney-themed goodies!

035. Those IKEA Boxes.

I still don't have those boxes from eBay. This morning I received a package from the seller, it contained the right style and size boxes but in the wrong colour - I got black boxes. I ordered white.

I'm passed the 45 day limit to raise an official dispute with eBay but have contacted their customer service for advice. I have two items in my possession that I didn't want and didn't pay for. I now face having to pay to send both of those back, I've asked the seller to advise on this as well because it's not my error and I shouldn't have to pay.

I've requested that the seller dispatch the boxes I want on Monday to be delivered to me on Tuesday, which I think is reasonable given that I've been waiting 10 weeks!

UPDATE!

While I've been ranting blogging, the seller just messaged back with this:

Speechless...I will send the white one on Monday for you, please send the wrong one and I will reimburse for the P&P and refund the difference to your paypal account.

I could not be more relieved. If I was this seller I would be absolutely mortified by all these mistakes! At least I have the reassurance that they return fees will be covered.

So disappointed that I don't have them already, it just made me so angry when I got the black boxes that I wanted to cry! My parents are visiting tomorrow and I'm planning on cleaning and tidying the whole house tomorrow - having those boxes to finally organise my office would've been amazing. Never mind, there's always next weekend.

032. Frame and display more Disney pins

I'd been tidying the spare room today and came across some old cards and postcards that I'd sent to James over the years. I found a Minnie and Mickey Mouse 'Thinking of You' postcard that I sent him in December 2002 - I'd gone to WDW for a family holiday, we had only been together a couple of months.

I'd had this black frame for ages, always intending to fill one half with pins and the other with a photo of some sort - I thought the postcard would look great instead. Choosing the pins was easy, they had to be Minnie and Mickey!

The frame is almost a couple of inches thick so could stand up on it's own without the back on, which is good because with the pin backs getting in the way I wouldn't have been able to stand it up. It's now sitting on quite a high shelf of our bookcase in the living room, having it stand up without the back on means it can be seen much easier because it's not pointing slightly up - if that makes any sense at all!

035. Buy shelves and organise the office

I've had these boxes for a while and I hadn't yet put them together, until today. I bought them from an eBay seller because going down to IKEA in Essex just for these boxes seemed a bit too far to go. I ordered the DVD storage boxes and some boxes for A4 paper, I still haven't received the larger boxes because the seller sent me two sets of DVD boxes and wouldn't resend until I'd sent the incorrect item back! And they send through second class post, which means I am still waiting for my boxes after sending the incorrect item back two weeks ago. I've been reassured that they're on their way, but they could've sent first class because of their mistake the first time round?

GAH! Never mind, as long as they arrive then it'll all be okay. I've been waiting on these boxes for weeks and I've not been able to organise all my papers and shelves because of the waiting! If they arrive next week I'll be able to finally finish organising the shelves in the office - I cannot wait!

032. Frame and display more Disney pins

I spotted some white frames in Clas Ohlson that would be perfect for framing more of my Disney pins. I have almost 200 pins and the majority of them are currently in boxes and I've only frame a few Stitch pins so far. I wanted to display more of my pins around the house, so picked out those white frames for my office/computer room.

This is my new frame! I was sat on the floor in the living room making it while we had the NFL on. I have a lot of Stitch pins in my collection, that is my collection pretty much apart from a few extras. But, I don't have enough of a particular theme to fill a frame this size (8x10in), so I went with some random/favourite pins I have and a good mixture of open edition, lanyard and limited edition pins. On Flickr I've tagged each of the pins with their Pin Pics number and edition size.

I have a smaller frame (5x7in) for some more pins, that might have to be a Mickey and Minnie frame next time! I will post pics of more frames when they're made.

035. My shelves arrived!

My new IKEA Expedit shelves arrived yesterday morning! The delivery men were here at 08:40, so it's a good job we set our alarm to come on at 08:30 - our delivery slot as 09:00-12:00, we weren't expecting them to arrive so early!

James assembled them, with some help from me! I can't wait to fill them up and get them organised, I'm just waiting on some storage boxes to be delivered from an eBay seller and I'm good to go! For now, the mess that needs to be organised is in the spare room.

Happy New Year 2011!

035. Buy shelves and organise the office

When we moved into our new hours in July we took a few trips down to IKEA to choose some new furniture. I wanted a new desk and shelves for the room where we'd keep our computer, or the office. We almost went with the Billy bookcase system, but I opted for the Exepdit system instead. I took to Flickr to search for shelving inspiration and found this picture by almostbunnies. I hope that I can organise my shelves in the same way!

Today I ordered my Expedit shelf from IKEA so it will be delivered during our Christmas break. My office needs some TLC while we're off work, it's become a messy dumping-ground ever since we moved into the house in July.