Fall Haul

I was all "bah-humbug" about the arrival of fall, but then I saw this display of decorative gourds and flowers in autumnal colors at the Covent Garden Academy of Flowers last week and it was like - bam! - I was hit with the pumpkin spice stick. Suddenly, everything around me was wonderful: the swirling leaves, the darkening evenings, the unearthing of wool coats and jackets ... I found myself ready to ... well, hibernate.

So, I'm sharing some of my favorite things about fall, along with some goodies from the independent online store Magpie and London, which have made staying in an absolute pleasure:

Netflix and Chocolate

I wrote about some of my favorite TV shows here, but I'm currently working my way through every season of The Good Wife (after finishing Suits - I couldn't resist snapping up this issue of Vanity Fair with Meghan Markle on the cover). It can be a little yawn-inducing at times (there's only so much I can take of Alicia's steely gaze), but I like having it on in the background when I'm pottering around the house or cooking. This Cane & Bean chocolate tastes almost ... healthy. It's dark, and smells like freshly ground coffee beans. A bag of that, a warm blanket, and an afternoon of nothing but Netflix is my ideal way to spend a Saturday.

Long baths and magazines 

We recently remodelled our guest bathroom (which you can read about here!) and we've loved taking baths in the new, bright and airy space. These Isla Relax + Recover bath salts are healing and smell incredible - I can't resist opening the bottle and having a whiff everytime I wash my hands! It makes our bathroom feel like a spa. My favorite lifestyle magazine, Domino, is only available in the States, so I buy a copy whenever I'm over there, and treasure it for months to come back in the UK.

Arm candy reminiscent of summer holidays

Just because it's winter, doesn't mean I'll put away the bling: I love the bright color of this corded Ashiana St. Kitts bracelet. Something I'd wear to the office as readily as I'd wear it to St. Barths.

Banana pancakes

Do you know that cheesey Jack Johnson song, "Banana Pancakes"? I don't know why, but it somehow became a long-running joke between me and John, where one of us would sing it in a goofy voice just to make the other person laugh. Now, whenever I make banana pancakes (even if I'm by myself), I can't help but hum the tune, and laugh while I'm making the mix. I made these last week when I was suffering from a cold, but they're one of my favorite breakfast treats to have in the fall.

I'm giving away this beautiful pair of earrings from Magpie and London this week over on Instagram ... (just find the photo in my feed and follow me + Magpie and London, letting me know about your favorite part of fall! UK residents, you have until Friday to enter ...)

Happy Fall. xo

Gifts provided courtesy of Magpie and London, a store I love for gifts for myself and friends! All opinions are my own. Shop the collection here.

The Big Reveal: Our Guest Bathroom Before and After

When we were house hunting, having a second bathroom was on my dream list - and most of the houses we saw only had one (or a main bathroom upstairs and a single toilet downstairs, usually tucked behind the kitchen, which I hated).

Along with a first floor bathroom (that's the second floor, for my fellow Americans), we're also very lucky to have a loft bathroom attached to the master bedroom, which we remodelled at the same time (you can see the transformation here!).

To put it mildly, the first floor bathroom looked like a murder scene when we moved in (John would say that I'm grossly exaggerating at this point, but whatever). The walls were cracked and damaged because the previous owners had only tiled half-way around the bath; the linoleum floor was bubbling and uneven; and the toilet seat was a constant source of amusement for guests, as it featured an aquatic scene ... with a giant jelly fish in prime position.

I hated it.

So, it became my little project. And because of my aversion to the purple walls, dim lighting, and creaky floor, I wanted it to look as bright and clean as possible.

Originally, I'd selected a marble mosaic tile for the floor from Fired Earth, but stupidly miscalculated the square footage we'd need and realized it was going to be eye-wateringly expensive - which threw off the rest of my design (I'm pretty sure I also threw myself on the couch like my 3-year-old niece and kicked and screamed - yeah, I know. I'm vile). John told me to order them anyway, but instead, I opted for the Fired Earth tiles in St. Ives Frost for the floor, arranged in a herringbone pattern, and the square white bevelled Boho Soho tiles for the walls (note: I tried to find a dupe for these - no such luck. Plenty of metro bevelled tiles out there - not a lot of square bevelled tiles, except for a shop in Wisconsin that sells them too).

But then.

That's where my success ends. Literally every single item I ordered after that was wrong: the wrong size, bad quality, the wrong shape, etc.

I eagerly ripped open a couple of sconce lamps I'd ordered from The Garden Trading Company and, despite having carefully read the dimensions, they looked like the size of something that belonged in a doll's house. I kid you not. (I ended up getting these from Dusk Lighting instead).

Then, the shower head I ordered didn't work with the boxed in flue (luckily, our builders found a solution to this and quietly fixed it before telling me what had happened, as they knew I was prone to hysterics) and ... there was the matter of the bathtub.

So, I ordered this tub online from Victoria Plum, along with an acrylic bath panel and thought nothing of it when they arrived.

"Is this your, um, bath panel?" asked John when he came home from work one evening, scrutinizing the delivery of boxes in our living room. "I can lift it with one finger!" he said, before - literally - lifting it with one finger.

This wasn't good.

"Also, that bath looks a bit ... um, cheap," he said.

"I thought that's what we were going for in this bathroom," I snapped.

The next day, our builder arrived and I told him what John had said.

"Yeah ... to be honest ... they're not the best," he said, wringing his hands a little.

So, the bath and the corresponding panel went back to Victoria Plum, and in their place, I received a Bette super steel bath and Burlington wood bath panel.

"I'm just going to go for it," I texted John before I placed my order with the builder.

"Yeah," he replied. "Otherwise your whole bathroom gonna be cheap cardboard. *laughing emoji*"

Face. Palm.

Anyway, after that minor drama was over, I managed to find an XXL mirror for the wall opposite the bath (but only after asking my builders the awkward question, "Is it weird to see yourself when you're showering? Would you find that weird? Is that weird? I think it's a little weird, but is that okay? What do you think? It's weird, right?") from IKEA.

The grey Shaker-style vanity unit was from Victoria Plum (I replaced the ugly silver knobs with knobs from Anthropologie) and my builder made a bespoke cupboard to box in our boiler and Megaflo unit (which is huge). He was so nice, he threw in an extra bespoke cupboard for free to hide the rest of the boiler flue and to give us some extra storage space (I also had him install knobs from Anthropologie for these). Now I can bulk-buy my toilet paper, Kleenex and soap!

I sourced an antique milking stool from eBay (our Airbnb in Iceland had one and I loved the look - John uses it as a stand for our Samsung Galaxy View when he's taking a bath and wants to watch Formula One/cricket/rugby/random-history-programs) and bathmats from Anthropologie and Cologne & Cotton. The plants in the windowsill are from Patch.

This bathroom gets a lot of natural light already (it's a lovely place to take a bath if you're feeling sick/down as it's bright and relaxing), but we replaced the dingy overhead light the previous owners had installed with a selection of spots, and two wall sconces. To keep it from looking too stark, I chose a pale, barely-there pink for the walls, which even my builders ended up liking!

As with the upstairs bathroom, our builders fitted Warmup underfloor heating so our guests' tootsies will stay nice and warm when padding to the bathroom in the middle of the night/in the morning.

Although very different in look/feel to our upstairs bathroom (AKA John's project, which looks a lot slicker and more modern with the digital shower and fancy sink), this bathroom still feels like a sanctuary to me - and welcome relief from the design disaster that was the old one.

I hope our guests enjoy using it as much as we do, and I'd love to know what you think!