All posts filed under: our home in France

How to create a mood board for your home in 3 steps

Follow my blog with Bloglovin Creating a mood board is one of the most exciting steps when re-designing or refurbishing a room. If you’ve gone through major renovations before, you know that while it is a creative project to start with, it can also be stressful as you rely on other people/tradesmen for the project to come together and one thing you can’t control is what others will do. We always hope to work with tradesmen who are professional, conscientious and who will deliver on time but sadly, it is not always the case. The trickiest thing is finding reliable and available tradesmen that can do the job on time and within budget AND nurture the relationships while they work for you (in case you need them in the future)…but let’s focus on the fun part of a project ;-) Why should you aim to create a mood board? A mood board is a great way to show your tradesmen what your vision is for the room rather than emailing them thousands of pictures from Pinterest. It will give you a better sense of …

Our bedroom update with natural accents

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

Follow my blog with Bloglovin As you may have seen from the “Renovations highlights” on my Instagram profile, I’m currently working on the re-decoration of our home in France. The renovations will include four bedrooms & hallway makeovers, the complete refurbishments of the bathroom and kitchen and the creation of an outdoor shower so let’s start with a look at our master bedroom… Our bedroom: from a place to sleep to a place to really relax and wind down After ten years of having a beautiful feature wall in dark grey, I’m now planning on having a softer colour scheme to create a more relaxing, soothing atmosphere in sync with the beautiful beaches available around the Bay of Arcachon. To tell you the truth, the bedroom has never been a space of heaven for me in the past like it is for some people. It was mostly a place to sleep and I much preferred hanging out in the open-plan lounge or kitchen. Resting or remaining still was something I had always real trouble with until I sold …

The Lappalainen brass handmade mobile from Tea and Kate

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

In what seems the longest Winter ever, I have decided to ignore the weather and focus on creating a Summery vibes in our home in France. As it happened, we received all our belongings from our home in London the day before I flew to London to work with Command Brand again. Facing the content of two houses fitting in one on my return, raised my stress level a bit but I’m slowly making my way through boxes and I’m planning to re-decorate the whole house one room at a time to accommodate the living requirements of our family. Spending two weeks in the house on holidays doesn’t require the same level of storage than living there the whole year. I’m also working from home now and so does Steve on Fridays so they are quite a few things we need to improve to make space work for us. The great thing is that I have received some of my favourite objects and furniture including my beloved Ghost sofa and this beautiful Lappalainen brass handmade mobile from awesome online …

Décoration chambre ado: un re-looking inspirant dans des tons doux et apaisants

Mila’s bedroom makeover

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

Teen’s bedroom makeovers are very gratifying and enjoyable. It is a great opportunity to do something creative with your child (even if you hire someone else to do it). They may even become house proud afterwards. That’s what happened with Mila. She now loves her bedroom so much that she really looks after it. She does her bed every morning, puts her clothes away in the evening and burns scented candles while doing her homework. Her bedroom is now the most welcoming, feel-good room in our home. Following Mila’s desk makeover, which many of you loved (thank you!) I have now tackled the rest of her bedroom makeover. My goal was to ensure her bed would be warm, comfortable for wintertime while feeling a bit more luxurious. A few months ago, we installed double-glazing which has made our home a lot warmer, cosier and secure. A pricey but necessarily evil home improvement. However, unlike the other bedrooms in our home, Mila’s room is exposed north and sees the least amount of sun. Since Mila didn’t want to …

In bed with white stonewashed linen

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

It has been a good week but I’m glad it’s the weekend… I put a few styling Xmas shots for clients to bed. I also got nominated again by Vuelio as UK Top Ten Interior Design Blogs (happy dance 1) and Mila’s desk area makeover got featured on Babyccino (happy dance 2). This weekend will be all about stocking up on lemons for my seasonal detox (let me know if you have any questions about it), chilling out, surfing, re-charging my batteries ahead of next week. I’m planning to tackle Mila’s bed makeover and I’m hoping to be able to make her a new headboard out of plywood. For those interested, the light fitting is the Tolemeo by Artemide and our bed linen is the white King size from the Brisa collection by Made. I’m going to change them now as Plum just got sick on it while I was finishing off this blog post. What are you up to this weekend!?

Mila’s desk area makeover

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

Last time, we decorated Mila’s room in our holiday home in France, was shortly after we purchased the house and refurbished it at the speed of the light to rent it over Summer. Mila was two years old. We fitted a sisal carpet on the floor to hide the uneven concrete floor, painted the walls in white and added two single beds as the house is rented out to other families during the summer and caters for 8 people + a baby. If you click on the second image here when the house was featured in Boligdrom magazine in 2014 and Grand Designs in 2008, you will see that we turned the front and back of a vintage French iron bed into two headboards for every single bed. Fast forward 10 years, Mila is now a 12-year-old pre-teen, well into surfing, skating and all of the above is gone. Her room is still in need of a serious makeover and I’m planning at some point, to paint one of her walls in light grey, get …

Fresh look in our dining room BEFORE & AFTER

Our dining room renovations Part 1

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

And just like that…Summer was gone. We moved back into our home after a whole Summer away and I’m now looking at the house with fresh eyes to see how to finish our dining renovations and what projects we can (budget permitting) tackle. For now, let me show you what we did recently in the lounge and dining area rather than focusing on what need to be done

How to decorate a bedroom with a dark grey feature wall

Stylish update for our grey bedroom

Published by BODIE and FOU Style Blog

Updating our bedroom & its beautiful dark grey wall was on my list of things to do. As soon as I recovered from the low blood pressure that hit me and let me with very little energy for three weeks, I tackled all the things on my to-do list. I wanted to give our bedroom a new, fresh look for Spring. I finally unpacked the new stonewashed linen duvet cover in white I got during my last trip to London. You can’t beat white for a fresh look, can you!!? I also added a gorgeous, new print above our bed. To get this print made, I used Mapiful, a website that lets you choose any location in the world (even a small town) and get it printed on a nice poster. It’s a fantastic concept. I can think of several friends and family members I could treat with one of those prints featuring a place that would mean something to them. Bordeaux is the city where I went to University. I met some of my best friends there …