FEATHER & BLACK YUMMINESS

We've decided to get a bigger bed seeing as we have to share it with two fat cats, and RB and I seem to have really big elbows that get in the wrong places at the wrong times.  I'd heard about Feather & Black and loved their website - http://www.featherandblack.com/ - and was dead excited to see that they had an Outlet store in Chichester which isn't far from here.

My GOD that store is AMAZING!  If you love beautiful things and incredible bargains, you really cannot - and I'm saying this with so much enthusiasm there is neitehr font nor special effect that can convey it - CANNOT (best I can do) do better than a trip.  The discounts in the outlet are outstanding and the lovely manager, Donna, was really helpful and didn't make us feel like lepers for not wanting to pay £1.5k for a divan.

We came away with (or at least, we will when we've finalised the van-hire) a king divan and a mattress, two of these gorgeous chests of drawers and beside tables.

 And the piece de resistance, or however you say it - this headboard. This headboard was an AMAZEBALLS bargain: instead of £499, we got it for £275.

The fabric is Pebble and is a really lovely warm grey.  I am SO excited about this lot arriving.  At the moment, our room is so patchy with half painted walls, sanded filler, unpainted woodwork ---  it'll be so relaxing to get into bed and not be constantly aware of all the work that needs doing.  

Anyway, Feather and Black rule.  Yeah. 

WELCOME TO OUR BIG FAT 1980s HOUSE

We had been dying to move out of London for the whole seven months we'd been together (myself and RB; the cats seemed perfectly content staring out the window onto the Streatham backstreet we lived on).  RB is from Winchester and he was longing to raise his family in the leafy middle-class idyll of his youth where our children could build dens in the bushes and shoot fireworks at passing trains, just as he had all those sun-drenched summers ago.  As I am the perfect wife, I let him have his way.

What we hadn't counted on is that Winchester is one of the most expensive places in the country to buy and while we had every intention of buying a little piece of chocolate box beautifulness, the fact that anything with a hint of character was about two-hundred grand out of our budget stumped us a little.  So, after many, many, m-a-n-y viewings and two false starts, we finally settled on this little 80s beauty because it had four bedrooms, was in our budget, is in a lovely quiet courtyard and because ... well ... we panicked ...

It's not what it looks like.  It is in fact U shaped and our house is made up of the first two windows on the right - the Master Bed and the Dining Room - the recess which has the front door (big hall behind) and the Bathroom above, and the next two windows which is Bed 2 and the Living Room.  Behind these are two more bedrooms, a downstairs WC and, of course, a kitchen.

The foreground is the communal garden. Our garden starts from the blue-green of the very LEGGY lavender. Note the abundant hydrangea bushes.  There were two of them.  And they were abundant.

Out back is this:

Note the abundant bulbous bushes. They were abundant.  And bulbous.  And let's not talk about that island of concrete ...

And the back of the house...

See. Abundant. Bulbous. Bushes.

Windows are: Far Left Bed 4, middle landing, Right Bed 3.  Then Kitchen obscured by abundant bush and sliding doors to the Living Room.  Yes those are some conifers growing against the back wall.  I know.

Next time ... INSIDE!