Roses from the garden. Smelling just how roses are meant to smell. Now my little girl is on the mend, I can start to work on a few of the projects that have been on hold for a while.
First up is the exchange of a new sofa. Oh how this has left me feeling sad. I love our sofa. We only bought it last year, as some of you may recall. I was so happy with it and wrote about it [here]
Well a few weeks ago, the husband noticed a crack in the frame. It was clear that if someone sat heavily on it, the whole frame would just break in half.
As it was less than a year old, and barely used, we got in contact with Laura Ashley customer service, who sent a lady round to inspect the damage. It was obviously a design fault. You can see the crack is directly above a join in the wood. Unfortunately, this style of sofa is now discontinued, so the options were to get a refund or exchange it for another, different style sofa. It is upsetting, because ridiculous as it may seem, this was my dream sofa. But, something had to be done, and in all honesty, if having to change your sofa is the biggest 'problem' you have in your life, then you're not doing too badly in the first place. So we have to wait for a new sofa to be delivered. This is the nearest we could find design wise, it's vaguely similar in style. We could have gone for something squishy and big, but I love the elegance of a smaller, neater sofa.
And it will be covered in this fabric. 
You just know that I'm going to be painting the feet of the sofa, don't you?! And to console myself, I've already bought a few cushions to scatter on it to give it that squishyness, but without the bulk.
So it's not all bad. Such a shame though, I really do/did love that sofa. It might be a bit early to be thinking Christmas, but Christmas is rarely far from my mind. Especially in summer, when I'm dreaming of cool, crisp weather. And that is why I am going to be working on a festive project next week.
We don't have Pottery Barn in the UK (as far as I know), so when I saw this during surfing the internet, it was new to me and gave instant inspiration.
I gather it was pretty expensive, and I've seen many brilliant copies made by clever crafty people. So. I went to [Hobby Craft] and ordered cardboard letters (I'm showing a 'V' because I ordered the letters for 'Love' too, so I can make a Valentine's version).
They are on their way and will be here during the week. Then I can set to work trying to recreate the Pottery Barn sign. My only dithering is over paint. Do I copy PB and paint the letters dark, to resemble metal (which I think is what the PB sign is made from), or do I use this silver paint that I bought today..
.. or do I paint them a creamy white? Decisions, decisions.It's so nice to be able to spend some time on being creative again.