I’ve been meaning to add to my collection of cacti for a while now. I have two big window ledges at the front of the room known lovingly as the “Oil Baron’s Sunken Lounge” and though one of them was filled with a row of the cacti I’ve been lovingly killing since 2007, pictured above,…
I’ve made a little video for my Instagram page @casacrilly, where I put all of my house and interiors stuff, and it’s all about the double renovation we’re currently in the midst of – we’re doing up a little seaside holiday cottage in Dorset and also the house we’ve moved to. It’s all quite chaotic…
I said I’d come back to you with more about my side-hustle, sneakily mentioned last summer and not referred to since. It has been a bit crazy on the house front and so I didn’t really know where to start: then Christmas happened and then the latest lockdown and so we find ourselves in February…
I’ve always fancied being the sort of person that could throw one of those dinner parties that seemingly only exist in Ferrero Rocher commercials and magazine shoots; French farmhouse tables overflowing with flowers and flickering candles, fine linen napkins placed upon artfully stacked place settings… A proper lavish dinner party thrown by the sort of…
A great decorating book to feast upon, if you’re something of an interiors aficionado; Farrow & Ball’s Recipes for Decorating* by Joa Studholme. It’s an absolute visual delight. Whether you’re a serial re-painter who loves to experiment with colour or a confused starter with no idea how to pick a more flattering shade for the living…
I must admit that the title sounds slightly click-baity, but I filmed my latest house update when I was still waiting for the big glass doors to arrive and all building work had come to a total halt – it felt very appropriate. Like that bit in Grand Designs when everything goes wrong and they film…
Question: is a part of a building still called an extension if there was something there before it? I’ve been mulling this over because I’ve been automatically referring to our new dining room as an extension but is it? We’ve demolished one thing (a weird, shoddily-constructed annexe) and we’re building something bigger and completely different in…
Here’s a “home haul” video, which I believe is the correct down-with-the-kids-speak for Things I’ve Been Buying For The House. Which could also be called Ruth’s Neverending Stream of Parcel Deliveries, or even Ruth’s Husband’s Ultimate Source of Discontent, because he has to endure the incessant ringing of the doorbell and the cardboard boxes everywhere and me…
Is there a term for someone who is the very opposite of green-fingered? Who’s more Die-das touch than Midas? Whatever the term is for it, that’s me. I just seem to be very bad with houseplants – I’ve killed orchids, money trees, even cacti! (I really shouldn’t use an exclamation mark there because it makes…
I’ve been looking for something to jazz up my very plain bathroom, but something soft, steam-tolerant and relatively portable. A flash of colour, a punchy pattern, a sort of moveable visual feast, if you will. And what’s more soft, steam-tolerant and movable than a snazzy towel? If you get a good one (not that easy,…
I’ve had a bit of a eureka moment with my house. After a year of dithering and not quite feeling confident about what I wanted to do with it, I feel as though I’ve finally found my furnishing and decorating groove. I’ve embraced the Georgian architecture with its ornate cornicing and big fireplaces and all…
Oooh, this is nostalgic: a Sunday Tittle Tattle the way it used to be. The way that nature intended. Or at least the way that I intended! Do you remember when the Tittle Tattle was made up of little morsels of unrelated information? Sort of like a notice board? I moved away from it because I thought…
[AD info: this post contains one affiliate link marked *] I know that it’s entirely possible that pink velvet is going to be one of those fleeting trends that disappears into the interiors ether as quickly as it arrived, but please humour me. Because I’ve always wanted a pink bed. Not the type of pink…
Bane of my house-decorating life, televisions. I like to watch them (my evenings are dominated by Netflix box-sets) but I hate the look of them. I hate them on their stupid perspex stands, I hate them when they are plonked in the middle of an otherwise bare wall, even worse with the wires hanging down….
The one you’ve all (maybe) been waiting for – the house tour. OK, so it’s not a room-by-room reveal of the whole place, MTV Cribs style, but it’s as much of a house peek as you’re probably going to get. You can always see bits and pieces of the inside of my home on Instagram stories, but this…
I seem to have developed quite a serious, potentially ruinous, shopping addiction. I can’t stop buying things from the vintage/antique website Vinterior. To date, I’ve bought four lights, three mirrors, a chest of drawers, an old French shop display, an armoire the size of a small village and almost a coffee table. (Some of my purchases are pictured…
(links marked * are affiliate links, for more info see disclaimer below post) It’s been a while since the last Weekly Window Shop, hasn’t it? And I have no idea why, because I’ve been spending just as much time as usual looking at stuff online, creating fantasy furniture wishlists and obsessing over items of clothing…