PRETTY YOUNG THING

We are hoping to buy our own place in the next few years, at the moment we are renting so I am restricted when it comes to decorating so I tend to buy new accessories to refresh our home.

I'm always looking for ideas and inspiration for our future home and I thought i'd share a few products and ideas I have for our living room. I actually really want to buy a few new bits and pieces for our current living room to brighten the place up a little.

Right now alot of our accessories are black and white as the sofa is black, when we buy our own sofa  I want to go for a grey sofa and will most likely have alot of grey accessories. I think grey is really classy and clean. Right now I plan on buying some grey cushions and maybe a grey rug to incorporate it into our current living room and then we can bring these items with us when we move. By using accessories to add colour to a room it makes it really easy to change a colour theme and is more affordable than replacing all of your furniture.

I'm loving window shutters right now and think they look so clean and stylish, much nicer than fabric blinds. Thomas Sanderson stock window shutters for any window, I think these Bay Window shutters look so nice, I like traditional bay windows and think the shutters make them look gorgeous.

I really want to buy some new furniture and accessories, alot of our furniture is quite cheap, it's pretty much all from Ikea and i'd like to add some new pieces to our living room. This nest of tables would be perfect, they are white with a little wooden top and would look fab in our living room. We have a coffee table right now but I think I'm going to get rid of this to make more room.

I'm on the lookout for some nice new bits like a new lamp and some new cushions and a throw. I want to make our living room look cleaner and more modern. We have a lot of black and white and patterns going on and I think I want the room to look more grown up with crisp clean furniture and accessories.

I'm always looking out for new bits and accessories to refresh my home and always looking for new stylish ways to keep my home looking trendy, clean and new.







* sponsored post

We are hoping that in the next 5 years we will own our own house. Right now we rent and we plan on renting for a few more years. We have discussed mortgages but as i'm only working part-time we are better off waiting until I go back to work full time when Amelia starts School. I don't think it makes much sense for me to work full time as we would have to pay for childcare for Amelia and i'd rather spend this time with her. I thought i'd share a few ways in which we intend on saving money. We need to save money to pay for deposits and renting fee's and we currently live in a part furnished apartment so we will need to pay for furniture and other appliances.

First up is making cut backs.  Do I really need to buy that pair of boots? Going out for extravagant
meals. It's good to look at your statement and see how much you really spend on unnecessary purchases for example those £4 coffees twice a week add up, you can buy a whole jar of coffee and put it in your own to-go cup. I was spending £17 a month of a cinema car that I don't use and wasting £30 a month on my gym membership.  I know it's not the same but if you want to save money you have to make these simple changes. By making these little changes like parking a little further away from town or why not walk to the shops instead of driving?

Meal Planning - We waste so much food and it's because we never plan our meals. Plan your meals for the week and write a shopping list. Then go to the supermarket and just buy whats on your list, I find online shopping is a good way to save money too because you don't get tricked into buying those £1 offers at the end of the aisle. Also by doing a weekly shop you use less fuel going back and forth to the shops and you tend to eat what you have in rather than going to get something else for dinner.

Shopping around  - why pay more for something?  You can browse different websites online and find out what stores have the best prices and offers on those products that you need. Going to shops like Home Bargains or Savers for your household goods can save you loads compared to the supermarkets. As I mentioned above we rent a part-furnished apartment so when we move we are going to need to buy everything from a sofa, fridge-freezer, washing machine and tumble dryer. It's good to shop around online and there's websites like latestdeals.co.uk who have loads of really good deals on appliances. Another way to save money is to look for vouchers when shopping as you can save lots of money by looking to see if there is a voucher before you buy, even if it's just a free delivery code.

Buy secondhand - There are so many products that you can buy secondhand, one of my friends bought a secondhand sofa and its lovely. It's a huge grey corner sofa and I would never of guessed it was pre-owned. You can find some really good deals on furniture, I bought our Ikea dressing table second hand and it looked brand new and it cost me about £20 instead of the retail price of £120.

Even after following my money-saving tips we will still need to look at a service like Zippa Loans to buy some of the furniture and to put towards a deposit. This way we can manage the monthly repayments. I think we will buy a new fridge/freezer and then look into getting a second hand sofa and some wardrobes. I think we could bring our washing to our parents for a couple of months and then save up to buy a washing machine instead of paying out loads at the same time.














 * sponsored post

Today's post is all about my top tips for renting. I've been renting for about a year and a half now and have had a few ups and downs along the way. I found blog posts such as this really helpful when we were looking at renting as if was all new to us and we had only ever lived at home with parents. Below are a few of my top tips for renting, if you have any questions and I haven't covered it below then just send me a comment or email and i'm happy to help or check out the HomeLet website for lots of information about renting for tenants and landlords.

ORGANISATION - You need to be organised when renting, from looking at properties to moving in. When looking at properties you need to know how much you are willing to spend and how much you can afford, you need to know what you want, how many bedrooms?  a garden? bath or shower?

Write a list of properties you want to enquire about with estate agent information and numbers and make sure you have all your documents ready to go! We found renting was very speedy you need to get your applications in quickly, they usually need to see your financial documents and get you to fill out forms with your passport details so have everything to hand.

When you actually move in it's good to go into the empty house/ flat etc and take photos of everything. That way you have proof of what was in the house when you moved in and what kind of state it was in. This makes it easier when your trying to get your deposit back when moving out. Also write a list of these things too just incase you loose the photos as a backup. We have a folder where we keep all of the bills, documents and I have kept this list safe in here.


PAYING THE BILLS - As well as your rent, you have other bills to pay like council tax, utility bills like water, gas, electric and internet. I set up a joint account with Clint and we use this to pay all of these bills. We each put money in on payday and this covers all of these bills so we don't have to worry. Try and set up your bills so they come out at around the same time, all of our bills come out on the first of the month which makes it easy to remember. Use comparison websites to get the best deals on your utility bills, don't just stick with what the previous tenant had.

INSURANCE - You should get some kind of content insurance should you have any kind of accident, this covers your stuff as most landlords insurance doesn't cover your things. Also appliances should be checked regularly. Our boiler and gas appliances are checked every year to make sure it's safe.

TENANCY AGREEMENT- Make sure you have an up to date tenancy agreement. If you have been living at the same place for a while or you decided to have a short term tenancy agreement then have a look over this and make sure it's up to date. You may have originally agreed on a 6 month tenancy but now a 12 month tenancy would suit you better, get in touch with your landlord or estate agent about updating the agreement if you feel it's now out of date.














* This post is in collaboration with HomeLet

Can you believe we've had our own flat for over a year now! It's gone so fast and it's been so good.

Today I thought i'd share a few tips for first time renters for when you move into your property as sometimes it's hard knowing what you need to do.


1. Moving Day can be very stressful so being organised will help so much, when packing you want to have boxes for each room which I know sounds obvious but we had a few random boxes and these sat in the spare room for a while as we needed to sort them whereas the kitchen stuff and living room stuff all went away straightaway because it was in it's own box. We had the kitchen stuff in the car with us when we went to pick the keys up so we could make a cup of tea for people helping us move. We also brought the bed first as even if the flat was full of boxes at least we could sleep in our bed.

2. Cleaning the flat before you bring all your boxes and rubbish in makes it easier so we just brought the bed and a few kitchen bits and the vacuum with us and got the flat nice and clean before we started bringing boxes in.

3. Write up an inventory, our flat is part furnished so there's a few bits that were left here so we wrote up these things so when we move out we can make sure these are back where they belong. For example the sofa had cushions left on it but I had already brought cushions so i've popped the cushions into our airing cupboard but when I go through the inventory I will know they belong here.

4. Get a spare set of keys cut, we have the original set in the flat and both have a set of keys, we could do with getting a replacement key set cut incase either of us ever loose ours. Also make sure that the your lock system is secure and in working order, check out https://www.fastkeys.co.uk/ for a huge selection of locks and a fast key cutting service.

5.Take photos of damage or marks etc. On the first day when the flat is still empty you want to go round with your camera and a note pad and list any marks and take photos so if there is any issues when your moving out you have proof that these were already there. In our flat theres a mark in the spare room on the carpet and theres a broken leg in one of the kitchen cupboards but we have photos of these






*sponsored post