March 11, 2019

French Happy Shabby Chic is Back

Yes you heard it here first – French Happy Shabby Chic is back.
I tried adding modern pieces to my home from modern shops, to find that I was throwing out trends that I no longer liked quite quickly! which wasn’t very ozone friendly…I even tried living with the pared back look and although I liked it for a while…I felt something was missing.

I have been feeling very unhappy lately and even had a mini breakdown last week…Yep I hit ground zero! luckily my family gathered around me and picked me up, I know they all love me, but I felt that I was spinning too many plates in my life and I just needed some time for myself…that’s something that I never seem to get, being a carer to 3 people is very wearing…sometimes you just want to scream! and my way of coping has been to stay up to silly o’clock so that I can do everything that I want to do for myself as well…

That idea though has thoroughly worn me out, trying to burn the candle at both ends is not a good idea if you want to stay healthly and the fact that I am in denial about having type 2 diabetes and constantly eating lots of sweet treats has just added to my poor state of mind…I do this you see! It’s like a recurring circle, I feel depressed, eat something sweet to make myself feel good…immediately feel bad!  Then I stay up too late and have to get up early and all this added together just made me hit rock bottom!  I know I should go to bed at a reasonable time, but the only time that I don’t get disturbed is when everyone is asleep and that time for me is bliss!

So! after thinking for a while and looking around the house, I asked Freddy if he would mind me adding some more of my happy shabby pieces into the mix…I felt I needed to add some more colour into my life, to try to make me feel happy again!  I thought I needed a change when we moved to this  house, but we have been here 3 years now and I still feel that I haven’t got it right!  When we first moved in, I tried to do the happy shabby look, but it just didn’t work…then we took it all out, and went for a more pared back look and for a while that felt good, well for a while anyway!

Then we added a bit of vintage in with the modern accessories, ferns, gold and quirky modern pieces…and yep I liked it! I really really liked it!
The thought of adding anything red! oh no! not me…I am not going back there! I thought to myself! but really! is that really me? and after my mini breakdown, I started thinking what do I really want! when was I at my happiest…and the more I think about it, it was when we were living on the Island and we decorated in a french happy shabby chic style…with rather of a lot of Cath Kidston thrown in (back then Cath’s homewares were to die for!) I started to look at old blog posts from that era and my heart skipped a beat!

So out came all our vintage French enamel and other old favourites, there was mess everywhere, but it was a beautiful mess! I was supposed to of sold a lot of this stuff, but I couldn’t bare to part with my favourites and stored it away, just in case one day I would have this eureka moment and want it all back!  Fred stayed out of my way while I played house! I asked him if he minded me changing the look again, as he really liked the modern look, but he said he just wanted me to be happy!

The pictures I have shown you in this post is the progress…ha and the mess!

This time I have incorporated old mixed with quirky, modern and chic…items that make my heart sing.  Everything, I look at sparks joy! I keep asking Freddy if he likes it…but he just say’s sarcastically ‘it’s nice’.

But to me…it’s my ‘happy’ and I can’t wait to get all the house under it’s spell again!…and hopefully if I can get to bed earlier, it might make me feel better in myself so that I can have more time to do the things that I enjoy!

My pictures aren’t the finished room design…but I will be posting the final pictures soon!

P.S I have recently moved over to a Self Hosted WordPress platform, so some of my older posts might be out of line or have huge out of focus pictures…sorry about that guys and gals…I was going to correct it all but lifes too short!

Love to you all x