Spot the difference - View from Dubai Festival City Skyline

Can you spot the differences in the skyline?

There are 2 obvious ones. Can you spot anymore?

April 2018

December 2018

My top tips on interior design for those perfect instagram posts for #myhousethismonth

Those of you who have arrived here based on the title alone, then carry on, you're already doing well and you know it.

The rest of you are just intrigued because you know me well enough to realise I'm not being serious.

But if you want some tips then here they are:

• Ensure each room looks exactly like page xx of Next home or whatever store is in vogue and similar to everyone else.
• Purchase display towels and make sure your family know they can't use them (actual conversation over heard in IKEA in Dubai) I know people who have 'display towels'
• Spend an hour or two every day staging photos and tidying up for the perfect shot
• Move that house plant around for it to appear in every photo
• In all bathroom shots make sure a) yours looks like everyone else and b) that pot plant is placed near the loo
• Make sure you only buy or just tag expensive wall paper/paint companies
• Spend a fortune on buying the latest 'must have' cushion in the latest colour, for the photo
• Don't up cycle anything, if you want shabby chic then buy it already done like that
• Paint your walls grey and call it greige, same with all other colours, give them a made up name
• Have a glass of wine, fresh flowers and freshly baked bread/cake in every shot also

Or you could do what I do.

Show the reality of your home, the mess, the work in progress, realise that the above is not true to life.

Here's how my house looked on Tuesday when I wrote this post and after a 2 hour tidy up. If you click on the #myhousethismonth hashtag on instagram you'll see how far off the mark I am with every being qualified to offer you a top tip on interior styling or design.

Cushions used to stop Bob the dog making himself comfy on the sofa.

We rarely draw the curtains and the bed only ever looks like the 2nd photo on the day I change the sheets, I made it especially for this post.

Entrance hall and dumping ground, used for everything that comes in and out of the house. Yes, the bike really does live there.

Kitchen is hit and miss, for this photo I just removed everything that shouldn't be there and dumped it on the stairs.

The lojunge at the end of every day and within half an hour of peter being up, easy to tidy, just plump up the cushions. The single chair also has to be dog proofed or he'll sleep on there at night and when we're out.

My lovely outdoor space on the balcony and the bedroom floor that everything gets dumped on when it rains, as keeps happening.

It takes around 45 minutes to sweep the sand up after a storm and everything gets set up, then I use the chairs to dry the washing on.

Then it rained the following morning and everything jsut got dumped in the dining room.

Is your home insta ready all the time? 

Mine is like anyone of the above photo's at anytime and I welcome anyone in at anytime also. 

I don't have time and energy to keep it looking perfect. 

It's a home, it gets lived in.

Around the home this January 2019

There have been a few changes around the house this January, making way for the new sofa we've ordered for the TV room.

We purchased a couple of new rugs from the market in Masafi. This red one in the lounge and 

this pale green runner for the hall.

 We also moved the white IKEA furniture from the hallway (book case and plant stand) to the upstairs area.

I love these repurposed drawers used as book shelfs which are now upstairs also.

The sofa is made to measure and this is the area it will be in. The old wicker furniture which we acquired in South Africa has now been relocated to the balcony behind the curtains.

The spare room is the next to be tackled (receive a make over) the MFI furniture (out of shot) will be replaced with a simple desk and a storage unit for files. I'll tackle that job in March.

Do you have any plans for your home this spring?

The Paris hotel, Las Vegas.

Peter and I have had many trips to Las Vegas. I think it is probably my most favourite place in the world to visit. I'd live there if we could. From the architecture to the lifestyle, endless buffets, entertainment. Las Vegas is truly a 24/7 city built to entertain from the moment you step off the airplane.

Work on the Paris Las Vegas started in 1997 and took two years to complete. Originally designed to be a full size replica of the Eiffel Tower itself, it had to be scaled back to 1:2 scale due to interference with nearby McCarran Airport.

It opened in 1999, is 164.4ms tall. The hotel has 33 floors and 2916 rooms. We've stayed in many of the hotels on and off the Las Vegas Strip. We opted to stay in the Paris hotel on this visit, as we'd not long returned from Paris, France and had dinner up the actual Eiffel Tower itself.

 View from our hotel room on the 5th floor.

Our hotel room

Like all hotels in Las Vegas, each one contains a casino, restaurants and shopping experiences, usually located on 3 different floors. In the casinos there are no doors, no windows and no clocks, so no way of knowing if it's day time or night time.

The ceilings are decorated with outdoors scenes and the interior is designed to look like you're in a street, outdoors, including real trees.

Since moving to Dubai in 2014, I've been fascinated by the speed at which they construct buildings here and have been following the progress of several construction projects and exploring some of the more unusual building designs.

I'm featuring these buildings in Dubai and from a around the world for My Sunday Photo for 2018.

Week 158 Dubai Bluewater Islands and Dubai Eye. Man made island a 210m high Big Wheel
Week 159 Dubai Dubai Marina - Reflections
Week 160 Dubai Dubai Frame. A window between the Old and New Dubai and a 150m high glass floor.

Week 161 Dubai Dubai Marina 3 years apart.

Week 162 Dubai Dubai Water Canal Bridge Construction and reconfiguration of roads

Week 163 Dubai New Metro Line for Expo 2020
Week 164 Arizona and Nevada Hoover Dam 2002 - 2010
Week 165 Dubai Dubai Opera House What a difference a year makes
Week 166 Dubai Unfinished buildings. The Pentominium
Week 167 Coventry Mixing the old and the new. Coventry Catherdral
Week 168 Dubai New Dubai Metro Station 
Week 169 Dubai The new extension of the Dubai Mall and Burj Khalifa 
Week 170 Dubai Hotel fire After the Address fire 
Week 171 Dubai Unusual designs The Opus Building
Week 172 Dubai District Cooling. Keeping the desert cool.
Week 173 Dubai Can I visit the Burj Al Arab
Week 174 Dubai The Almas Tower
Week 175 Dubai The Cayan Tower
Week 176 Toronto The CN Tower

Week 78 - My Sunday Photo. Inside the Burj Al Arab

It's my birthday today, I'm 45, I'm in work  and my husband is out this evening at a function. So on Friday he booked afternoon tea for two in the SkyView Bar at the Burj Al Arab. 

                       

After valet parking we entered the foyer and were directed towards the escalators to a reception area, the lift was called and we ascended to the 27th floor. I of course stopped along the route to take photos, before tucking into sandwiches and cakes until we were both stuffed and talking about our grandparents, from Newport and Stockport, 'if only they could see us now'

Scrapbooking and ideas for #HDYGG

There is plenty of software available to help with planning your garden, but as I like to physically have things in front of me and flip from page to page rather than try to locate tabs and saved pages, so I decided to make a physical scrap book of my plans for the garden, look at what I've already got, what I've done before in the garden and ideas for future planning.

Next weeks blog post will showcase gardens and outdoor space in the UK. We never really did much in our garden in the UK as it was fairly well established and with me working and having 5 kids at home it really was just another project I didn't have time for. Although I did do a fun halloween project with the kids which I'll blog about nearer the time.

I have a house full of arts and crafts pieces that I keep meaning to get round to making into something including spray paints, beads, coloured string and material. I've opted that whatever design I come up with will be bright to inject some colour into the beigeness of the desert sand and walls in our garden.

I've been gathering various bits and pieces together from around the house that I can use in the garden, including an old dressing table I had every intention to do up as well as ornaments and lights I can use outside and make some more floor cushions and create some kind of protection from the sun. 

I already have a table, chairs, parasol and 2 sun loungers as well as a gazebo and several deck chairs and an inflatable bright pink chair.

There are areas previously used for planting and we have a pile of bricks at the back of the house I will use to build raised beds with so I can mix in some soil rather than just plant straight into the sand.

This is what I've been creating over the past few weeks to inject some colour back into the desert and now the weather has cooled since our UK trip we've been able to spend some time outside in the evenings.

I just have to remember to bring the candles in during the day as I keep forgetting and they're melting from the heat of the sun.

Last weekend we took a walk round Safa Park as the weather has started to cool and found these amazing mushrooms growing in the shade.