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Family, Interiors, Lifestyle, Motherhood, Parenting, Photography

A room tour | Our bedroom and a baby corner for Wilf

October 5, 2018 1 Comment

Hannah Straughan blog - a bedroom tour with a baby corner for Wilf - calm, minimalist, scandi-style interiors

From time to time, I post a photo of our home interior to my Instagram, and although it’s not the main theme of my account, I always get a lovely response from them. I love interior design, although since we started our family it’s taken a bit of a backseat as an hobby simply due to lack of free time. I’ve been asked a number of times to share some interiors-themed blog posts and I thought it was about time I did!

I’m starting off with a room tour of the master bedroom in our home – our bedroom – which, incidentally is my favourite room in the house. I’ve very much taken inspiration from the light and simplicity of Scandi interiors, and as a result, it’s such a calm and peaceful space, perfect for a bedroom. As Wilf shares our bedroom, I created a baby corner for him so that we could change and dress him easily, as the only other bedroom on this floor of the house is Oscar’s.

| Our Home

We’ve been in our house in York for almost five years now. It’s the first house that Ben and I have owned, and after being in rented accommodation for the best part of ten years, I was so excited to be able to call this place our home and be free to decorate it as we pleased. It’s a Victorian terraced house, built in 1890 and its set over three floors (all original, no attic conversion). The only modernisation was a small extension to the back of the house, where our kitchen is now, and we love the the house has retained lots of original features – including servant bells!! – and has gorgeous high ceilings on the ground floor.

We lived in our house for two years before we had our first child, Oscar, and during that time (my pre-Instagram days!), interiors turned into a hobby of mine, and I would scour Pinterest and interior magazines for inspiration. We didn’t need to make any major changes to the house when we moved in, but over the course of about a year we gradually re-did each room in the house, with some just needing the walls repainting, and others needing floor to ceiling renovation. We did pretty much all of this ourselves, and we often spent a weekend tackling a room – I actually really enjoyed it!

| The Master Bedroom

I’ve linked some of the products you can see in the images, and I’ve explained what we did to the room to get to this point. Scroll right to the bottom to see the ‘before’ images I dug out of the room!

Linen ring sling from Mezaya Baby

This is the dress I changed into, to dance in on the evening of our wedding. It’s from Virgos Lounge. I didn’t plan to showcase it, I just hung it up here on a whim and it’s stayed there ever since. I love to see it – it reminds me of the most wonderful day of my life.

The mirror was a find at Homesense. Belly basket and Monstera plant both from IKEA.

These photos were taken just a few days before Wilf arrived – I was about 39 weeks pregnant here. I look enormous!

Our bed is a solid Oak four-poster from Get Laid Beds. I umm-ed and ahh-ed for ages about which bed to buy, it felt like a big decision as it’s so important to buy a good bed, plus as Ben is 6 foot 7 inches tall we had decided to get a bespoke bed made extra long (his feet hang off the end of normal-length beds, and that’s no way to live!) so our choice felt a bit more ‘final’ as it would be harder to sell on if we changed our mind. I liked the look of minimal, simple beds but I did want a bit of a statement too – then I found this design and I fell in love. I wondered for a while if it would look a bit extravagant to have a four-poster, but we went for it and I’ve never looked back. I love it. The beds start at extremely reasonably prices, but we invested a little more to get solid Oak. Of course, one of the main reasons we went for this company was that they offered bespoke-sized beds, and from memory, this was only a small extra cost. I’d highly recommend them.

The Ottoman is from John Lewis – see a similar one here. I keep all of our spare bed linen in it – so useful!

The picture rail is from IKEA and Wilf’s bedside crib pictured here is the Snuzpod, which we have used for both boys and is one of my absolute favourite must-have baby items.

Who else is a fan of Ewan the Sheep? Our boys both love him!

These two photos, above and below, are the only two I took on a different day – you can tell as there is a tiny sleeping Wilf wrapped up on the bed! These are poorer quality photos as I just took them on my iPhone, but I wanted to show off the bedside crib in the position we had it for the first six months of Wilf’s life, attached to our bed with the side down in the co-sleeping position, and also the lovely forest print and frame which are both from Desenio.

This is the little changing and feeding corner I created for Wilf, and it proved so useful. I cleared a few drawers in this chest, which was bought from Debenhams online, for Wilf’s nappies and wipes, muslins and sleep suits. I bought a changing basket from OlliElla, after seeing lots of gorgeous nursery inspiration on Instagram with the same basket – I love it!

The cloud mobile is from The White Company, the round mirror is from H&M, the little animal prints are from Sarah and Bendrix, the moon print is from Land and Furrow, and the bespoke calligraphy is by Ffion McKeown. It’s a quote from the book Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de St Exupery and it says: “On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L’essential est invisible pour les yeux.” – “One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

The grey and blush muslin blanket is from Baby Mori and the pull along duck is from Sarah and Bendrix.

Our brown leather chair is from Laura Ashley and the leather pouf was a find in a market in Morocco. It was a perfect breastfeeding spot – I spent many hours sat here nursing and gazing and Wilf’s perfect little face.

On the chair is my hospital bag packed and ready to go (actually not a prop for the photo believe it or not, I’d just packed it that morning!). It’s a leather changing bag from Josefina and I couldn’t love it more. It’s got a removable inner with lots of compartments so that you can keep all of your baby bits separate, and it attaches to a pushchair with gold button hardware. best of all, it’s so elegant and chic, and doesn’t look at all like a baby changing bag. I’ll carry on using it for years to come as a weekend going-away bag, and it also makes a perfect camera bag, with all its compartments. Josefina offers monogramming, and I opted for the gold, of course. This bag was generously gifted to me by the brand, but I wasn’t asked to review it here – I just adore it!

The cream bobble rug is from Le Flair Vintage.

The sweet soft toy whale is from H&M.

Our treasured Birthday Letters journal is from The Simple Stories, Oscar and Wilf have one each. The idea is that you write a letter to your child every year on their birthday, and then eventually it will be a gift to them.

You can find the rabbit night light here, the wooden stacking kitten is also from Sarah and Bendrix, the little toy camera is from Twig Creative and the milestone cards are by Cheryl Rawlings. The tiny moccs are from a past collaboration between Rebecca Kiff (Rebecca Raynham) and Monkey and Mole. The magnetic wooden animals in the photo below are actually Oscar’s and they too are from Sarah and Bendrix. It’s my go-to shop for gifts for my friends’ kids – the toys are sweet, simple and provoke imagination and play, plus I know that their parents will also love them as they look so beautiful.

Please let me know if there’s anything I haven’t mentioned and you’d like to know where I found it.

| The ‘Before’

Now, it wouldn’t be a room tour without some ‘before’ shots, would it? I wasn’t sure that I had any, but I managed to dig these out!

The first thing we did when we moved in was to deconstruct the enormous IKEA wardrobe that covered the entirety of one wall and took up a ridiculous amount of space. I’m all for storage space, but I really did not want to encourage my inner hoarder with this expanse of space, plus it had super ugly gloss doors. When we removed it we found two alcoves hidden behind, and although they’re small it was completely dead space! We put the IKEA wardrobe pieces on Gumtree for free collection, and amazingly someone took the lot off our hands.

Removing the wardrobe revealed painted wallpaper that was peeling and coming away in parts, so we steamed the rest off. Unfortunately a few pieces of plaster also came away, and Ben insisted on doing the plastering himself. He’d never done it before but he watched a couple of Youtube videos and I must say he did a pretty good job!

The carpet was in a really sorry state – very worn in parts and lots of stains. It had to go. We had intended to replace it with a new carpet, but the we removed it we found the house’s original floorboards beneath it. They were painted black, not in the best condition and as it’s such a old house the floor is far from flat, but we wanted to see if we could restore them, so Ben hired a professional floor sander and spent a whole weekend working on them. There was dust everywhere! I’m not sure if he would have taken the job on if he’d actually known how much work it would be, but I was very grateful – it looked amazing.

This photo shows the nearly finished room – we treated the floor with an oil to waterproof and protect it, but it brought out the yellow/orange tones of the wood (pine? Probably – I’m not sure!), and I wasn’t keen on the colour, so I applied a lime tinted varnish, which really helped.

I painted the walls – they are Sail White matt emulsion by Crown and the skirting is just cheap as chips Brilliant White wood paint. The walls needed three coats to look really uniform, which was a faff. After having done this, I used Farrow and Ball paint on two of the other rooms and they only needed two coats. I think cheaper paint is a false economy as it takes more paint and more time to achieve the same job!

So there we have it! Please do comment below if you have any questions, and if you’d like to see more posts like this I would love to know.

Hannah x

Instagram, Lifestyle, Nature, Photography, Tips

How to make your own floral crown

June 14, 2018 No Comments

I’ve got a bit of a love affair going on with flowers, and it’s growing stronger by the day. I’ve always been an admirer of all things floral, but I think it was around the time that I had Oscar, and I started using Instagram regularly, that I really fell head over heels. When Osc was tiny, like so many other parents I used to go for daily long, long walks with the pram, as for a while it was the only place he’d settle in the daytime. Our walk usually took us past one of the two street flower stalls in York, and treating myself to a bunch of blooms became a bit of a tradition that has stayed with me since then. Rather than buying a pretty mixed posy, I tended to go for one or two different types of stem, usually inexpensive types, and often a bunch of foliage such as ruscus or eucalyptus too. I loved taking them home, unwrapping them and having five quiet minutes to myself to trim each stem and arrange them, appreciating each bloom. It was my little bit of mindfulness in the midst of a chaotic day.

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ll know that I love a floral wreath or crown, and with the summer solstice coming up soon I thought it would be nice to share with you how to make your own floral crown to wear. It’s so simple to do, I promise! In Sweden, the summer solstice is widely celebrated and it’s a tradition for women to make and wear floral crowns. That’s a good enough reason for me to as well! I actually took these photos quite a while back, but I never made use of them. I’m going to be making another floral crown this year though, and I will share the finished result on my Instagram – I’m thinking bigger and blousier than the ones I’ve made before!

| How to make your own floral crown

What you’ll need:

A selection of blooms and foliage of varying sizes and complementary colours. I used garden roses, stocks, sweet william, astilbe and jasmine, which are all available at this time of year. Try foraging in your own garden for supplies – you only need a couple of sprigs of each variety.
A short section of stiff florists wire (or any covered wire), cut to length to fit over your head from ear to ear, like an alice band.
Florists tape
Scissors or secateurs
A length of ribbon, around 1m long
Some thin florists wire to secure and larger flower buds (optional)

Florists tape and wire can be found in craft stores or online – I bought mine from Hobbycraft.

| Step 1

Cut your blooms to length. Aim for a 1-2 inch stem. Shorter stems will make a neat, compact crown (but make sure they are still long enough to tape down!) while longer stems, or those of varying length will make a more wild-looking crown.

| Step 2

If you have any larger blooms it can hep to anchor them with thin wire, although you don’t have to do this. Cut around 4 inches or wire and bend in half, like a hair grip. Insert into the centre of the flower, from front to back, and pull so that the wire is concealed. Twist the wire ends. You now have a flower head on a wire stem, which is easier to build into your crown and bend into position.

| Step 3

Take your stiff wire, which is now shaped like an alice band. Wrap the ribbon around the wire, starting from the centre outwards, and tape into place. You should have enough free ribbon on each end to tie around the back of your head.

| Step 4

Start to build your flower crown!

And there you have it! One flower crown, perfect for wearing for summer solstice celebrations, music festivals, photo shoots or just to do the washing up! I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading this and feel inspired to give it a go; if you do make your own floral crown I would absolutely love to see it! You can share it with me by tagging me in your photo on Instagram – I’m @hannah.straughan. I’m thinking of doing a similar post to show you how to make your own winter wreath; it’s using a different method to this, it’s super simple and looks amazing. Let me know if that’s something you’d like to see!

Hannah x

Instagram, Photography, Tips

My photo editing tricks and tips

June 1, 2018 4 Comments

Photo editing. Love it or loathe it, it’s an essential process for professional and amateur photographers alike, and can take an image from ‘meh’ to ‘WOW’. I’d go as far as saying that unless you’re an exceptionally talented photographer, it’s all about the editing, and it takes practice to get better at. If you’re an Instagrammer, the importance of great photo editing goes beyond improving each individual photo; having a consistent photo editing style is necessary to achieve that cohesive ‘look’ that makes your Instagram gallery look beautiful, and will draw people in to click that follow button.

I’ve put together this post after I had a few people asking about my photo editing process, so whether you’re taking taking photos for your blog, want to up your Instagram and move towards your own cohesive editing ‘look’, or simply enjoy photography as a hobby, I do hope you find these tips and tricks helpful.

| The ABC of photo editing

A. Correct

First up, photo editing is essential for fixing those basic mistakes we all get in photos. Crop, straighten, tweak the exposure and temperature – even professional photographers need them.

B. Enhance

This is where the magic happens! Add a filter, selectively deepen some colours or brighten your subject. There are now apps which allow you to add special effects such as rain, fog, sparkle or lens flare. Or you can delve into photoshop and create a whimsical make-believe scene with endless possibilities! Read on to find out which apps I use and would recommend to you to enhance your photos.

C. Develop your own style

There’s no secrets or tricks to this, it’s simply about trial and error, practice, and once you know what you like, keep experimenting until you’re happy. It does take time. It is however a really important thing to develop if you want to up your photography game or take your Instagram to the next level, as having your own editing style will mean that your work is recognisable and consistent. When I was choosing a photographer to document our wedding, one of the really important factors for me was a solid consistency in both quality and editing style in their portfolio, as it meant that I could trust that the same quality would transfer to our own wedding photos; similarly if a brand wants to work with you as an influencer, it goes without saying that they’ll be more likely to reach out to you if you have a consistent editing style, as then they feel they know what they’ll be getting from you.

Something I struggled with when I was playing around with photo editing and finding a style I liked, was that I felt as though I liked lots of different styles, and my Instagram gallery seemed to change in its overall look quite regularly. I believed that I needed to select one filter, and one colour palette for my gallery, and stick with it. Now, there are some Instagram accounts that I love that have this nailed, but if you don’t want to commit to this, as I didn’t, that’s totally fine! If you look back through my Instagram gallery you’ll see that that colour palette changes through the seasons, and whilst I used to think that I was too fickle and it meant that I hadn’t yet settled on ‘my style’, I now embrace it.

One tip I would offer is to use a free grid planning app, if you don’t already, such as UNUM, Mosaico or Planoly. It will load your last 9 or 12 Instagram images, and you can add your next images into the mix to see how they will fit in prior to posting. I’m always a supporter of ‘post what makes you happy’, so if there’s a photo you’ve just taken that has e.g. a heap of green in it and sticks out like a sore thumb with the rest of your gallery, don’t despair! You could either desaturate the greens, or if that doesn’t help, just save the photo for later and start a little theme of green running through your feed, so that it fits in.

| Getting your photos onto your phone

I do all my photo editing on my iPhone. Some of my Instagram photos are still taken using my iPhone camera, but for the ones that I take using my DSLR the first step before editing is to get them onto my phone. I have two ways that I like to do this:

I download the images I want to edit directly from my camera to my phone using a wi-fi enabled memory card. This is the link to the one I use; you download a free app, connect to the card via wi-fi, et voila! Plus points – it’s quick, I can do it anywhere and don’t need to download images onto my computer first. Downsides – it’s best used to download a few select images as you have to do each photo manually, and the images are downloaded onto your phone which takes up memory space.
I upload photos from my camera to my computer; then in iPhotos I select all the images I wish to use, and add them to a shared folder on my iCloud. I can then access the shared folder on my phone and either select which ones I want to download, or upload them directly to VSCO from the shared folder. Plus points – it’s a better option if you have lots of images to choose from, and the images are still on the iCloud, therefore not taking up phone memory. Downsides – you have to connect your camera to your computer first in order to do this. I have a desktop Mac, so I can only do this at home.

VSCO

My favourite photo-editing app, VSCO is the first I turn to for every image I edit. If you’re new to VSCO, see here for a beginner’s guide by Instagram queen Sara Tasker. It’s a free app, but I’ve upgraded to VSCO X for an annual fee; having said that of all the hundreds of presets available, I still only use a select few! I’ll take you through a quick step-by-step on how I edit an image in VSCO.

First of all, I’ll use the editing tab to make basic corrections to the photo, starting off with cropping and straightening the image if needed, and then tweaking the exposure (usually slightly up, as I try to slightly underexpose when I shoot on my DSLR). I’ll then adjust the contrast and temperature, if theres an obvious need to.
Next, I add a filter. I almost exclusively use the Analog series: my favourites at the moment are A4 and A6, but up until about 6 months ago I tended to use A7, A8 and A9. I toggle the strength of the filter up and down, until I feel it is ‘just right’ – often less is more. I like to switch back and forth between the image I’m editing and the last 9 or 12 images in my Instagram gallery, to check that it looks like it will fit in seamlessly.
Finally I’ll go back to the editing tab and make some final changes, if needed. Sometimes I like to add clarity or sharpness by one stop, or slightly tweak the temperature again. There is a relatively new function called ‘HSL’, which stands for hue, saturation, and lightness. I’ll most commonly use this to desaturate green shades in a photo, if I feel like they are too intense.

Sometimes VSCO is the only editing tool I’ll use before posting a photo to Instagram, but there are a few other apps that I keep up my sleeve to troubleshoot various problems, and add effects.

PS Express

There are heaps of editing options in the Adobe Photoshop express app, but I generally used it for one function only, and that is the ‘Reduce Luminance Noise’ tab. If you’ve taken a photo in low light and the quality is poor, but you love the image, use this trick in combination with the ‘Sharpen’ tab to smooth things out. However, be careful not to go too heavy, or your photo will look like a painting! I don’t really use this function since I started shooting more on my DSLR, and I generally avoid any photography in low light.

PS Fix

I use the Photoshop Fix app if there is something in a photo that I want to erase, such as a plug socket! The ‘Spot Heal’ function will do this, but I find it a bit fiddly and sometimes the cover up isn’t very subtle, so I try and avoid getting ugly details in the shot in the first place!

Snapseed

This is a brilliant app, which I know a lot of people use as their primary photo editing app. There are heaps of different functions and effects, but I generally only use it for the ‘Brush’ tool. Using this, you can selectively ‘paint’ areas of a photo that you want to adjust exposure, temperature, saturation or ‘dodge & burn’ (lightening and darkening). So, for example if a photo has a well-exposed background, but the subject has been cast in shadow (or even just a part of the subject), you can paint the area to be lightened, and avoid having to overexpose the whole photo in order to ensure the subject is appropriately exposed. I’d urge you to have a play about with this, I love it.

A Color Story

This is another app that I know some people love to use exclusively, but I only use it to add effects. I’ve got the ‘Flare & Bokeh’ pack – call it cheating if you will, but I adore adding a little bit of magic to photos using these overlays! My preference is to make it look as natural as possible, so I head to this app only when I’ve got a photo that’s been taken in bright sunshine, so that it’s believable that a bit of sun flare has been captured. You can hold your fingers down over the flare overlay to change the orientation, and of course it looks most natural if you make it look like it’s coming from where the sun actually was in the photo. I’ll then always use the slider to reduce the effect to a subtle level.

| An editing recipe

I thought I’d add in one example of an edit that I’ve done; I’ve selected a photo that has been pretty heftily edited as it’s more interesting for the purposes of this post, but most of my photos generally have much more subtle tweaks than this one.

From the first image, which is taken straight off my camera, I used VSCO to create the second edit. After first cropping and straightening the image, I applied the following changes:

(Using the HSL function, I desaturated the greens). To take the image from the second to the third edit, I opened up the A Color Story app, and added a small amount of ‘flare 7’ in the Flare and Bokeh pack. The whole edit took me about 15 minutes.

| What’s next?

I’m very much still learning and evolving my photo editing myself, and my next project is to learn how to edit in Lightroom. I actually bought this for myself last year, but haven’t found the time to get to grips with it! My plan is to use YouTube tutorial videos to help me, and I’m really excited to get the hang of it and try using Lightroom presets on my photos.

So there we are! All of my photo editing ‘secrets’! I hope that this has been useful for you and that you’ve perhaps picked up a few tips. Would you like me to go into any more detail on how I edit my photos, maybe with a step by step example? Are there any photo editing apps that you love to use that I haven’t mentioned? Let me know!

Hannah x

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Family, Motherhood, Parenting, Photography

The honest truths of parenthood and a shoot with Melia Melia photography

November 20, 2017 4 Comments

Something that has struck me recently is how, with parenthood, time has taken on a different quality. It feels like the days fly by at a panic-inducing rate, and yet in other ways they can drag on and on. As I write, Oscar has had a nasty cold for the past three days, and it’s made him feel utterly miserable and grumpy. I can’t seem to do anything to cheer him up, and whilst I feel so sorry for him, I feel completely broken by his near-constant whining. It’s only been three days, but in my emotional, sleep deprived mind it feels like it’s lasting forever. Next week, he’ll be better, and I know that I’ll barely remember how fed up and helpless I feel in this moment.

Each moment itself is so fleeting; heart-melting joy can switch to biting back tears of frustration, and then back again, in a second. Earlier today Oscar whinged in the back of the car for the entire journey home – no amount of cheery chatting, singing or distraction from me helped, and I felt my patience dissolving and my hands tighten their grip on the steering wheel as the journey went on. As we pulled into the drive, the crying stopped. I walked around the car to get him out; my patience shot and head thick with an angry parent mist. In that very moment, my feelings of warmth towards my child were one out of ten. As I opening his door, he cocked his head to the side, grinned at me and chirpily said, “Hiyo, Mummy” followed by him sheepishly mumbling, “Sorry Mummy Oscar noisy.” Completely stunned by this, I melted into a puddle, scooped him up and felt a few hot tears prick my eyes. As someone who, previously, was prone to remaining in a bit of a grump for a while, if something had set me in a bad mood, I find this newfound emotional rollercoaster that comes with parenting thoroughly overwhelming. One of my favourite bloggers, Sara Tasker, wrote about this phenomenon a while back far more eloquently than I can put into words – you can find the post here.

A couple of months ago, James and Jo Melia popped over to our house in York to take some photos of Oscar, Ben and I together. Initially, I thought I had wanted a ‘family shoot’ – I had an image in my mind of us looking happy and windswept somewhere on the moors, amongst the purple heather, looking completely natural and not at all staged(!). Whilst I’m sure these images would have been beautiful, James and Jo suggested some shots of us around our home, and what we’ve got as a result is so, so much more than a ‘family shoot’. James has captured those memories, the fleeting ones, the ones that are so difficult to truly remember once they have passed, in the whirlwind of hectic, day-to-day parenting. We will treasure the images from this day not only because they are an insight into the little moments of joy shared within our little family, but also because they remind me to grasp onto all the little moments of joy that happen in every day, the ones interspersed between the mundane and frustrating bits, and reflect on them, or take a quick photo, or make a note, so as to not forget them.

James has a talent that extends far beyond his dreamy and captivating images, and that is his ability to capture the most authentic, intimate moments, such that I found myself looking through the photos and thinking, “I don’t remember him taking that!” Maybe more impressive still, is that our Oscar, who is always wary and shy of strangers, especially men, took such a shine to him that his cheeky, sunny and mischievous personality shows in each beautiful image.

I did envisage that the whole shoot would be focussed around Oscar, but another thing that I am grateful to James and Jo for is encouraging Ben and I to share some moments in front of the camera together. Since Oscar arrived two years ago, we are perpetually guilty of failing to find time to devote to each other, and whilst we are often together, we rarely truly find moments to connect, simply due to lack of time and tiredness. I love these images of us so much; this person of mine is the most wonderful husband and father I could have ever hoped for; I couldn’t imagine sharing life’s experiences with anyone else. Neither of us expected that a family photo shoot would remind us both to make a resolution to devote more quality time to each other.

After James had used all the rolls of film he had with him, we went down to find Oscar and Margot (James and Jo’s daughter) flirting outrageously. If I remember correctly, Oscar was feeding her raspberries and bringing her flowers. The boy is smitten! As I’ve found previously with others that I’ve connected with on Instagram, James and Jo were both gorgeous, warm people and we found ourselves chatting to them all afternoon as if we’d known them for far longer. Several cups of tea later (and a fish finger tea for the little lovebirds) we parted, with a plan to try and meet up again soon to capture some more of these little moments, either soon before or after our family grows with the addition of our second baby in January.

All of these images are shot on medium format film on a Pentax 67. You can find out more about Melia Melia photography and book a film photography family shoot here, and you can find more of their work on their Instagram account here.