Annabel Vita

It feels like ages since I’ve updated you on anything to do with the home. This is partially because things are changing a lot less around here – we’ve been in this flat for nearly a year now and most things just work as they are. There’s only so many changes you can make in a one bedroom rented flat!

But, there were two things that weren’t working. One – I’ve got really into embroidery lately and I didn’t really have anywhere to do it after dark! Our massive sitting room is lit by one rubbish fixture in the ceiling. It has four bulbs, but one is out and we’d need to move the massive sofa and borrow a massive step-ladder in order to change it. So that’s not happening anytime soon, which meant things were pretty dingy. (These are the sort of “problems” we’ll take if it means we get to live in a house built in 1745 ith 11-foot high ceilings!)

It wasn’t really a problem – we have massive windows that keep things nice and bright during the day and we have lots of lamps that we use to make the living room all kinds of cosy for evening time, but the only spot light was over on the table, and I felt a bit silly embroidering over there behind the sofa, not to mention it wasn’t all that comfortable.

The other issue was a silly one. Our bed has to be pushed up against one wall of our bedroom. Mr V heroically agreed to take the wall side, but at some point in the last year it got really annoying that that side of the bed doesn’t have a lamp. I’ve had my eye out for a pretty lamp that could clip onto the bed frame so that he could read in bed without sharing my pillow or turning on the (predictably horrid!) overhead lights.

So I was thrilled when Argos offered to send me two lamps from their Habitat collection to review. For my American readers, Argos is a UK-based furniture and homewares shop, that also produce a massive catalogue that we pored over as children to pick toys we wanted for Christmas. Habitat is one of my favourite shops (where I got the cushion that appears later in this post and this clock), and it was recently bought out by the owners of Argos. Hooray for everyone! When my clothes inevitably outgrow my little Rast dresser, I’ve got my eye on one of the nice tall (but still narrow) chest of drawers from Argos.

Anyway, here are my two lamps!

This angle-poise style floor-standing lamp a is perfect for lighting up my work when I’m stitching in this chair. When I get the chance, I hope to sort out some extension cables so it can stand behind the sofa, but it works well in this lesser-photographed corner of the living room for now! (This lamp isn’t online anymore so I can’t link to it.) It’s a little smaller than I was expecting and the “elbows” don’t work as well as a true anglepoise lamp (with the springs), but I do love it.

(Yes, ugliest radiators ever! This one is nicer in summer when I put pretty things on top of it to try and make it go away.)

Here’s the bedside lamp we went for, the Bobby Clamp lamp. I love it. It’s really sturdy and the metal finish is beautiful. Plus, we’ve read in bed every night since we got it! (I was reading the newspaper in the picture above.)

This might be where you’d expect me to show you a picture of this lamp in daylight, but we don’t have daylight in our bedroom at the moment! Since it’s been so cold, our drafty old shutters (see 1745 problems I mentionned above) have been keeping the bedroom pppretty frigid. So we put a blanket over the gap when it’s really cold. Anyway, Mr V risks life and limb every time we do this (the top of the shutters are about 9 feet high and we don’t have a step ladder so he climbs up the side of the window, it’s terrifying). So we just leave it up until it warms up a bit….

It looks pretty stylish, as you can see.I think it’s the little details like this that makes this blog so inspirational, you know? You can pin that image….

(The blanket really does work though! Mr V’s mum said that when they were newlyweds she sewed blankets on the inside of all their curtains to keep things warm. )

Argos provided me with two lamps to review, all opinions are my own.