All I Want For Christmas

Disclosure – collaborative post

At this time of year my thoughts turn to our house and how many guests we will be welcoming over the next few weeks. This year we will be making up for last year and catching up with as many friends as we safely can. I love to keep my house looking clean and tidy and always have a wish list for the things we would like to improve.

Engineered wood flooring

We haven’t been happy with the flooring we had put down a few year ago and have been thinking about engineered wood flooring for our living room and dining room. Not only is it moisture resistant, so perfect for families like ours, it also has the finish and design of solid wood flooring. As we intend to be in our house for a long time this sounds like a great option for us.

Since returning to work full time I now try to do as much cleaning and tidying as I can at the weekend. I find that wooden flooring is more hygienic and easier to sweep and wash. I seem to clean much more since we got our pup, especially at this time of year when he seems to attract mud and dirt. This makes it essential for us to have easy to clean floors.

Of course, wooden floors are sustainable too and it has never been more important to make our house as eco-friendly as possible. Although we try to recycle as much as possible it is also important that the things we bring in to our home are sustainable when possible.

A lick of paint

It’s been a while since we had our downstairs rooms professionally painted and this is next on our to do list. With two young children you can imagine just where the grubby handprints are! The colour is quite neutral and I’d love to go for a bolder colour, which also wouldn’t show up all the dirt.

A traditional fireplace

Some thing I’m always thinking about is putting a fireplace back into our living room. Although there was a fireplace when we moved in we opted to take it out and replace it with a huge wall of cabinets with a built in tv unit. It’s the focus of the living room and although the storage is useful, I would love a more traditional fireplace, especially with a log burner at this time of year.

With only four weeks until the big day it looks unlikely that we will be doing any major changes to our house this year. Thankfully there are some quick ways to spruce up our house and I will be spending time cleaning and polishing, and hiding away all the piles of stuff that seem to accumulate during the working week.