The decorating bug: I haz it.

Must. get. this. house. sorted.

I love our house. It is spacious (unusual in France), on a large, leafy block and feels very French.

However, it's a rental, and it kinda shows on the inside. The upstairs carpet is orange (except for our room which is avocado green) and has seen better days. The walls are all very stark white, except for the living room which is peach. The white paint has been battered around a lot, and the peach, well, there's no love between peach and I.

When the landlord's agents handed over the house they took photos of all the walls, marking down where all the picture hooks were. We were told we couldn't put a single hole in the wall. Let alone a repaint.

So in order to distract from the walls and carpets I am undertaking a cheap and cheerful redecorating campaign (yes, I know we've been living here almost a year, what's your point?)

My loud cushions show the sort of direction I'm talking about.

And I've been using these awesome Command Hooks to hang everything without putting a mark on the mark-filled walls. Take that suppressive landlord!

My latest triumph is this fab world map print I bought online from Famille Summerbelle. 

I tell you, between this and their Paris map, it was a tough decision to make. 

The website says it is a print of a hand cut paper original - can you imagine cutting all this out with an exacto knife? Incroyable!

Here it is, chez nous. 

The detail is wonderful. Here's France. 

And Father Christmas. See the jingle bells on Rudolph's antlers? 

Look at all these wee penguins.

And Australia. Oh look, they even captured the essence of our national drinking problem. ('Tis true, we Aussies love a drink.)

The kids adore the print, it has that 'Where's Wally' quality to it which encourages long, quiet and considered scrutiny.  As any mother will tell you, one cannot put a price on such a quality. 

The print fit perfectly into IKEA's largest RIBBA frame. Sadly for me, IKEA were all out of black frames when I visited, so I bought a light coloured one and painted it. 

You can use the triangular edge protectors that come with the frame packaging to prop it up so you can get at the edges without painting your work surface. 

I found the paint in IKEA's children's section. I should have primed the frame first, but I was too lazy. As a result, the paint scratches easily, but seeing as mine is resting untouched on the wall, I'm not too worried. But if you do want the finish to match the other black RIBBA frames you will need to seal/varnish afterwards as this paint has a very matt finish (the black RIBBAs are glossy). 

I also turned the off-white matting in the frame around the other way to use the white back side. I felt it better matched the white in the map. 

My frame-painting put the kids in a crafty  mood too, so we decided to paint the pinecones we collected on Monday.

They picked their favourite colours. 

And mixed some new ones. 

Seems the decorating bug is contagious.