hello…
We are not interior designers. This website is not about us predicting trends or telling you how to design your home or which accessories are this season’s “must-haves”. It is about us sharing a very personal journey – one which has made us really think more about design and how it affects the way we now live our lives.
Our current journey started in 2017, when we sold our home in West Didsbury, Manchester. We’d lived in the mid-terraced, three bedroomed house since 2000, but had recently renovated it, creating a very unusual, completely open plan space. This gave us a craving for more space. To be somewhere which didn’t have houses to each side of us and to the back and to the front. To be able to see the sunset, not other roof tops. We took a complete leap of faith and sold the Manchester house, buying a stone house, high up in the hills in northern Istria, Croatia and set off on a very new journey.
We really hit the ground running and from day one, had to get our heads around not only sourcing tradespeople and materials but also considering what we wanted our new home to be like. Underpinning our thought processes, was the constant idea that we wanted to create something which was unique and bespoke – and as far from the traditional interior of an Istrian house as possible. We wanted to get to know our new environment and feel the house and understand the space. We wanted space, light and clean lines. We wanted our style, but we knew it would evolve. It would take time. It would become Slow Design…
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Renovation
Interiors
Lifestyle
Travel
Latest Blogs…
Renovation
our very unique feature
Although the whole job isn't quite 100% complete, we do have a very, very unique feature in our house. If you've never seen any of our photos, or read any of our renovation blogs, you might not not know about our Well Room. And, that's clue. The name we call the room....
mandala window
Although not overlooked, now that the small house has been demolished, we felt we needed to do something with the downstairs bathroom window. No-one can see you in the shower, because the house is elevated and so all we've looked out onto previously, has been the roof...
winter house maintenance
Our stone house in Istria isn't currently a holiday home. Having relocated from Manchester nearly seven years ago, we have lived here full time, renovating the house from top to bottom. We've lived through walls being knocked down and out, kitchens and bathrooms being...
private parking
We've never lived in a house before that has a private parking area. All of our previous properties have had on-road parking, and because we lived in busy Mancunian suburbs, parking could be tricky. Often, our car would be parked away from the house as you basically...
Interiors
mediterranean inspired bedroom
In keeping with a lot of the renovation and redecoration work we've been doing throughout the house, we've taken the decision to revamp the largest bedroom. This is a lovely room, with two windows with views across the fields, and over to the woods. In the winter,...
welcome, wooden benches
Our blue IKEA Tobias dining chairs have served us well over the past few years, and are still in good condition. They've stood the test of time, often sitting in a room which has resembled more of a builders yard, than a room we'd choose to eat in. The Well Room - as...
the well room : a makeover
With Spring knocking on the door and a house to get back on the market, we've been beavering away at the interior of our home since New Year. Now that we are also seriously looking at other properties to buy, we're seeing things slightly differently and have realised...
a place for dinner
Although we are lucky enough to have a few options regarding where we can eat, sometimes we just want to eat in the living room, where the big woodburner is and where we can watch TV. When we've done this in the past, it's had to be on the sofa, eating dinner on our...
Lifestyle
three ingredient chocolate cake
I have never been much of a baker, but I do love the idea of baking. Unfortunately, I'm very impatient and I like quick and easy - preferably immediate - results, so the thought of standing in the kitchen, baking up a complicated recipe doesn't really do it for me. I...
torvehallerne food hall : copenhagen
Copenhagen, for us, is just about the perfect city. As much as we love Italy beyond reason, the cool Danish capital, is the perfect place for a short break. It's a city that can be easily broken down into areas, so makes exploring it really easy. On our last trip, we...
trubar bar : grožnjan : istria
The opening of a new bar is something quite exciting here, in northern Istria. Although we have lots of choice when it comes to excellent restaurants, cool bars seem to be more of a thing on the coast. In fact, bar culture doesn't really seem to have taken hold here,...
the country life vlog…
A couple of years ago, in the depths of winter, we were staying in an apartment in a hotel on the edges of Zagreb. It was cold and dark and just a bit too far to walk into the centre of the city for a meal. So, with cooking facilities in the apartment, we decided to...
Travel
casa m apartment : citta alta : bergamo
Whenever we stay in Bergamo, in Lombardy, we like to discover new places to stay. In December, we met up with friends from Manchester who had flown over, and so rather than a hotel room for two, or a small apartment, we needed an apartment for four adults, for four...
one night in verona
Because of where we now live - northern Istria, near the Slovenian and Italian borders - we get to travel a lot more than we ever used to. We rarely fly now, as our location means many places, especially in Italy, are so much more accessible and so we are very lucky...
piran : slovenia
Until very recently, we hadn't actually realised that our closest beach/seaside town, was actually in Slovenia, not Istria. Not by many kilometres, but enough to be our closest. In just over half an hour, we can be in beautiful Portorož, on the Slovenian Riviera, the...
Mövenpick Hotel Zagreb
Hotel Mövenpick, Zagreb, is located in a business area nestled near the Museum of Contemporary Art, Bundek Park, the city centre and the international airport, Zagreb Franjo Tuđman Airport. It's in a location that we wouldn't normally stay in, but we were taking...
InstaLife Photos
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