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spring into summer malta

DECORATE YOUR HOME FOR SPRING & SUMMER WITH THESE 24 AFFORDABLE ITEMS

By Home Comforts, Life & Style No Comments

Are you redecorating on a budget and wish to bring in a Spring into Summer aesthetic into your home this year? Take a look at some of the beautiful items We Are Not A Shop has to offer! We’ve only chosen affordable things, but ones that still possess an element of grandeur and airy freshness.

Click on the links to be taken to our website where you’ll be able to bring these items into your home in preparation for warmer months!

HOME ACCESSORIES

Looking for home accessories to freshen up your home? Take a look at some of our favourite items!

There’s something ancient-looking about this pomegranate-shaped box made from zamac (€3.25). The website also has a silver version, but we liked this gold one because it fulfills all our mythological interests. Could this be the famed fruit that doomed Persephone to half a year of darkness?

Add some spring flair to your walls with these decorative tin plates. The Goodge Violet Tin Plate (€7.15) features a violet design, taken from a plate commissioned by the French state at the end of the Franco-Prussian war after Napoleon III was deposed. Couple it with the pinks, golds, greens, and blues of the Gold Butterfly Tin Plate (€7.15), featuring a reproduction design of a saucer made by the Chelsea Porcelain Factory in London between 1758 and 1769.

This recycled glass water bottle with stopper (€14.25) would be perfect for the environmentally conscious, but can equally double as a vase or just a decorative item in general. This kind of lustrous glass has become quite collectible. You just don’t get that kind of sheen in glass bottles anymore.

This simple yet elegant glass vase from AD Trends (€22.95) is a staple for any home. If you’re not in the habit of bringing real flowers indoors for environmental or allergy-related reasons, We Are Not A Shop stocks a remarkably lifelike range of artificial flowers that are admittedly quite lovely to look at. You won’t have to worry about flower maintenance, and you can have them all year round!

To continue with our gold aesthetic, this pair of vintage Italian brass hook sconces with ceramic roses (€27.15) are, in our opinion, stunning. Even if you don’t end up fixing them to the wall for practical use, they’re just so pretty to look at that you can leave them standing on a shelf in a corner.

SOAPS & FRAGRANCES

Yes, we’ve provided for your interior decorating needs, but that only covers one of your sense – sight. What about scent? There’s a whole array of soaps and fragrances available at We Are Not A Shop that will really make your home a pleasant place to relax in.

This selection of Max Benjamin Room Diffusers would make the perfect gift, both for others and for yourself. Believe us when we say they’re very effective in changing the ambience of a room. The fragrances you can choose from include Dodici (€35.00), containing oils of rosemary, Sicilian lemon, marjoram, and Tuscan lavender; White Lilies (€35.00); Rose & Champagne (€35.00), containing top notes of pink grapefruit and blackcurrant mixed with pomegranate and hyacinth; and the stunning Dolce Sole (€38.00), inspired by the scents of the Italian coastline, combining bergamot, tangerine, rosemary, jasmine, vetiver, and musk. While the prices might seem steep, keep in mind that these diffusers last for around four months!

If you want to keep the fragrance aspect and also have the added benefit of natural lighting, then these Crabtree & Evelyn Aromathology Candles are for you. The Relaxation candle (€13.25) contains lavender, tangerine, and clary sage, while the Romance candle (€13.25) contains patchouli and rose.

Bring glorious scents into your bathroom as well with this 500ML Hand Wash and Moisturiser from the Aspire Collection designed in aid of Save the Valletta Skyline Appeal by local perfumer Stephen Cordina (€15.74). Your hands will be both moisturised after use and lightly scented with hints of jasmine, oud, and grapefruit.

Don’t stop there! Your clothing needs to be taken care of, too. This box containing six Laura Ashley Drawer Liners (€8.75), scented with citrus blossom and nectarine, are the perfect way of keeping your clothes smelling fresh and like you’ve just been frolicking in nature.

CUSHIONS

Truth be told, we’re rather obsessed with cushions. But when it comes to changing from darker, colder seasons into lighter, warmer ones, the choice of colours and fabrics can make all the difference. You’re bound to find something to your liking among We Are Not A Shop’s impressive range of cushions and cushion covers. Luckily, in the case of cushion covers, the shop also stocks feather or polyester cushion inserts of various sizes.

You can’t really go wrong with this minimal set of Ragged Rose Bobby and Arabella scatter cushions, each with adorable pom pom trims, and complete with their own polyester inserts. Collect them all in delicious summer gold (€25.00), delicate soft pink (€22.50), savoury burnt orange (€25.00), and magical lovat green (€25.00).

Our personal favourites are these hand-painted cushions, one with bright, bold pink and yellow colours (€25.00), and the other with a more multi-coloured array of blue, green, yellow, and pink (€25.00). They’re made from canvas, so they’re waterproof and therefore ideal for outdoor use.

HOME OFFICE

Spring and summer aesthetics don’t have to be relegated just to living spaces. Bring some colour to the areas in your home where you work, with a Notelet Block showing bluebirds, containing 800 blank sheets of paper from sustainable forests (€6.50), a flowery pink Mini Home Office (€8.50), and a Handmade Mulberry Paper Notebook (€13.75) from the Karen tribe in Thailand.

GARDENING

If you’re looking to get your hands dirty in your journey towards becoming a gardening expert, you’ll need the proper tools for the job. Try out this Four Seasons Planter Set (€24.50), containing a natural wooden-handled trowel and fork, as well as a pretty flowered kneeling pad.

What did you think of our selection of home accessories for redecorating on a budget? Be sure to leave your comments and thoughts below! There are plenty more items on the We Are Not A Shop website for you to browse through, all of varying, though not unreasonable, prices, so be sure to check them out!

Looking to go back to basics and start from scratch? Read our article on the best books for sustainable living and redecorating on a budge

13 BOOKS ON SUSTAINABLE LIVING & REDECORATING ON A BUDGET

By Family, Home Comforts, The Environment No Comments

SPRING INTO SUMMER

Attention, bookworms and nature enthusiasts! To usher in our new Spring into Summer campaign, the team at We Are Not A Shop is here today to talk about everything green, from sustainable living for the environmentally conscious, to the benefits of feng shui-ing your home and turning your habitat into a veritable Eden.

We’ve compiled some of the most eye-catching books that We Are Not A Shop has to offer, hand-picked from our LifestyleGarden, and Interior and Exterior Design sections, and all at very reasonable prices! Be sure to check those sections to find even more books that didn’t make the cut!

Clicking on the book titles will send you to our website, where you’ll be able to make the books part of your own personal collection.

Happy reading!

SUSTAINABLE LIVING

Making sure that your home is beneficial to your health and environmentally friendly has become essential in such a chaotic world. Thankfully, there are a number of books out there that aim to help you with just that.

Chris van Uffelen’s Façade Greenery: Contemporary Landscaping (€11.00) is great for those who want to go green but don’t really have the space for it. Who said gardens have to be horizontal? Green walls will not only help ecologically and make an area look like a forgotten wilderness, as there are also a number of architectural advantages, such as improved building climate quality and optimised energy balance. Essentially, you’ll be able to keep your home cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter! This is a great way of getting into the booming sphere of sustainable architecture.

Sally Coulthard’s The Bee Bible: 50 Ways to Keep Bees Buzzing(€10.95) pops out, not least because of its quaint cover. This “illustrated guide to helping the world’s best-loved insect” confronts the worrisome depletion in the bee population. These extremely important insects are essential for the pollination of the world. Coulthard’s book shows you fifty ways we can help, be it placing particular flowers in your garden to attract them, campaigning for them, or even learning a little bit about “bee whispering.”

Megean Weldon’s An Almost Zero Waste Life: Learning How to Embrace Less to Live More (€15.75) is one of many additions to the “zero waste living” trend, a way of living without sending anything to a landfill. Weldon helps in all domestic areas, including cleaning, meal plans, shopping, recycling, and much more!

To accompany Chris van Uffelen’s book, Ula Maria’s Green: Simple Ideas for Small Outdoor Spaces(€16.00) is another great guide for those having to make do with smaller outdoor living spaces. Indeed, it’s designed for those with “small gardens, terraces, balconies, and roof gardens who see their outdoor space as an extension of their home, rather than the horticulturally committed,” and employs low-maintenance items.

DECLUTTERING & FENG SHUI

Opening the windows and letting in the spring breeze is one of the best feelings in the world. Dust off those cobwebs and take a look at these books on decluttering, organisation, and the art of rearranging your furniture to allow maximum energy flow through your living space, otherwise known as feng shui.

Get these two Lillian Too books together for a negligible price. Too is a world-famous feng shui writer, and these compact guides are perfect to “keep the endless chi flowing abundantly into your living space”. Take a look at Lillian Too’s Basic Feng Shui: An Illustrated Reference Manual (€4.65) and Lillian Too’s Personalised Feng Shui Tips (€4.45).

In case you’re still obsessed with the concept of feng shui and want to go a step further in Asian-inspired interiors, Kelly Hoppen’s East Meets West: Global Design for Contemporary Interiors (€12.00) showcases the author’s travels through Asia and Europe, and “considers colour, fabric, texture, and objets d’art in a broad sweet of decorative influence that embraces Southeast Asia, from China to Japan.”

Get decluttering and organisational advice from YouTuber Cassandra Aarssen’s Real Life Organising: Clean and Clutter-Free in 15 Minutes a Day (€11.85). We believe that less is more, so if you’re looking to purge some items that you’ve been holding onto for all the wrong reasons (guilt and sentiment come to mind), this guide will help you finally take control over your living space. You’ll free up a lot of time during the day to do all the things you love!

For a more European touch, but one that still embraces minimalist qualities, try Hans Blomquist’s The Natural Home (€15.00), in which the influential art director and stylist explores “the essence of his style” through “interiors inspired by the beauty of the natural world,” all captured by Debi Treloar’s enigmatic photographs.

Learn how to bring the fragrance of spring into your home by reading Karen Wheeler’s The Scented Home: Living with Fragrance (€20.00). The benefits of aromatherapy are well-documented, and the scent of flowers is a love language all of its own. As Wheeler states, “spritzing bed linen with lavender water to promote sleep, or burning a sandalwood candle to help you unwind, has become as natural as choosing your colour scheme.”

REDECORATING ON A BUDGET

It’s all well and good when you catch the redecorating bug, but the financial aspect is a fact of life and sometimes needs to be adhered to. Nowadays, we’re spoiled for choice when it comes to ideas, interior decorators, and the huge amount of stuff you can potentially line your walls and floors with. But you have to start somewhere! These books are a melting pot of the best tips for redecorating on a budget.

First on the list is Matt McKinney’s self-explanatory title, Interior Decorating on a Budget: A Budget-Friendly Guide to Creating a Home Which Makes You Truly Feel “at Home” and Happy (€9.45). As the book’s blurb explains: “You can have the home which looks like the ones that you see in magazines without spending a fortune. You can learn how to decorate your home like a professional without paying a professional.” That sounds ideal!

For any DIY-ers out there, Annie Sloan’s Quick and Easy Paint Transformations: 50 Step-by-Step Ways to Makeover Your Home for Next to Nothing (€11.00) is a must-have. Sloan is revered as a “paint legend”, so you’ll be safe in her hands when you finally take the plunge into “spring into summer” redecorating. If you’re interested in what else Sloan has to offer, you can also check out her other book, Colour Recipes for Painted Furniture and More: 40 Step-by-Step Projects to Transform Your Home (€11.00).

And that’s all from us! We’ve given you quite a good selection of affordable sources of inspiration for redecorating your home while also considering environmental sustainability. If you have any other suggestions that you think nature and interior decorating enthusiasts would enjoy, be sure to leave your thoughts in the comment section below!

If you’ve perused these books and are now looking to put all your knowledge into effect, check out our selection of affordable We Are Not A Shop items to decorate your home for spring and summer.

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