In your bedroom French furniture demonstrates a sense of luxury and extravagance – ever wondered why the French word ‘boudoir’ sounds so much more glamorous than the standard British ‘bedroom’?  For the bedroom, look at pieces such as dressing tables, bedside tables and even a chaise for you to lounge on at the end of a stressy day.  For your kitchen, think about dressers, ornate dining tables and French-style islands which will give your home that French twist.

If you can’t afford the real deal, there are some great pieces of reproduction French furniture available which mean you don’t have to re-mortgage to get that classic French look.  The Orchard have a great range of reproduction French furniture available, featuring a wide selection of styles - from the elegance of the French Bergère era to the French Provincial style featuring Louis-Philippe embellishments.

So, take a look online today and see what you can pick up for a fraction of the price.

The Orchard Home and Gifts stock a huge range of rustic furniture and accessories to help turn your house into a home.  From doorstops and photo frames to clocks and vases, you’re bound to find something which stands out from the crowd and suits your personality down to the ground.

Don’t underestimate the things you don’t put out for show either as your storage solutions should also be carefully considered.  You ceratinly don’t have to settle for plain and boring storage solutions, but instead opt for rustic storage chests and old vintage umbrella stands.

The Orchard really is the solutions to tired furniture - designed for those who are looking for something a little bit different. Have a look online where you can find a whole host of rustic furniture pieces, all with a style all of their own.

A smattering of carefully selected home accessories can make all the difference to your home, without breaking the bank.  Investing in home accessories and staying in to appreciate them is what it’s all about.  This doesn’t mean that you have to scrimp on style because you’re scrimping on cost as there are some amazing home accessories available to decorate your home.

Home accessories have the ability to transform your house into a real home so indulge in a bit of ’staying in’ and lavish some TLC on your home in these frugal times.

The great thing about painted furniture is the variety of colours - if they sell it in your local home decorating store, you can have it; even using a colour matching service to get the perfect shade that you are looking for.

What’s really important though is that you prepare your wooden furniture properly beforehand so that it can take the new life you are about the bestow onto it.  If it’s been out in the garage for a while, make sure that you bring it inside for a few days or weeks so that the damp is removed from the wood.  Thoroughly clean the piece of furniture and then roughly sand it all over so that any loose wood and dirt is removed.  Once this is done, score it all over with a tool so that the paint will stick to it easier.  After this, it is simply a case of applying the paint (3 coats should do it) making sure that it dries well between each coat.

Painted furniture really is an easy way to bring your room scheme together so get digging out that old furniture now!

Kitchens are no longer the place where you spend half an hour a day bunging something in the oven - okay, so we all have the odd day like that when we finish work late, or the kids have to be driven about, or you simply don;t have the energy!  But, in general, people are using their kitchens for so much more.  Kitchens have become the place to socialise, entertain friends, for children to do their homework, for special cakes to be baked, romantic dinners for two, culinary experiments you’d rather forget and a general meeting place for the family to catch up.  As open plan living makes a comeback this year, more homeowners are choosing to incorporate their living space into their kitchen space. Even with a small kitchen, the chances are that it’s still a place where family and friends choose to gather.

A shabby chic look fits just perfectly with the nature of the kitchens – that homely feel; warm and lived-in.  Shabby chic turns kitchens into places that you want to spend time in.  It embraces kitchens as a vibrant, functional space, brimming both with people and stuff!

The Orchard have a whole range of shabby chic kitchen furniture and accessories and very reasonable prices.  Whether you have a small or a large kitchen, you can always add some charm and character with a few key furniture pieces or accessories.

The aim is to make your kitchen a really special place to be - and shabby chic in the kitchen is made easy by The Orchard.

The Orchard is well known for its furniture and accessories - all of which add a touch of glamour and unique antique charm to a home.  Their range of french furniture is absolutely gorgeous and will add that something special to any home.

From the Beregere Bench and Antique White Mirror, through to the French carved kitchen wall shalf and French country sideboard, they have so much to choose from that you will be spoilt for choice in their online store.

If you are already a fan of The Orchard, you will know how well made their furniture is - and their French furniture range is ne exception.  Hand crafted and lovingly made, they can help turn a house into a home with just a few carefully chosen pieces of french furniture.

Complement this lovely rustic furniture with some homemade decorations (or one’s which you’ve bought and passed off as your own!)  Gorgeous fabric decorations hanging from the tree and a felt advent cone calendar resting nicely on the fireplace is my idea of heaven!  You can also use bunting instead of tinsel - much prettier and more expensive looking that the cheap and nasty scratchy tinsel.

Get the kids involved too and help them to put their own very unique stamp on gifts and home wares with some homemade gifts and gift tags.  Join us in our crusade to keep rustic and chic at Christmas time!

There are many home accessories to choose from this Christmas, with lots of different colour schemes.  There are the traditional red and green, through to the chic delight of gold and cream home accessories which look stunning too.

Whether you decide to fill your home with fun and colourful decor, or the more pared back understated festive glamour, have a look at The Orchard’s home accessories and see if you can find something perfect for your home this Christmas.

Anyway, life carried on but on an almost daily basis I curse the orange spindles - of which there seemed to be hundreds.  That is, until this Summer when hubby popped out to golf and I took a sledgehammer and demolished the lot in under an hour.  Not my finest moment when aforementioned hubby returned home to orange splinters galore and the danger of being killed on the ‘dangerous descent with no safety bar’.  The kids however promptly started flinging themselves from a great height and declared it the best house they’d ever lived in.

So, after wiping out the enemy, I went a bought a tin of paint and transformed my modern stairwell into something which is a little more rustic and differs from the norm.  Yes, painted furniture has now become a love of mine and I regularly transform something quite boring into a work of art.  There’s a joke in my house: if you sit still long enough, you might get Dulux-ed!

From my off-white staircase to some brightly painted furniture in the kid’s rooms, a lick of paint really can transform a room.  If you can’t be bothered to do it yourself, painted furniture is making a comeback and is making an appearance in home deco stores across the country.  Get with the trend and get painting!

Everything seem so much more stylish now than it did years ago - and prices can be very affordable if you shop around.  From your local garden centre for cheap plants through to online stores which sell off end-of-season patio sets, there are some bargains to be had if you look hard enough.  So it is worth spending a bit more time to kit out your garden space - no matter what size it is.  Spending that little bit of extra time making sure your garden decoration is bang up to date means that you will benefit on those long summer days and balmy summer nights we all hope for each year!