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Why we chose a bioethanol stove

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I’ve always loved the cosy warmth and soothing glow of a real flame, and a working fireplace was high on the wish-list when we moved from the city to the countryside.  Sadly the original fireplace had long since been removed from the living room of our little cottage, leaving the space looking soulless and in desperate need of a focal point. So, we decided to create a new one from scratch, building a chimney breast from studwork and plasterboard and commissioning a bespoke hearth, inner chamber and fire surrounded carved from locally quarried Bath stone. The question then was what kind of fire to put in it. A wood-burner or gas fire would have been the obvious choices, but various factors meant these weren’t right for us. Instead, we decided on a bioethanol stove, which uses a plant-based liquid fuel produced by fermenting the sugar and starch components of crops like corn, wheat and beets. Here are the reasons why we opted for a bioethanol stove, along with my ve...
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Why we chose Quick-Step wood flooring for our cottage renovation

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[Advertisement – the flooring featured in this post is a PR product] What do you do when you’re trying to put the character back into a period cottage but find the previous owner has ripped out all the original floorboards? Do you try to guess what they might have looked like and replace them with something similar? Or do you opt for the durability and practicality of modern flooring? That’s one of the dilemmas we faced when renovating our new home and we took the second approach, choosing engineered hardwood flooring from Quick-Step. The main reason behind our decision was the house’s layout. The downstairs rooms all lead off one another, with no hallway between them, and it’s one of the things we love most about the cottage. We’ve never been fans of full open-plan living, and this gives us the ideal balance between separation and connection, openness and cosiness . We have the benefits of enclosed rooms, but each space still feels linke...
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The best scented candles for autumn – updated for 2026

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After a long, sweltering-hot summer, I’m so happy to welcome the ‘ber months. I’m looking forward to cooler temperatures, misty mornings, crisp woodland walks and snuggling up under a blanket with a book and a mug of coffee – and with that in mind, it’s time for my yearly round-up of the best scented candles for autumn. I have a year-round obsession with scented candles, but there’s something particularly special about lighting them as the days grow shorter and the nights longer – in fact I tend to have one or another flickering away from the moment I wake up until I head back to bed again. Below, you’ll find my pick of the best, including some old favourites and some new discoveries for 2026. I’ve focused on the kind of scents that appeal to me at this time of year: smoky blends that conjure up crackling log fires, earthy aromas that remind me of autumn landscapes, comforting fragrances that are ideal for cosy nights at hom...
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Room reveal: our calm, cosy cottage living room

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[Advertisement – this post features some PR products, but all words and opinions are my own] I’ve shared a few peeks of our living room in recent posts, but today I’m excited to finally reveal the finished space as a whole. This room appealed to us the moment we viewed our little cottage, as it has two windows and gets lovely light from morning through to evening. But it was also the trickiest space to get right. Not only did it present several layout challenges (more on those below), it had also been stripped of most original features, leaving it looking bland and soulless. Figuring out how to turn it into the calm, cosy living room we wanted took a bit of thought – in fact I spent quite a while mocking up various renderings and floor plans before we even submitted an offer for the house, to ensure we could make it work for us. Here’s what it looked like on the day we moved in:  And here’s how we’ve transformed it...
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