So…a little about me

Hi all! So here’s a little about me, my home and why I decided to set up this little blog site. My name’s Jo (short for Joelle) and I’m a happily married mum of two teenage girls aged 18 & 16 (delightful ages! urgh) My husband and I are childhood sweethearts and have been together since we met at school aged 15. We run our own small business Apple Crates UK which we started around 5 years ago after returning from living in the Costa del Sol, Spain for the previous 10 years – and yes I still miss the weather!

Thinking about it, I’ve always loved home decor. Completely re-decorating my bedroom myself as a teenager (and my brothers room too) and asking for things like a futon for my birthday present were probably an early sign. When we purchased our first home at the age of 21, I was in my element making our first house a home, forget the essentials like a kettle, my first purchases were pretty plates from Whittards!

We moved in to our current new build home in Febuary 2017, after renting for a couple of years when we returned from Spain. It’s a 3 bed semi detached just outside Ringwood in the New Forest. Our house was one of just 4 houses on a small development and had already been completed when we viewed it so there was no kitchen, tile or carpets options for us which, with my indecisiveness was probably a good thing.

I started my Instagram page a few months after we moved in as a way of sharing my passion for interiors with like minded accounts and I am still amazed, that to date, I currently have over 80K followers! I could spend my whole spare time trawling through Pinterest, Instagram and online home stores and hours wandering around the home decor departments of shops. I truly believe that you don’t need to spend a fortune to make a home that’s perfect for you, not when I feel you can get the same look for so much less. So with this in mind and guessing that I’m not the only one that feels like this, I thought about setting up this ‘blog thingy’ to firstly let you know where pieces in our home are from (just in case anyone’s interested) but most importantly, to hopefully save you some of the leg/finger work and share the best deals, prices, inspo, ideas and tips I find for the latest home decor trends on a budget, along with details of D.I.Y’s and improvements that we’ve made in our own home.

Please bear with me, this is definitely a work in progress, but I hope to help make your own journey into making your house into a home just a little bit easier.

Much love

Jo x

Disclaimer:

This blog includes affiliate links, so if you click on a link and make a purchase from an affiliate site, although it won’t cost you anymore, I may make a a very small commission. I will always disclose when a featured product or brand is part of a collaboration or paid partnership and will only recommend brands or products that I would personally choose and purchase myself.