We’re Going on a Lair Hunt

• 18 email enquiries lodged to agents
  
• 6 inspections
  
• 2 application submitted & rejected
  

It's a very good thing that I don't need to move into a place right this very moment. A) There are barely any properties on the rental market in my price range, and B) those that are either get snapped up before inspection, or get applied for by people that don't have the word 'student' somewhere on their application. Still, hope remains! After a week of nothing, a new property came up, in an excellent location, within my financial limits. Now it's just a case of hoping that the inspection isn't before I get back from the interstate family trek!

And of course, now that I'm in house-hunting mode, I'm also in the mindset of planning how I'd like my lair to look and feel. Your home is your sanctuary, your escape from the cruel world beyond its walls. If you're anything like me, you want there to be very little related to your work or university work where it can be helped (obviously for a student, the massive stacks of textbooks, papers, etc is unavoidable, but I try to limit its encroachment on my space). So I've been sticking my head in homeware stores, reading random blogs on decorating, and generally trying to get a picture in my head of how I could lay out any place I end up getting. Thankfully, I already have a lot of furniture that fits with my personality – A beautiful wood and iron bed with a good quality mattress, a bookcase, desk and side-table all in white and cherry finish (from the Piedmont Collection from UBiz, how I'd love the rest of it!), a chest of drawers halfway through being stained the same as the Piedmont stuff, and two massive, second/third-hand dark green club chairs that are perfect for curling up in with a book. So, of course, everything is being planned around these pieces.

My style varies with my mood, so anything I have needs to be able to chop and change at a whim. For example, I have bright, jewel colours in a Byzantine colour scheme, or soft, natural greens for a more forested look. I find changing a quilt-cover is the fastest way to change the mood of your bedroom, and with that in mind, I have several sets of sheets in different colours. Recently though, I found this beautiful set in Adairs, and fell in love at once. I resisted temptation to blow my whole paycheck on the set, and instead put it on lay-by. Come mid-January, that set is all mine!! It perfectly matches a quilt I have been meaning to finish, and contains a blue that I absolutely love, so I can see myself decorating everything around them! Shame that landlords tend to frown upon painting murals all over their clean white walls…

Have you got a favourite room, a space where you retreat to? Did you decorate it yourself? Share your thoughts and photos!

(Picture from Linen House, pretty much my dream bedroom if only I had the money, room and climate!)