Ripping yarn

I thought I'd solved the problem of trying to decorate our new, very dated house with an energetic toddler in tow: I simply included Eddie in the process and we were both happy for a good hour, which was enough time to strip one wall of garish paper and leave me with at least some sense of progress. It wasn't until later, when his now expert fingers started to pick at the wallpaper in the living room, that I realised my error.

The room I'm tackling is Eddie's bedroom. As any parent with an eye on design will know, it's a scarily fine line between colourful, stylish fun and garish-plastic mishmash. I'm not ashamed to say I've nicked lots of ideas from the many houses that come in daily here at Livingetc. Some have been vetoed by my husband as too girlie (as if!), but many have made the final cut, including having wooden letter Zs floating up the wall from Ed's cot, and pasting a huge map of the world over a whole wall. Now all I have to do is convince Eddie that peeling off wallpaper isn't that much fun after all (odds on me succeeding, anyone?).

Sarah Alcroft
Chief sub-editor

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