the living room

I’ve been meaning to briefly tour our modest home with you for some time now.

And today just seems as good a day to begin, I think.

We live in a rented two bedroom apartment in Nashik, Maharashtra, India.

So, what you might not find in our home are beautifully painted walls and a bespoke structure.

No gorgeous furniture either, only hand-me-downs and a few others that were bought second-hand.

But, it’s lovingly decorated with… whites [lots of them], flowers [lots of them too], 

some old things and something’s new [mostly bought at thrift stores and craft bazaars].

My home décor is a reflection of my love for all things handmade; flowers and ferns; 

vintage books; all things wooden and brass; little lamps, candles and fairy lights; 

and white linens with plenty of laces and frills.

Here’s a little glance into the corners of our living room…

Welcome to our sweet nest

The white lantern in the nook is from fabindia, one of my favorite stores

The brass candle holder in the above image is really, a flower vase 

This bigger trunk is my father’s and the small one used to be Mayur’s school
bag in the good old days.

New cushion covers I sew recently

This image gives a wider view of the living room with the entrance door and my little pooja nook
that I call mandir. If you turn towards the other end, you’ll see a make-shift vintage book table
I created to place flowers in that corner.

Here again, I’ve wrapped vintage plain paper, pressed flower and leaf around a cute little nescafe jar

and sat an old silver wick-holder I had, creating a lamp out of it. And that small milk jug I use

for my flowers was bought for only Rs.20 at one of the craft bazaars. Isn't it really pretty?

This is one of the many brochures I have of Golden Chariot -Karnataka Tourism.

They have amazing photographs in them, so it gets displayed on my coffee table occasionally.   

This shows a closer view of the mandir with the gods radha-krishna wearing attires hand-sewn by
me and the details of a vignette I created over a cupboard [you can see in the previous fifth image].

Two vintage copies of the sanskrit epics – Ramayana and Bhagwat Gita, an old kerosene lamp,

a wooden jewelry box that holds all our keys, a stone sculpture of Lord Krishna and a short-story
from Rabindranath Tagore’s book Lipika framed on the wall [to conceal a non-functional switch-board].

Living room with my fairy lights on...
My mother’s old brass pot used as plant holder towards the left and rajasthani puppets just managing
to sneak-in over the right wall.

If you’ll observe carefully, I’ve tried my utmost to decorate with only natural/organic/up-cycled
elements like wood, brass, aluminium, cotton, paper, old kitchen jars and wine bottles.

It makes my sweet nest even more sweeter to me.

Hope you enjoyed this little tour.


Here's the bedroom and the kitchen