Home is the comfiest place to be... Winnie-the-pooh

So I have moved a lot in the last five years, going to university, changing from halls to student housing (a couple of times), moving from my childhood home into rented, having my own flat and moving back to my parents new (old) house in Norfolk. It can be difficult to tell where home is throughout all of these changes, but to me home is where my family is, where my teapot is and where I can just be. And so I made this, a picture of where I feel home is to me. Starting from my childhood home, London (as although I may not have ever really lived there, I feel so at home and at peace in St Martin in the Fields), Leicester (my university home) and Norfolk, my family home.


The Norfolk part of this 'home' is actually quite an strange story, my family have been wanting to set up a B&B for about ten years now. But to make it happen, we had to wait until timings fell into place: me and my brother leaving for university, enough money and my mums job relocating somewhere which would be touristy enough to set up a B&B, and of course all of these actions take time to fall into place. But finally my mum got a new job in the East of England, yet that's a big place. We finally settled on North Norfolk, a beautiful area we have never really explored. We looked at a few properties and they finally found the perfect one, which my mum was ready to put in an offer as soon as she saw it, but apparently they needed her husband to see it before any offer was excepted. So we bought an old bakery in the middle of nowhere. After contracts had been exchanged, my uncle (who has been researching our family history) said that he recognised the name of the village we were moving to and once he checked his records it was correct that we had family from this village back in the 1800's. Well, we were all shocked, I only thought that my family came from London and Sussex, but it appears that before living in London we came from Norfolk, and not just any part of Norfolk, the ten miles around our village. This of course was very exciting and as I loved history I decided to research the history of our house as when we moved in we were given a large box of deeds. After much research and cross-checking it with my uncle we are quite sure that not only did our relatives lived next door, but they married into the family which made our house a bakery and built the windmill in the next garden! So I can now finally say that this is our family home, our family may have left it for 100 years but they have come back home again.

Anyway so here is my home, made from the maps of everywhere I call home. Rather than spend £185 on a similar idea from notonthehighstreet.com I made my own version for just over a tenner. Cut out the letters from white card, choose the size of the letter by what fits best on your maps. Stick the card letters to the maps and cut out the maps. Now elevated them in the frame by sticking five or six bits of card together as pillars. Now stick it all down to the backing piece of card on frame and hang it! If you buy the maps from a charity shop (like I did) and buy the frame from IKEA (ERIKSLUND frame), this should cost you just over a tenner.

There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.
Jane Austen

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