I can't help but love Ikea

I thought once I grew up I would get out of my Ikea stage and maybe move onto something that is more mature and rich looking... but seriously I love Ikea. Swedish style is pretty much my favourite ever and living there made me want to change the whole way we do houses in North America

Anyway, I've been loving Ikea's Lack and Ribba shelves for awhile and I am super excited about all of the places I can put them in our house. For sure I want to put a few in our living room and then a few in our kitchen. I think the Lack shelves are awesome for laundry room, offices or bedrooms as well. We have an open closet in our master bath so I might do some Lack shelves in there as well.

Apartment therapy has a whole post titled "12 Uses for IKEA's Lack Shelves" and here are a few of my faves

#1 Console behind a couch: I seriously think that anyone who has a couch against the wall should have this. Unfortunately this is not us... because of our open floor plan our couch is kind of in the middle of our Living Room so it won't work but I do love it. This picture has also inspired me to spray paint every picture frame I have white.

#2: Entryway: How awesome is this?!? I'm trying to dream up a way this could work in our house even though it goes against what I originally had planned for the entryway... we'll see :)

#3. Display for Collections: I don't exactly have any collections but if I did, I would probably put them somewhere like this

Here is just a random pic that I planned on using for inspiration in either our Dining Room or Living Room. I'm thinking of only doing 2 shelves though because 3 is a bit much for me and I'm not sure I have enough stuff to put on 3 shelves so it might look funny

Here is the Ribba shelf which I also love. It is really narrow and just kind of acts as a ledge for pictures or really small things to display. LOVE LOVE LOVE it in white.

I don't wanna jinx it... but I'm too excited to care!

The lights we've been wanting for our livingroom and dining room are one step closer to actually happening... Yeah!!!

So to make a long story short, Lowes in Canada is different from Lowes in the States and even though they say they can order anything from the States they are liars and even though they say "oh our new lighting catalogue will be here any day" they are also liars. but the good news is when you have parents who spend so much time close to the boarder they can run across and try to smuggle lights back for you... I hope all goes well cause we love the lights!

Dining Room

Living Room

Wall Quotes

I'm a fan of the vinyl sticker wall quotes that are fairly popular in decorating right now. I found a company that has a good selection and ordered a few here for the house.

For my first one, I made my own quote and ordered all of the letters to put on a wooden board. I bought a board from Michaels and decided this cold Satuday was the day to do the quote.

I used Benjamin Moore: Copley Gray which is a sample colour I bought for our house. I love the colour but I might need to go 25% lighter for our bedroom because it's a bit dark.

obstacle #1:

the board was pretty crappy quality. It was cheap but next time I would look for one with less dents and for a lack of better explanation "fuzziness" Even after sanding and priming I still couldn't really get it smooth

Obstacle: #2

Letting the paint dry when you are super impatient like me

Obstacle #3:

Putting the letters on straight, and without tearing them... harder than I thought it would be

All in all I thought it turned out ok. I wouldn't order from the company again because in my opinion these vinyl letters are too expensive and too close to what I could get at Michael's or Walmart for much cheaper. On the other hand, if I ever want to start a business I would totally make these because people pay tonnes of money for wall quote/art when they are really quite inexpensive to make.

I did buy another one for the laundry room (at the same time I bought the letters and before i realized i could probably get them cheaper) that I am just going to put onto the wall above the washer and dryer.

Here's my laundry room one, only difference is that I bought it in black

Sentimental Saturday

Everyone is gone today and it is awesome. It is terribly cold outside but the snow is so pretty. I'm sitting in the living room procrastinating from all of the laundry and cleaning I need to do today and I came upon a folder of pics on my computer called "Ode to Edmonton" so I thought I'd do a little tribute to the fun times I had before I ended up here.

Now that I'm living in Linden again my time away seems really far away and sometimes I forget about it but it's fun to think about all of the adventures I had before I landed HOME again.

First stop after High School: Sweden, where I met some FANTASTIC people and learned lots about God. Most of the girls I met here are people that I still admire the most out of anyone I've known. I think about them often and I am thankful for the experience that I had in Sweden.

This pic is with Heidi the day that she left Sweden and I didn't see her again for a very very long time. Now she lives in Santa Cruz and working there for the summer that I did is one of the best things I have done.

Lets skip over my 2 years at Canadian Bible College because let's face it... I didn't like it there and I can't say it had a huge impact on my life in any way.
My first night in our apartment in Edmonton living with Kirbie and Jenna our sink explodes and there is water everywhere. Only one of the eventful things that happened while living with these two fun girls:) Here we are eating chocolate to try to make ourselves feel better about our flooded bathroom and University starting TOMORROW
Mexico with Kirbie, Kyle and James. I am obviously not good at disguising that that shot tasted GROSS!!

Oh Kyle, you were so much fun. Here's when he brought us a Christmas tree so our new house would look festive!

Sarah and I driving around Seattle trying to figure out where the heck Highway 405 is.... it took FOREVER!!

And then there was the Art class I took with Angie. I was a little bit out of my league to say the least. This was a very common look for me to have on my face during this class.

Mike being REALLY excited for Sarah's birthday. The three of us had some great times living together:)

And now I'm married to the best roomate yet and I've ended up back on the farm which always was the most homie feeling place nomatter where I lived

Yah for this walk down memory lane:) Now I think i really do need to do the laundry...

I have a confession to make

For the last 3 or 4 months I have fallen asleep with paint swatches on my bedside table and when Nels isn't home they are often right in the bed with me. I have grown to be a little obsessed with colour and everything related to the layout and interior design of our house. Partly this is because paint is the one thing that I don't feel guilty about spending money on at this point. I've also had lot's of fun trying to figure out how to best set our house up using the furniture that we already have (which is not much).

The only thing we're allowing ourselves to buy new right now is our dining room table (check!) and i even faithfully saved up for that before we bought it (pretty proud of myself). Of course there's a list a mile long of things I would love to get (armoire for the spare bedroom, oh yah, and a spare bed!) but I think for now I'll just focus on my colour obsession

As of November 5th at 9:15 here are my colour choices

#1 Hawthorne Yellow: Kitchen. I have searched high and low for a yellow that is not too bright and not to mustardy and I'm pretty sure this is it. It's from Benjamin Moore and several blogs I've been reading have recommended it as the perfect yellow. We don't have a tonne of wall space in our kitchen anyway but I'm pretty stoked about my yellow.

#2Copley gray: livingroom and entry way . I've loved gray for awhile now and i especially love gray and yellow combinations. At first I was a bit concerned about such a dark colour but because of the open plan of the house I think it will work. The next obstacle is dealing with the vaulted ceiling and where to stop with which colour. Hmmmmm...#3. Rockport gray: upstairs hallway and bonus room. Our bonus room looks down into the living room so I decided to choose one shade lighter of the gray for a few reasons. First of all I wanted the colours to be similar so the space wouldn't seem to broken up and second I didn't want the upstairs to be too dark so I figured one shade lighter would be a good choice for the space. I read a post from the blog Young House Love about creating flow with colour and I think the dark and light gray will flow well.

#4 Masada: Bathrooms. My latest development has been choosing a orangy red colour for the main floor and upstairs bathroom. I like the idea of a bold colour for a bathroom because I figure it's a safe room to take risks with because who really cares if it doesn't look awesome. Everyday I fall a little more in love with this colour though so I'm pretty stoked about it.

#5 and finally... Mortar:on one of my more lengthy visits to Benjamin Moore I picked up this colour that I love for our master bedroom and bathroom. It's fairly dark but I think the space will be able to handle it. We have a tonne of windows in our bedroom that will need covering (Terralee came over the other day and pointed out that people will be able to watch us have sex and of course we don't want that to happen!) so I'm thinking of doing white window coverings to lighten up the room.
*can i just say that the colours as they appear on the computer screen are quite different from the swatches I have in my hand. Computers ruin great colour:(