Family Visit

how cute is this little guy?

nick and crystal came for a visit.  great to see them.  fricken cold outside the whole time. 
p.s henry is the happiest little guy I've ever seen in my life

It's been awhile

I feel like I haven't had time to do much of anything lately... haven't felt super great, busy with work and life = no blogging. 
Great news is the hardwood is ALMOST DONE thanks to Nels and friends who have helped along the way.  All of the pics of the kitchen (with applicances!) and flooring are unfortunately on Nels' computer so this post will be pictureless
Even though the house is so close to being done it still feels like we will never get to move in for some reason... like it's too good to be true.  I don't think I'm even going to know what to do with myself when I have that much glorious space to enjoy!
so that is all... pics to come.
p.s we are having a baby and we heard the heartbeat today and it was really fast and amazing and we are so very full of joy :)

Just for a second...

...i'm going to forget for 1 blog that we just celebrated Christmas and New Years and hold off on posting about my most favorite time of the year to instead post about our latest painting endeavors.

The great news is that thanks to Dad and Frank Gibson, our entire entryway and livingroom is painted (including the DIFFICULT to reach bay window) and I'm really happy with the colour... so what did it end up as?!?!?

ROCKPORT GRAY:

looking from the livingroom into the kitchen and up into the bonus room area.

Keep in mind that these pics were taken with my parents 10 year old crappy camera so not the greatest quality. The best wall to judge the colour here is on the big one to the left.

I initially planned to go with a darker gray (copley gray) but i thought it might be too dark. After deciding on Rockport I am happy with the way it turned out BUT I totally think the darker gray would have worked really well for the space. So many people warn you about going too dark but it soooo would have worked and it might have even warmed the place up a bit. Needless to say, I'm happy with the colour. The next challenge will be to warm the living room up because although i love the gray colour, sometimes it can seem a bit cold/indistrial-like.

After today, our kitchen is also completely done... and I am 110% happy with it. We like to call it "our custom kitchen" I had picked out the Hawthorne yellow colour from the very beginning and I was sure it was going to be perfect. I had visited my trusted young house love blog and they had called it the "be all end all of yellow paints" well.... as much as everyone was trying to convince me that it would tone down when the cabinets went in, I just couldn't quite wrap my head around how yellow it looked. So in a pinch, we decided to add some white primer to the paint to lighten it up for the second coat (i'm sure this is a big painting no-no) and now after the second coat is done, it is AWESOME. It's a slightly lighter (not so orangey) yellow that I seriously love.

All the pics I have are actually with the original Hawthorne so you can get the "before" idea and I"ll get an after one later. On camera, the difference might not be that great but Nels and I couldn't believe how much more we loved the kitchen now that it is a tad lighter. This first one is the wall where our cabinets and some appliances will go, hence all the holes and wires:)

Cabinets come on Tuesday (wahoo!!!) and we ordered all or our appliances from Trail Appliances yesturday (AWESOME boxing week sale i might add) so things are looking up and I'm excited!!

Biggest pleasant suprise:

Huntington Beige for all of our bedrooms, bathrooms and now probably even our utility room is my favorite colour yet!! I should have known I'm a beige girl at heart. I've always loved browns and I think this golden brown will tie in with the yellow of the kitchen really well. Here is our Master bedroom and bathroom which are COMPLETELY FINISHED NOW!!! (except of course for the tile around the tub to come later)

Tomorrow we have another full day before I head back to work Monday :( I can honestly say that painting is pretty darn fun because I love seeing the results so fast.

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...