Working on a house tour: Living Room

So I have yet to do any sort of updates in the form of a house tour mainly because I can't manage to keep the house clean enough to take pics:)

Needless to say I am really trying to get some pics taken so that I can share what we've been doing and more importantly what we dream of doing in each room.

I managed to get a few photos taken of the living room the other day that I wanted to share.  Not much has changed in here but we have some ideas that I'm super excited about.

One of my favourite views in the house is looking out from our office to the living room.  You can get a glimpse of the kitchen and the openness to upstairs.  I spent so much time standing in this spot dreaming about how to decorate these spaces while we were building and I still like to stand here and look at what we've done and what we could do.  The most obvious thing that needs to be done to me is the trim around all the railings.  Trim just finishes everything off so well so I'm excited to get painting so that so Nels can put it up.  

I am still very much in love with the armoire we got off of kijiji (love that it hides our TV) and recently we put that old phone on display which I'm loving.  I'm possible going to spray paint that lamp gold so if I do I'll post a pic.

I've never loved these boxy things.  When we originally moved in, the empty space by the fireplace just bugged me so much that I put them up.  Well, they've never come down but thanks to some leftover paint from our front door and some scrap-book paper I was able to make them a little more "me".  Still not in love but a bit better.  

Here's a look from the front door into the living room.  Our curtains are from Ikea and I talked about them here.  Mainly chosen because you cannot beat the price but at the end of the day I do really like the print.  I would love to add a bright patterned area rug like the one in this pic one day but I cannot believe the price of large area rugs.  I can't help but notice that our couch looks purple in this pic... IT'S NOT!!  I swear its just a nice grey colour:)

 Here's the look from the kitchen to the living room. That door you see is the master bedroom and to the left of it is the front door (not pictured).

We would LOVE to do built ins something like this on that large wall with the four white frames and little black shelves

The built ins would likely stretch from our bedroom door to the office doors (far right).  We're thinking of doing an Ikea hack with Billy Bookcases but we'll see.  Might not happen this winter (because we have a fairly major project that needs to get done)... but maybe next winter:  

If for some reason we don't think built ins will work we will probably do wainscoting along the bottom of that big wall and extend it to the front entrance to look something like this

We would also ADORE a sectional for this space something like this.  Right now I'm totally fine with our couch.  I actually kind of love it.  We had it custom made from a place in Calgary right after we got married so its a bit longer than the average couch (so Nels can lay down on it).  Our two faux leather chairs were also a steal.  We bought them for 60.00 each at Home Depot a few years ago.  Our blue coffee table is something I found in Dad's shed and painted Benjamin Moore Blue Nose awhile back.  This winter my goal is to antique it to look something like this and seal it really well because that's one step I've skipped in way too many of my painting projects:(  I'm a rookie at painting furniture.  

So as of October 2013 this is our living room.  We have some major trim painting/putting up planned for this week so I'm excited.  

Summer 2013 project recap

We did a few projects outside this summer but here are two of my favourites...

#1 We painted the front door which I obviously love because I love how paint transforms a space.  I was searching for the perfect red FOREVER and settled on Geranium by Benjamin Moore.  We LOVE the colour.  At first I wanted more of a tangerine like this or even a bright yellow like this but Nels wanted red so I tried to compromise:)   I wasn't wanting a barn red so the red I picked seems a little bit like a lighter pink or tangerine.   I actually got the idea from some of the colour swatches Young House Love had posted on their site.  We're so happy with the red we're going to do one of our interior kitchen door in the same colour.

These stairs are also new... They're loads sturdier than the ones we had before.  Now we just need a railing but as you can see Molly is quite enjoying the new steps:)

Around the same time we painted the door, Nels started putting the lattice up around the house.  In the original plans for our house everything was ground level but because the water table was so high when we started digging we had to build the house quite a bit higher.  At first I couldn't get over the idea that the house seemed to be on stilts but as we added the deck and now the lattice I'm loving it more and more.  I'm super excited to add flower beds like this next year to make the whole thing seem more "put together"

Can't you just imagine some sweet sweet flower beds around the house like these beauties...

photo found here

Along with the lattice, steps and front door, we also mulched some trees, planted lilacs and built a sandbox so maybe I'll take some pics of those projects sometime soon.... Aaaah the summer was great!

I love fall decorating:)

This has been a crazy week.  I'm tired and my house is crazy messy but both of my kids are sleeping and i'm super proud to say that I actually managed to be a bit crafty this week amidst the chaos.


I wanted to get some fall decorating done this week and I fell very short of what I actually wanted but I did manage to get a very subtle "shout-out-to-all- things-fall" display done on our floating shelves in the kitchen.

First off, Who doesn't remember doing these turkey hand prints in kindergarten?!?!?  We did some with Molly this week and she LOVED it and we even managed to get a few that worked out so I framed one.  She constantly points to it and says "Molly's hand".  I was excited to find an activity I could actually do with a busy two year old that we all loved (Nels was around to help for this one)

I also managed to spray paint a pumpkin which is something I've wanted to try for a long time now. I'm horrible at tutorials so I'll just tell ya I used frog tape vertically on the pumpkin and then I had some leftover paint from our kitchen chairs that I used to paint the entire thing.  I only did one coat, let it sit and then tore the tape off.  It's not perfect as you can tell by the close up shots but I was really happy with it and totally don't mind the imperfections.  It would be hard to make the lines SUPER perfect because of the uneven surface of the pumpkin.

Here's a side angle of my little pumpkin project where it's sitting

 And here's the whole space... easily one of my favourite places in the house to quickly change for the seasons.

 I haven't gotten around to getting any more fall decor going but I do love being super practical with decorating.  I love this little basket I got from Superstore last year and it's home to some fresh BC apples right now which is going to have to be considered a fall decoration right now:)

I saw that my sister had done something similar to this at her house and it looked super cute... definitely will consider it for next year!

My pumpkin project is linked up at A Swell Place to Dwell so check out all the other pumpkin projects

You know you haven't blogged for awhile when....

... you forget how to login to your own blog!!!!

After about a year of forgetting about this blog and a few conversations with Nels about just shutting 'er down I've decided that I love writing this too much to quit.  Blogging has been a fun way for me to look back at the progress of our house and some of our major life events.  Nels always encourages me to write things down anyway because its always been one of the best ways for me to communicate.  Especially with two little kids it seems like I can't really get out much so this is one of the ways I can have some sort of creative outlet.

Also... lets face it I'm a Pinterest addict so instead of just spending hours on Pinterest I thought it might be good to actually write about the loads of things I've actually attempted from Pinterest.  

With all of my re-establishing the blog ideas in mind, I will begin by documenting the hugest update in our lives and try to add some house stuff very soon. 

Ok, so the biggest change in our lives in the past few months has been the arrival of our sweet little girl Violet Helen Bieber on July 22 2013.  I am so in love with this person it is crazy.  The transition from 1 to 2 kids has been fairly smooth partly due to how well Violet sleeps and also the incredibleness of my husband:)  

My labour and delivery with Violet was quick and painful... 5 hours start to finish.  Kind of a chaotic experience compared to Molly which is funny because Violet has been such a calm, peaceful baby.  Without going into too much detail I will say we may have had a nurse who was panicking quite a bit and delivering the second time around may go faster but that doesn't mean you don't want to die because of the pain.  Praise the Lord once again for the laughing gas... I owe my life to that beautiful invention:)

One of the most exciting feelings I've ever had was hearing we had another girl.  There are a few moments in life that make living so rich and that moment when you deliver a human being is definitely one of them.  Knowing that Molly would have a sister and we would get to experience all of the girliness of life another time makes me very excited.  

Watching Molly grow into the big sister role has also been one of my greatest joys and it actually brings me to tears sometimes when I see her and Violet together.  Don't get me wrong sometimes Molly isn't a the most gentle but there are those precious times when she wants to hold Violet or calls her cute or lights up when she smiles that make me so excited for these two sisters:)

Nels and I often look at each other and marvel over how we created these two people.  It really is a miracle and I truly feel blessed.  

Whoopsie... forgot about the blog for awhile:)

My blog-less summer/fall hasn't meant we haven't been doing anything around here.

Theme song for the summer was "The green grass grew all around."  We seeded a whole lot of grass and thankfully it actually all came in... super thick and green and awesome.  We were stoked.  I don't have a pic but you can imagine.  We had to mow that sucker like 10 times this summer (that might be a slight exaggeration but we mowed it lots)

I am always more of a fan of inside projects even though the fact that we got lots of trim and fascia done on the outside of the house is awesome:)

Nels kicked the summer inside projects off by doing our kitchen back splash for me for my birthday.  This is not the greatest pic but you can imagine that it looks super awesome.  White subway tile with dark grout=love.  Unfortunately our computer crashed and all our pics are totally mixed up so I can't find a decent pic anywhere:(

We scored this older dresser from Nels' parents and I was super excited to paint it my new fave colour "Wythe Blue" from Benjamin Moore.  After pinning many pics of painted dressers on pinterest I finally got around to doing it!

Here's the before 

And the after shot.  Unfortunately I have the two bottom drawers in the wrong spot for the after so the little design is mixed up but you get the idea.  Currently the dresser is in our kitchen just under the calendar.  I'm all for using bedroom furniture all over the house these days.  So useful for storing things:)

 Molly hasn't been a fan of her crib for quite some time now so we were tossing a few ideas around for a toddler bed for her.  We wanted it to be a single bed size so we could still snuggle and also so that she could grow into it.  We had a single mattress laying around along with some spare wood from goodness knows what so Nels got to work one day and came up with this bad boy:

After we had the construction down we actually took it apart and I stained everything and painted a blue (Whythe blue, that is) heart on the headboard.  WE ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS BED.  It looks super cute in Molly's room and we're slightly proud that we made it for her!

Last but not least... Nels was looking for some scrap pieces of furniture for a different project at our local Habitat store and came across this awesome piece... he took a pic and sent it to me.  I LOVED it.  Even more I loved the 50.00 price tag.  Its super solid wood and just needed a few repairs with carpenters glue.

We moved it into the entryway and I am really happy with it.  Now I might need to do something with the blackness of that mirror but other than that I'm loving the new addition.

Next up we are SUPER excited to build a play kitchen for Molly for the play room.  We've found a few things on pinterest that we're going to be taking ideas from and maybe I'll even be on the ball enough to get some pics of the building process.  

There is a great tutorial for a play kitchen here that Nels has been looking at and tweaking a few things to fit the space we have

This pic makes me super excited for the kitchen and I'm excited to add all the finishes to it.  Molly will soon have some of her very own cupboard doors to open and close!

i joined the turquoise bandwagon

I think i've mentioned before that I've always been a little bit weary of blue.  Don't know why, but I always lean towards greens and yellows for my favourite decorating colours.

My appreciation for blue started when I painted our coffee table Benjamin Moore "Blue Nose" as i posted here.  Of course I've also noticed the huge turquoise trend in decorating right now so I had to have a part of this blue pie.  It also doesn't hurt that I love yellow and turquoise together so it naturally fits in a few places in the house.

I picked up a few bottles of spray paint from Home depot a few weeks ago.  I've been looking for the perfect yellow spray paint for awhile so after this post on Young House Love,  I was stoked to check it out.  Home depot has a REALLY good selection so along with the yellow I picked up a green and turquoise colour.

This mirror had been 3 different colours now but I think this turquoise is here to stay.    The actual colour is aqua in the Rustoleum brand.

These little buckets are plastic and they were 3.00 at superstore.  I LOVE all the turquoise and yellow at superstore right now.

Yah for turquoise!   I've done a few things with the green and yellow paint as well that I'll post about later.

And I thought I was the crafty one...

Is it too late to post about mothers day??  I don't think so, so here it goes.

First off, most people know that one of my recent passions is a good DIY project.  Painting, gluing, sewing etc... there is something so authentic about things in your house that you make yourself.

Along with my DIY project passion comes my passion to spend less.  Spending less for me has included re purposing furniture, getting cheap art, as well as sticking to a strict budget for groceries and miscellaneous spending.  Consuming less in general has made my life so much easier and less stressful (especially when it comes to personal spending).  It really is so much easier to get dressed when you only have a few outfits you really love:)

Ok so anyway, this brings me to the AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME gift Nelson made me for mothers day.

I love this gift because

1.  He came up with the idea himself (he is the more creative one out of the two of us even though it hurts to say it)
2. This was made out of recycled barn board from the farm
3. Pretty sure he spent less than $5.00 on this project
4. He was man enough to finish it at the fire hall and I'm fairly sure the guys made fun of him for doing a craft for mothers day.
5.  It is something that is unique and I will cherish forever

Alrighty folks, here it is!

thanks to Mike for taking the pics via Instagram.  The project in the pics below is actually a frame the guys made for Ali after Nels had already given mine to me but you get the gist of what he did for mine.

Here's the barn board ready to get cut down

The first piece for the frame

screwing the wire on the boards

The nearly finished project

Ta da... hère is the one Nels gave me... the pics of Molly are so dang cute.   They're hanging on some clothespins with scrapbook paper glued on.

love it...