How in the heck is it 2014 already!?!?

Quick recap… we had a great Christmas.  Molly showed her first signs of Christmas excitement/understanding which for me (a lover of ALL things Christmas) was very exciting!!  From leaving cookies for Santa, to stockings and giving gifts… that girl had fun with it all:)

In front of our tree on Christmas Morning.  We got a real tree from Ikea this year which was surprisingly amazing and only cost os 20.00 plus we got a 20.00 coupon.  We will DEFINITELY be heading back there next year to get another tree… we loved it!

Molly leaving a cookie for Santa

Nels thankfully had from the 25th morning to the 29th off so we were able to hang out and enjoy some good weather.  I know with his job there will be lots of years where he will be working Christmas Day so eventually I'll hafta navigate around that.  

I added a few new recipes to my Christmas baking repertoire… both I got from Pinterest and they were hits!!  I'm gonna round them up and share them later.  

We decided to start the New Year off with an overnight trip to Banff (Nels worked actual New Years Eve and Day) but due to an INSANE amount of snow and drifting we were unable to get out of our driveway on his days off.  Not gonna lie… its kinda hard to stay positive in January when you are literally snowed in every second day.  

Besides doing a fun little New Years trip we've been racking our brains about some possible New Years resolutions for things around the house.  I always have about a million resolutions because I'm a sucker for new beginnings and making lists… I love it!

We had a pretty unexpected major expense come up before Christmas with the motor in our car dying so any of the big projects planned for our house this winter had to get scratched.  We had wanted to re-do the tile in all of our bathrooms due to a shifting sub floor but I think we're going to put that on hold for now.  

I've been really encouraged by some of the posts over at Young House Love since they've moved into their new house.  They've talked a lot about doing projects in phases.  Mainly making things pretty to look at by using things like accessories or a quick paint job while in the mean time saving up for big projects.  I'm a big fan of doing things in phases especially because it give you more time to truly decide what you're going to do.

Sooooo having said that.  Most of my house resolutions for the New Year involve very little money and are geared more towards small decorative projects.  We usually clump house projects into Summer and Winter because as soon as the weather starts getting nice we pretty much forget about the inside of the house and focus on building the yard up and finishing exterior things on the house.  

Here are our "Winter House Resolutions"… Summer ones are yet to be determined:)

#1. I have a Huge oversized frame that I'm guessing was once a mirror.  I would love to hang it and do a chalkboard inside of it.  Not sure where to put it yet… at first I thought in the kitchen like this but now I'm looking at a few options around the house.  

I will be painting the chalkboard paint directly onto the wall because the frame is so heavy already so I don't want to add wood or something to the back of it to paint on.  I've decided to head over to Benjamin Moore because they do any colour in chalkboard paint so I'm pretty stoked.  I might even take some pics of the process so look out!!

#2.  We have a big space above our kitchen sink that we've talked about using for a shelf or doing a valance but I've decided to try my luck at making a sign using this technique.  I haven't decided what it should say yet but I'm excited to try the transfer paper method because it seems pretty no fail to me:)

#3. We need to address the boring room that is our guest room.  I don't quite know what to do in there but we need some art on the walls or some painting or something… I'll post pics when we start the project

#4. We are continually working on our Master Bathroom which is in need of some trim, curtains, light fixtures, tile and some major organization.  I'm looking forward to tackling this project sometime soon!  This will be one that is definitely done in stages as we have money to throw at it.  Unfortunately baseboards cannot be complete until the floor is done and since the tile floor will take bit more money both flooring and baseboards will probably be the last thing done on the list.  

#5.  Then there's just some organizing that I would like to get done. Our mudroom closet and the office mainly.  

So there you have it… they're written down so now I actually hafta do them right!?!?  Looking forward to trying some new things this year and just enjoying where we are in all aspects of our life right now.  

Kitchen tour November 2013

Time to do a little kitchen comparison 

Here we were March 2012 looking in from the living room.  Its actually super hard to get a good pic from this angle because of all the light from the windows… makes the colour of the walls look way different than they really are… everything looks so yellow but you can get the jist of what is going on

Here we are November 2013 from the same angle (roughly) with again, bad lighting.  Biggest differences are the door we painted red (Benjamin Moore Geranium, same as front door), hung some curtains to the right there and kinda hard to notice but there is some subway tile back splash that is awesome.  Also painted that dresser you see on the right hand side which is awesome for storage. Added a rug under the kitchen table which has really helped prevent damage to the floor along with adding a bit of coziness.

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I'm trying to think of what to do over the window in the kitchen sink.  Maybe a valance with matching fabric like this… or a shelf something like this… we'll see

                                       

Here's what used to be our coffee corner but it was actually a bit small for our coffee pot so now we just keep our mugs here and use it for wine and the cookie jar:)  We've talked about one day extending the counter out a bit farther so it would fit our coffee pot better.  In hindsight we should have just extended it out from the beginning… still love this little corner.  Nels just finished the back splash here about a month ago.

Here's a bit of a close up of our curtains.  We just finished them last weekend.  I had my first ever experience ordering fabric through fabric.com and it was AWESOME.  I had the fabric shipped to a warehouse at the Sumas border (free shipping) and then my international shipping connections (mom and lori) picked it up for me.  I will definitely be shipping more stuff this way because its so much cheaper and so convenient if someone can pick it up for you.  I ended up doing no-sew curtains after I got into a fight with my sewing machine so we'll see how long they last.  If the iron-on hem does crap out on me I always have the option so sew them because they're cut to size and there is enough fabric for a seam allowance.

Here we are looking from the corner to the living room.  We need some new bar stools at some point… we could easily have 4 around the island but they're too pricey and not really a necessity right now.

 Looking in from the mud room to the kitchen.

and from the mudroom to the other side of the kitchen

 Close up of our painted dresser.  I really love the idea of using furniture in unconventional ways… like this dresser that is obviously supposed to be in a bedroom but is perfect for storing napkins and wrapping paper and craft supplies.  Also shutters for fun even though they don't serve a practical purpose.

Molly's little desk area… I was looking for a way to add tangerine into our kitchen and I love that I was able to in a non permanent way.  If I get sick of this colour I'll just move the table out or paint it another colour :)

This was the Panatone colour of the year for 2012… Tangerine Tango.  I had the colour matched at Benjamin Moore.

Of course our herringbone stencil that we did a few weeks back… I'm still in love with it.

We currently use this bench for some seating.  I love benches because they're a great way to seat more people and this one came from Nels' parents.  I might eventually paint it but for now its been great.

 enough pictures yet????
 nope!!

LOVE the subway tile!!

There you have it. The kitchen as it sits right now.  Maybe we'll leave it alone for awhile now. Its ended up being much more eclectic than I first thought it would be.  In my head I wanted it to be super white and calm.  As we lived in the house for longer and longer that just seemed kinda boring and actually Nels is the one who really wanted me to add some colour so the red door, blue dresser and orange desk for Molly have helped make the room more fun.

Barnboard Monogram

This was a really simple DIY project that has most likely opened the door for MANY more like it.  First of all we have access to an abundance of barn board and secondly i have tonnes of leftover paint that is fun to use for small projects like this.

I'm excited to try out some of the sign painting techniques I've found in the future like this but for our monogram letter we just kinda winged it… Here's a break down of the steps we took

Step #1  Nels went on a barn board scavenger hunt at mom and dads and came back with a beauty that was pretty much ready to hang.

Step #2 We drew a B on the board with a pencil (just free hand).  This was the hardest part and our B isn't exactly perfect but it was alright for our first try:)

Step#3 I found regular paint was a bit thick to brush on the board because of the size of the paint brush I was using and the texture of the board.  I put a bit of water into my paint and it went on much smoother and made tracing the letter easier.

Step#4 We used our picture hanging kit to put two screws and a wire on the back of the board and put it onto a nail we already had on the wall

DONE!!

Super easy afternoon project… probably took about an hour total in time but we still broke it up over 2 days.

*blue paint is Benjamin Moore Blue Nose left over from painting our dresser

Stencilled Herringbone Wall

I've had quite an obsession with the herringbone pattern for awhile now and I had been wanting to do something with this wall in our kitchen for a long time.

One random Wednesday afternoon I threw it out there to Nels and we pulled out the painters tape and magic happened.

I had been looking around at different stencil companies and I had actually decided I was just going to bite the bullet and buy one but the whole idea of stencilling kinda scares me.  How do you keep that stencil straight on the wall?  Doesn't paint get everywhere??  And most importantly I did not want to pay for a stencil plus any other extra supplies I might have needed.  I still LOVE the results of stencilling I see online but I'm not convinced I could do it.

Nels thought he could easily tape off the wall... so he taped the whole thing off for me. we used this tutorial on pinterest for a reference and it was GREAT!!  I wanted a bit of a different pattern so when it came down to painting I just alternated the white colour a bit differently

We used Benjamin Moore Cloud White paint that we have for painting our trim and the original wall colour is Hawthorne yellow (also Benjamin Moore).  Best part is in total this project cost us $8.20  and that's cause we ran out of tape so I ran to the hardware store in town to get some.  I LOVE a quick painting project that has major impact.

Our kitchen is my favourite room in the house so we do like to play around with decorating it a bit.  We put the most money and by far the most time into fun projects for this room.  Next up we are going to paint the door that leads to the deck red and I have some fabric ordered to sew some curtains… we'll see how that goes.

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