Confessions

This Canada Day weekend was exhausting. Long, hot, humid and exhausting.  While people were watching fireworks and drinking beer, Marc and I were cutting sod and smashing concrete.  I think we need a vacation from our long weekend.

Now here is the hard part, I have a confession you guys.  My yard is 100% not at all complete.  It's about 50% of the way there, I guess, maybe...

I have about half a walkway and three plants planted, but considering that at 2pm yesterday my yard looked like a brickyard and a dirt pile had blown up, three plants isn't so bad.

It wasn't meant to be, finishing a yard in a weekend.  Thunderstorms, stuck pickup trucks, concrete and tree roots added up to an eventful and long weekend.

Many, many thanks to my inlaws who drove 2.5 hours on super short notice just to help us out!!  Without them I don't think we would have gotten nearly as far as we did, and our walkway definitely wouldn't be as level as it is.

We will keep moving along, and hopefully tonight will be last night of laying bricks and pulling sod.

Farmer Joe

Anique was ready to work hard this weekend, and between the rock throwing and dirt eating it was a lot to accomplish for one little kiddo. She did a pretty good job though, and even got a couple of naps in on the side.

Organization For the Not So Organized

I love organization, or at least the idea of it.  See, I'm not as organized as I would like and I'm always astounded by my friends and family who can organize in their sleep.  Their houses are spotless and everything has a place and is in it!

Organizing is a system, a system that I am very slowly learning.  When you work from home being organized is pretty paramount to getting anything done, so I'm starting to figure out how I like to organize.

One of the biggest things I've learned about organizing is that you need containers to organize stuff into.  I like to organize by function and type, and I found some cheap organization tools to help me put items away.

Ikea has the whole organization thing CASED.  If I know that someone is going to Ikea, I send a list, and then hope they have enough room in their vehicle for everything.

I recently got the entire Kvissle set for my office and the whole set quickly became a favourite.  Clean, modern, white and with just a nice touch of cork.

Kvissle Desk Organizers, set of 4 Boxes

Kvissle Desk Organizer

My office just happens to be in my dining room at this point in time, so being neat and organized is key.  Some quick, cheap and easy mount shelving from Rona along with some more Ikea makes keeping all my work odds and ends in site and neat.

Tallisker Containers from Ikea

You don't actually have to spend money to get organized though,  It can honestly be as simple as re-purposing items you already own or found or made.

For our wedding my husband and I made almost 100 vases out of old wine bottles.  While we gave a lot of vases away we still had a couple of boxes left, and ultimately they were suited very nicely for pencils and paintbrushes.

Mason jars are really popular right now for decor, and here's why.  They can be used anywhere and for anything, and they look pretty cute at the same time.

Here was my tea and coffee cupboard pre-organization and pre-mason jar.

It was pretty much a total disaster.  Bags of tea and coffee everywhere, and I never really knew what I had.

Post mason jar organization:

Clean and simple.  Everything stacks, I can read all my labels and I know exactly what I have.  Apparently, I have a lot of tea.

I'm tempted to add some Chalkboard paint labels at some point later down the road, it would up the cuteness factor by at least 10%.

The downside to this whole organization thing?  I no longer have any excuse to stop by my local tea shop, not until I empty a few of these containers anyway.

On Pink and White

It's finally done, nearly a year later and my fun, stained, beaten up chair is finally finished!  Remember the before?  Bad fabric, nails and screws everywhere, horrible deep red stain and creaky joints.

This chair had some really great bones though, and ultimately there wasn't anything that a bit of paint, epoxy and fabric couldn't fix.  

Beyond revitalizing the wood and fixing the joints and some of the cracks in the legs with epoxy and wood putty it was a fairly simple redo.  Can't believe I didn't do it sooner!  

It was also a really budget friendly redo, I managed to get that lovely coral fabric for $2.50 a metre. Crazy!! Plus I finished the edges with leftover fabric from my bedroom lampshades and sewed my own welting. The cording for the welting was about $4.00.  Paint was at a cost of about $6 a can, for 4 cans.  

Since my father in law was amazing and picked up the epoxy and wood putty supplies, then gifted them to me those were free!

Total cost: $30.50

Not too bad for a ramshackle $75 bishop's chair.  I love it, though I haven't quite decided where it's final home will be.

Also for a bit of fun, instead of covering the bottom of the cushion with the usual black mesh netting stuff, I used the last bit of my lampshade fabric.  Waste not, want not, right?

It's our excitement for the day when we need to pick up toys from underneath our furniture.  I'm so happy with the finished project, not to mention just getting it finished felt so good!

A DIY I didn't do

Were you just "dying" to know what the last DIY project was?  No?  That's ok too.  The best part about this next DIY project was that I can't even take credit for it, because Marc did pretty much all of it.

Remember this fantastic end table with the really horribly beaten up veneer?

We picked it up for $30, and then sanded and sanded until the veneer almost came off of the top.  Basically there was no way to salvage the top and have it smooth if we stained it.  But, since the rest of the table was in pretty good shape I didn't want to paint the entire thing.

So we went half and half, sort of anyway.

Painting just the top and sides of the table really helped make the dark wood on the rest of it really stand out.  We usually use General Paints HP2000 for furniture projects since it is a durable paint made for high wear and high wash areas, we didn't this time and I'm not sure that I love that decision.  We used Behr, and the finish just doesn't seem as durable, I may do a quick once over with some General Paint when I get the chance.

Overall though, I think Marc did a pretty good job!

Elephant

Elephant was the name of our choice paint, but it ended up seeming surprisingly blue for an elephant, until I realized that it was almost the exact colour of Dumbo!  It really helped lighten up our bedroom which was a really awful dark matte brown before.  Matte paint helps hide imperfections on plaster walls, but it also deadens light and makes everything seem far more dreary.

Pretty awful before pictures, hey?  Ok now on to the good stuff!  The after(ish) pictures!

We went with a semi-gloss from General Paints in the Z-Coat line (which is their low VOC line that I love!), semi-gloss won't hide imperfections as well, but it does allow natural light to reflect off of its surface thus making the whole room brighter.

I found those bedside lamps on a weekend Salvation Army shopping trip with my Sister-in-Law Rachel, $10 a lamp.  Most likely early 70's, but originally they were pretty dated, and the bases were in rough shape.

Three coats of a glossy blue spray paint, and about 3.5m of fabric and those lamps got a fantastic easy and cheap redo.  I honestly rarely like lamps, which is why it took so long to find just the right ones.  But I am so happy with how it all turned out!

There is actually one more DIY project in the above picture, can you guess what it is?  Don't worry I will post it tomorrow, so you can see the before and afters.

Aren't Renovations Glamorous?

It is always the weeks where you have the most to say and absolutely no time to say it, these last few weeks have been crazy!  DIY projects littered around the house, paint, family and rugby meant that I lived entirely in the real world for a while and the internet world was left behind, so I will try to catch things up as best as I can.

The real work on the master bedroom finally started, and we've been pulling it together piece by piece, and I am so excited!  I would say we are at about the 60% mark, only because some big pieces like the closet and the drapes haven't been started yet.  But 60% is still so much better than the 10% we've been sitting at for a year and a half!

In the beginning of renovations I get so inspired, I see all these "before" and "after" pictures on Pinterest and I oggle, I oooooohhh and aaaaaaahhhh, I design in my head, I pull colours and fabrics, and then we do the work.

The work is so much less glamorous, you guys.  Halfway through painting my master bedroom looked something like this:

Everything we own shoved into one corner of our room, paint and patch on the walls, ladders and dropcloths.  Pretty sexy right?

Thankfully, we are just passed that stage and onto the putting everything back in its rightful place stage.  I can't wait until we are done that stage, because we have three pretty fantastic DIY projects that need some photo love!

Anique may be watching a little too much DIY go on around the house since she has effectively started her own projects.  I'm worried about what she is going to start DIYing when we start the big renos on the house... or maybe we can channel those creative energies into installing new wood flooring, or patching plaster?

The Never Ending Project

Sometimes there are days where I don't listen to my own advice and sometimes it works out great, and other times it results in that one project that just won't end.

A year ago I fell in love with a chair, I spent more than I had intended and I brought it home.  I loved it, but it was in bad shape, really bad shape.

The legs were broken, it was stained badly, it creaked, it wiggled and it had screws in all the wrong places.  But I loved it.  So I told myself I was going to fix it, I was going to paint it, I was going to make it all better.  That was a year ago.

And so I've been slowly plodding along with this chair, working at it from time to time, and I am finally getting close to getting to the point of painting and upholstering it.

I can work with wood, I can make new furniture, I can build architecture models, I can make stuff.  But, I have never worked with old, beaten up wood.  Thankfully my father in law is a wood carver and has an amazing knowledge of wood and how to fix it.  So he has been instrumental in helping me along thus far, and always has great suggestions for what products and techniques to use to fix everything on this chair.

So far I tried to strip off the bad stain, but the wood is in such bad shape that it isn't worth trying to salvage.  I did strip the stain off the metal patch, which I love and am going to keep for sure!  I've also used a wood epoxy to fix up some of the decor that came off.

Slowly but surely it's coming along, now I need to pick some fabric, I was looking at patterns originally but I'm thinking maybe a really bright solid would be nice.  Still haven't fully decided, I need to go shopping I think.

Springtime

I absolutely love the spring, there is nothing quite as refreshing as being able to walk outside in just a light sweater after a long winter hibernation.

Anique and I took a little walk down the street today, after I finally finished the sweater I have been knitting for her for far too long.  I still need to spend a bit of time this evening to block the sweater out so it fits a bit better, but otherwise I love it!

Isn't the yarn fantastic?!  I saw it months and months ago and just had to buy it.  The yarn is Archangel by Malabrigo, they always have the most wonderful colours and the wool is so soft!

Dresser Redo - Part Two

It has been a long time coming, but finally one of the dressers is complete!  Mini YAY! In case you forgot what they looked like before our amazing transformation of awesomeness: Dresser Redo - Part One

Now while the dresser is done, the bedroom isn't, so it isn't quite in its natural habitat yet.  But give it time, and then we will have a full bedroom reveal!

Onto the photos!

Remember what I said about neon??

The old hardware stuck around... but with some lipstick.

As my husband stated "it definitely isn't the same dresser anymore."  Stay tuned for the upcoming tutorial and total bedroom revamp!

Also, who doesn't love a baby in sunglasses?

Super Fashion!

Dresser Redo - Part One

In the past year that we have been in our house, we have done very, very little in most rooms.  Not because we don't want to, more because we have been focusing on other things in our lives.

Our bedroom though, has become a bit of a sticking point lately.  It's ugly.  Straight up ugly.  Brown, no real storage, awful blinds.  Did I mention ugly?

We have been slowly working on our room, putting together the puzzle pieces really.  We bought an amazing bed from EQ3 that we love, a platform upholstered bento bed.  We have a gorgeous bedspread for said bed.  But everything else is really lacking.  Especially the giant black wardrobe thingy that was in the room when we moved in, it works for storage, but its so ugly it hurts.

So, we recently went shopping for dressers.  The hope was to find a couple of thrift store dressers for a decent price that we could redo into something that we love.  

Our qualifications:

- Modern Lines

- Wood

- Under $200

After only a couple of hours of shopping at thrift and antique stores we found what we wanted!  Two late mid-century styled dressers, and for the low low price of $125 for the set!  The only drawback was that they were finished with arborite, probably 1970's or so.  

But, we fell in love anyway and picked up our new dressers a few days later!

We don't love the taupe and dark brown colour scheme and the brass handles are really starting to wear.  Also, much of the arborite is starting to yellow from years of hands touching the drawers.  So, this next weekend will bring a much needed update in the form of paint!

We are going to keep the dual colour scheme, because that is part of what makes these pieces so fantastic!

Keep checking in for updates!

Jewelry, Jewelry, Jewelry

Here's the thing that I a lot of people probably don't know about me.  I own a lot of jewelry.  I may not wear it all that often, but its always there!  And for a long time it was taking up space here or there, 4 jewelry boxes scattered about my room.

Therein lies another problem.  Jewelry out of sight = jewelry out of mind.  I would never wear what I had because I would honestly forget what I had.

The solution?  A homemade DIY jewelry holder for my bedroom.  I had fallen in love with a DIY holder on pinterest that was really simple.  A board, some fabric and old cupboard handles.  It made the most fantastic holder.  But it wasn't quite me, yet.

You see, I love colour, and presently my room is devoid of it in so many ways.  This is phase 1 of mission "Fix the Bedroom".

Ingredients:

- Ugly, cheap, "shabby chic" picture frames.
- Spray Paint
- Fabric of choice
- Batting. (Either loose batting or sheet batting will suffice.  Sheet batting will be easier to get a consistent plushness).
- Glue Gun
- Spray adhesive

Serious Kudos to my cousin Janine who was fantastic and gave me those flamingo cabinet pulls years ago, I never had a cabinet or dresser to put them on for years.  But I think this is so much better!

Sadly I didn't take progress photos, I wasn't really thinking at the time.  Next time no such mistake will be made.

I chose 3 different frames to create a sort of gallery effect.  Also if I needed more space later I can always add another frame or two in.