Creating Kris ~ a young mom blogs…

house changes

Other than the home decor projects happening inside the house, I haven’t updated this category much in the past little while, so here’s an update on how things are coming along with our new house…

* we got our grass by the end of the summer
* in October we got our first tree
* in November, our driveway was paved

These milestones were exciting, although alongside them there came problems that had to be fixed! It seems our house somehow experienced what we jokingly refer to as the “Great Silicone Shortage of 2009″… nearly everything that should’ve been sealed with silicone seems to have been overlooked for this important step! Some of these areas were easily sealed up before any damage could be done (e.g. the powder room sink). But other areas were only discovered after there had been serious leaks, including the master ensuite shower and the kitchen patio doors.

Both of these two areas have taken many many many visits from the builder and their sub-contracted companies to diagnose the problems and fix them. Our shower was repaired earlier this fall (after several weeks of having it dismantled!) only to have the leaking re-appear because the shower door was not installed properly even the second time around! So presently we are waiting for it to be installed a third (and hopefully final) time. After escaping the “pleasure” of sharing a bathroom between all members of the family for more than a decade, it sucks to have to go back to it again. But I’ve been very thankful to have a back-up bathroom on the same floor because the bathroom renovation in the last house (with the only other bathroom in that house being in the basement) was just miserable for me.

It’s all a balancing act over here, and I try hard to remember all the positive aspects of having a newly built home. I enjoy them when things are going OK and I appreciate them even more when the negative aspects enter the picture. Sure the big construction trucks tend to shake the walls. But when I hang a picture on those walls, it’s a totally fresh canvas with no existing holes. And yes it feels gross to use your bathroom after so many tradesmen have tromped through it, but no less so than spending years showering in your apartment bathroom where who knows how many people have been over all those years.

Overall, I vote that a newly built home is still worth it! And I continue to hope and pray that things’ll work out so that our family is able to keep our dream home that we waited and worked so hard for!

family photos wall gallery DIY

As much as I love those new picture gallery kits (with paper you place on the wall that shows you where to hang frames of certain sizes), they are out of my home decor budget at the moment. So I put together my own wall of framed photos, with lots of measuring and planning beforehand. It was a lot like the colour-blocking scrapbooking technique I’d used a lot a few years back (and taught in my workshops).

And the final result turned out pretty well!

I was really at a loss for a few spaces and was contemplating going out to find a couple of frames that were about 4×4″. But I realized that the kids’ wood letters (”A” and “H”) were about the right size and didn’t need to be squished into the square open-back frame with the parents’ letters anyways. Our hallway wall space is significantly increased from what we had at the old house (and it’s not gray! I’m so sick of gray that I don’t think I could bear to paint any room gray for at least a decade or more).

I actually came back to the project later on and added another couple pieces on the left side – a wall sconce for candles and a black chalkboard with art inset. They were conveniently the same height as my photo “square” when placed one above the other.

Speaking of family photos, here’s some helpful info on current bargains in the photo-printing options world (just regular links, no affiliation):

* Kwikpix.ca is offering 5 cent prints for the first order. I ordered a bunch last summer and it was really great… even shipping was reasonable and they were really quick. I’m in such a brain blur these days though that I ordered just *over* 100 photos to try to pay less for shipping but of course I was confusing it with things that you order more to get a bulk discount and I paid more.

* Kodakgallery.ca currently has a 25% off coupon for their new pocket photo books (regular price $9.99). Use the coupon (PKBOOK25) and if you pick up the book at a local store that they ship to, you can get a book for about $8.50 including tax. Just be careful to keep the album at the 14 pages to avoid paying the extra “per page” cost, which does not show up on the album-maker until you go to the order section. They are really plain unfortunately, but it’s a good cheap way to have a bunch of quick photos all together in one book and since you can add captions, I’d argue that it’s at least more improved than tossing a couple dozen pictures into a plastic flippy book with no journalling whatsoever.

White wallflowers

This beautiful home decor project was made possible by my awesome friend Trina, who managed to track down these products here in Canada after I’d seen them online. The flowers attach to your walls with small nails and have little spacers to allow them to stick out enough. I used almost one whole set of them on this “hallway” (if you can call it that in an open space house like ours) but have a few of them stashed away for my bathroom.

Oh, and also added to the whole design was the white frames and mirrors. They weren’t in the original plan, but they totally jumped out at me when I saw them at the store (on sale, no less!), since I was in the midst of doing the wallflowers (I think at that point I’d had them temporarily adhered to the walls with stick tack so my DH could OK the concept first before we put actual holes in the wall). And with a little re-arranging they fit right in and were a perfect match!!

Both the flowers and the frames worked super well with my existing strié glaze effect in the French Cream paint. It comes together to create a really soothing look that I still really enjoy seeing every day.

Also, the last framed circle is now filled with a collage of our very favourite babies (4 babies all born in 2008 and 2009 to friends of ours from high school!!!) – Eve, Hannah, Taimi, and Logan.

I think we had all this done by the beginning of September but I am just getting around to taking and posting pics now. The decorating has definitely slowed down but we are still slowly working through all that needs to be completed. I’m trying to enjoy the planning, designing, and browsing online for furniture and decor I like ( would you still call it window shopping if you’re looking online? as long as no one with a PC tries to call it “Windows shopping” I guess). I figure so what if the pace is slow and it takes us years to decorate the whole house? It’s rare to have the chance to bring colour and life to so many blank canvases so I’m focused on making many parts of the process as pleasing as I hope the end results will be.

*please note: the wallflowers were a gift and my “ooh pretty!” comments are unsolicited by the creators of them, whom I have no affiliation with.