October 14th, 2009 -- Posted in house to home, pics |
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.
October 1st, 2009 -- Posted in EZ-blog Oven, house to home, pics |
I’ve added a new blog category called “house to home”, dedicated to the home decor ideas and projects I blog about. As we decorate our new house to make it a home, everything feels more comfortable and warm and cozy. There are much more than just walls surrounding my family now and I love it that way…
Here’s a quick idea for jazzing up your kitchen if you have extra tiles from a renovation or new build…
Remember my kitchen? and differently-toned brown/caramel backsplash tiles?
Right, so we had some tiles leftover that I wanted to have some fun with… So I cut out adhesive magnetic strips that were the same size as the tiles (maybe a wee bit smaller) and applied them to the back of the tiles. Et voila!
I used mine to decorate the oven hood, but they could also be used as fridge magnets. Also my friend Amanda had the cool idea of using them to hold recipe cards above the stove as well (which I think I will try the next time I’m not testing a new recipe torn from a magazine page!).
Simple, but adds a little “something”. And I find it also makes up for the fact that those tiles are actually hidden behind the stove… I wish they’d made them higher up in that area of the kitchen or something. Maybe when the kids are a lot older and we’re getting a new stove we can get one of those cool ones that is flat and has the buttons all at the front.
Speaking of the joys of home ownership, we’ve been having some repairs done to the house lately. 
We’ve discovered a couple of areas that are leaky so there have been tradesmen here quite a few days out of the week/month!
That’s part of what has kept me from keeping up with my usual blogging schedule of a few posts a week (besides the constant pain, of course, which puts me completely out-of-commission at least several days of the week). Hopefully I can get back to it soon.
September 18th, 2009 -- Posted in domestic engineering, house to home |
Encouraged by my first attempt at sewing a valance, I decided to go ahead with my idea of sewing box valances for the family room next. Of course they didn’t turn out exactly as planned (does anything?), but I’m happy with the results and it’s created a much “homier” feel in the room where we spend a lot of our time together.
The materials – a good match with the paint colours (blue), the blinds (stripes), and our furniture (light wood)
Improvising on the corner pleats – I couldn’t get proper ones so I went backwards and just kind of made it up as I went lol
Getting the hubs to put them up – you can kind of see the “before” look when the blinds’ hardware was in plain view
When all is said and done, they fall quite nicely!
Other than a few yet-to-be-unpacked boxes, our family room is mostly assembled the way we’d like it
And it’s so great to have at least one room that you can go to that’s mostly complete. We’ve been moved in about 2 & 1/2 months now but there are a lot of rooms that are still really “in process” as far as decor is concerned – including a couple spots where we’re using storage bins for coffee tables. 
I look forward to our Family Movie Night (a weekly Friday tradition since Harmony was about 2!), and one of the features that drew us to this model of house was the open cut-out between the family room and kitchen. We start our movie and watch from the table, then tidy up our messy selves (especially Avery… OK and me too, what can I say? I’m a bit of a sloppy eater) and go sit on the couch.
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