The First Nursery Purchase

As I mentioned Monday, B and I made a trip to The National Home Show last Friday. I'd won some tickets from Staci, and we thought with having the day off we'd rather attend on a weekday than fight the weekend crowds... and were we ever happy that we did!

We went to the show with no particular renovations in mind. It was more of a chance to get out of the house and to check out what was new and interesting. In the end, we stopped at a few more places than we had anticipated.

We stopped and looked at, and talked to, a few people about sliding glass doors (that's a whole other post, and a project that is not even being truly considered at the moment), and then we found Keesta!

Keetsa sells eco-friendly sleep products and B and I were instantly in love with one of their memory foam mattresses. If we hadn't just bought a new bedframe and lighting, as well as a really great purchase for the basement (which I'll share soon) we may have been in the market to snag a mattress at the show since they were offering $200 off. We're normally not fans of memory foam but this one mattress in particular was to-die-for. Plus, with me being pregnant and B having a bad right shoulder, we knew it would be great. We ended up leaving sans mattress, but have decided we will make a stop into their showroom on Queen St. East to check out the mattress toppers. It might be more in our budget for now, and we'd rather save the new mattress purchase for the future when we own a larger home, and hopefully a king size bed.

Our next major stop was at a small both for Reiner's Ottomans. If you attended the show, you may have seen them. The booth full of leather ottomans that look like animals!?

Normally not a place we would look at twice, but when I saw them I instantly thought of our peanuts nursery. B and I checked out all of the different animals and talked to the lady in the booth, who told us they normally retail for $250 (their website actually says $260), plus $30 shipping since they don't have a store front in Toronto. The deal at the show was that they were on for $150.

Now, you may remember that I had put together a little mood board for an expecting Mommy last year which included a leather hippo that I had a seriously hard time tracking down. If only I had known then what I know now... that would've been one happy Mommy indeed!

We walked away letting the lady know we wanted to finish walking the show floor and think a little bit more about the purchase. We talked very little about it and after we were done browsing I turned to B and asked "So what do you think?"... and well... we came home with this...

Isn't he adorable (I'm guessing it's a he?). We've named him Babar! Barbar is our first big purchase for the nursery and I love that I can use it as an ottoman when baby is little (to go with our yet to be purchased chair), and can later become a safe and fun toy for our sweet peanut. Joy!

He's currently sitting on the red dresser in our bedroom, waiting for what will soon become the nursery to be cleaned out and painted. I just had to share our first big purchase with you.

Did anyone else in Toronto attend the home show? Make any purchases? Would love to hear what you thought of the show (and of Babar of course!)

Weekend Recap - Fall Home Show

Happy Monday everyone! We had a busy, but enjoyable weekend around here. On Saturday afternoon we headed to the Fall Home Show, with some particular projects in mind.

As I mentioned previously, B and I are planning a complete renovation for the front entrance of our home. Part of that renovation will involve getting a new front door, as well as a new storm door. At one of the previous home shows we visited, we came across Metalex Security and Screen Doors, and B and I instantly knew we would one day have one installed on our own home. 

The Metalex doors allow you to have the added security of a steel door, with the beautiful look of an ornamental storm door. As the rep mentioned at the booth, it would also give us the piece of mind to have this additional security on our home, especially at times when I'm home by myself.

We spent quite a bit of time speaking to one of the reps in their booth, and looking over the different styles, colours, contruction, etc of the doors. At this point, we are almost positive we will purchase a storm door for the front of the house, and possibly even for our back door in the future. We were most struck by the Wilmington design...

The company seems really great to work with and they have all kinds of additional options, like customizing designs as well as door sizes, and the option to have their screen door locks keyed to match existing locks on your home. Talk about accomodating!

We weren't quite ready to order a door on site, as we'll be looking at spending close to, if not over $1000 for one of these bad boys. We do, however, hope to have one installed by next spring.

We also made a brief stop to check out Wrought Iron Man. I was drawn to his display when I saw the free standing wrought iron mailboxes he was displaying. The mailbox we currently have is your run of the mill, wall mounted, top open mailbox. Unfortunately, everytime it rains anything in the mail box gets soaked and we have to air dry all of our mail for a day or two. Not good. We loved that we could get a free standing mailbox that we could bolt down, to keep our mail dry. The added bonus is that you get a key, making all of your mail secure. Despite my love of the mailboxes, and a really great price, we walked away empty handed, as we knew we weren't quite ready to make this purchase for our home when we still have the entry renovation ahead of us.

Overall, we found the Fall Home Show helpful in looking for things we were interested in for our upcoming renovation. For those who didn't attend this year, if you are interested in renovating or making relatively large purchases for your home, I would definitely recommend the Fall Home Show. It's a great place to price things out and talk to different contractors and suppliers!

Thanks again to Anne-Marie from 10 Rooms for the tickets! It was a great way to spend a cool Saturday afternoon with B!