Fall In Love...

In any city you choose! When I came across these fantastic screen prints from artsharkdesigns, on Etsy, it was love at first site! B and I first met and fell in love in NYC - so what better way to give a stylish nod to the city that brought us together than through one of these gorgeous little prints! There are tons of great cities to choose from... I may even pick up a Boston one, afterall, our love did continue to grow there as well!

Goodbye Old Basement...

...it hasn't been fun!

Moving on from yesterdays exciting post about our new family addition, I want to discuss some changes that should be coming soon to our little house. Ever since our first viewing in early May, we knew the basement was a project we were going to have to tackle. With low ceilings, a bit of a dampness issue and a seriously bad layout - our basement needs HELP! So, it looks like our home renos will be working their way UP from our disaster of a basement.

Main living area in the basement at the bottom of the stairs. There is a bit of mold starting to appear by the baseboard behind me. Behind the wall, directly ahead, is the utility room full of our giant water heater and ancient furnace - only accessible by walking all the way around and through the guest room.

This is the little hallway that leads to the bathoom (seen through the open door) - to the right is the washer and dryer as well as the door to the guest room.


As you can see the bathroom needs a whole lotta love (and a whole lot less wood paneling around the tub - YUCK!)

These ancient pieces of equipment make it sound like a rocket is taking off everytime I throw in a load of laundry. They are located directly outside the bathroom door. To the left (see B's arm) is the doorway into what we have been using as a guest bedroom. Not really a nice site for our guests!


And finally our guest bedroom as it looked when we first moved in. We have since painted it a much calmer shade of green and the wood paneling has been painted an creamy colour. We also put floor to ceiling sheer curtains on the wall where our oddly placed window is to soften it up a bit and put in a double bed with a cream coloured head board that matched the wood paneling. It was working well as a guest room. But not for much longer.

As of last night, our basement overhaul has officially begun (in my eyes anyway). B had someone come by to discuss getting a tankless water heater installed. Since there will be no cost to have it installed and our old rental heater taken back to the other company, we have decided to have it done ASAP. B is all about the technical stuff, the most important part to me is that we will be reclaiming all of the space our water heater is currently taking up. So, with a new water heater coming, that means it's time to start ripping apart the basement.

Our plan is to turn what is now our guest bedroom, into our new utility room/laundry room, redo/update the bathroom and open up the rest of the basement into a larger living area. With the tankless water heater coming soon, and thoughts of purchasing a new washer and dryer on boxing day, our attention is focused on the new utility/laundry room.

As the main laundry doer in our house, I want a place that doesn't look like a dungeon and is more a part of the home. So I have spent the last few days online looking at inspiration rooms for our laundry room - the starting point for our reno. Here are a few I'm a fan of...

As I continue to think this through, I can imagine demo will begin soon - even with two dogs (hopefully) and a rabbit living in the house. Right now I'm really just trying to decide the best option for the floor... B and I are leaning towards a dark natural stone tile I think, so if there are spills or messes, they will be easy to clean. I'll have to keep you posted on my thought process.

In the meantime - what's your laundry room like? Is it a beautiful place in your home that you don't mind cleaning and folding your clothes? Or is the kind of place that you want to be in and out as quick as possible? Have you had it redone or do you plan on redoing it in the new year? Would love to hear some stories!

Our Potential New Additions...

I'm not talking about additions to the house... I'm talking about to our family!

For quite some time B and I have been discussing adding to our little family. We currently have B's dog, Parker, whom he has had for about 5 years. We also have a bunny rabbit, Ebony, that I adopted shortly before we moved into our home. We love them both dearly, and being two young people who have grown up surrounded by animals we just can't get enough of them. So, after a number of discussions, we decided we wanted to get a brother to be the Fenway to our Parker (B's a Red Sox fan - did you guess?). So we've spent a lot of time looking through rescue shelter websites to find a pup that just stole our heart.

WELL - last week we found more than 1! So B sent in an application and they've been screening us to make sure we are the right applicants to bring a puppy into our home. Today B got an email with three pictures of potential pups. We haven't been approved to adopt yet, (B still has to finish the phone interview he started yesterday), but they asked us to choose an order of preference for the dogs so that if we are approved we can go and meet them before we bring one of these beautiful boys home. Below are the three pups, in our order of preference (mind you, if we had the house, the money and the time... I'd take all three!)...

This is Charlie - isn't that just the sweetest face you've ever seen?

Topa is Charlie's brother and equally as sweet...

and this is Sarge, he was dumped, and is a few weeks younger than the other two pups (no relation). He is absolutely adorable, but has higher energy and is likely to be more fluffy. He, of course, is not off of our list, but we know that a dog with a more of a calm attitude would be better for us and our laid back girl Parker.

I'm pretty excited to think that there is a possibility we could have a new family member by Christmas. On top of that, we'll be saving a deserving pup and bringing them into a very loving home.

I'll keep you posted on how the screening process goes, and if one of these beautiful boys comes to find a forever home with us!

Design UnInspired?

Since we've returned home from our vacation, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the renovations I want to do in our home (when I'm not thinking about the impending holiday season). In particular, I've spent a lot of time thinking about our living room. Since the living room is a) the first room you see when you enter from our foyer, b) the room we spend the most time in and c) one of only two rooms on our main floor, I want to be sure that the design and decor is something that I love, but others can truly appreciate. I don't want it to be too trendy, but I also don't want it to be cookie cutter. For a while, I was pretty sure I knew what I wanted, yet there was something in my gut telling me it wasn't quite right. This morning, while browsing through my latest edition of House and Home magazine (The January Trends issue), something hit me and I knew I had it all wrong. That being said, I am extremely happy that B and I didn't take the plunge a month back and start purchasing some of the materials for my original design plan, as neither of us would be very pleased at this point in time.

Our home was built in the 1920's and is located just up the street from the shore of Lake Ontario. Since the first time we saw the house, the location and character have had me thinking "cottage". I want to keep that cottage feel in our home, but update it a little bit and THIS my friends, is what has made me scrap my original design plan.

I originally had something more dramatic in mind, darks floors with dark walls, a floor to ceiling ivory stone fireplace and pops of colour (mainly light blue). As much as I loved it, I know it doesn't fit the character of our home. So I'm now leaning more towards light floors (natural looking) and more of a natural stone look for the fireplace. I'll have to see what I really LOVE before I decide on the fireplace and wall colour, but at least now I feel confident in the direction I am taking.

Regardless, our living room is a blank slate so I definitely have the ability to do as I please.

So the design is a work in progress, and I'll keep you posted on my thoughts, but I am completely open to input from readers. How about you? Have you ever had any projects where you (thankfully) realized before you began work that it was all wrong? Or worse, have you ever realized it while putting your plan into action? I'd love to hear your stories!

Our Great Tree Adventure

It's that time. We've gone on vacation, ate our share of turkey, scored some great deals at the stores and returned to Toronto eager to begin our Christmas decorating. After arriving home during the wee hours of Sunday morning and sleeping for a few hours, I was up, out of bed and pulling our boxes of decoration from storage. Most of what I found was for the kitchen, with the remainder being boxes of ornaments. However, with this being our first Christmas in our home - we had to decide what tree our ornaments would be adorning!
 
In my family, my Dad has been going to the same tree farm to cut down a real tree since he was around my age. Every year it's tradition to bundle up, trek out to the farm and bring home a big FAT tree. As this has been such a big part of my Christmas tradition, we both just assumed we'd once again take part in this annual outting and bring home our own tree. However, the more I thought about it, the more I began to think that may not be for us.

The thought of trying to cram a real tree into our little living space freaked me out a little. We already knew we would be sacrificing some space to get it in, and our family is well known for always picking the BIGGEST tree (seriously, when people arrive at my parents annual Boxing Day open house they actually make a beeline for the tree to see how big it is that year). It's never done on purpose - it's just a perspective thing (the great outdoors vs. my parents family room).

Then there was the thought of the tree needles all over the house. The more I thought about the needles falling all over the floor (and I'm sure the dogs tail wouldn't help this matter) the more irritated I became. Ever since we moved in together, my true clean freak has emerged! I'm pretty hardcore about keeping our pad tidy (and clutter free) and just thinking about having to clean up after the tree was enough to drive me mad.

But when it really comes down to it, my final deciding factor was... I'm impatient! My dad always goes to cut down the tree two weekends before Christmas (this year it falls on the 12th) and I honestly didn't want to wait that long! So, on Monday night we headed out in search of an artifical tree, and agreed if there was nothing we liked, we would get a real tree. This of course, was just the start of our whole ordeal.

After trying Costco and Canadian Tire, and finding nothing that we liked (or that fit our budget), we finally came across the perfect tree at Home Depot. Pleased with our tree, but disappointed they were sold out of lights, we headed for the self check out discussing where to head next on our hunt for LEDs. In typical self check-out fashion, we picked the side where a lady was finishing up and no one was waiting behind her. Once she was done, B began to hoist the tree box to scan the barcode and some guy runs over and cuts in front of us saying "There's a line over there!". B and I look over our shoulders (spying no line) and B says "I didn't see one" to which Mr. Holiday Spirit replies "Piss Off". Following this pleasant exchange, Mr. Holiday Spirit begins to frantically wave his tin of whatever over the scanner. After numerous frantic passed over the scanner, he marches over to the cashier inquiring why his item isn't scanning. The young boy indicates that he needs to scan it with the barcode facing down. As Mr. Holiday Spirit makes his way back to the check out B mumbles "At least know how to use it", at which point Mr. Holiday Spirit turns around and kicks our Christmas tree. Of course everyone turns to stare, and the guy continues to struggle with paying for his item. As another self check out opens up, we head over and begin the process of paying for our tree. While removing my receipt from the machine, Mr. Holiday Spirit storms by and out of the store carrying his one simple tin that took him 15 minutes to pay for!

After a good laugh and a joke with one of the Home Depot employees, we headed a couple storefronts down to Wal-Mart in search of LED lights, only to discover they had next to nothing! Defeated, we decided to call it a night and headed home, lightless.

Tuesday evening, B arrived home from work with a box of LEDs from RONA, which it turned out to be too short to cover our whole tree. This of course led to a close to two hour trek around our neck of the woods in search of the closest RONA to find lights that matched. Upon our return home we plugged in our lights only to find out that the two sets of "warm white" lights did not match. Again, we sat defeated, staring at the mismatched lights on our still undecorated tree.

Finally by last night, we had two boxes of "warm white" lights (that MATCHED!) and were able to get our ornaments up (mainly my labour as B has been feeling pretty ill). Sitting back and looking at our very first Christmas tree, it's nothing exciting, but it's our first year and we're on a budget - so I'm pleased with the outcome. I figure, if nothing else, we'll always be able to look back on our first Christmas and fondly remember the adventure that was buying and decorating our very first Christmas tree together.

The Big Reveal!

So I've blogged, and I've tweeted and I'm sure everyone is sick of hearing about our bathroom vanity! Well - this is it, the end of all of that. A ran into a few little problems along the way. Stripping the vanity itself took ages! B bought some eco friendly stripper that didn't really have any fumes, but it took a long time to get all of the original top coat off. Then, once we got it off, we got a coat of oil based primer on it and a couple coats of paint. It was looking great so B and I got to work sealing it with an outdoor clear coat that would protect it from any water that dripped on it (our vanity always looks like B had a water fight after he washes his face). I got the first coat on and no problem, but once B got a second coat on, the wood grain started to show through again. SO - B sanded the whole thing down and got another two coats of paint on it. After those extra coats and some seal, it looked much better and well... I guess now all that is left to do is show you our final product (and some other wonderful details in our little bathroom...)

So what do you think?

Our Final Pumpkins

Halloween has come and gone. We had nowhere near as many trick or treaters as we would have liked, but we also expected very few after talking to our neighbours. We seriously waited until the last minute and found ourselves carving our pumpkins yesterday morning. B with his native american art inspired piece and myself looking for something more pretty. Well, I never came up with an idea I was happy with for my larger pumpkin, so instead ended up just working on my smaller white pumpkin that I meant to do something with for Thanksgiving. My larger pumpkin was left in it's original state sitting by the bottom step of our front porch.

Overall - nothing fancy, but was happy with how our front entrance turned out. One little boy even told B "ooooh it's SCARY" when B opened the door for him. I can happily say we both enjoyed our first Halloween in our house! Hope everyone else enjoyed their Halloween as well!

My pumpkin with the candle holder B picked out from HomeSense. The red candle we just happened to have from a gift given to B by his grandmother. Worked well on our little table!

B's pumpkin. He sent me the design he liked on Friday and I resized and printed it to fit his pumpkin. I think he did a pretty great job. If we'd had more time he could've done more detail - but I think it turned out pretty great.