First Time Blogger

Before I begin my adventure in this space I'd like to introduce myself and give a little run down of what you can expect from me.

Growing up near Boston and closely following the 'Big Dig' Ive always experienced and had an appreciation for construction. I have always been fascinated by construction and was first introduced to it hands on by my grandfather. I remember helping him mix up batches of concrete around the farm since I could first hold a shovel (fully getting that concrete dust embedded in my blood).

I also preferred watching This Old House on weekend mornings over the cartoon network (I'm different, I know this) I even went to school for it (BS in Construction Management). I hope to provide some of my knowledge I've learned along the way through school, personal experience and watching old Bobby V himself. I will try and provide the 'nuts and bolts' aspect to our renovations and projects giving you a dose of the technical side of things.

Since I spend most of my time doing the manual labor it will be a nice break to get on here and share what Ive learned and some of the knowledge Ive gained while helping Kerry bring our designs to life. Keep an eye out for 'Nuts and Bolts with B" here at First Time Fancy and feel free to ask any and all questions and Ill try to get them answered during breaks in the renovation action. Now back to your regularly scheduled programing...

Coming Up Roses

When we moved in last July we were thrilled with the two large rose bushes in the front yard. Right outside our front door there were gorgeous mini red and white roses. 


This past spring I spent a full day outside cleaning out the garden and pruning back the plants to allow for new growth. Just over the past two weeks the bushes have absolutely exploded and we have a ton of gorgeous roses decorating the front of our little home.

This past Sunday morning B and I headed out to the dollar store, at my request, and found exactly what I was looking for - a fantastic small square glass vase for only $2. When we arrived back home I snipped a few blooms, and clustered them into my new little vase. 

Love the way they look sitting on the pass through between our living room and kitchen. What's even better is that it only cost $2, as the roses we absolutely free! It made me think, I'd like to go back and pick up a few more of these small vases to use in other rooms around the house.

Have you been enjoying any blooms from your own garden recently?

Scotts EcoSense Weed B Gon - Product Review

If you are from Toronto, or the area, you are familiar with the bylaw against using particular pesticides. Or, on a broader scale, you are also probably aware of the provincial ban which supersedes all municipal bylaws in Ontario. Of course, with bylaws aside, it is not always easy to get a beautiful lawn and be kind to the environment all at the same time. In our case, I was feeling especially hopeless, as the state of our backyard was beyond embarrassing.

Here's the disaster in early May. So. Much. Yellow. 

This is a small patch of  our disaster yard... 

Come May, I was thrilled to hear about the newest product from Scotts EcoSense, Weed B Gon. The product is advertised to "kill weeds, not lawns". The active ingredient is Iron, which apparently, when applied to the weeds in an excessive amount will cause "oxidative damage... at the cellular level". Good to know. Well, I'd finally had enough of looking at our backyard, and last Monday B went out and picked up a 2L spray bottle of Weed B Gon.

Being the thoughtful man that he is, he left the weed spraying to me as he knew I had a personal vendetta against the weeds that are choking out the grass in our yard. I was quite happy to get my "spray-on" and headed out back to see what needed to be done. According to the bottle it's as simple as spraying the weed to wet it with the brown liquid (colour comes from the high volume of iron in the solution) and then just let it do it's job. Results should appear in approximately 72 hours.

Seeing as our yard looked like a refugee camp for dandelions (and other odd weeds), I decided I would go around and spray some test weeds before I went nuts cramping my hand by spraying every individual weed out there. I got a whole lot of them, and in just a little over 48 hours I was happy to discover this is the back...

Look at how black that stupid dandelion is and how GREEN the rest of the grass is! No dead spots on the grass! It's fantastic that we've been able to find a product that is more environmentally friendly, and that will kill the horrible weeds crowding the yard, but keep our grass green and growing. If you're looking for some spot treatment for the weeds in your yard, I'd definitely recommend giving Scotts EcoSense Weed B Gon a try. I know that we'll continue to use it for all of our weed killing needs around here!


I'm thrilled... I guess now it's time to get out there and tackle the rest of them. Look out weeds....

Fancy Friday Love

Back again with another Fancy Friday Love! It's been so long since I've shared beautiful things that I've found! Now that I'm trying to stay on top of my blogging, I thought it was the perfect week to get back into it! Here are just a few things that I found, and loved, this week!:

This lovely print was sent to me by the wonderfully brilliant Brittany over at My. Daily. Randomness. She is also the talented designer behind this print that I shared a while ago, that now hangs in our guest room.

It's adorable, and I know exactly where I plan to hang it! (Just give me a bit of time before I can actually share it in it's proper place!)

Moving on into the tasty department, I picked up these tasty treats at our Organic Grocery store! They are cranberry, hazelnut crackers, and adelicious, light snack for when I'm sitting at my desk at work...

They are delicious, and apparently commonly used to replace crostini's for hors d’oeuvres. They have a bunch of other varieties that I would love to try - especially the cinnamon raisin! Yum! Check out the company's website here.

I am head over heels in love with this Mountain Home designed by the Mother Daughter team of m. elle design. I've seen photos of this talented trio's work in quite a lot of places recently, and it's very deserving! Found this home featured on Desire to Inspire this past week. Go here to check out all of the gorgeous interior photos! (I'm packed and ready to move... when do we go?)

I must say, it's been a pretty crazy week - so it's a short post... but you can expect my lists to grow in the future! Happy Weekend Everyone!

A Little More Fancy

I'm extremely discouraged by my lack of blogging recently. In the last little while I have spent some time trying to brainstorm more content for blog posts, and have started to create an "Editorial Calendar" for myself. It will be helpful in mapping out what's to come, and make it easier for me to get posts together in advance so I can get them up for your reading pleasure. As part of this, I hope to go back to including my "Fancy Friday Love" feature on a weekly basis. Why am I telling you? Well, partially so I can prepare you for some (hopefully) more regular blog posts on my part. Also, because you can expect to see some posts from someone else around here a little more regularly.

B and I got to talking the other night, and it appears we are both on the same page that it would be fantastic if we could get some posts up from him on the regular. Afterall, he is the one doing a LOT (a.k.a pretty much ALL) of the heavy lifting in our renovations! This should give him a chance to give you a little more detail about what's going on at our abode. He also hopes to share some of the knowledge he has gained through school, work and experience, as well as some of the new things he is learning along the way. I hope that his insight will bring a bit more technical knowledge to the renovation portion of our life / this blog. You can watch for B's posts on Wednesday's in a section we'd like to call "The Nuts & Bolts with B"!

I hope you'll welcome B to the blog as a regular and that you enjoy his posts! Things are about to get a Little More Fancy around here!

Paint it Blue

Once this past weekend was upon me, I was thankful to a little bit of time to get work done around the house. Today's post is just about a little project I made time for on the side.


Saturday afternoon, as B was working away with a contractor friend on getting our multi-zone heat pump installed, I was craving creativity. In an effort to avoid studying for my midterm I began my search for something to beautify in our little house. That was when I stumbled across this old photo box that we currently use to store extra cords and game system controllers:

I must say... gold cherubs don't really make up my idea of "style"! Thus began my mission. I figured since I had some of the yellow and blue spray paint left over from my patio set transformation, I would put it to use. 


Initially, I thought it would be a great idea to go with the yellow since our living room in predominately grey, black and white, and I knew we needed a  littlecolour pop. However, after getting a coat of yellow on the box, I discovered it was not to be. The yellow wasn't going to cover those cherubs. So onto blue it was...

After getting the paint on, I let it all dry out in the garage over night and Sunday morning brought it back in and put all of our cords back in. 

It's nothing exciting, but a small change that I am happy with. I have an identical box on the bottom shelf of the same bookcase that I plan on giving the same facelift too. I'm just happy that I was able to take this storage and continue to utilize it in our home. 

Have you been able to take an old storage container of some sort in your home and give it new life?

The Saga Continues - The Basement Living Area

Basement work never ends (which I guess is kind of a good thing, since we'd like to complete this renovation eventually!). So, as we continue work on the basement bathroom, work has also commenced on the living area of our basement. Just a quick reminder of what the living area originally looked like...

Basement stairs

Living area

Living area again - to the left is the old hallway to the old bathroom, laundry and guest room

B took Monday off to continue working on the installation of our multi-zone heat pump (keep your eyes out for a post on that soon), and by the time I arrived home from class on Monday evening I was in for a big surprise. I mean, the basement had already undergone SOME demo, but this is the big stuff. 

Disaster, right? I figure, it has to get worse before it gets better. I was actually surprised at how excited I was too see the amount of destruction down there!

I'm quite happy about how much space we will gain by getting rid of that rusty old furnace and reclaiming that space that was once used mainly as a room for the furnace, old central vac system and old water heater! Also, notice that bulk head in the before shots? Gone, as B has already ripped out the old duct work (someone picked it up after he posted it for free on craigslist!). It'll definitely make a huge difference in head room / how big the basement looks!

We're closing in on the 6 month anniversary of us starting the basement reno (December 27th), and also the one year anniversary of us moving into the house (July 17th). That means, we're hoping to really start getting work done down there so this whole thing can be finished up before then! Also means, you can expect a lot of "What We've Completed in the Last Year" posts. Watch for them starting the month of July!