Take A Seat

I know it's been silent for a while around here. We've just spending some time enjoying being together as a family, so I can't apologize for that. Even with lots of family time happening, we managed to finish  the bentwood chairs last week! Just to give you a little refresher, here's how they started out...

I was clearly drawn in by the lines of the chairs and their potential. After painting them a beautiful Cornflower Blue, by Martha Stewart, the fabric hunt began. I originally hoped to use a fabric that I already had on hand, but it turned out that I didn't have enough of any one fabric to cover all four seats. I'll be honest though, I didn't complain too much about having to go fabric shopping. So, two weeks ago now, we piled into the car and headed to the closest Fabricland. I made a couple laps of the home decor section, double and triple checking every single fabric that caught my attention. Finally, after getting the okay from B, I landed on this fabric...

I loved the pattern and the colours, and I knew that it would be mess friendly. After sitting on it for a few days, last week B and I finally got around to recovering those old seats. (Have I mentioned that B is the best? Totally supporting every little project I undertake, and always willing to lend a hand. Yup - THE BEST). Anywho - here's how it all went...

{B set up the compressor and my staple gun and then tested it out quickly before we got going}

{Halle hung out nearby and supervised the whole thing. I think she was telling B what to do here. Seriously, little miss has quite the personality}

{Pretty self explanatory - don't you think?}

{Halle was more than willing to lend a hand when B reattached the seats for me}

I guess that leaves little else to share except for the final product. So let's take one more look at the original chairs...

Followed quickly by a reveal of our final chairs...

I LOVE THEM! I love them in the awful, ugly sunroom, but love them even more in our slowly progressing breakfast nook...

I love that little hint of blue in our kitchen, and I think they will look even better once I get those two end chairs painted up as well. Something I should consider getting started on this week. In the meantime, since not a whole lot has been progressing around here, I do hope to share some more of our adventures with you this coming week.

In the meantime, what's the consensus on our chair transformation? I'd love to hear what you all think....

Fancy Friday Love

Good Morning and Happy Friday! I'm happy to be finding a bit more time to read blogs recently. Especially since it means I'm able to share fancy finds, like these ones, with you...


What is it with me and kitchens? I don't know, but even this entire home, designed by Charles de Lisle and featured on desire to inspire, is incredible, I was mainly drawn to the gorgeous kitchen...

Another home where each room is more inspiring than the next. This home (that was featured on House of Turquoise last Friday) was designed by Regan Baker. It epitomizes what I want our forever home to feel like (so you better believe I pinned every last room!)...

This little peek at a dining room that was featured in Adore Home Magazine, and then on Shorely Chic, reminded me why I am so excited to add some fun, fresh pops of colour to our rental. Just looking at this image makes me smile, and with fun colours like that in your home, I think it's harder to let the dreary west coast weather really get to you...

Parties, like this ice cream themed birthday from On to Baby, make me so happy I have a daughter. There will be so many options in the future when planning fun birthday parties for her (I'm excited to start sharing my plans for her 1st Birthday soon). Check out all of the details on this little soiree here.

I'm trying really hard to get better at being the person in charge of coming up with dinners, grocery shopping and then actually making dinner. It's been slow progress, but I am definitely working on it. I think I may have to add this recipe, from The Lovely Cupboard, to my list of one's to try:

We have some family fun planned for this weekend! The city we now live in will be having a teddy bear picnic this weekend and we plan on bringing Halle to soak up some fun family time together. I'm looking forward to it, and maybe we'll even get to meet some other people from the area. I'm also hoping to sneak out to another vintage market taking place closer to home... we'll see if I can make it happen. What do you have planned for this fine summer weekend?

Tourist's In Our New Home

Since I didn't get to share photos of our weekend antics yesterday, I decided I'd put up a second post today. We had a great time visiting with my friend, and did our best to show her as much as we could... even if at a bit of a slower pace with Halle in tow. After picking her up at Pacific Central on Saturday, we headed to Gas Town and enjoyed a delicious brunch at Chill Winston. The food was great, the drinks were delicious and thankfully we got some sunshine as well so that we could enjoy our time on the patio. Afterwards, it was time to take in the sights that people come to Vancouver for. Since Halle needed a nap, we thought a drive along the Stanley Park sea wall was in order. We stopped for some photos along the way...

Afterwards, we headed over the Lion's Gate Bridge to North Vancouver, and up to the look out point on Cypress Mountain. B had made the trip once before we moved, but I had never been. We lucked out and the weather was lovely, so we had a fantastic view of downtown Vancouver...

That was it for our sightseeing on Saturday. From there we headed to a barbecue in North Vancouver, before heading home to put Halle to bed and me and my friend enjoyed a bottle of wine and a good girl chat. Perfection. The next morning started slow with lounging around, enjoying our morning coffee and a late breakfast of banana and nutella ebelskivers - YUM! After Halle's nap we loaded into the car and drove out to Golden Ears Provincial Park. B and I had never been either, so it was a first for all of us. We're so glad we went though - it's absolutely breathtaking!

{Intrigued by the little creek running under the foot bridge}

{Peek-A-Boo!}

This is just a sampling of all of the photos I got at this beautiful park... and we barely even starched the surface of the whole space. B and I are already talking about taking a long hike here when the Grandparents come to visit... so Halle has someone to hang out with. I feel so lucky that we have this beautiful place so close to us here. After our little outdoor excursion, we were all ready for food so headed out to dinner. I snapped a few more photos of Halle being Halle, but had to share this rare moment...

She normally avoids kisses from her Dada because of his scratchy face, so the affection she was showing him throughout dinner just made me melt. Could not possibly love these two anymore! It was such a great weekend, and I loved getting to catch up with an old friend, as well as explore more of our new home. We have so many more adventures planned, and I can't wait to share them with you.

The Comfort Factor

While yesterday I was talking about our weekend exploring and our kitchen chairs, today I'm pulling out something completely unrelated that we have recently added to our home. For a while now we've been looking for a nice area rug to add to the living area in our rental.

Well, I'd gone back and forth a few times after checking our rugs at a number of different places. Yesterday, we finally bit the bullet and picked up a new 8x10 from Home Depot.

I loved the hits of colour it provided in our room, and also the pattern that will hopefully help hide any dirt  from Halle or the pups. It's also nice and soft, and a great place for Halle to hang out and play with her toys.

We were especially happy that we were able to use a gift card we had received for my participating in Home Depot's Match the Look contest, as well as some store credit that we had. After all was said and done, we only had to shell out just under $70 to bring this home.

I'm really liking how this place is coming together for us. Since we are a young family, it's nice to add some more fun and colourful pieces to our home. I can't wait to add some more accessories to this room and pull out more of those colours from the area rug...

I'm happy that we waited to find the right rug, and didn't make an impulse purchase when we first moved here about two months ago. This one just works perfectly and makes me so happy. It not only helps to define our living room space, but it also helps to warm it up as well. Every day this place feels more and more like our home...

Roadblock...

Well, I took yesterday off as my friend was still in town. So we enjoyed a little breakfast date with Halle, before we drove into the city for her flight back to NYC. It was so great to catch up with her and we did some sightseeing Saturday and Sunday. I planned on sharing some of our adventures today... but I can't seem to find my cord for my camera to upload our photos. I'm sure I hid it on myself really well, while I was cleaning up last week. UGH!


I will go on a real hunt today to find it, because not only do I have photos from our sight seeing to share... but of course our chairs! Yup! All painted and fabric has been picked up for the seats... hoping to get those all wrapped up today, and then to just start painting the white chairs. Things are moving along, even if a little slowly!


What fun things did you get up to over the weekend? I have so much catching up to do!

Fancy Friday Love

HAPPY FRIDAY! Another week behind us... and, wait a second... another month gone! Just like that it's June! WHOA! Well, let's kick this month off with lots of fancy finds - shall we? Oh, and I'll warn you, I finally had a chance to catch up on blog reading... so this is a looong one!


This console, found on style-ING with Children, was a welcoming sight. I'm dying to get our house pulled together and this is exactly the type of image that inspires me!

Forget decorating my next home. I want our next place to be designed by Tim Clarke, and this post on desire to inspire will make it quite clear why I feel this way...

After seeing Timothy Sue's removable wallpaper over on Simplified Bee, I totally want to use it in our rental! Could it be any more perfect for a temporary space!? In particular, I want to use the Waterways pattern in Seafoam in our bedroom...

{Uhhh, flickr did something crazy to the colours of this beautiful wallpaper - so make sure you hit up the website to see how beautiful all of the wallpaper truly is!}

If only the kitchen in our rental (or even our home), looked more like this stunner from House Beautiful (that I stumbled across on Decor de Provence)...

I think I'd like to add this sign, from Dime Store Vintage, to our breakfast nook....

I'm ready to move (again), into this incredible home in the South of France. As if the location wasn't enough to convince me, the building is actually an old mill converted into a home. Everything about it is just stunning! Check out more of it over on Verdigris Vie...

All of the blog reading I've been doing recently has me longing for a home that we can truly make our own again... not just decorate. This post on desire to inspire, featuring the work of Andrea Monath Schumacher of O Interior Design, did not help...

Dining room perfection, care of My So Called Home and HGTV Magazine. LOVE!

Well, I'll be spending the rest of today doing some last minute prep for our house guest who arrives tomorrow. It would be an understatement if I said I'm excited for her arrival. Nicole and I have been friends since high school and we don't get to see much of each other these days as she now lives in New York City (yeeeeahh... I know, I'm jealous too!). I'm looking forward to exploring Vancouver with her, and just spending time catching up! I hope you all have a fabulous weekend too! What are you doing this weekend to welcome June?

Getting Guest Ready

Aside from working on the breakfast nook, there's another project I've slowly been working on... I just haven't had much time to share it with you. 


This coming weekend, we will welcome our very first house guest to our rental. So, in order to make her feel welcome and comfortable in our new space, I'm doing what I can to spruce up our basement guest room. If you caught a glimpse of our rental tour last month, you may remember that our guest room was a giant blank slate in the basement that looked like this...

Clearly, this was not going to cut it as a guest space. So, about a week before we were to depart on our Florida trip, B and I set to work. The day we had arrived in BC we had swung by IKEA and purchased a queen size SULTAN HULTSVIK mattress for us to use until we ordered our own king size bed. We were pretty pleased with how comfortable it was, especially as we knew it would only be used as a guest bed. The price tag was a little high, but knowing we would probably have quite a few guests staying with us during our time out west, it was worth the investment in our books. 

That first weekend we had also scored a bed frame and headboard for $40 at a garage sale, and we later picked up a box spring. With all of that behind us, we were ready to get to work piecing together the room. We planned on using or queen size bedding from our room in Toronto, and I had found a cute flat sheet and matching pillowcases at Real Canadian Superstore for $4 a piece that we knew would look great with our bedding. Thankfully, we also still had our light blue queen bedskirt from our old guest bedroom that we were able to make use of. So, with all of the bedding on the room was starting to come together, but it was still a long way from feeling welcoming...

My next step was to work on our garage sale headboard. It wasn't much to get excited about when we first picked it up, but I already had plans for it...

Since I still love the fabric we had used as a headboard in our Toronto bedroom, I decided to use that as my inspiration. I brought a swatch of the fabric with me to HomeDepot, and had one of the flowers on it colour matched. We came home with a sample sized can of Behr's Amazon Moss and I set to work sanding and painting it. 

I must admit, when I first started painting it, I got a little nervous that the green just wasn't going to work in the space. I told myself I had to trust my instincts though, and move forward confidently with my design decisions. In the end, once it was all painted and put together in the basement, I was feeling pretty good about my choice...

Yes, there is still some work to be done, but it's coming together quite nicely so far. The side table was relocated from our living room where Halle had been repeatedly trying to pull herself to standing on this. Not so safe, so into the basement it went, and thankfully it works perfectly next to our guest bed. 

What do we plan to do with our hold headboard that is leaning against the wall? We're talking about hanging it on that section of wall it is leaning against - we just need to pick up the proper clips for it. Hopefully we can get it hung tonight or tomorrow before our guest arrives. We also have some hooks that I would like to add to the wall by the door for our guests to hang purses, bags, etc.

For now... lot's of cleaning and organizing left to do before our guest arrives. The work of a hostess never ends...