Beach glass

Yesterday we headed to Locarno beach in Vancouver and collected some beach glass and driftwood. For our post-nap craft we glue gunned the soft pieces of glass onto the cedar. It is now sitting on a plate stand on a shelf in Grandpa's office. Perfect...except for when my daughter's fingers got caught in the hot glue.

Good from far, but far from good

For my daughter's birthday party we have rented a multipurpose room at the park clubhouse near our house. It's a great facility, but lacks personality. Last night I whipped up this simple construction paper bunting to add a bit of colour to the room. I think it will go well with our 'sports' theme. I have no patience, so the flags are not all the same size and many of the edges are jagged....I'll just have to hang it extra high so no one notices!

Cards from the heart

For occassions like Mother's Day, I have my daughter make cards. I buy blank cards at Michaels or Staples, and we personalize them for birthdays, Christmas, or whatever the occassion may be. This way I am never scrambling for a card at the last minute! Who doesn't like receiving a homemade card decorated with colourful scribbles, right??

Preserving perfect moments in time

Every day the weather is getting nicer and the kids are getting a bit more independant. My job as their Mom feels easier. Freezies, bubbles, and sidewalk chalk are all we seem to need in the summer. Bliss.

This afternoon we wandered out for a coffee and ended up perusing the toy store. I was feeling particularly nostalgic, so I picked up some blocks of colourful clay to preserve the little hands and feet that keep me company all day.

These ornaments will be finished off with some brightly coloured ribbon from Mokuba and will adorn doors in our house, always reminding me of my little munchkins.

PS: The clay I bought is called Sculpey and is similar to one I had as a kid called FIMO. It bakes in the oven in 15 mins. Easy peasy. These make cheap and cheerful Christmas ornaments - great gifts for Grandparents!

Looking for a little South Beach in my life

My friend Erin is heading to South Beach tomorrow, (jealous!!!!) and it has me pining for some hot weather and chilly pastel coloured drinks.

Instead, I found this bright planter at Moss on the Danforth, which has sort of a dip dyed look, and I filled it with a cheery miniature palm tree from Ikea. Ikea is my secret source for inexpensive house plants....$12.99 for the palm which I've seen for $19.99 elsewhere. DEAL! That's $7 saved for the trip fund!

The planter coordinates with the pillows I sewed last week, blogged about here.

Seeing the world through rose coloured glass

We are having some friends for dinner tonight, so my daughter and I decided to do something a little different on the table.

We started with PC stemless champagne glasses (as an aside these are one of my favourite products- super cheap, super fun, and they fit in the dishwasher!!! Cheers to that!), filled each one with warm water and a drop of red food colouring, and a perfect tulip bloom from our local fruit market.

I am not sure I looooove it, but my daughter had a ball swirling the colour through the water!

1, 2, 3, 4...

...tell me that you love me more...isn't that Feist song addictive?

After sewing the new pillows for my living room (blogged about here), I was left with a little bit of left over fabric...just enough to make 4 little bean bags that will fit perfectly in a toddler's hand.

Currently my husband and daughter play soccer in the living room; I'm hoping they'll take to tossing these babies instead...not that these can't do damage, but at least there is a lower risk of rebounds smashing my lamps. ...and they match the decor, to boot! (my husband accuses me of sucking the fun out of childhood with such comments, but I can't help it!)

PS: I used beautiful dried white navy beans inside...they look like little perfect little pearls and are just the right size to make a delicate feeling bean bag....not dense or heavy. ...am I seriously writing about bean bags in such detail? Ohhh mat leave, what have you done to my brain?

Botox for my antiques

We inherited a lovely antique dining room set from my Grandparents when we moved into our house a few years ago. While I love the suite, it was feeling a bit 'stuffy' for a young family. I lusted for something a bit younger and hipper, but I didn't have the heart to get rid of this set or to put it under the proverbial knife! It just needed a little pick me up, as we all do from time to time!
In the end I decided to update it with new hardware from Lee Valley Hardware. If you have never visited a Lee Valley store, it is well worth the trip. They have everything from microplanes to fruit fly catchers to very intense wood working tools (think Pinnochio!!).
I looked around a number of different sources for new hardware. Lee Valley had the best selection at the most reasonable prices. Big box stores were suprisingly expensive for not great quality; Restoration Hardware had beautiful pieces at about 3X the price. Lee Valley was just perfect, and located on the TTC to boot!!

PS: I have moved my mercury glass lamps from the living room to the buffet as my baby becomes increasingly grabby and mobile!...I think I like them here!

New ring pulls

Original fixtures

Start the car!

I was perusing the "Finds" section of Sarah Richardson's website yesterday, and noticed her post about this graphic linen Kravet fabric, listed at $122.80 a yard. It reminded me that I had bought a remnant of this same fabric at Designer Fabrics on Queen West in Toronto for $5! START THE CAR!! (This is a quote from an Ikea commercial (view here) that my family frequently references when we get a killer deal....as in "I got this shirt for 60% off. Start the car!").

Anyways, I had totally forgotten about this fabric, as I bought it mere days before my now 7 month old was born while I was in the depths of crazed nesting...and then my baby was born and I forgot everything that had happened before that point in time.

Seeing the fabric again inspired me to make two cushions for our living room couch on Sunday night, piped and backed with a matching turquoise velvet. I rearanged the living room furniture this weekend and the new cushions finish off the new configuration and add a nice punch of colour!

Did you do anything fun around the house this weekend? Any START THE CAR moments?

Goodnight Moon, Goodnight room!

This weekend we finally got around to putting the final pictures up in my 2.5 year old daugther's room. I have blogged previously (here) about my love of graphic posters and how I go about framing them. The posters for my daugther's room came from the Vancouver 2010 Olympics - they are sentimental because we brought her to the Olympics when she was only 8 months old.

The room is not perfect:

...the wall colour is not quite what I wanted

...the pictures are too high thanks to the preexisting chair rail,

...I really don't love the mirrored doors I chose for the closets that we built

...and I'm sure a designer would have a seizure when they saw the amount of colour I've packed into this room

...but it was a labour of love and we did all the work ourselves. Most importantly, my daughter loves her room and sleeps soundly and peacefully. ....what more can you ask for!?

Here are a few before pictures!

Hosting a birthday party 101

My daughter is turning 3 in June, and I have decided that this year I will finally host a little birthday party for her. I know I am probably getting started a bit early, but I have no idea what is required for kids' parties, so I am trying to make sure I don't miss a step!!

I haven't made many decisions yet, other than that I am going with a sports theme and am going to use a lot of red. I have rented the Clubhouse at Withrow Park, and the folks from Sportball are going to come and do some sporting activities with the kids.

For our invitations, I checked out lots of amazing ideas online (including this one and this one from Jen at Rambling Renovators), but I decided that something this elaborate was just not in the cards this year. Instead I designed the e-invitation below. It was easy - I just used auto shapes in Powerpoint, saved it as a Jpeg, and emailed it out to Izzy's friends (well actually to their parents)

What ideas do you have? What are the cool things to put in 3 year olds' loot bags these days?

A Jackson Pollock for Grandma and Grandpa

I have been away from the blog for a few days now, and it feels like forever! My husband has been away for work (in Vegas...don't have pitty!!) and yesterday I travelled out to Vancouver alone with my two kids to visit with my parents. Trying to pack two kids for a five hour flight that left at 8am without my partner in crime around was no small feat! I am running on minimal sleep, needless to say.

In advance of our trip to Vancouver, my daughter made a piece of art for each of Grandma and Grandpa. I started with a wooden block 'canvas', which I purchased for under $5 each at Deserres. The beauty of these is that because they are made of wood, they stand on their own and do not need to be framed or hung on the wall, but are more formal and permanent than a drawing on a tattered piece of paper. They are perfect for a ledge, shelf, or table vignette.

I started by applying gesso (an artist's primer; this is not necessary. You could instead just use white paint, or you could just paint/colour directly on the wood. I just wanted a white background) to each block. Once it was dry, my plan was to have my daughter paint each block with coloured acrylic paints....but I just couldn't muster the energy for the prep and clean up. So instead, I just handed my daughter crayons with which to create her masterpiece.

I don't think she is ready for a gallery showing yet, but nonetheless Grandma and Grandpa were very touched to have special pieces of 'art'.

Gallery wall

My vision for the art work that I gave my husband for Valentine's Day (blogged about here) was that it would be one of the central pieces of a gallery wall in our bedroom. I have long admired gallery walls with a mish mash of art and photos that all somehow work together, but I've always been too timid to try.

Instead I have typically gone for simple and balanced repititon, as in these photos:

In the nursery



In the living room



In the nursery



In the office


But I figured that the wall along this cosy reading nook at the back end of our bedroom would be the perfect place to take the plunge with a gallery wall of family photos.

I have my first pieces all ready to hang....I think we're going to do it on Monday...Family day! I'll let you know how it goes...in the meantime let me know if you think my plan has any fatal flaws!

Poster panache

 

There is something about posters that bring me back to my university years. At the beginning of every year my roommates and I would go to the poster sale on campus, pick up a few new pieces for our apartment, and proudly put them up on our walls with tacks.

I feel like my taste has matured at least a little bit since then, but I still have a soft spot for posters. My husband and I bought a vintage CP Hotels poster in Quebec City while we were there for our 'babymoon' a few years ago, and we bought two really vivid posters from the Vancouver Olympics in 2010. I am sentimental about all of these posters as they remind me of special times in our lives.

I framed the Olympic posters a few months ago (they are going up this weekend in my daughter's room, finally!) and I am in the midst of framing the Quebec City one now.

For all of them, I am using Ikea Ribba frames, which are nice and cheap. My only warning with the Ribba frames is that they are often sloppily sized, so even if you measure impecibly, they can look a little asymetrical and unbalanced if you are doing a gallery wall. I hung 2 pictures in our office and couldn't figure out why they didn't look even....turns out the frames are a quarter of an inch different in height.

My biggest tip for framing posters is to go to your local frame store and get them to mount the poster on foam core. This is inexpensive, and ensures that the poster lies flat against the glass even if it's been rolled for years. You may also have to get custom mats cut if your poster is an odd size (which mine appears to be).

I will upload some photos once the posters are up on the wall! It makes me want to go buy a Breakfast Club movie poster for my dining room and put it up with tacks!

Burning love for the Bulk Barn

This morning my daughter and I headed down to the Loblaws at Lakeshore and Leslie, which has a Bulk Barn. Normally I am skeptical about Bulk Barn prices, but at the moment Steel Cut Oats are on sale (see my previous posts on Steel Cuts here and here) for $0.20/100g, compared to $0.42 for their PC Blue Menu cousins. I'm pretty sure this is a good deal, but I digress.

The real reason we wanted to go to the Bulk Barn today was to fetch some Valentine's treats for Izzy's friends. Bulk Barn conveniently also sells a variety of little celo bags which serve as perfect vessels for treats (the bags are $0.34 to $044 each)!

This was an easy activity for a snowy morning. Putting the celo bags in the little Ikea cups (blogged about here...I told you I use them for everything!!) made it easier for my daughter to fill the bags. Still, a lot of cinnamon hearts ended up on the floor and in our mouths, but I guess this is par for the course with a 2 year old!

More Valentine's activities to come!

Mirror mirror on the wall, am I the biggest disaster of them all?

Do you ever start projects that you think will be quick and easy that turn into total disasters? I accuse my husband of this all the time, but it turns out this time I'm the guilty party. That's right. I'm admitting that I'm wrong. Mark down the date and time because it doesn't happen often.

I started with a mirror from Home Sense that I hung in my front hall. The frame was a bronzy colour, which I was fond enough of until my sister pointed out that much of my house is beige. In face she said 'you have a very beige life'. This made me upset, as I like to think of myself as a colourful person.

But I knew in part she was right. I often make conservative decor choices, even though it's not what a gravitate to in magazines. So I took action. I got a new runner for the front hall that has a lovely bricky/orangey/rusty/peachy colour to it. I saw this post on Lindsay Stephenson's blog and was inspired to spray paint the mirror a punchy colour to match. Easy peasy, right?

I dutifully taped the pieces of mirror so no paint would get on them. This was the first unexpected hurdle, as the pieces of glass are all very angular and difficult to cover with the tape. This probably took 2 hours.

Next, I headed to Canadian Tire to buy some spray paint. They would not let me sample the spray paint and their colours were somewhat limited, so I made my decision based on the little colour contact sheet. Risky, I know. The colour I chose was called poppy. I told myself that the name sounded reddy/orangey/pinky, so it would work out fine.

I came home and spray painted the mirror on my front lawn. Two problems. 1) I spray painted my tree and my grass by mistake and now my front lawn looks like it's covered in graffiti...so much for curb appeal 2) Poppy is decidedly pink. Argh.

A few weeks pass...the mirror sits in my hallway covered in green tape and pink paint

I decide that all is not lost. I pulled out my set of acrylic paints and tried to mix the colour I want and just hand paint the mirror. The colour is not bad, but now the paint looks goopy and matte, not the glossy look I was hoping for.

Yesterday I started peeling off the tape. Much of it is stuck under the frame thanks to gobs of paint, and somehow I still managed to get paint on the mirror itself.

I am going to continue trying to rescue this poor mirror, but I'm not very hopeful.

Keep your fingers crossed for me...