Mud Room Improvement

A few weeks ago, we went to Anna Mae's for lunch. In the entryway, they have a bunch of knickknacks for sale. When I saw this shelf, I thought it would be perfect for the mud room. It fit the theme and we need something with hooks. I love it! Thanks to Ian and Uncle Drew for putting it up. 

[Couple notes... It's really hard to get a good picture in a space so small! Also, the space to the right of the Algonquin Park sign is empty at the moment. There is a frame that I want to create with badges from the park. More to come...]

Dining Room Transformation

This post is 5 months late. January and February were spent enjoying the remaining Mat Leave time with Emma. March was spent with my family and celebrating Emma's birthday before heading back to work. April was the start of our illnesses, plus a trip to California. May was the worst month we've had in a really long time. June is all about getting back to normal! So yes.. this post is 5 months but.. better late than never? :) 

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For Christmas, I requested a storage solution for our board games that didn't include the entertainment center cabinets. This led to a long debate between Ian and I about our future house plans. We were allocating a gaming space in the basement.. but how far away was the renovation? Probably too far away to justify waiting on gaming storage.

We planned our house around having a dining room. Not many people have one these days.. we wanted one because my family comes to visit and we'd like to eat around a table (when we aren't going out to a restaurant!). Plus I think it's nice to have a big table handy... for me I can use it for crafting. It's helped "stage" big excursions. I can spread out around the holidays and get a bunch of wrapping done. But outside these uses, the room wasn't used often. I floated the idea of turning it into our gaming room. It can still be used as a dining/crafting/staging/wrapping room... but now we have a great space for tabletop gaming.

I'm lucky I have a brother-in-law who doesn't like outstanding projects.... Here's Drew in his jammies after he put it together. [blurry] :)

Putting it in the space.. [you can tell how late this post is just by the mini Christmas tree..]

Ian rehanging the Tree artwork. Something is slightly wrong with the left canvas.......

Here it is filled with games. We have added many more to our collection... but still need to keep some of the bottom rows empty due to DestructoBot-5000.

Finally, a view of the whole room - best view I could get. Since this picture was taken, Ian and my brother-in-law added a plug to put a TV above the shelving unit. This way I can easily put on music or a football game while we play.... or dwarven mining music if we're playing Rockwell... :)

I'm posting this now... because this weekend is our first BOARDGAME WEEKEND EXTRAVAGANZA that we've had in a really long time. :D

Entertainment Center Redo

Emma's naps are unpredictable. Sometimes it's 20 minutes... or 4 hours. Today was a 4 hour one. When it hits a certain point I don't really know what to do with myself. I randomly decided to reorganize the entertainment center. I don't have a before picture but here is the result. (bad lighting and fuzzy pictures, sorry)

 

Fun fact: the middle shelf contains our wedding vases. It took me almost 3 years to finish them but I finally did! They are filled with dirt from "The Dirt" (the mound of dirt that came from our basement being dug out when we built) and turned into votive holders.

 

 

Emma gets a shelf. Some contents are temporary...

 

 

 

I added some mantle stuff... I'm on the fence if I like it or not. I wanted a way to display these photos without buying a billion frames or a big collage frame AND be able to change the pictures out quickly. Thoughts?

 

 

 

Ready For Baby

The nursery is... I'm not so sure if I am! :]

More chalkboard prints... Coldplay and Wizard of Oz song lyrics.

I love how it turned out... Like I said, it's more for me than the baby. I'm happy it's done!

Finishing Projects

In addition to wrapping up the nursery, I'm slowly finishing projects that I had laying around the house. I had created this print for the kitchen (almost exactly a year ago - weird). It ended up too small for the space and not exactly what I wanted. I stumbled upon a print shop on Etsy called The Print Annex and found some chalkboard prints I fell in love with. The digital download cost roughly $5 CAD and it was $1.50 to print at Staples on nice thick paper. I had the frame lying around here and thought it would fit in the kitchen. I really like how it turned out. 

Bathroom Shelves

When we had the house built, I went to Pottery Barn and got some design tips for a lot of the rooms. It was super helpful because it gave me some sort of direction with the blank canvas. The ensuite is one of the most complete rooms. We went to Target and found one element - white shelves for over the bath tub. I'm still looking for knick knacky things to put on them but I want to keep it clean looking. Thanks to Ian "The Tool Man" Matheson for putting them up. :)

I tried to pan back so you can get an idea of how they look in the room... but the blinding light from the window didn't help. 

DO ALL THE THINGS

Let's face the facts. There is no football. Ians get bored when there is no football or non-spring training baseball. We live in a house that is mostly a blank canvas. At some point an Ian will wake up in the middle of winter and say... "we must DO ALL THE THINGS". 

It is the job of a Brittany to just let it happen. That is exactly what I did! Ian woke up last Sunday and decided it was the day he was going to do every project ever. He put up curtain rods, hung the drapes, drilled holes in the entertainment center and planned out future projects. He was busy most of the day... and for a majority of the time I just walked behind him cleaning up. The following pictures are the results. On a side note, trying to take pictures of windows in the winter is hard as hell. The blinding snow confused my little point and shoot. I can't wait to get a real camera that can handle such shots!

We put up the same rod and drapes in the living room and dinette. We started to switch out the lampshades for the Ikea ones... just to add a little pattern to the room.

The dining room turned out very nice. It was really hard to imagine drapes in any of the rooms but the dining room actually looks finished! It's not and needs about 3k in decor... but that's besides the point! :) 

Again, photographing the windows was really hard... lights on? lights off? day? night? Here's the dining room with the lights on. It's so pretty!

While he had the drill out, he made the holes in the entertainment center - one for the digital picture frame and remote control charging base and then a couple air holes for the side that heats up when the doors are closed. Big thanks to Ian "The Tool Man" Matheson. He said he has a lot of "project inertia". It takes him awhile to get off the ground but once he gets going there's no stopping him. Personally, I can't wait for spring... and crazy project Ian. :)

Christmas Subway Art

A trendy thing to do in home decorating is something called "Subway Art". Google it for examples. It's simply a canvas or framed print of words usually with a theme. It's cheap and easy artwork for your house. I decided to whip up something for Christmas. It's my first stab at it.. but I think it turned out pretty good. (Minus the fact that I had to go in order for the Reindeer and Rudolph's R makes the E in Comet look weird - I'm being nit-picky)  I'll print it out and put it in a black frame on the entertainment center. Simple and easy!