Shut the Front Door!

Another project motivated by Mom when she was visiting - painting the front and side doors!  I went with black, although I was thinking about doing mustard yellow. I figured in the end that a glossy black would look perfect with the new mailbox and house numbers (as well as the old porch light fixture and the plant pots I have out there).  I love it.  It took 4 coats of paint and lots of touching up to get it to this point!  (after picture was taken while the paint was still drying hence the green tape on the door handles). 

Colour used:  CIL exterior paint - Dark Secret.

Before - bright white door!

During - yikes, I was a bit afraid...

After - looks great! 

Can't wait to hang some kind of festive wreath on this door.  Totally wanted to do that crayon wreath that I saw on Pinterest, however with the black door and the direct sunlight all day, I'd have melted crayon all over my front door...

Pinterest Challenge 2011!

What a great idea!  I am in love with Pinterest, and as many others do I've pinned soooo many fun ideas.  Problem is, I never follow through and actually try to recreate the beautiful things I see.  Well I was so happy to hear that I am not the only one!  Over at one of my fave blogs http://www.younghouselove.com/ the Pinterest Challenge was posted, and I was ready to take it on! 

My husband and I bought this really cool vintage sofa frame from a garage sale a few months ago and kept putting off making the pillows and cushions for it...until this weekend!

Lucky for me, my Mom was in town visiting (she's a sewing pro) so we decided to take on the challenge together. 

Here is my inspiration from Pinterest (via my other fave blog Decor8!):

I really like how the pillows can change, and with some new colours you could have a new look.  So that's what we decided to do.  Here is our lovely sofa frame before we got started:

And here is our during shot...foam cut, pillows purchased...

And finally, the finished product thanks to Mom!  She's so talented and can sew anything :)

And here's another look with some other pillows - I have to keep playing with it to get it just right.

Thanks for inspiring us Pinterest (and thanks for kicking our butts into gear Younghouselove!)

New House!

It's pretty much official - we've purchased a new home and can't wait to move in!  Pictures from the real estate site are below. Very excited to start decorating again!  Before I get into more details about the new place, as a last farewell to our current place, I FINALLY entered the Small Cool Contest at Apartment Therapy.  I've been meaning to do that for many years, and with the real estate pictures on hand I figured why not now?  Vote for me HERE if you're up for it! 

When my husband and I began our house hunt late last year, we wanted our dream home to be an old bungalow in a great area that was flipped (since we are NOT handy at all). That's exactly what we found.  It's a 3 bedroom, 3 bathroom house, with a finished basement. 

I learned from the real estate agents that a group of four guys did this flip, and carried out the work from Oct. 2010 until it went up for sale in Mar. 2011.  They did an amazing job.  My agent was able to provide me with the original listing from back in Oct. 2010 which had pictures - a great way to show a before and after!  Remember - we didn't do this work - someone else did!  All we have to do now is give this house some love from the outside, move in and decorate.  We are really lucky we found what we were looking for!

BEFORE (pictures from original home listing in Oct. 2010)

AFTER (pictures of the house after flipped and up for sale in Mar. 2011)

Time for Change

I started this blog in order to document my adventures in designing and setting up my first home. Unfortunately life got in the way and I kept on decorating and stopped blogging. Tisk tisk!

Well it's been about 4 years since I moved into my home and started this blog and now I am (or we are) packing up and getting ready to sell! During that time I got married and took in a "roommate" aka my husband. We've made our 1-bedroom condo work well for us and are accustomed to the idea of small space living, but it's time for something new.

I am so excited to start house hunting and decorating all over again, but I am also sad to say goodbye to my little home. One neat thing about selling is that now I have some snazzy professional pictures to share of my finished product!

I will continue to update the blog as our home search continues, in the mean time scroll down and compare the before (all the way at the bottom) and after shots. I added a couple of wedding pics too!

We've come a long way in 4 years!

Henna Ceremony - Jan. 2, 2010

Wedding Day (Dominican Republic) - Jan. 9, 2010

Toronto Reception - Jan. 23, 2010

Pictures of the "finished product"

Spring is here!

I can't believe I've let my blog sit here for so long with no updates! 2008 was a busy year filled with travel, adventures and me getting engaged! 2009 so far has been filled with wedding planning :) More updates on my Baj Mahal to come soon now that spring is here. New plants for the balcony and who knows, maybe a new sofa? Anything is possible. Stay tuned! In the mean time, here is what the living room looks like these days...a new sofa would be great! AND further down are a couple of pictures after I rearranged the living room a bit. It only lasted a day though! I moved everything back later that night :)

It's been much too long!

I have made an appointment with myself to sit down this weekend and update this blog with all the great things that have been going on over the past few months! Spring is here, the pigeon wench is back, I will start up the balcony garden again - things are great! Stay tuned for more...

The Party!

Well the housewarming was a success and I am sure there will be many more as I'd like to have one that my family can attend at some point soon (hint hint people - make a trip to Ottawa before the summer is over!)

Thanks to everyone for coming out and celebrating with me! Enjoy the pictures :)

Art in the living room

Finally my prints arrived from Yellena in Oregon! She has a great page on etsy.com. I am in love with this print, which is called "birthday". Funny since I also love birthdays (especially my own).

This is the original print - I asked Yellena if she could possibly alter it to fit in these frames I purchased which were thin and tall. She said no problem and came up with the idea of splitting the picture into two!

Here is the final result in my living room...

I am very happy with it!

My housewarming party is this weekend and I am looking forward to it!

Wall decals and chandelier

Finally after months of trying to figure out what I wanted and where I wanted to place the decals I made the orders and this weekend Sheraz and I went to work doing the installations! We even did some light electrical work - note the chandelier in the bedroom - that was not easy to do!



It was great working with my little brother this weekend - I never realized how patient and hard working he is! He is also very good at complicated tasks! Maybe that's why he's so smart? No, no who am I kidding - he is smart because of me.

I am still waiting for some of my other art to arrive in the mail so stay tuned!

I got the idea to do these decals from a Belgian company called "ApplePie Design". They've got a lot of beautiful decals to choose from and some really unique ideas. I was ready to purchase from them but was lucky enough to come across a local company doing something very similar. They are called "Wall Juice" and are located here in Ottawa. They've got a great catalogue and are more than happy to put together custom designs. I am very happy with my purchase!

This is the bedroom:



And this is the living room - the quote is from my favourite book The Alchemist and reads: "It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting - Paulo Coelho"

Ahhh Summer!

It is officially summer here in Ottawa - the weather is HOT. I am not complaining because HOT is better than COLD i.e. -40 degrees Celsius. Ick.

I am working hard at putting the final touches on the place as I get ready for my housewarming party which will take place over the Civic Day long weekend!

I am looking for art. And I found some that I love. Here are pictures of areas where I want art to exist...ignore the baron cold walls and imagine beautiful prints appearing there soon!

Here are some prints I hope to get soon (the first two are by Yellena, and the last by BirdNerd - you can find out more about these prints and artists at http://www.etsy.com/)