Readers Choice

So on our Facebook page a few weeks ago, we put up a poll asking you what you thought we should change about our guest room. We wanted to change it up...it just didn't feel finished and we weren't totally happy with it, so we thought we'd ask you, our lovely readers what YOU thought we should change!

30% of you who voted, wanted us to paint our shutter headboard....so we did!

I decided I would test out my choice paint method (white washing) on a sample first. Thankfully, when we cut the shutters down to put up on the wall, I kept the scrap pieces and those worked perfectly as testers.

I grabbed my paint, water and a brush and went to town.

After about 20 minutes I had this:





I put it up against a wall in the guest room to see how the paint finish looked with the walls, and was pretty happy. Then I put the sample up on the bed to see how it looked with the bed fabrics and pillows, etc:





While I loved the look of the shutters with the blue, white and cream pillows, and my curtains, I wasn't crazy about the red. Soooo...goodbye red pillows (maybe I'll use them elsewhere, but they're not jamming with the room vibe anymore). I took away the red pillows to see what it would look like with the blues and whites:





Much better. Now I just need more blue tones in any additional pillows and accessories. Honestly, I've determined those are just my colours. Every time I try to decorate with colours other than my favorites (whites, blues, greens, grey's) I really struggle with a room. I read in a magazine once, a story about a decorator who did her whole house in black and white. Every time friends or family came over they would try and tell her to inject colour or change it up, and when she did she was never happy. So she finally did every room just the way she wanted and she absolutely loves her home. She said something like "to others it may feel cold, but to me I LOVE it". That has really stayed with me. To anyone who has seen our home, every room we have done, has been in white, blues or greys, with touches of turquoise and green, and we LOVE those rooms. So stick with what you love, and what makes YOU happy. You the one living there so YOU need to like it!

So I ripped the room apart,and while Ian worked on painting our pool house (eeee....another room to decorate! Sort of...if you count a 10x6 sized space a room? I've decided on a navy/white nautical theme...for the inside. Really there's not going to be much decorating-I think Ian just wanted to humour me when he said yes, but he's agreed to let me add navy accents to the inside where-ever we can), I worked on painting the shutters.

This is how far 3 hours got me:




Yes, that is all. It was hot on Sunday people! That, and white washing shutters that soak up paint like a dry sponge, takes forever. My plan is to finish them this week and then get started on the next project for this room. I'll be blogging about how I painted the shutters once they're done.

So, we need your help again! What do you think we should do next? The poll below is open for 1 week, so let us know what you think! He're another quick shot of the guest room to remind you of the before!






Vote and let us know! Can't wait to see what you all think!

Backyard renovations

Our backyard needed a makeover. Not a simple makeover involving paint and decor and curtains- a complete overhaul. Our goal is eventually be able to sit and enjoy our space...a peaceful space like this beautiful backyard by Centsational Girl:





But we're not there quite yet.

Here's a sneak peak at what we've been up to with this backyard:

It might not look like much from that photo, but we actually had to rip out the entire deck and start fresh. Our original goal, was to make the backyard into a big square (instead of the odd shape it was before), so we could add a railing around the deck (which would help in the future for safety issues with the pool). So adding a railing around the deck was our way to solve the safety issue.

We initially thought we could just replace some of the boards on the deck (the longer and shorter ones) and just fill them in with new boards cut to the right size, forming a square. Then we would pressure wash the deck and paint it all over next year. Not so simple. The new boards are full of moisture and wider than the old boards, so they didn't fit into the spaces, and we ended up with this:




Hmmmm. We weren't liking the patchy effect and we couldn't fit the new boards in those open spaces. So we ripped it all out and started fresh.
After a week of hard work, lots of help from family (you rock dad!) and friends, our deck is coming along nicely:





I have to be honest...this deck hasn't exactly been a project I can claim credit for. This was one for the boys. However, I've been a busy little bee inside the house working away on my own projects...more to come with those later.

For now, I'm going to go enjoy a lemonade on my deck boards :)

Happy Canada Day Everyone!

Guest post from Burlap and Lace!

Today I'm super excited to have a guest post from my blogging BFF Shannon over at Burlap and Lace! She's insanely creative and has done so many incredible things to her home. Thanks so much Shannon for guest posting today!

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Thanks Melissa! I'm super excited to be posting here today!


I wanted to share with you some of the updates going on in the house right now, particularly in the dining room. Since I last posted about our dining room, we have installed laminate flooring, and made a few other minor changes!


This is what my dining room looked like BEFORE:



and (semi) AFTER, when I thought I was finished:


[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="640" caption="View the full post for the story behind this dining room reveal!"]

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But now, just to keep you in the loop (and to keep myself in check!), I will be posting about the
endless small list of things that we still need to do in this space. Here is the dining room NOW:



We installed the flooring, but we still need to install quarter round in this room. Remember the great deal for the area rug? Well, we bought a larger jute rug for the living room, and moved this one in here. I like it much better in this space.




I'm keeping the mis-matched china for now, because I'm still diggin'it.





Nothing screams "SPRIIIIING!" more to me than feminine flowers and milk glass (and yes, that is exactly how I hear it in my head).









Remember this lamp makeover from waaaay back when?! I moved it down here from the guest bedroom. I'd still like to find two matching lamps to flank each side of the buffet.



Can't go wrong with a stack of books and a bird!





The DIY tissue paper flowers made their way back into the dining room. Those suckers get around, if you know what I'm sayin'...







My DIY painting is also staying in the room...for now ;)





I also bought some cabinet hardware at Hobby Lobby when it was 50% off. I believe these knobs ended up being $1.50 a piece, and I like them much more than the original ones.



I also added some chandelier crystals on a whim (about three months ago) and haven't taken them down since. They need to be tied with clear thread, but I'm still not sure what I think about them. My plan is to add enough paint and other crap to this builder's grade brass chandelier until my husband gets sick of it and buys me a new one (I can haz?)



DINING ROOM TO-DO LIST:

• install floor
• buy new area rug
• refinish table
• find buffet
• refinish buffet
• paint
• install chair rail
• reupholster chairs
• hang plate wall
• hang picture molding under chair rail
• frame out window with molding
• install quarter round
• find new curtains (gray/ patterned?)
• new chandelier
• arm chairs for table
• art for both sides of window
• two new lamps
• and much, much more, I'm sure...

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Thanks again Shannon, you've done an amazing job! If you want to check out more of what Shannon's done (which of COURSE you do!), go check out her blog at Burlap and Lace!

Shine a little light...

Lighting is one of my favorite things to shop for. Seriously, when it comes to home decor, Im a big fan of lighting. Mainly because there are so many options out there and lighting can seriously change the look of a room.

It might also be because the lighting in this house was terrible when we moved in. Every single light fixture had a bulb burnt out. Every single one (we checked). Thats got be a record or something.

There are still many fixtures we want to change, but so far we've done about 6 main ones...not bad. Recently my mother in law mentioned to me that all of our fixtures were very 'sparkly'. I hadn't actually thought about it, but she's right....every single one is 'sparkly'. I now feel that someone needs to stop me from buying sparkly fixtures....oddly enough, Ian doesn't seem to mind or even care. Huh.

Anyho, this is my last sparkly fixture for a while. I swear.
Dont judge the sparkly fixture lady!

So our master bedroom has a hallway to leads into our bathroom and into our closets. It had a bulb hanging from the ceiling when we moved in (have I proved my point about bad lighting now?)

I wanted to change it out, but we didn't want to spend a lot of money on a light for this little hallway.

Months ago, my parents we renovating one of their properties, and had removed the old fixtures. I remember walking in to see what they had done, and spotting 2 old chandeliers. My parents graciously let me have them (Ian wasn't crazy about the idea at first...), but I could see their potential. Problem was, they were covered in nicotine from the previous owner (who was a heavy smoker). Ewww (now you can see why no one else wanted them).

I brought them home, took them apart and let all of the crystals soak in soapy water for a full day. After a few days of cleaning and preping, the chandeliers looked ammmmazing! The first one had to be rewired and Im saving it for another room in our home :) The second one was perfect for our hallway...perfect and FREE!

Putting up this fixture was another story...

The hallway began looking like this:

and after 2 evenings, 1 very frustrated husband and a few words that are too inappropriate to type, we ended up with this:

A close up of the sparkle sparkle....

and it even looks pretty with the lights off:

Do you see the ring around the top of the light? That was originally gold, but I used silver leaf paint, to paint it silver. Turned out pretty well. I got the paint from Michael's, and you dont need much at all to cover a surface- I barely used anything in the small jar to cover the entire ring (inside and out).

At night it casts a really neat shadow on the walls too:

I think it adds a bit of vintage flair to the room, and of course more "sparkle, sparkle". He he.

I love it. Funny thing, how often did I previously turn this light on for use? Barely ever. How often do I turn it on now? Every day. lol

As I said before, lighting really makes a difference!

We're at it again....Bathroom #3!

Sooo...you might be thinking, how are they STILL renovating bathrooms? Have they not already done two?

Yes, yes we have.

But quite honestly, we just love renovating bathrooms SOOO much that we decided to do this one for fun. Did you even sort of fall for that? Didn't think so. The main floor powder room is the one bathroom that probably bothers me the most. Not because it was the worst of the 3 (it was probably in the best shape), but because its not only us that uses it, which means we can't hide it from the world.

So whenever we have guests and they need to use the washroom, I cringe at the thought of them walking in there and thinking...wow, Ive just stepped back into 1990.

For starters there is no towel rod or paper towel holder. You'd think we could get our butts in gear and put something up, but we figured this would force us to complete this bathroom sooner. Not-so-much. Secondly, the toilet is bad. Like seat falling off, and its just not a good scene. Lastly, the fixtures are gold/silver and rust. Not as in 'rust the colour', rust as in 'super-old-and-not-in-good-condition-rust-falling-off' rust. For those of you who've used this bathroom you're probably thinking its not "that" bad, but I know a few of you out there who are probably relieved to know that those were not our decor choices. NOT our decor choices :D

So over the past while, Ive been collecting "pinspiration" sources of powder rooms that have inspired us. We're starting to think about ideas and here's what we're liking so far (all photo's are courtesy of Pinterest and can be found on our board here):

Mirrored pieces:

source

Pastels... (Im a BIT obessessed with anything mint green right now- and always):

source

Wallpaper:

source

Touches of gold:

source

Rustic and warm:

source

Vintage touches:

source

Coloured vanities:

source

Truly in a small space or powder room, I think you can break the rules a bit. Feel free to use colour, wallpaper (as there's no tub or shower to we don't need to worry about moisture issues) and fun accents.

As you can see from the pictures, our thoughts are still all over the place. We're still working on a tight budget here, so we'll definitely be doing this space on the cheap as well. Hopefully we can come up with some creative ideas for this one ;)


What would you do in a powder room? Have any of you wallpapered, used fun colours or tiles in a small space like this?

Mirror, mirror on the wall...

Last time I posted about our vanity, the mirror was sitting on the vanity top and it wasn't completely finished yet. So I finally got my act together and finished it up.

That's right people, the mirror's actually up on the wall now. I convinced Ian to use a hammer and put a nail up....only because I know he'd kill me if I tried to do it myself. That, and I'd probably miss and put a massive hole in the wall that Clover could fit through....so the only solution was to bribe Ian to do it for me.
Food usually works for that.

Anyho, got the nail up, put the mirror up and presto- mirror on the wall!

I also added this cute little lamp from HomeSense:

It was on clearance and the colour was perfect. Only problem? I brought it home and it didn't work. Switched to a new bulb...still didn't work. Boo.

So I went to return it at a different store, and found another lamp exactly the same...also on clearance. This one better work! Brought it home, flipped the switch and ta-da! Worked perfectly!

Not only now do I have a mirror up on the wall, but a light so I can actually see what Im doing at night. SO much better for everyone involved here....

So there you have it! A finished project which only means we're one step closer to our master bedroom reveal.

For those of you who dont follow us on Facebook or Twitter (and why not I might like to add?! Join in the party!)- I often share sneak peeks of what we're up to on our Facebook page before I post about it. Think of it like a VIP club, where you get special privileges and cool stuff. Although ours is free and right now the bonus' are pretty limited...but again, isn't it cool to be a VIP? I like to think so.

So here's another small peek that I posted on Facebook this week, of our *almost* complete master bedroom...

Whatcha think?!
Thats all for now...I'm off to finish up that room people!

Friday Feature

Who doesn't love Fridays? Its my awesome item for today. Just the fact that today is Friday rocks.

For those of you who dont follow us on Facebook, hop over and check out our page here. Lots of fun stuff happening over there :)

One of the announcements I made a while back, was that I was going to try and list one "awesome item" every day. For those of you who have read "The Book of Awesome" by Neil Pasricha, you'll know what Im talking about. For those who haven't I highly recommend it. Neil came to do a speech at a staff conference we had at work and he totally inspired me. So, thats when I started my own "awesome item a day" tally:

Monday- finished the 3rd book in the Hunger Games series and actually went to bed before 1:30am- awesome.

Tuesday- new sheets fesh out of the dryer, on the bed- awesome.

Wednesday- did not get attacked by the goose standing beside my car- awesome.

Yesterday I found a granola bar in my purse when I was about ready to eat 18 tic tacs to fend off my hunger- awesome.

Today is Friday- awesome.

Small pleasures people. Small pleasures.

Next week we are going to have some exciting changes happening to the blog and I can't wait to share with all of you (also awesome!)

Until then, I wanted to share something we are going to start doing on Friday's on the blog. I often feel that when you read someone blog you think, wow, is this real? These people always seem so happy and smiley and their world looks perfect. Well, lets be honest, at least in our world thats not always the case!

We save up for weeks to buy things and get everything on sale. Most of the time we are scrounging around in our kitchen to make meals (hmmmm grilled cheese on rice crackers and an old can of soup sounds delicious!) and spend hours working on every project we post- many of which don't always turn out as planned..."Ian why is this paint bubbling?"

So, in the spirit of "keeping it real" we're going to dedicate this Friday post to just that. Keeping in real.

Other than decor, I have a love for fashion and finding deals. These will just be some of the things we post about on Fridays. The best part? Everything we post about will be things that most anyone can do, try or buy.

A key piece to living beautifully (for us) is doing that on a budget. We hope this will let you all see that we struggle through situations like everyone else and things aren't always perfect.

So for today, I wanted to share something I thought was super awesome....

She really is the best :)

Did you note the big white painted square on our wall in the video? Yep, thats where the previous owners had installed a cat passageway. So after filling the hole, we haven't gotten around to painting it yet, and now there's just a big fancy white square there.

Just keeping it real :)

Happy 1st!

Well its here!

Our blogs very 1st birthday.

I can't believe its already been a year since we made our first post. I feel like we've barely scratched the surface of all the things we want to do!

I want to thank all of YOU, our readers for following along with us over the year and for being so incredibly supportive and positive about everything we do. Without you, we'd just be writing a blog for ourselves (and maybe our mom's). So THANK YOU.

We hope you plan to stick around for another year...or maybe more to see what else we have in store :)

Happy Birthday Blog!! Now make a wish....