category: decorate



 

our house: office update

So after I decided what I wanted for my office, I couldn’t stop myself from going RIGHT out and getting it. Now my QUICK trip to the new (& big!) Ikea didn’t end up being as quick as I thought. We got there 10 minutes after opening and the kids wanted to try the new playroom/ballroom. And of course there was a line up. A big line up. And so we waited. And waited. And waited. Only to be told when it was our turn, that we had to wait some more (15 minutes they told us but in actually it ended up being 45 minutes). So the first part of the shopping trip was me taking the kids through the showrooms until our playland buzzer went off.

I was so close to giving up and leaving but finally we got the call and the kids got to go here:

happy ball room kidlets

And then once I was kidless, I headed STRAIGHT to the self serve aisles, picked up 8 boxes, paid and went out and packed my car up. Which took almost the exact amount of time I had before I had to go pick up the kids.

Once home, I left all the boxes in the garage and just had a regular ol’ ‘juggling kids and work’ day. But behind me, all I could see was this:

even blurry it is SO bad!!!

At the end of the day, once the kids were eating supper, I got to work! I moved everything out that was currently in my way (Yes, a lot of things got shoved behind those doors!). And I was left with this:

empty! so nice.

First, I started to put together the Billy Bookcases. When I had them assembled (2 wide & 1 narrow), I screwed them together with brackets so that they would be flush together and look like one large unit. Also, in the back of the bookcase there is a little cut out “u” for attaching the bookcase to the wall with an “L” bracket. Because I don’t want these cabinets moving ANYWHERE, I found the studs along that wall and cut my own little notches to make sure my brackets were all attached directly into studs.

Now the office looked like this:

yay! shelving!!

(Yes, it was late at night, hence the lamp. Actually, to be honest, because I was SO excited to get these cabinets up, I brought the lamp in from the other room instead of using the overhead light because that was blown out which would have required me to go upstairs and find a bulb, and a chair to change it. This was faster!! And to be COMPLETELY honest, the bulb has yet to be changed. Oops.)

And now, even though the room is technically no more organized then it was last week, (hopefully that will change by end of month) this is what it currently looks like:

I love my Billy Bookcases!

Love.

What is left to do in the office:

  1. Paint the upper cabinets to match the lower
  2. Get matching knobs (maybe something pretty? like this, or this?)
  3. Hang my gallery wall
  4. New rug (this? which I have upstairs and LOVE.)
  5. Window treatment
  6. Create organized paperwork system for behind doors
  7. Create kids art supplies station

Now I love my office. I love how I can focus and go in their and NOT stare at the mess that greeted me before. And once the stuff behind those doors is pretty too. Wow! I will be in heaven.
:)

 

planning my office

So I am sitting amidst the mess. Right now. Trying to focus on work yet really wanting to deal with the mess behind me. The one I have already posted:

my office - the "before" picture

It is frustrating to say the least. But one thing I have thought over and over about in regards to this mess is how the solution is not what I have it set as. That I am going to have to spend some money to create an office that I would enjoy showing off. First things first, I am going to need more hidden storage. I want this room to feel calm when I enter it every day. Easy to hide things I don’t want to see at that moment. :)

So this is my new plan:

layout for new office bookcases

I will replace what I have with a Billy Bookcase layout from Ikea. This will almost be the exact width of the upper cabinets I currently have. And then paint the above cabinets to match. This will create a whole wall of hidden storage. Except the small shelving in the centre where I plan to store my cd boxes that I use for work daily.

I also plan to purchase this desk for the kids area:

kids art desk

This is because the desk I have in their currently only fits one chair at a time and often it is both kids who want to be working with me in the space and I like the idea of a wider, simpler desk that will allow them the room to work side by side.

Beyond that I plan to also:

  • create a gallery wall of inspiring images and quotes
  • organize my paperwork using a document sorter instead of a file cabinet (does NOT work with my personality!)
  • get an easel & create a painting space

And I think that is it for now. Hopefully I can get started this week and start the new year off in a space that inspires me!

 

a new year – resolutions and reflections

peaceful

So this is the last day of 2011. Wow! I am not sure what that should feel like, but it doesn’t feel like that. I think this low key holiday we had didn’t quite create the build up to the “finale” as usual.

I am o.k. with that. I like this quieter, softer start to the new year. I feel more reflective. Less inclined to pick the typical “lose weight/get healthy” as my go to resolution. Nope. This year I want something a little smaller, but that is so much more than that.

This year I want peace.

Not peace on earth (although that would be nice) but peace within myself. Peace to accept my decisions, to follow my gut, to not sweat the small stuff, to enjoy the little moments. To notice the little moments. To simplify my household routines so that I remove as much stress on myself as I can, and just go with the flow more. (a post on how I plan to do this to follow)

Don’t get me wrong. This isn’t a plan to stop doing projects or making stuff. Oh no, I have a list of 2012 projects a mile long, including dealing with this:

my office - embarrassing!

Yes, it is THAT bad. It has been ignored and neglected for too long. And since I am in that space mostly everyday, it will be the first space I am set to improve on.

Bring on 2012! I am ready!!!

 

our advent calendar

There have been so many great ideas about activity based advent calendars on blogs and pinterest in the last month, that I wanted to make my own. But I wanted it to match my style and use things I already had. So first I went shopping in my house. I found this:

old ikea drape and a 16 x 20 canvas

A blank canvas and an old unbleached cotton drape. So I cut up the drape. One piece to fit over the canvas and the other into little squares that were about 2.5″ X 3″ in size. 48 of them to be exact. I had made my measurements on a piece of paper and then used a cardboard template to trace the squares on the fabric.

yes, pencil on fabric! ;)

Then I sewed the little pieces together like pillows, turned them inside out and ironed them to make little patches, so to speak. (side note: I did this because I did not have any reinforcement to stop any fraying if I left the edges raw).

Then using embroidery floss, I stitched the numbers 1-24 in random colours on the front of each patch.

embroidering the numbers

And using matching thread, I stitched each patch on to my large piece of cotton on 3 sides to make little pockets.

sewing the pockets

I then stretched the fabric over the canvas and stapled it to the back (I had a hammer to make sure the staples went in flush). I covered the staples with masking tape to make the back look nice too!

stapling it to the frame

Lastly I printed out my activity list in different (again random) colours to fit in each pocket.

some of the activity cards

Next year I may add some more embroidery decoration to the background fabric, but for now I love our family’s new reusable advent calendar. (excuse the early morning photograph/bad lighting!) It sits perfectly at home right next to our 3 foot nutcracker.

our advent calendar

And for those wondering about my list, this is what I have (not necessarily in this order).

  • hang lights
  • get tree
  • decorate tree
  • hang stockings
  • go see santa
  • pizza night
  • gingerbread houses
  • bake cookies (x2)
  • christmas shopping
  • wrap presents
  • go to the library
  • hot chocolate
  • bubble bath
  • dinner at a restaurant
  • movie and popcorn
  • play board games
  • make paper snowflakes
  • christmas colourings
  • give a toy to charity
  • go to the library
  • wear red to school
  • breakfast for supper
  • open one special gift (for christmas eve)
 

the difference 6 inches makes!

Now I got your attention. LOL!

But seriously this post IS about 6 inches and how that made a difference to me.

In my living room, we have a HUGE fireplace mantle. I love it. It was custom made to exact specifications of a photo I sent my builder. In our last house and in this house, I always hang our world map above the fireplace. It was a gift for my husband and means a lot to both of us. Here, we hung the map again and but I made a mistake, I hung it TOO high.

map hung too high

I loved the map but I didn’t love it there. Since I plan to decorate my mantle in the next week, I decided to move the map down, you guessed it, 6 inches. You can see how much better it is closer to the mantle. Lower, it doesn’t look like two separate items, but a focal point as a whole.

map lower by 6 inches

And I can even start to layer items over top of the frame. Yay! Love it!

started to layer

Stay tuned for how it will look decorated for Christmas.

 

our house: girl’s bedroom update

So although I thought I had finished our daughter’s room, I was wrong. Since Little Man got new bedding that was more grown up, Little Miss wanted the same thing (after all she is FIVE now) ;) So after looking and looking we finally found something we both liked. Funnily enough it was from the same company Little Man’s was.

her new bedding (the flannel sheets she already had (from Pottery Barn) and happened to match perfectly

But now that she had new bedding, the existing drapes no longer matched so new drapes were in order, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. So I found some drapes at Giant Tiger that matched her wall colour exactly and were $12.99 a panel. Can’t beat that. But… they were only 84″ long and we have tall windows. We need 90″ inch drapes. So I needed to come up with a plan to extend the drapes and work with the new bedding.

Here is what I did.

my solution to extend her drapes

I cut the drapes 10 inch from the top and added a panel of white fabric, which was actually a flat sheet from when we had a double bed in the guest room (upsized to a Queen last year, but kept the sheets for fabric). On this I made stripes. I wanted one pink and one turquoise. The pale pink is actually a strip of fabric I cut off her existing cotton flat sheet she has for warm weather. I noticed that it was quite long and she isn’t, so she doesn’t need all that length. She won’t even miss the bit I cut off. The aqua and the darker pink (on top of the light) are ribbons I purchased on sale at the craft store.

Anyway, I love the new drapes and how they match the new bedding.

her bedding with the new drapes

BUT I am not sure how I feel about my baby girl growing up!