tag: new house



Jan 07
2012
 

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.
:)

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Posted by Janet under decorate, organize, our house
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Nov 30
2011
 

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.

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Nov 13
2011
 

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!

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Posted by Janet under create, decorate, our house
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Oct 29
2011
 

our house: boy’s room – lego table

So I posted a while back a bunch of pictures of Little Man’s bedroom but didn’t show you the side of the room where he has his lego table. He LOVES lego and so last Christmas I wanted to make him a table and an area that allowed him to build and keep that stuff together.

I showed you the view towards the bed

view from the door

But never towards the corner

view of his lego table

Here is a closeup of the table. I made it with a Lack side table from Ikea (no longer showing on Cdn site and no longer in blue on their US site) and four large blue Lego bases glued down with Gorilla Glue.

lego table

I also found a storage bin that fit perfectly under the table on casters (again from Ikea) to house all his lego pieces.

lego storage bin

One tip when you are gluing down the bases: Make sure you use a lego piece to space them properly apart. I started to push them flush together before I wondered if the pieces would work across the seam. I am glad I did as there is a TINY gap required between the plates.

use lego for spacing

Now I have to say, I love lego. It is the one toy I am definitely willing to sit down and build and create alongside my kids. Yes, I did have something to do with these rainbow coloured houses. :)

my rainbow creation

And what I love even more is how my “houses” are suddenly taken over by Star Wars soldiers and command central.

command central

Awesome. :)

I am linking up to

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Posted by Janet under create, decorate, organize, our house
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Oct 08
2011
 

New house: master bedroom

I was thinking today that I hadn’t posted in a while. That could be because I haven’t finished a bunch of things I am working on concurrently. But then I ALSO realized I haven’t shared some of the spaces in the new house that are complete. So today I am showing the master bedroom.

master bedroom 1

view from the door

This is the view when you walk in the room. I just switched out our summer bedding for our winter bedding and I still love it after all these years. I love how cozy and calm this colour scheme in without feeling TOO dark.

master bedroom 2

view from the bed

You see we have lots of windows on this wall. I love it. It makes it so bright but we also had to make sure we had blackout blinds because of my husband’s shift work and that he sometimes has to sleep during the day. The chair is really the dog’s chair and has taken a bit of a beating but he is part of the family and deserves his own space as well. And sometimes the kids cuddle there to watch t.v. so it is all good. The end table may be switched out soon for a smaller one against the wall, so that one can move back to the living room where it gets better use. (right now the shelves are bare because I don’t store a lot in this room)

master bedroom 3

view from the chair

This is looking into the hallway that leads to our ensuite (and has both our closets). Yes, we have an ugly fan on top of our bureau. We use that fan nightly so I have thought about someday painting the grill black or grey to blend in better but other that that, it stays.

One thing about our master, it is about us. The pictures on the walls are all about just the two of us. The pictures around the window are all from our trip to Europe we took. Most of the pictures above the bureau are of us. Two from our trip to Virginia YEARS ago (before kidlets), one from Europe and one from New Zealand. Another picture is from a wedding (again pre-kidlets) and one is of the street my art college was on (which was when we met). There is nothing symbolizing the kids in this room. What? The teddy bear. Oh, that’s Bobo. He’s mine from when I was a kid. :)

This room is one of my favourites. It was the first room I painted at the new house and I used the same colour I used in our last house. We hang out here as a family but at the end of the day, the kids are almost everywhere else in this house. This room reminds us of who we are beyond being parents.

It’s our little getaway.

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Posted by Janet under decorate, our house
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Sep 19
2011
 

my office: the cork board failure

Failure

Learned this lesson this weekend!

I gave myself a challenge this week to not spend ANY money on things except groceries. It is going well and has come quite easy and is inspiring me to get stuff done with the stuff I already own.

One example was that I had an old bulletin board that I was going to repaint white (ugly fake wood) for the office wall. I taped, primed, painted and sealed. Once dry I removed tape, which took paint along with it PLUS the fake wood paper cover and some of the cork! UGH! I was so frustrated.

And then I thought “well, now I guess I will have to buy a new bulletin board.” And then I remembered my challenge. And then I thought, do I want a cork board in my office SO much that I would buy a new one? The answer? Nope.

I don’t want a cork board OR a chalkboard in my office. Once I get things organized and put in place, I want the space to feel calm and inspiring. This means, no clippings, no scribblings, just pretty and fun framed pictures. I love the idea of a mood board but I also love the idea of calmness. A mood board may not be me. Is not me. I have mood scrapbooks that I love to work in and can put away at the end of the day.

I don’t think I would have realized this was actually what I wanted unless I had completely and utterly FAILED! So I am thankful for that green tape that just tore apart my idea of an “easy” project for the office.

Now on to the next thing.

What have you happily failed at lately?

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Posted by Janet under create, decorate, life, musings, our house
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