tag: new house



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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Sep 12
2011
 

things change

So things in the house are a-changing. I have an office (which is completed & painted & functional but disorganized & messy & not picture ready – future post!) and because I was moving stuff downstairs to their new locations, I made some changes upstairs.

First off, the kitchen desk area. I had NEVER taken a picture of this area while I worked there because I could never seem to get it all organized or tidy looking. It was such a small area and things tended to get placed, piled and shuffled. But I did find a picture my son took of it on his Fisher Price camera (hence the blur).

Before:

kitchen desk: before

Yup, it was THAT bad! Ack. But now that my computer, printer and paperwork are all finding their ways downstairs, this desk area has been reassigned for homework and my morning coffee/laptop time. Ahh! So tidy!

After:

kitchen desk: after

You will notice that above the desk I removed the painted stars. I love my stars but wasn’t loving them in this location anymore. They didn’t have enough presence to stand out & didn’t blend enough to only add texture. So I moved them into the dining room.

Before:

dining room: before

And I moved the silhouettes to the other side of the kitchen wall and framed them in black (didn’t like the black frames next to the black hutch but like them next to the white drapes)

After:

dining room: after

And lastly during all this change-a-roo-ing, I added to my kids art gallery wall. I realized I wanted something more filled up and had seen a picture on pinterest that I loved (and reminded me a lot of our wall!).

Before:

gallery wall: before

Inspiration:

inspiration picture from pinterest.com


[Source: asoftplace.net via janet on Pinterest]

So I added some great art the kids made (and a couple by their cousins during their visit). I painted the word “create” black (wanted it to stand out.) Made a “make art” painting myself. And just filled the wall.

After:

gallery wall: after

These changes have sparked a new energy into me and is pushing me to move forward with other ideas around the house. After all, if I don’t love it in the end…

I can always change it!

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Posted by Janet under decorate, our house
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Aug 11
2011
 

our house: dining room

My dining room has secrets.

from front door

china cabinet

The first one has to do with the drapes. These are super long drapes from Ikea but even so, they were not long enough for the room (tall windows & ceilings). So I left them unhemmed for months thinking I would have to figure out a way to add fabric to the bottom. The other day I decided to do something about it and looked at the two that happened to sit only an inch off the floor and the two that sit an inch too long. And decided that no one should be looking SO close at my hems that I couldn’t just serge the end of all the drapes to match the shortest one and then be done with it. And I did! (I even hemmed them while they were still hanging on the wall). Done!

serged hem

The second secret has to do with how I am using my china cabinet. I don’t have a whole lot of serving dishes and one of the things I like to do in my dining room is sew. So… I decided to take over 2 of the drawers and 2 of the bottom cabinets to house all my sewing stuff. Simple. Love it!

my sewing supplies

And there are also a couple secrets IN my display cabinet. I have a tea cup collection that I show off there (with space to grow!) and originally the back of the hutch had mirror panels. It felt very busy when you looked in there, so I simply cut black bristol board and used double sided tape to cover it up. The other secret is that in my house of rambunctious kids who love to run, I have used double sided foam tape to attach the tea cups to each other and rubber feet on the bottom so that I don’t hear that “clink clink” noise when they come barrelling through the dining room on their way to the kitchen.

my tea cups

And lastly, the last secret is the little area tucked to the side of my china cabinet. Here is where I hide my apron and my hand vaccuum. I don’t have space to store these things easily in the kitchen (open concept – lack of walls) but find here I can grab them just as easily without them being out in the open (it helps that my apron is pretty, thanks Mom!).

pretty apron

There you have it. My dining room has secrets.

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Posted by Janet under decorate, organize, our house
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Nov 20
2010
 

within arm’s reach

We have a GREAT pantry in our new kitchen. It is VERY deep and therefore in some aspects, hard to use. We did not pay the extra for the roll out shelves, because we knew there were other places we would rather have spent our money. Plus, we do not usually purchase more groceries than we will need for the next month or so, so we knew that the pantry would not be fully used. (But a GREAT selling feature someday, so worth adding!)

My Pantry Baskets

I love my pantry baskets. No more messy pantry shelves!


The first thing I did to make it more accessible and organized, is to use dollar store plastic baskets to contain the items that easily fall over (like noodle envelopes) or used at one time (like lunch supplies). I labelled the baskets to be easily read from standing in front of the pantry. I just love how neat and tidy this looks. And I can quickly see when I am out of one of our staples, as each item or category has it’s own place.

my top pantry shelf

where we hold our cereal boxes


On the very top cabinet of our pantry, we house our snacks and cereal. The cereal made the most sense on the top shelf as is it the tallest item and still would be within reach above everything else. The issue I was having, was that the boxes would get shoved back by each other and eventually I would have to get a chair and climb up to retrieve the boxes within reach. This was frustrating to say the least.

this piece of wood stops the boxes from travelling back.


While working on a separate project around the house, I happened to have a piece of MDF trim that was unused and almost exactly the same width as the cabinet. Using double sided stick foam tape, I attached the trim across the shelf at the depth of the largest cereal box we have. Now, my boxes no longer travel veyond reach and the back of the cabinet is still accessible if I ever wanted to use it for long term storage. And no more chair climbing!

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Posted by Janet under organize
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