LOVE LOVE LOVE

I haven't had time this week to work on any projects (even though I have a million on the go!!!) because this weekend coming up is my grandma's 90th birthday!!!!! How awesome is that?? We are throwing her a Mad Hatters Tea Party to celebrate! So lets first start by introducing my super awesome and always cute Grandma aka Jean.

I would like to point out that this is my grandma two years ago (at 88 years old) doing the Twist at our wedding!!! HOW AWESOME IS SHE??

For her birthday party we (my mom and I) decided to go with a tea party theme because ever since I was a kid I always had tea with grandma. I even had my own special little tea cup way back when... I'm sure its still around somewhere. Anyway, the whole theme revolves around an Alice in Wonderlands mad hatter's tea party. SO all guests have been asked to wear hats and there will be a prize for the best hat. As well we have kept the decorations bright and fun!! I even managed to pick up some pink flamingo's at Dollarama for $1.50 each!!! We have bright fun napkins and flowery colourful centerpieces and a silver tea urn. Its going to be a fantastic birthday for her!!!

The invites my friend Katelyn at Red Squirrel Studios designed for us and they are fantastic!!!

I haven't had much time this week because I've been preparing party favours and getting out supplies and getting everything ready for the party. Tonight my job is to bake cookies that will say "Eat Me" on them (just like in Alice in Wonderland). I also have to make signs that say "Drink Me" that I can put on the tea urn as well as the Iced tea container. The party favours are cute! I printed off the pictures above of my grandma and put a poem on them that read "A cup of tea to say thank you, for everything you've done, and wishes that today will bring you happiness and fun" I attached the picture and the poem to an individually package tea bag. They look so cute!!

I will try to take pictures of the party to share next week!! It will be a blast!! My grandma is going to love it!!! Currently she is all stressed out because she thinks I have a big surprise... but there is no surprise! She knows all about the party and is going to have fun with all of her friends!!! Did I mention there are about 50 people coming!!! At 90 years old she can still manage to have a party with 50 people!!! WAY TO GO GRANDMA!!! I hope that at 90 I'm as fantastic as my grandma!!!

Next week I will hopefully be back to renovating everything in sight!!!! I still have the following projects on the go:

* New light for the kitchen... its done I just have to figure out how to hang the homemade lamp shade.... haven't found the perfect thing just yet... mind you I haven't really been looking either!

* Curtains for the kitchen

* Barbers chair makeover

* Basement Bathroom Plumbing (oh yes it is happening!!! Are you as excited as I am??)

* A few other secret projects that you will just have to wait to find out what they are!!!

Oh How I Love Thee Powerwasher!

This weekend my baby brother and his wife took posession of their first house. We headed over there on Saturday to help do some tearing down of the basement and some other odds and ends. Lets start by introducing my brother and his wife.

This is their super cute house! Isn't it adorable!!!!

Now the house doesn't need a lot of work, just some paint and the basement has a leak so they have to fix that. While Ryan, my dad and brothers worked on demoing the basement I took on the task of powerwashing the back deck. Now I never understood why people would paint a deck... you stain a deck.. you don't paint it!!! This deck I quickly discovered had not only been painted once.. but twice... Pictures will explain better. This is what I had to work with before I started.

In need of a little tlc! I figured the powerwasher would take of the lime green paint to reveal the little bits of the brown paint. I was VERY wrong!!!! As I started to powerwash the deck it was quickly discovered that the brown paint was the 2nd layer of paint and out came the bright green which the power washer would NOT get off! Can you see which section has been power washed??

Mind you it still looks MUCH better!!! I managed to get the brown paint off and a good chunk of the green paint. So now the deck looks like this.

Still not fabulous... next the plan is to sand the rest of the paint off with an electic sander and then stain the deck. Since it took me about 3 hours to powerwash the deck that was it for the day. But hopefully I can get back soon to help them finish off their deck. I did however steal the powerwasher so I have my own little powerwashing project that I will hopefully get done this week!!

A little of this and a little of that!

This week has been full of a little of this and a little of that... My parents (Oh how I love them) came over on Monday to dig out the hole in the basement so we could get our plumber out. My dad spent time uncovering the drain pipe in the basement. NOW nothing in our house comes easy... SO of course as he was digging a rank smell escaped from the deep depths below and I (while at work) got a phone call saying "You may have sewage leakage down below" Never the phone call you REALLY want to hear! SO I was at work all panicking because the last thing you want is to come home after a long day of work to the smell of poop! Anyway, it wasn't as bad as my dad and Ryan made it seem. By the time I got home from work I couldn't smell it at all and it may just be old stale water that has been stuck down there forever. Regardless we have to get the plumber in to fix up our plumbing so we can get a start on our basement bathroom. Now the only thing holding us back is that the plumber hasn't returned our phone calls.. argh. I meant to take pictures of the uncovered pipe and forgot... frankly it isn't very exciting... there is a hole... some dirt... a pipe.... get the picture??

While my dad was uncovering the pipe my mom took it upon herself to paint my arts and crafts room (formerly the walk in closet... converted because I have too many projects on the go and no where to put my stuff). We originally painted the room with Behr's Celery paint (I believe.. don't really remember). It was a free can of paint that we had been given so we decided it was the perfect colour for a walk in closet. Mind you I never really liked the colour... it was dark and reminded me of pea soup. Here is a before picture of the colour. OR if you want to see what the room used to look like before renos go here. As you can see from the pictures we had never finished the window trim or put quarter round up after putting up new walls so there would be no gap between the walls and the ceiling.

We had bought the quarter round AND the baseboards AND the trim 2 years ago... but never bothered installing it because when it was a walk in closet you couldn't see anything in there anyway!! (aka laziness...) Now laziness isn't really a word that could be used to describe Ryan and I... but this room was basically put on the back burner and forgotten about as we got to more important tasks. Anyway, this week the quarter round was installed, Ryan spaalooched (Ryans word for caulking), baseboards were installed AND my wonderful mom painted the room (so she could keep my dad company while he dug in the basement... how cute!)! FANTASTIC!!!! Here are a few pictures of the NEW and improved and brighter colour of the room! We used CIL's Light Lime paint.

Isn't it brighter and cheerier!!! I LOVE IT!!! The room is still a disaster and we will be making some sense out of it this week I just wanted to show the lovely colour!!! I will be doing a "How to put up quarter round" posting soon once I find batteries for my camera so I can take the pictures I have off the camera! The batteries died on me!!!

We have a few more things to finish off this room..

1) We need to finish the flooring in the room... can you see the small sliver in the last picture where there is no flooring... its just cement.... oops... I guess I missed that section...

2) The door is getting a new door knob and new hinges because whoever originally painted this room (I don't think it was me!!) decided to paint the hinges AND the door knob... so we have a gross green door knob!

3) We need to make a radiator cover for the grossly yellow rad. Yeah more radiator covers... we all know the first rad cover went by easily... HAAHAAA... you can check that out here. Ryan wants to attempt to spray paint the radiator by putting a plastic bag over it and spraying into the bag. I'm very sceptical about this.... I think it will be a rad cover project in the end.

4) Shelves!!!! Now when we converted the room into a walk in closet we had to hang a clothes bar. We took 2 pieces of wood and not only screwed them into the wall but to make sure the clothes wouldn't tear down the wall with their weight we also used construction glue. Now at the time this was a fantastic idea!!! BUT we realize now it was slightly stupid as those pieces of wood are more or less stuck on the wall! SO to hide the pieces of wood (you can see them in the pictures above) we are going to make shelves.

And that's the plan for my arts and crafts room!!! This weekend I am VERY excited because my baby brother and his wife take possession of their house! Which means.. MORE PROJECTS!!!!! I'm sure I will have a lot of things to show you this weekend!!!

Love it Tuesday: Puffy Vases

I came across this idea awhile ago and thought it was an awesome way to decorate inexpensive vases!!!! This is from PS I Made This blog. They have lots of fun stuff on there that when I am bored I love to peruse! Anyway, they have taken ordinary objects and turned them into fantastic decorative vases by just using puffy paint and spray paint! How fantastic is that??

(source: PS I Made This)

You could take anything from around the house.. cans, beer bottles.. etc and transform them into an awesome vase!! AND you get to go back into the 80's and use puffy paint!!! Oh how I used to love puffy paint!!!!!

Fab Finds: Blue Jars and Wall Hooks!

We spent the weekend away at my parents cottage. It was a great relaxing weekend. Both of my brothers and sister-in laws were up there too so it was a full house! But it was a lot of fun! I hadn't expected to do any home projects at all but when my younger brother and sister in law decided to drive into town to go look at the antique shops I thought HEY why not!!! It was raining anyway so it was good to get out. In Lakefield there are many cute little antique shops, some more expensive than others. We stopped at one that I love going into because its a cluttered mess! You can literally stand in one spot for about an hour and everywhere you look you'll keep seeing something new! Its crazy! I had no intentions of buying anything but just went along for the ride. Then I came across these OLD Crown jars... IN BLUE glass!!! After starring at them for far too long and thinking they would be pricey (some of the others in the store were about $20 per jar) I read on the bottom they were only $5 each! SCORE!!!!!! I also picked up a great blue glass tall container that will be perfect for oil! As you can probably guess these are for the kitchen!

As you can see they need a little bit of cleaning!!! I just love that they are hand blown glass jars! you can see the bubbles in them!

Then while rummaging through piles and piles of stuff I came across a box of hooks! Aren't these adorable!!! I picked up 5 for $6! YEAH! I plan on hanging 3 behind the door in the bathroom and 2 in the 3rd bedroom on the back of the door. They are super cute!

That was it for my fab finds this weekend!!! Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Love it Tuesday: Better Marriage Blanket

There are two things that I am shocked about today... #1 I CAN'T BELIEVE I'M BLOGGING ABOUT THIS and #2 SERIOUSLY THEY MADE THIS PRODUCT???


OK with that said lets get onto this weeks Love it Tuesday. My sister in law sent me a link to this product while I was at work and I just about peed my pants laughing... then I realized it was a real product!!


Here it is the Better Marriage Blanket


You may be wondering whats so special about this blanket?? WELL apparently it helps your marriage because it converts stinky gas into non smelling air.. yes that is correct! It will take those ungodly odours and transform them through the material (acts as an air filter) in the blanket and then there will be no more smell. MMMMMMMHMMMMMMMMM... REALLY????


Now this made me laugh incredibly hard because I grew up with 2 brothers.... I'm no stranger to funky smells!!! And then I married Ryan.... once again no stranger to funky smells!! BUT at the same time I put this blanket up there with the Snuggie... yes it is a great idea in theory BUT no one actually buys them!!!! (sorry if you have bought a snuggie I apologize... just stating my opinion). Mind you Ryan and I own Snuggies... but that is because my brother and sister in law made them for us as a funny Christmas present. (if you don't know what a Snuggie is you can go here to see them) The name of this blanket just makes me laugh... I feel like some law suit is going to come from this.... I can just see someone suing the company because the blanket didn't make their marriage better!! HAAHAA OH goodness!!!


Anyway I just think this is the most ridiculous product EVER!!! What I'm wondering is would people actually buy it??? Mind you I said that with the snuggie and they were sold out... THEN they made DOG SNUGGIES!!! OMG what is the world coming to!!!

Weekend Wallpapering and Hallway Heaven!

This morning I woke up and did NOT want to deal with the wallpaper... SO I did what anyone would do on a Sunday morning... I went back to bed! Best decision ever!! PLUS Ryan had gone grocery shopping so I was able to go back to bed without being disturbed.

Then when I woke up I felt more relaxed and rested. It was time to tackle the wallpaper. Now I have to admit I have NEVER hung wallpaper before!! I have only ever peeled it off walls. So this was a new experience for me!! Now cutting the first piece was the easiest. I just measured the space and then using a ruler and Exacto knife I cut my piece. It worked perfectly!! The second piece however took me about 3 cuts to get it right. Now it would have probably been smart to start off with NON PATTERNED wallpaper for my first try... BUT alas I didn't think it would be an issue. Cutting my second piece proved difficult because not only did I have to match up the pattern on the one side BUT it was a funny piece that had to go around the cabinet so it had too many edges. BUT eventually I did it! Then it was smooth sailing after that because the rest of the pieces were the same size so I cut them all (making sure I had the pattern matching along the way). And tah dah!! My wallpapered walls!!!

Now remember my cabinet doors will be painted white soon enough! Its going to look FABULOUS!!!!! I'm sooo excited about it!! Oh just a note, to smooth the wallpaper on the walls so there were now creases and it was stuck to the walls I used a rolling pin. There is a devise you can buy specifically for wallpapering... but I found the rolling pin worked just fine!! Just to remind you here is the before the wallpaper...

And here is the after! Its such a simple thing but it adds some zing to the room!! I love it!!

Here it is with the new rug!

Now in this picture you might notice we have our table in the hallway!!! YEAH!!! We visited my parents last night and picked up the table that my dad made for us. Doesn't it look fabulous!!!!!

And just a close up, here is our hallway table! It is so completely perfect!! I looks fantastic and I'm so excited about it!!!!!!

The rest of the kitchen won't be tackled until August. But I have a few other projects on the go at the moment! The fun never ends!!!!!

FAB FINDS

Ok so it may be too early on a Saturday morning for creating titles for blog posts.... BUT when you are married to Ryan everyone is up at 7:30am no matter what!!!



Yesterday on my lunch hour I took a trip over to Home Sense (my favourite store) to just walk around. I had no intentions of buying anything I just wanted to get out of the office. $40 later I walked out of Home Sense with a big grin and so VERY excited about my finds!!!!!




To start off I found these awesome mugs in the clearance section! They are HUGE!! I love them PLUS they are very similar in colour to the walls in the kitchen. AND they were only $3.30 marked down from $4.99!! NICE!!!



While perusing the clearance section I found matching platters for $3.30 too!!! SO I got 2 of them! The plan is to have them on the kitchen counters to put fruit etc on so as to tie the 2 ends of the kitchen together!



Next came the place mats!! I found these place mats and loved the different shades of blue! They weren't on sale BUT they were only $14 total for 4 place mats. Which isn't too shabby... yes I did just say shabby!!

And then came the most exciting find of the day!! As you know I've been looking for a rug for the kitchen preferably in blue, yellow and white. WELL I came across this blue and white rug and looked at it for awhile and went YES!!!!! I have some left over yellow ribbon from another project so I plan on adding a thin line of yellow around the edges of this rug (because the trim on this rug is material it is easy to do). The best part of all... do you see that red tag on the top of the picture?? Yes it was on clearance for wait... $10!!!!!! Yes it was marked down from $45 to $10!!!! YEAH!!!!!


This is what it will look like in my kitchen!

Lesson Learned

I guess I learned my lesson today with buying things online! Remember this wallpaper that I was SOOO excited about for my kitchen??

I LOVED this wallpaper!!! SO with this wallpaper in mind I went out and bought this material for the curtains in the kitchen. Doesn't this material match perfectly with our yellow walls!!!! I was SOO excited because it all tied together!!!

Well since no Home Depot around me had anything remotely the same as my beloved wallpaper above I decided to order it online while Home Depot had a 'don't pay for the shipping' sale. And yesterday 5 minutes before I got home the Purolator man stopped by. Of course it had to be 5 minutes before I got home so that I had to wait an entire other day to get my beloved wallpaper. On my way home from work today I stopped by the Purolator pick up and couldn't contain my excitment! I got into the car and instantly ripped open the package to discover this.... (it is a little brighter than this picture shows.. but not much)

Its a long way off from this..

And when you put it next to my new curtain material...

Soooo its a little off of what I was thinking... BUT I have a feeling it is still going to work. Just to remind you the wallpaper is going above the cabinets so you will really only be seeing about 3 inches of it. As you can see from this older picture you only see a little bit above the cabinets.

Plus what you can notice is the colour of our countertops, a greyish blue colour. NOW that I think about it... I think the bright blue wallpaper would have clashed with the yellow walls in the rest of the kitchen AND the grey blue tiles. I think the actual colour of the wallpaper that came will compliment the grey blue tiles will not overpowering the kitchen in colour.

Now onto the material I bought for curtains... I think that since the window that I want to make curtains for is the one wall which won't have the wallpaper on it it will work out perfectly and tie the kitchen into the yellow dining area. Here is the window where the material will go.

This is the new colour scheme for the kitchen (with a LOT more white) It isn't what I was expecting BUT I like it!!!! As long as the rug I make (yes I'm making a rug... I've given up the search) has different shades of blue it will work perfectly!

Even though initially I was VERY disappointed with the colour of the wallpaper I think it is actually going to work out perfectly!!!! I'm going to attempt to hang the wallpaper this weekend if I have time! There isn't a lot of wallpaper to hang so hopefully it won't take too long!! (and those are always my famous last words)

LOOK WHAT DAD MADE

This is the first edition of LOOK WHAT DAD MADE!!! First I would like to introduce you to my dad and my mom! Aren't they super cute!!!! Yes my dad is hanging in a tree!!

(Photo By Labour of Love Photo)

And just to be politically correct I thought I would add another picture because my dad no longer has a mustache.. after having it for longer than my mom has known him (she had never seen him without a mustache until last November when he shaved it off for Movember to raise money for prostate cancer.)

My dad is recently retired and with his spare time has taken on a bunch of woodworking projects. He started by building drawers for the pantry up at the cottage as well as a gorgeous wood box that holds the wood for the stove up there AND the DVD player (nice and hidden!!). On top of that he has transformed their garage into his own personal workshop! Mom is happy he is keeping himself busy with this (and of course golfing a few times a week) and as long as she can fit her car into the garage in the winter she is fine with his workshop!

Anyway, to get to the point. Ryan and I have been looking...wait I should rephrase that... I have been looking for the perfect table/plant stand for the little nook in our hallway. As you can see below we have a weird corner in our hallway that bugs me. We previously had a breakfast cart there but it was too big and cluttered up the hallway so we sold it. BUT its been a bare hallway for sometime now (we do have pictures hanging that aren't in this picture) But that corner bugs me. OH and to mention if you think the floors and walls look a little not straight, don't adjust your screen they aren't!!! The floor slopes to the back of the house in the hallway and the walls are a little bit wonky... that's what you get when you buy an old house!!

A few weeks ago I mentioned to my mom what I was looking for and they had EXACTLY what I was looking for up at the cottage in one of the rooms.. the only problem.. it was 2 inches too long and about 2 inches wider than I wanted. The width of that nook is only 9 inches... so finding a table to work in there is HARD as most tables at the very least are 11 inches. Then my mom looked at my dad and said "Why don't you build them something?" SO my mathematical dad made a plan in his head in about 5 minutes and got all excited!! I honestly didn't expect him to get on it so quickly as I knew he was going to be working on my brother and sister-in-laws coffee table. When he went to buy the wood last week he had to order the wood for my brother and sisters coffee table but since ours was being made of pine he just picked it up. Then he had time early this week to start our table. I didn't expect him to finish it in one day!!!! SUPER DAD!!!! He sent me an email Monday evening with photos of the finished product and his process. My mom took the photos of him working in his shop! SO here is the progress on our table!!!

Isn't it awesome??? Then Monday night he wanted to know what colour stain we wanted it to be. We decided to have it tie in with our french doors as we loved the stain colour. SO he went with a Minwax stain colour Red Chestnut.

Tuesday he stained our table and it looks like this!!! Isn't it fantastic!!!

We're so excited to put it in our hallway! We will be visiting my parents this Saturday and will probably get to take the table home! The only thing left to do is my dad is adding a few coats of varathane to seal it. When we have pictures of it in the hallway I will post them!!

I will make sure to keep adding more editions of LOOK WHAT DAD MADE as more of his projects are created! Next up is a coffee table and of course he will be helping me out with the kitchen cabinet doors this summer!!

THANKS DAD!!!!!!