Birthday Wish List

Well its just about that time of the year again... I'm about to turn 29... AHHH that much closer to 30!!  Mind you when your husband is edging closer to 40 turning 30 really doesn't seem that bad!  But still... this will be my last year in my 20s!!!  As in years past here is my bday wish list... 90% of which is more a dream list!!! haahaa!!

#1) First off lets start small.. HOW CUTE ARE THESE???  I found them on Etsy and think they are super cute slippers for those cools days around the house!!  You can find them here at BrokenHallelujah best part is they are made right here in Toronto! I love local!!!

#2) Its no lie that I'm obsessed with peacock patterns etc.  I LOVE them lately.  Thats why this necklace is TOTALLY awesome!!! AND its made out of leather!! SOOOO cool!!!  It can be found at TZain

#3) I would LOVE to get some professional fun family photos!!! I had originally bought a photo session through a deal website but the photographer has decided to not honour the voucher anymore... ARGH!  At least I got my money back but now I don't get photos!!

#4) This dress from Joe Fresh! Its SUPER cute! I tried it on and love it but just couldn't justify spending the money on it!

#5) CARDIGANS!! I'm like a cardigan freak... I love them because they are great with ANY outfit at work!!!!  Over dresses to keep warm in the office, over tank tops, with skirts or pants etc. I'm in love! I NEED MORE.  I have like 2 black ones and a grey one... I want some fun coloured cardigans!!!  Joe Fresh has some for $19 but everytime I go in they don't have the colours I like.

#6) Now to get a little more practical, but more expensive. I WANT A FENCE!!!!  Honestly... I know it doesn't seem like a big birthday present but I would like a fence on the one side of our backyard so our stupid anal neighbour can stay out of our way!  However I know realistically this won't happen but this would be the BEST PRESENT EVER!!!

#7) Even more practical and totally crappy but would be appreciated and loved none the less... A CLEANING LADY!!! Someone to come even once a month and do my vaccuming and dusting!!!  THAT would be awesome!!!

#8) Last but not least.... A totally awesome bottle of red wine! Mmmmmmm I love my red wine!!! 

Now I started out this post planning on adding some ridiculous items to my wish/dream list... but in the end I realized this is basically what I want/like right now.  If I was to put them in order honestly a fence would be at the top of my list but I know that is not going to happen! I'd settle for a bottle of wine and my friends and families company!! :-)

Thats it for my wish list. :-)

Seeing Green... Kinda

Yesterday I updated you on all of the pictures I had hung around the house here. And I said I was working on a project to add more to the wall in the living room with my new $10 blue canvas.  Well it is finished and I am loving the result! This is the picture I am talking about.  Before I get into what I did I want to explain a few things.

First of all I knew I wanted to add something else on either sides of this canvas because it is a large wall and this canvas just wasn't cutting it on its own! My next problem was the living room was getting too much blue (between the peacock shadow boxes here, the pillows and the rug it was all blue) I love blue but the problem is that the curtains in our bay window have a greenish tinge. This photo doesn't do them justice... they are similar to the wall colour but have more of a green undertone in them.

The next problem with all the blue was that my dining room chairs which I had just recovered  (see here) are striped with green and a little bit of blue.  Since the dining room is part of the living room I wanted to tie both rooms together and not have a blue room and a green room. 

So after some thought I figured I would test the 'green' idea out.  I had picked up a bunch of the Malma Ikea mirrors in natural wood finish at one of their Wacky Wednesday sales for 50 cents each.  Since I have like 20 of them I figured even if I mess up one of these I can either just paint over it or throw it out.  Luckily I didn't have to do either because for once I did it right the first time!!!  I pulled out some silver paint (same paint I had used for the art project in our bedroom here and the knobs on my jewelry display here), for $1 this paint is definitely worth the money!!  Anyway, I pulled out the silver paint and some bright lime green paint that I had lying around and mixed them together.  I wasn't entirely thrilled with the colour but I figured I would try it out and learn from what I figured would be my mistake.  However, as I started to paint the colour on it was incredible, the silver shined through with only hints of the green... I immediately loved it!!  Now it isn't massively green which isn't what I wanted anyway.  Since my curtains are subtly green and my dining room chairs are also subtly green I didn't want something HUGELY green.  What I ended up with was PERFECT!  So with that said here is my completed project. Nothing over the top crazy... just painted Malma Mirrors. But I'm glad I kept it simple. 

In comparison to the wall they don't really look that green in these photos but they are! I forgot to take an up close photo of them, I'll update this post with that photo at some point.

And just for clarification, I hung the painting high because Norah's magnetic wall is just below it and when it has magnets on it the canvas doesn't appear as high as it does in this photo.

Have a great weekend everyone!! 

Pictures Pictures Everywhere

I finally got around to hanging a few pictures around the house that have been lying around.  First lets start with my shadow box update! Remember my post here how I wasn't happy with my painted shadow boxes... they were too blah...

Well they now look like this!!!

I had some amazing peacock fabric that I bought for another project (which I finally realized I didn't want to do) so I thought it would look amazing as a background for my shadow boxes!!

I LOVE how it turned out! It adds some colour to my bland living room and that is my goal right now!!!

Next up was my front hall.  We have lived here for 8 months and the front hall wall has been bare the entire time!! SO I pulled out our mirrors a few weeks ago and hung a few of them. Then stopped because I wasn't sure what pattern to finish them in.

 After thinking about it for a few weeks I finally got around to finishing the hall wall up. I used the pictures that used to hang in the bedroom in the front hall and love them there.

 

This week I was randomly in Bouclair Home on my lunch just browsing and came across this amazing canvas that I couldn't stop starring at!  I have been trying not to buy too many things lately as we have so much stuff so I walked away but I couldn't stop thinking about it!!!!  So I went back and starred at it for about 10 minutes and decided I was in love!  Then I looked at the price... ON SALE for $9.98 down from $34.99!!! SOLD!! Isn't she pretty!!! I have always had an obsession with drops of water!

 

She looks great in the living room!!  I have a plan in the works (just waiting for it to dry) to add two decorative mirrors on either side of this picture in a lovely greenish silver.  Hopefully I'll have those up soon.

 

Now I'm not going to say I'm finished with those spaces as the pictures may always change but for now I'm liking it!!!

Knit Knit Knit

I have been knitting up a storm lately.  I have SOOOOOO much yarn lying around the house!!! Ryan's mom left me a garbage bag FULL of yarn and I pulled it out the other week and have just been going crazy knitting scarves and cowls!!  The original plan was to sell them at the Made By Hand show we applied for this October. Which is a craft show by our house.  Sadly we found out last week we weren't accepted... BOO!!!!!  Very sad! Because now I have WAAAAY too many scarves lying around and WAAAY too many jewelry frames in the house! That means I'm adding them all to the shop where everyone can go and purchase some awesome stuff made by ME!! (and Ryan in theory... he helps with the jewelry frames).  I plan to add a whole bunch of stuff over the weekend! So check back soon! You can visit our shop here http://www.etsy.com/shop/Livelovelaughreno 

Lets face it fall is coming and that means SCARF SEASON!!!!  I personally LOVE this basket weave scarf I knit! But I have SOOO many scarves I don't need anymore!

Or this pretty pink chunky knit scarf!

So go pop by our shop and these lovelies could be yours!!

I am working on some amazing infinity cowls as we speak so if that is your desire send me a message!! Also if you have a colour in mind let me know and I can see what I have in my bag (of yarn!). 

Something Missing

Have you ever had a project you've been dying to do and when its all said and done you look at it and go "oh... that's not like I imagined it in my head."  Well that was what happened with my shadow boxes!  Lets recap a bit.  In the old house I had four black shadow boxes hanging in our living room and they looked amazing!

The black on bright green walls with dark furniture looked great! However, in the new house I'm going for a lighter look (at least slowly trying to!) Since everything in the new living room is white I decided I wanted to paint my shadow boxes white!  So when I was painting my mirror and a few other projects I pulled them out and painted got to work on them! (FYI I use an old can opener to pry open my paint cans... don't ask. I have a paint can opener but can never find it and this works great! Ryan always laughs at me!)

After a coat of Zinsser primer and 2 coats of paint these puppies were done and I happily hung them on the nook across from Norah's play area in the living room where I had been humming and haaaing for months about what to hang there. Then I grabbed a few random things from around the living room (mostly off of the fireplace mantle) and put them in my boxes.  And this is what I had.

Initially I was pleased. And then I starred at it from a distance.

I LOVE the idea of it but they just don't pop like I wanted them too!  They blend into the wall too much!!  I do plan on painting and distressing our credenza a creamy white at some point and I'm afraid the shadow boxes are just too BLAH for my liking!!

BUT I have a plan!!  I have decided to put a fun paper or material on the back of the boxes to give them a kick of colour!!  I think I will be plenty happy with that!!  I just haven't had a chance to do it! I have some awesome peacock material I bought for the new curtains in the living room and if I ever get around to doing them and have extra material I think it would be a great way to tie it in!!!  Anyway that's my Oh Poo That Isn't What I Wanted moment from last week!

Mirror Mirror On the Wall

We have been seriously lacking in the mirror department in our bedroom!  The mirror we previously had in the room went with the old dresser that was in the room so when we moved the dresser out we also moved out the mirror.  In the mornings I run into the spare room to check out my outfit.  Since I am on vacation  I decided it was time to do something about it!  While sifting through the disaster that is our storage room (project for another day) I found a mirror that we had bought YEARS ago purely for the fact that it was $1... yes you read that correctly I said ONE DOLLAR! Just after we bought our first house we had gone to The Brick to look at mattresses and in the clearance section we saw two HUGE mirrors in perfect condition with a price tag of $1.00. We couldn't believe it so we found a sales person and low and behold they were only $1.00!!!!  The only thing missing was the hardware to hang them.  We took them home and the one mirror was in our kitchen in the old house and now hangs over our fireplace in this house. The other mirror was hung in the basement and basically just collected dust. UNTIL NOW!!!

I looked up online how much this mirror goes for and found The Brick still sells it (in a pine finish) for $99.96.  Awesome $1.00 find on our parts!!

Here is our mirror. It is more of a white washed fake wood colour. 

I bought it outside and got to work on priming and painting it.  The current colour just didn't do anything for us and didn't go with anything in our bedroom so it was time to paint it!

First I used Zinsser Cover Stain primer because I have been DYING to try it out on a few products! I wanted to test it out on small projects before moving onto a larger project with it.  I plan on writing a review on it when I get a chance to let everyone know my opinions of it (I'm not paid/compensated by Zinsser in any way).  So first I primed the mirror because I did not want to have to sand this puppy down!!!  After one coat of primer I applied 2 coats of paint (letting each coat dry 12 hours before applying the next coat).  And I was left with a wonderfully white mirror!  Here it is in the bedroom!!! Now all I have to do is hang the purple paintings on either side and call it a day!!