Quirky Door/Wall

I have been meaning to post this for awhile now! I don't remember if I have ever mentioned our bedroom door before. Picture Mr. Ed in his horse stall.... that's our bedroom door. Yep its cut in half. We figure the old owners did this because they had a window air conditioner in the bedroom and wanted it to circulate but they also had dogs so they wanted to keep them out. Its honestly the only explanation we could come up with!!!

Now you might be wondering why we have never changed it... well that's a VERY good question and I don't really have an answer to that. Maybe its because we love the quirkiness of it. Or maybe its because when I'm mad at Ryan I can leave the top half closed at night and he'll walk right into it without knowing... haahaa joking!! Who knows why we haven't changed it. We'll MAYBE get around to changing it soon but who knows!!

To top off the weirdness... the old owners instead of putting in door stops decided to just cut out a hole in the wall the PERFECT size of the door knob.... They did this in most of the rooms too but we have fixed all the other rooms... only this one hole in the bedroom remains! I have no idea what they were thinking!!

But on a less weird note. Look at the new curtains I made for the kitchen!!! I know its a dark picture but I love them! They look GREAT!!! Plus my sister in law a little while back brought over gerbera daisies!! I LOVE THEM!!! So bright and cheerful!!!

And with that I'm off to paint the back stairway!! Stay tuned for that update soon!

Pastel Pink and Green... EWWWWW

Yesterday as I was walking by our bathroom I had finally had enough! This 'wonderful' toilet paper holder was given to us by my mom when we bought the house. She bought it for the cottage as a joke/temporary solution to the 'where do we put the toilet paper'. It just happened that when she decided she hated it we bought a house that had the same problem... where do you put the toilet paper when you have a radiator right there and no wall!!! SO Ryan and I gladly took it thinking this would be a 'temporary' solution until we found something better. 3.5 years later its still there. I HATE IT!! I kept telling Ryan I wanted to do something about it but he would say 'oh its just fine' But then again Ryan is the one that said the kitchen was fine before we made it over only to realize after I made it over that it look SO much better now! You have got to LOVE the pale green and pink leaves and flowers on this baby!


I decided to spray paint it black because honestly it couldn't get any worse than it already was. Also the towel rack we have in the bathroom is black. My thoughts were if it looks worse I'll just pitch it and get something else.
So yesterday I took it out back and sprayed away! It was transformed into something much less grandmaish!

It looks SOOO much better!!!

I can't believe I didn't do this ages ago!!!!! And it only cost about $6 for the spray paint!! It always shocks me what a little spray paint can do!!

Families Are Like Fudge...

Remember on my 'to do list' (here) I wanted to do a photo project in the hallway. Well I finally got around to it. This is what my hallway was looking like. Now the small 5 photos just weren't doing it for me.

I had originally wanted to tackle something like what Sherry and John over at Young House Love had done. See below.

However after starring at my wall and humming and haaing... and most importantly realizing that all the pictures frames we had in the basement we had JUST recently gotten rid of because I had decided we didn't need to keep them around. In my own words "we haven't used them yet lets just get rid of them". ARGH I shouldn't listen to myself. SO long thought process short... I realized I would have to go buy a bunch of frames to accomplish what I 'thought' I had wanted. I started to look at alternatives to just using the few frames I had on hand. I forgot about this awesome frame my friend had given me a long time ago and pulled it out. During one of Norah's naps I came up with this...

I like that it is a little more than 5 tiny photos. Here is a close up. I found this quote and it just summed up our family. Families are like fudge, mostly sweet with a few nuts! I knew I wanted to use it and when I found the frame behind a dresser in the kitchen it was just perfect! I pulled out all the fun photos of our family I could find. I know its hard to see but believe me most of these pictures aren't your 'typical' family photo! haahaa. And just because we love her so much, I added 2 8 by 10's on either side of it with photos of Me, Ryan and Norah.

Nothing special but it definitely makes me smile to walk down the hall now!

That is ONE thing checked off our 'to do list'. Actually we have checked off a few things on our old to do list... but added MANY more!! Here is the most up to date to do list (red items have been completed):

1) Make brother and sister in law pillows - COMPLETED!!!

2) Photo project in hall - COMPLETED!!!!

3)Spring Cleaning - COMPLETED!!!!

4)Paint behind toilet in upstairs bathroom

5)Clean Basement

6)Install Carpet

7)Make curtains for kitchen window - COMPLETED (post this week)

8)Fix Kitchen cabinet chips

9)Clean up closets - HALF COMPLETED... needs to be done again..... booo!

10)Organize Kitchen Cupboards

11)Install laminate flooring upstairs

12)Finish painting basement

13)Panel the entrance to basement bathroom

14)Paint back stairway

15) Finish Norah's door (when we flipped Norah's door around we never finished putting the hardware on so there is a doorknob but no place for it to lock into)
16)Fix upstairs shower tiles... they are coming loose

17) Fix upstairs bathroom cabinet mirror

18)drywall under window in spare room (never finished this because we didn't have a piece of drywall big enough but we have leftovers from the basement that we plan on using!)

19)Seal the stones on the outside of the house

That's a LOOOOOONG list!!!!!

Perpetual Pile of Crap BE GONE!

This is slightly embarrassing... SO when we took possession of our house 3.5 years ago it was winter and we just dumped all the construction debree in our driveway. When it thawed out we eventually disposed of it... BUT with all the work we have done on the house that pile of garbage would ALWAYS come back. We would go at most 3 months with a clean driveway before we had more crap piled up in it!!! (me hanging my head in shame...)

This was the first pile of garbage....

After this pile of garbage came the garbage from tearing down the living room/spare bedroom walls. Then it was old shelving from the basement and old carpeting from the basement. Then it was eventually concrete and dirt from the basement bathroom which we cleaned up. BUT then we had to knock out more concrete for the new plumbing... and sadly this pile has been sitting there for over a year!! (once again head hung in shame...)

That was NOT a pretty site!!! I was embarrassed every time we had people over because we are THAT house on the street... you know the one that you hate to look at because it has a pile of crap in the driveway!

WELL!!! Ryan finally managed to borrow a dump truck and on a 40 degree day him and Dave loaded up the truck and FINALLY got rid of it all!!!!!!

This is the cleanest the driveway has EVER been!!!!

We have vowed there will be NO MORE crap thrown in the driveway EVER again!!!!! Plus now we can fit 4 cars in the driveway!!! Impressive!!

A Little Math and HUGE savings

So the other day Ryan and I were at Shoppers and he asked me why we don't use formula. My answer was "because the boob is free!" Now I have never looked into formula because I knew that if I didn't have to use it I didn't want to. I looked at the price and was shocked to find that a 640g can was on 'sale' for $26.95. Now I'm sure you can get it a lot cheaper elsewhere but I just did some quick math in my head (I haven't gone completely baby brained yet!). Basically the can said for every 2 oz of water add one scoop (8.7g) and at an average of about 30 ounces a day that works out to 130g. SO a 640g can would only last 5 days if you are lucky. SO in a month (assuming you can get it for $25 a can... just to make easy math) we are talking about $150 in just formula!!!! SO Norah is now 4 months (as of yesterday) and we would have forked out $600 in formula in those 4 months.... If you have the option to breastfeed why wouldn't you.... I'm not judging those who choose not to. Its a choice and I understand that it isn't for everyone but for me I love it! Its me and Norah's special bonding time. My sister in law sent me an article awhile back with a great quote (mind you I can't find it now so I'm paraphrasing). It basically said that in the busy world that we live in today breastfeeding is the much needed break you need from the crazy madness. Don't think of it as a chore, think of it as your little break from reality where you can just sit with your child and hold them and think of absolutely nothing. That idea really worked for me. I used to try to rush Norah through feedings because the laundry needed to be done or the cooking done etc. Then I realized it was the time I needed to read a book. So for Mothers Day Ryan and Norah got me my Kobo Ereader so I could sit and read while Norah ate. I have flown through 8 books since then!!! I LOVE it, now I can't wait till she is hungry again because its the only time I get to read and relax!!!!

NOW back onto the savings topic. As you know we use cloth diapers and I still LOVE them to death!!! We had her in disposables a little while back as we went on a road trip for a wedding and I hated the disposables the entire time we were away! I forgot how much they smell... cloth diapers keep smells in better. Not that I leave her in her diapers for long periods of time but when you are in a car and all you can smell is pee ewwwww!!!!! Anyway, assuming disposables cost 30 cents each and that we would use 8 diapers a day and that there are 120 days in 4 months we would have spent $288 on disposables so far. SO between diapers and formula we have saved ourselves a nice $888. Since we spent $460 on the cloth diapers we still have savings of around $428.... NOT TOO BAD!!

PLUS I made Norah another dress!! How cute is this one!! The material was a whooping $3/metre so I picked up a metre... now I can make her at least another 2 dresses or some skirts with this material. SO for $3 I get about 3-4 outfits for her!!

While I was making it yesterday this is what Norah was doing.... so cute!

Switcheroo

I spend a lot of time in our spare room/office lately. Its where I do the ironing and where the computer is and most importantly where we hang the jolly jumper!! Now I never really liked the curtains I hung in here... I had bought the material for a different project but it hadn't worked out so I just turned them into curtains and hung them in here. They look like old lady curtains... I loath them that much!!! Here they are to refresh your memory!

Now after having to stare at those curtains for awhile I decided it was time to do something about them. I hummed and haaaaed over what to do. The spare room has zero pattern to it... it has super pale green walls a brown suede duvet cover and a super huge brown desk...

I didn't want to bring in too much new colour or too much pattern for fear of making it look old ladyish like the old curtains. Then as I was sitting here this morning while Norah napped I had an idea! Remember this material from the curtains and pillows in the living room??

See the curtains here in this super old photo.

Here is a more recent photo.
WELL I realized a few weeks ago that I need to make new pillow covers for the ones in the living room because I didn't make them removable. And the pillow cases are dirty!! I'm not about to remove them to wash them and then have to resew them back on. Instead I plan on making removable ones this time in a different material. I have an awesome idea in mind for the new pillow covers too! Oops getting side tracked! Anyway, since I'm planning on making new pillow covers I thought hmmmmm maybe new curtains for the living room as well. That's when it dawned on me... why not move the living room curtains into the spare room since the windows are identical sizes!!

Low and behold success!!!

They look sooo much better than the ugly flowery blue ones!!! (ignore the packages behind the bed... that's the under padding for the new flooring and the carpet... we'll get to that eventually!)

SO now that I switched that up I needed new curtains for the living room... I decided I wanted something light and airy. Our living room is so dark and every morning part of my morning tasks is to open the curtains to let the light in. I decided I wanted a very light weight curtain but I didn't want people to be able to see in. Off to Ikea Norah and I went and found the perfect solution. Meet Matilda and Wilma. Matilda is a sheer curtain with embroidered strips and little knots while Wilma is just a plain sheer curtain. The 2 put together made a nice light airy curtain that you can't see through but that lets the light through. The best part was that Matilda was only $19.99 and Wilma was just $16.99. So for a wonderful $40 I had new curtains that I wouldn't have to sew!!!!! YEAH!!!!!

I got home and realized I wouldn't have to attach Matilda to Wilma because of the way the hanging tabs ran. They were in the right spots to just hang both on the same curtain rod... BONUS!!! Then all I had to do was hem the bottom. If you have ever bought Ikea curtains you know they come with hem tape so no sewing was required. While Norah napped I managed to hem all 4 curtains and get them hung. I couldn't be happier with the result!!! I had difficulties taking a picture... I can't figure out the settings on my camera. But you get the idea.

See how bright it is now... I couldn't even get a good picture of the curtains!! (Can you spot Norah sucking her feet???)

Shazam... Transformation

Now I can take no credit for any of this. To be totally honest I haven't done a lot around the house lately. Its just been so nice outside that we've been spending a lot of time outdoors and little time indoors. Which means the house is barely clean (its actually pretty gross right now) let alone new/old projects getting done.

BUT my sister in law has been busy!!! A few weeks ago she came by and we went for a walk with Norah. As we were walking down the street one of my neighbours was getting rid of an old piano bench that was in rough shape. Now I have a piano bench in the basement that I have wanted to make into extra seating but don't have room for it in this house right now so haven't done anything yet. I mentioned it to my sister in law and on her way home she picked up this 'beauty'.

Rough shape!!! So she sanded it down, primed it, painted it with some left over paint. Then found foam padding on sale for $2 and covered the seat with material that was also on sale.

And SHAZAM its beautifully transformed into this!!! PLUS it still acts as storage since it opens up. Doesn't it look amazing!!!!! Guster really loves it as you can see!

This makes me want to finish ours but alas we have no place to put it! Next house I will definitely do it! I'd love to put ours at the foot of our bed if we ever have a bedroom big enough to do so!!