A Few Sneak Peaks

I've been so busy lately with working on various projects around the house that I haven't had time to stop and blog about any of them! (Not to mention that none have them have quite been completed :)

He are a few ideas of what we've been up to around here.

1. Fall garden clean up: I thought this would take a solid day to do. Apparently it needed to be spread over 3 Sundays... We have a lot of gardens. And I'm pretty low energy these days :) Joe was definitely a big help with those as my energy wavered...(Oops...no photo!)

2. Nursery Prep: we have the crib, the change table and a glider/rocker. We even have a few newborn hand-me-downs from my sis. That being said, the room still looks pretty barren and boring. It's proving hard to decorate before knowing the sex of the baby. Some things will have to wait :)

3. Painting the bathroom tile: I finally got around to painting the bathroom tile. Again, I thought it would be a weekend job.... but there were a lot more little patch-ups needing done than I expected. Plus I'm working at preggo speed. So, I got the priming done so far. I'll definitely be doing a more detailed post about this when things are more finished!

4. Starting to decorate for Christmas! This will be our first year hosting Christmas for my family, plus a party with friends. I'm really looking forward to it!

On a completely unrelated note, I have been OBSESSED with this gingery kale and tofu recipe from my Simply in Season cookbook. We've made it 3 weeks in a row and I am already planning the next batch :) (It's even better with avocado...but what isn't?!)

More updates should be coming in the near future!

September Update

As usual, we have been busy around here!
There are a few projects that I haven't written about yet... although some of them happened a while back! (Time flies in the fall as a teacher... so busy!)

Here are a few things we have done lately:

1. Painted the exterior garage and front door.
In case you forgot, when we moved in the doors and garage were painted in a 'lovely' rusty brown.

Summer 2012

I had originally planned on painting the front door a fun colour. However, it was quicker and easier (for now) to just pick one colour. I also found it hard to choose a colour to go with the odd greyish-white brick that we have. I opted for a greige (grey-beige) colour, and I am pretty happy with the result! It really modernized the house. Here she is! (I also pruned the shrubs and got rid of some weeds and rose bushes in the front...). I just need something to decorate the front door!

(Note: The pretty fall leaves in the background! I love fall!)

The pretty fall planter my Aunt Nancy bought us. Unfortunately it got neglected during the first 2 weeks of school and the mums turned brown. I am hoping they come back!

2. Waaaay back in June, Joe and I ordered some awesome Canadian-made furniture at a store called Shreiters in Kitchener. Little did we know that it would take over 2 months for the furniture to be made and brought to our house! We were a little disappointed, but LOVE the furniture now that it is finally here. We put it in our fireplace room and it is ready for some fall decorating. It is looking a little blah.. we are in the process of finding some nice accessories (ex. pillows!) to liven it up and tie it all in. (These pictures are not the greatest...oops!) Oh, and we got a new rug, too! And new curtains... I guess we've done more than I realized.

 

Our awesome and massive couch...it needs some pillows!

3. Remember the special fountain from our backyard?

That we removed and turned into a pile of dirt?

Well, I finally got around to seeding it. And it is getting there! After 2 weeks of watering (and loving any rain we get!) it is starting to fill in. I'm pretty excited about it and can't wait to have a regular, dirt-pile-free lawn!

 

4. Still growing a baby! Only 18 weeks to go. I have been having some crazy preggo dreams though. In my most recent, I had a baby that looked just like Joe...but baby sized. It was sooo creepy! 

5. We have been busy with other things, too. But I'm not ready to show you just yet :) We've painted the nursery, replaced the blinds in all of the bedrooms, and bought paint for them. And we've been cooking up a storm. Stews have been on the menu lately :) 

Ok, that is all for now! Hopefully life will be a little less busy in the upcoming weeks so I have more time for updating. Have a good week! 

Dirty Work

Since Joe and I were in Europe for the first two and a half weeks of our summer, we never seemed to get back on top of our gardening.

We pretended we were by keeping the front of the house acceptable...

But we were hiding our secret: the backyard was a disaster!

Point 1: Remember the 'lovely' fountain that graced our yard when we moved in?

Well, back in June, we posted it free on Kijiji and it was taken away, leaving us with a pile of dirt and rocks in the middle of our yard.

Yep, it has been like that since June. Ugh.

Point #2: The hedges in the back are out of control!!!!

Oh my!
The lawn was also starting to get out of control because of recent rain.
So, we decided to get down to business. Joe mowed the lawn while I pruned the hedges.
Don't they look pretty?

Then, we spent the afternoon moving the dirt pile. This was no small feat...it was huge!

It took over 30 wheelbarrow loads which we had to roll up the hill to the back of our yard. Joe kept me motivated by giving me some eye candy :)

And finally, we have it ready for some grass seed! Although Joe wants to plant a tree...and Mira thinks it's her own private kitty litter, so we have some figuring out to do.

Next on the list: Tackling the overgrown, wild garden. But it does feel good to have a few things done! Although this pregnant lady is paying for it today!

House Tour

I think it's about time that I post a tour of our new house!
Now that we've lived here for 2 weeks, it is definitely starting to feel like home. That being said, we have a lot of work ahead of us.

This tour will be much the same as the tour I showed after we bought the place (found here). Except that now it has our stuff in it. Consider these pictures to be the Before version. We are hoping to repaint everything. And redo a few things (bathrooms/kitchens).

Let me start with the front of the house. I think it's pretty cute looking! I love the dormer windows.
My hopes for the front: To repaint the ugly brown front and garage doors. Colours yet to be decided.

The Main Floor

When you walk in the front door, the hallway connects all of the room on the main floor, and has a stairway going up to the bedrooms.
Joe and I are wondering if it will be possible to somehow shave off the globs of plaster on the ceiling. Anyone have any ideas?

We bought a bold paint colour for the hallway. Plumage by Martha Stewert. It should offset the neutrals we plan on putting in the rest of the main floor.

To the left of the entryway is our long living/dining room. We contemplated making it a sitting room only, but once we started placing furniture in there it just seemed kind of...empty! So, now it will be our living and dining room. One flaw of this room is that there are no lights installed in the ceiling. That is another thing we hope to add.

**We have already re-painted this room in Behr's Parisian Taupe. It looks SOOOooo much better. We also went out and splurged on a new couch and chairs....Photos to come soon!

To the right of the entrance is what is supposed to be the dining room. We have decided to use it as another sitting room. We are even contemplating getting a TV to put in it (*Gasp!*). Right now we have a rug we bought in Bolivia in there. I'm not so sure about it, but Joe loves it, so we'll see!

**We have also repainted this room! We were busy last weekend. It is in Baked Biscotti by Behr. I will show photos of this soon, as well.

At the end of the hallway is the kitchen.
At first I hated this kitchen. I still don't love it. But it is functional, and will probably stay this way for a while. We are going to see how repainting the cupboards look, and maybe doing a complete redo in a few years. For now, it will have to stay as is.

Upstairs

The office room: 

The bathroom. I'm still trying to decide whether to completely renovate or to try painting the tile.

The guest room

The Master Bedroom.

The Basement

Right now, the basement is almost empty. There is a spare bedroom, a main area, a bathroom (the Funhouse) and the laundry room. I think it will be a while until we get around to doing anything down there.

The Backyard

The backyard was probably the selling feature of our new home. It is beautiful. Here are a few different views:

That's it for now. 

I'm excited to get going on all of the changes we have planned :)