New blog design:)

I've wanted a different look to my blog since...well since I created my blog. I had a standard blogger background template, and a header photo that leaned to the left and looked disproportionate and just awkward. It bugged me, but I am really quite lame when it comes to computers!

So I spent the last day (or two) squinting at my screen and trying to figure out how to make it nicer. I wanted it simpler (i.e white), with a unique (to me anyways) header that didn't include a cheesy up-close photograph of my coffee table.

I scoured the web looking for someone to walk me through this process, and came across this tutorial for creating blog headers in PicMonkey by Christine at Projects Around the House.

Super straightforward, in plain english, with lots of pictures for dum-dums like me. Thanks Christine!

I'm pretty pumped about how it looks now. Nope the fonts not that original, and anyone who uses PicMonkey will recognize the 'scribble-heart' but I like it.

Seriously though, check out the tutorial if you have a new, boring blog like I did and want to break out of your basic blogger template style. PS. PicMonkey is free.

Hope you like!

[Edited to add: My header still leans to the left! Ha ha...fml]

[Ninja] Maple-Berry Sorbet

It's a crazy hot one in LA this weekend! My plans involve going to the beach, hanging with a very good girlfriend who is passing through town on the way home from Coachella, and cooling off with some delicious homemade sorbet.

Flavour: Maple-Berry

Difficulty: So easy your head will spin.

The urge to make this came over me so strongly I leaped from the couch to the kitchen and literally whipped it together in 3 minutes - LIKE A NINJA.

I adapted my recipe from this very inspiring recipe here, and chose to leave out the 'zippiness' (cayenne/ginger) and used mixed berries (blueberries, raspberries and blackberries) instead of just blueberries.

Here we go:

You need:
1 1/2 cups frozen mixed berries
One banana
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup maple syrup
A blender
A tupperware container

1) Dump in your frozen berries

 2) Throw in your banana

 3) Add your lemon juice (fresh if you're fancy, from a bottle if you're a ninja like me)

 4) Drizzle in your maple syrup (be sure to drizzle some in your mouth after like me)

 5) Blend until smooth

 

6) Pour into tupperware container

7) Toss in freezer (next to your Trader Joe's triangoli's that you totally forgot about, yum!)

8) Wait like a patient ninja

......


9) Devour. But not too fast or you'll get brain freeze.

Nordstrom Rack Haul

Haul blog posts aren't usually the posts that get me all excited. Unless it's something I've never heard of that's new and unusual, I'm just not so pumped to hear details of an average H&M shopping spree. It gives me a case of the Zzzzzz's.

What does get me going though - savings. Major, awesome deals. And so I present to you, a Nordstrom Rack (mini) Haul.

Coming from Canada (see my rant about Canadian shopping here), living in the states has caused me a great deal of shopping joy. I'm a shopper. I don't shop a lot (I mean in large quantities), but I do my research, and I know what's available, where, and for how much. That goes for almost everything; clothing, make up, and home stuff. I just generally have my finger on the pulse.

So yes, Target has been exciting for me (annoyingly Target Canada's arrival coincided exactly with our move to the states). Also exciting for me - Nordstrom. (Although I wouldn't have had to wait long for that one either.) Nordstrom to me is basically the perfect shopping destination. Don't get me wrong, by no means do I rely on it for everything, that's what Target, Macy's and the like are for. But it's where I go to buy jeans, or browse jewellery, or drool on handbags. It's my mecca. My pricy, lovely smelling mecca. So imagine my delight when I discovered not just tons of Nordstroms around me, but a Nordstrom Rack too! (Canadians - Nordstrom Rack is like Winners but with actual good stuff in it).

We were in one the other day looking for some "interview" shirts for my husband. Totally boring right? So I wandered over to the cosmetics area where I found this:

 This costs $29 at Sephora. Rack's price was $12.97. I love buying things that I know are actually sitting on a shelf, somewhere else, for more than twice the price. How is the whole shelf not cleaned out? Are Americans so jaded by all the good deals everywhere that this sort of thing doesn't excite them anymore? American readers?? Tell me.

And then I spotted this:



I love Smashbox. I use the oil free primer in the winter and it makes my foundation go on as though I actually have lovely, hydrated skin (I do not). So I only gravitated towards this because I saw that it was a brand I already knew and loved.

Usually these value sets come with super seasonally-specific colours, so I would have imagined the "Spring" box contained all kind of pastel shadows and fuchsia lippies. Christmas themed ones always seem to contain only things that smell like gingerbread. But no, it's a neutral bonanza. These are all year-round, neutral, works-on-everyone shades. Never mind that it's last year's colours. Who cares.

You might ask, what the heck am I looking at here???? A list if you care:

- Full Exposure Mascara (cause who doesn't need another mascara?)
- Lip Enhancing Gloss in Tabloid (a nice nude)
- Creamy Lip Colour in Strike-a-Pose (also a nice nude)
- Photo Op Eye Shadow Trio in Editorial (matte dark brown, shimmery medium brown, matte cream)
- Photo Op Eye Shadow Trio in On The Cover (shimmery navy, matte steel gray, matte rose or pale pinky-nude)
- Cream Eye Liner Duo in Double Feature (charcoal gray and dark brown)
- Cream Cheek Colour in Callback 
- Double Ended Brush #7 & #9 (cause who doesn't need another brush?)

The front of the box said it was $68 for $180 value....but when I flipped it over the Nordstrom Rack price was $34.97! Ok is that not a total and complete steal? I'm going to go buy all of them, take them back to Canada for resale, and then retire on my hefty profits.

Oh hey there!

Well apparently I forgot that my little blog even existed. Well not really forgot but I completely became at a loss for what to blog about. I'm still in California, however not really doing anything that I deemed blog-worthy. I have a home decor blog...and I don't even live in my home right now.

I don't want to put my blog in a box though! It is unbeige-my-heart after all, not just unbeige-my-walls.

So I thought I share a little of our adventures to date. This is what our life has looked like for the past three months:

Visits from grandma, and a trip to the beach

Visits from friends (this is Santa Barbara - and those are my best friend's legs)

We only seem to go to the beach when visitors are in town. We've never gone on our own. Not sure why! Well...I think I know why. It's a pain in the ass! Driving anywhere further than the grocery store is an exercise in patience.

LA Traffic!! Pretty full on. ^^look at my pipes!^^

Although, we had excellent gridlock preparation coming from Toronto. My Toronto peeps can back me up on that one.

Neighbourhood (excuse me - neighborhood) walks.

Speaking of missing u's...my daughter has started attending a local preschool 4 days a week. American preschool. She says things like 'I'm going to go throw this in the trash' (which to me is super-American but maybe I'm the only one), and WXYandZEEEEE. No matter how many times I tell her it's ZED ;)

And, because this is Los Angeles (or maybe she just watches a lot of Dora), she calls penguins 'pengiunos'. She seems to know the english word for all other animals except this one. (By the way, I find this amusing and amazing, I don't have a problem with it!)

 Little training-chopsticks!

We don't go out for dinner a lot because dining out with a 2 years old is masochistic, but when we do go out we eat a lot of sushi. Well, my husband and I eat sushi, and my daughter eats the karaage (that's fried chicken for you non-Japanese speakers). The sushi restaurants in LA are amazing. After 5 years of living in Vancouver (best sushi in the WORLD) many moons ago, and then returning to Toronto where the sushi is best compared to rotting gelatin, this is very exciting for us. 

TARGET!! Nuff said. Check out the randomness that is a trip to Target. Now available in Canada!

Home Decor topic alert! We did buy a toddler bed, Minnie Mouse comforter, area rug and table lamp for my daughter to personalize her room a little bit. Her room is a very bland empty room with only a dresser and an ugly sleigh bed (which we shoved aside). Such is life in a furnished rental. Definitely not glamorous. I won't be showing pictures of said room because despite the colourful Disney accessories it still looks like a baby flophouse. Temporary...a word I say to myself a lot.

And of course, the odd touristy thing thrown in for good measure. This was taken during a tour of Warner Brother's Studio. If you don't recognize that couch you're probably too young to be my friend.

Well that's our life! I may be back with more soon. We'll see! Some of my favourite blogs are "lifestyle" blogs, featuring a little bit of everything. I like lots of stuff, so maybe I'll give this a try. Hopefully someone sticks around to read it!

Ahem - "Is this thing on"?? Ha.

Unbeige My Heart goes south of the border

No, not Mexico. The other border! I'm Canadian yo!

January seems to be a quiet blogging time as it is, but I didn't want to let it slip into February without explaining where Unbeige My Heart has gone. The fam and I packed up some suitcases and went to sunny Los Angeles for the first half of 2013. It's a temporary move, giving us respite from the cruel Toronto winter, and allowing my husband to explore the American job market.

This is me. And that's the Hollywood sign. And it's January and I'm NOT WEARING A COAT.

My brother has been living in our house in Toronto (AHEM - are you using a coaster under that beer bro?), and we've rented a furnished house in an area of LA called Toluca Lake. It's suburban (like most of LA), friendly and quiet. Despite the fact that we're living in a tourist haven, my husband has still been working like crazy (albeit from home) and I've been passing the time much like I did in Toronto, only with less shivering, less ice scraping, and more time spent outdoors. Although we did get a chance to pop down to Disneyland, so my daughter could do this:

This hug lingered for an awkwardly long time. Good thing she's 2 and can get away with it.

For the next 5 months or so, I'm not really sure how this blog is going to look. Maybe it will detour into somewhat of a lifestyle blog...we'll see how interesting life is over the next little while. It does feel a bit like we've unbeiged our lives, if only just temporarily!

But I hope you'll stick with me and see where it goes! Looking ahead to our return to Toronto, we're planning some exciting room renovations (the basement and maybe another bathroom) as well as some outdoor landscaping projects that I'm really psyched about.

Well, I'm off to go smell the flowers in my backyard. Literally:)

A very merry Dining Room Reveal!

We actually finished wallpapering our dining room in October, but it took me a while to photograph it. The lighting is terrible (as you'll soon see), so I needed to find the right balance of artificial light, natural light, tidiness and free time to take the photos.

And, as it happens to be December, it's decorated for Christmas! So here we go.

This is the view in from our living room.

This is good real life representation of the colour of the wall paper. The paper is called Rothbury Trellis, by Thibaut. The colour is metallic on slate gray.



Put on your sunglasses for this next shot people! The view from our hallway into the dining room. And whoops, a plastic bag full of stuff hiding behind the chair.




The buffet.

My deer head bowl from the William Ashley warehouse sale and Mr. Fox.

     My daughter pronounced x's with a hard k sound for a while. It made Mr. Fox a hilarious thing to talk about.                      Go ahead, sound it out.

My husband's ever expanding whiskey and scotch collection. He keeps receiving bottles as gifts but hardly ever actually drinks it. He loves it though. Good to have on hand during the holidays for sure.

My daughter's hand print ornament from her first Christmas last year.

I dunno. I like this guy. He's cute.

Sparkly snowflake from HomeSense.



Another holiday necessity, a well stocked wine rack.

I bought this Santa wine bottle (or tree??) topper at The Bay years ago. Any of you that shop at The Bay have a story like this. Saw it, looked at the price tag, which said something like $9.99. Go to the cash register, it rings through at $1. The Bay is notorious for this.

It adds some fun to the room. We try not to take ourselves too seriously. 

I hope you like this dining room makeover! There was quite a bit of blood, sweat and tears that went into this room (without any actual blood or tears. Some sweat for sure though).

The before-before again, for dramatic effect:

Then the more recent before, post DIY wainscoting:

And the after:

One last poorly lit parting shot. Because why not.

Turning an old wine case into a Christmas centrepiece

I was at my parent's house for dinner and noticed this wooden wine bottle crate sitting in their 'junk to get rid of' pile. They actually used it as a CD tower in their living room for years. It says Napa Valley on the side. No one in our family has ever been to Napa Valley so I don't have a clue where they got it.

Inspired by this pin, I decided to make a Christmas centrepiece out of it.

A couple of empty mason jars,

some pine branches and pine cones from Superstore,

...and some leftover faux-berries from our garland and there you have it! Throw in some tea lights and you have a DIY Christmas centrepiece made for just a few dollars.

Sharing at:

ReStore Find: Occassional Chair [After]

I have never made over an actual peice of furniture before. What you are about to witness is a beginner's makeover of a chair that was on it's last life anyways (nothing to lose).

I picked up this chair for $25 from my local ReStore. The wood is gouged in places, and it wobbles. It was made for tiny people in the olden days who sat up straight and had healthy BMI's.

First I removed the seat. It unscrewed easily and I got to work peeling off the strips of florescent duct tape.

Then I picked out tons of tetanus laden rusty staples. Seriously I was so paranoid. Even though I think I'm up to date on my tetanus vaccinations, I was still scared. I got a tiny scratch and ran screaming to the sink to scrub it with antibacterial soap.

The previous seat was pretty hard and uncomfortable (the padding was hay or something. I didn't take a picture because it was gross and I just wanted it out of my house), so I added a layer of memory foam to the plywood.

Then I wrapped it with thin batting, and (clumsily) stapled it down.

[Note: I had to UNstaple the above batting twice because a) I had unevenly pulled the batting so the edges were lumpy, and b) I covered the holes that you screw into to secure the seat. It's all about trial and error!]

Next, I stapled on the fabric, after moving it around several times to make sure pattern on the top of the seat wasn't crooked.

Doesn't that look so professional?? HA HA.

This is what us novice furniture restorers like to call "Good Enough".

FYI, the fabric is called Greek Key in Buff, and I ordered it from Tonic Living.

The wood was quite damaged, and I'm not a professional wood rehabilitator (is that a thing?) so I reached for the white paint. Several coats later, I reattached the seat, and voila!

Not bad for a first timer right? (Please say right).

Pinterest fun at naptime

My daughter doesn't always nap in the afternoon, but when she does I try to spend part of it doing something relaxing. Nap time can't be all netflix and internet surfing floor mopping and toilet cleaning!! Am I right? Ha.

Inspired by this pin (note, link goes nowheresville):

http://pinterest.com/pin/181058847490679832/

I picked up some Christmas scrapbook paper, grabbed a fine tip black pen, and I copied the idea detail for detail.

Not my idea at all but a fun way to spend nap time and add some personality to gifts this Christmas!