An organized dresser + excited me

Wowza! A few weeks ago I sent off an email with a link to my powder room makeover to Lindsey at Better After (www.betterafter.blogspot.ca) and to my extreme delight she featured it this past Monday (here)! I was super excited because 1) I love her blog and think she is the most hilarious person ever, and 2) I got like 50 times as many hits in one day than I have the entire time this blog has existed!

I received such kind and lovely comments on my blog, and as a result I've found so many more amazing blogs written by such extremely cool and creative people. I really haven't left my laptop alone for three whole days! The internet really has TOO MUCH cool stuff on it.

:)

I wanted to show-off some bedroom progress, specifically our dresser top! It's primarily me that uses our dresser top for things like my jewellery, perfumes etc...so it's taken a bit of a girly turn.

Mirror from Homesense $39.99!

A little back story - our house was robbed a few months ago by some a-hole jewel thieves, you know the kind that case your house for a week and then come in and toss your underwear drawer onto the floor looking for grandma's heirlooms and all your gold chains?

Well grandma's heirlooms they did not find (Booyah! Never keep those things in your underwear drawer) but they did take every single last piece of my jewellery (except for what I had with me on vacation ie. wedding and engagement rings, one watch, one necklace), including all my costume jewellery, fine jewellery, all of my handbags, perfume (some were half empty - weird right?), various other items like my Leafs jersey that husband bought for me our first Christmas :( and lastly my jewellery box.

I guess the only thing I don't really miss is my jewellery box, a big black hulking leather thing that wasn't really doing anything for me anymore. It did house 80% of my sparklies however. Considering I wasted no time using the insurance settlement to re-bling my life, I've been staring a growing pile of jewellery accumulating on my dresser top in a not so organized fashion. So I got to organizing!


I found the antique silver tray at Elegant Garage Sale in Toronto. The little crystal jar with the silver lid belonged to my great-grandmother. It has her initials engraved on the top. I recently liberated it from my parent's basement, where I can't believe it sat for decades. It was suuuper dirty, like I had to soak it in vinegar overnight dirty. 

I've hung my drop earrings from the side of a soap dish, and I've thrown some bracelets in there too. 

This birdcage is from Homesense also, and it's not really ideal to hang necklaces but it looks pretty and works in the meantime. I'm working on another solution for my necklaces.

I just picked up this inlay bone box from Chapters-Indigo on sale for $16.25. It's made from genuine non-endangered bone which is kind of gross but also cool. It holds my random stuff.

I also picked up this Ash and lacquer box for a steal at $7.50. It's not on the dresser but on husband's nightstand. He's a notorious junk piler.

Oh - and I'm planning to do some colourful DIY art for the frames, which I picked up at Real Canadian Superstore. The photo that comes with the frames makes me giggle. It looks like an adult diaper ad. She is so excited it's hilarious, and if you look at her feet you notice her shoe is falling off. Awkward.

Bedroom beginnings

This is the current state of our master bedroom:

I'm only showing you the half-decent bits here. For one, the wall colour, which is Sherwin Williams Essential Gray. It's totally gray, and then in some light (evening) it almost looks lilic-ish. Which I don't mind.

I've added curtains, from InVu on Yonge Street (who are no longer in business, sad-face). I like the trellis pattern, despite the fact that perhaps it's a bit "last year". They were a risky choice considering I hadn't found a duvet cover for our bed yet. But they were like 98% off, soooo....

Sorry if the picture quality hurts your eyes

Speaking of our bed, when we moved we upgraded to a king-size mattress, but we still have a queen duvet and duvet cover on there, as I haven't found a replacement yet. There is lot's of naked mattress hanging out for sure. Our current duvet cover is now discontinued and that makes me so sad, because I LOVE it. Here's a better picture of it from the internet:

Since I'll never find anything similar that I like quite as much, I'm on the hunt for the perfect white duvet cover. Boring, maybe, but I'm going to get crazy with some exciting throw pillows!

In the meantime, I'm waiting for our headboard to arrive, from Crate and Barrel:

I'm excited to get our room finished. It's certainly taking a while!

Bigger is better

Most One of you may remember my post on Scary Blank Walls and how to beat them into submission. The first thing you see upon entering my house is the wall behind the living room couch. Which was known as the giant beige wall. It's still beige (guh), but I had since Mcgyver'ed a solution using Malma frames and spray paint to temporarily fill it up. This is what I came up with:

Now, after this past weekend, you see this:

I had come to realize that a large space like that really needs something...larger. Simple logic really. I picked up 8 Ribba frames from our friends over at Ikea, and there they sat in their plastic in the corner for two months. Two Reasons - 1) I didn't know what to put in the frames (that wouldn't cost squillions of dollars) and 2) Ribba frames are notoriously horrible to frame and I couldn't face it.

I ended up just downloading and printing out some vintage botanical printables from The Graphics Fairy. They added the colour that the wall was really asking for.

As for hanging the Ribba frames, I learned of the old "screw in a paintstick" method from Kelly over at View along the way. Basically you stick a screw through a paint stick (just a little, not all the way), hang the Ribba frame on the screw, position, and then press lightly on the screw to make a little mark where you'll eventually hammer your nail in.

GENIUS.

It turned what Ikea intended to be an afternoon of screaming, crying, and ultimately divorce into a pleasant little home improvement activity lasting no more than half an hour.

Oh and say hi to my new little friend, Piggy (aka breakable toddler bait). He can fly!

For all you Looky Loo's

See what I did there? Ha.

Our main floor powder room has actually been mostly finished for quite a while now (considering all we did was wallpaper and put up shelves) but since it took me foreeeever to find, order and receive the shelves, it's been hanging in Loo Limbo. Until now! Behold.

Before, yellow as heck:

Hieeee! There's me and my big fancy camera that I don't know how to use.

And After:
(seriously, some one teach me how to take pictures. Although the room is like only 8x3 or something so it's a little hard to get up in there.)

I found the wallpaper at Home Depot, which surprised me. The mirror is from Home Sense, and the frame and photo are from Ikea. How inspired of me, I know. I actually just ordered this print from this Etsy shop, and I'm going to try it out in there. But I also might want to put it in my bedroom, so we'll see!

And here are the shelves (purchased here), behind the toilet. Sorry, I did not get a compelling photo of the toilet. It's just a toilet.

I found the glass box at Home Sense, the Voluspa candle was a gift, and I found the little framed picture for $5 at the St. Lawrence Antique Market in Toronto. It's of this Victorian lady stepping out of a carriage. It's cool.

And of course, a basket to hold extra rolls of toilet paper. Because you wouldn't a simple trip to the bathroom to become awkward for your guests. I'm a practical sort of host.

 And here is the light fixture, from Royal Lighting (in Toronto).

And finally, this is my failed attempt to capture the entire room in one photo. You can see my arms holding the camera in sideways blindly firing off shots. Whatever.

All in all, I think I created a really nice place for guests to pee in my home!



Linking up to:

Sometimes it's the little things

We have a to-do list in our house that is a mile long. Like we're talking entire empty rooms that need filling. Stark beige walls and bare surfaces abound. Sometimes you can hear an echo. And sometimes it overwhelms me to the point where I'm paralyzed and can't do anything. See my previous post for an example. Yep it's still empty. Lame.

It doesn't help that money isn't exactly falling from the sky right now. Lesson learned, if you buy a bigger house, you might not be able to afford to put anything in it! So, major furniture purchases (i.e. sectional, tables and bookshelves for the extremely empty basement) postponed, I can choose to focus on little things that make me happy and fill our house with cozy touches.

Turning my focus outside, I found three little tin pots at Michael's for 50% off. I used leftover chalkboard paint from Sophia's playroom to label them.

I had husband drill holes in the bottom for drainage.

I chose a Genovese basil plant (delicious), Rosemary (delicious) and a Lavender (for nothing other than wandering over and sniffing once in a while).

Lovely.

It's the little things right?

Now I just need the sun to come out!