DIY ~ Tape Art

Our window seat at the top of the stairs is still a work in progress. We have been busy with painting the kitchen cabinets, working on the yard, and um, life in general.

That being said, I have been working on making some DIY art to hang on the walls in the window seat area. I have three pieces planned. All are ideas I have seen floating around Pinterest lately. 

First Piece: Abstract Art Using Tape

I have seen quite a few DIY canvases using painters tape in different formats but I really got excited about trying it myself when I saw Michelle's tutorial over at Ten June. I loved the grey and white as well as her line placement (neutral colours always speak to me).

I decided I wanted my piece to be black and white.

         

So I set out and bought a $2 canvas from the dollar store and found some painters tape laying around the house. Originally my plan was to reverse tape my lines because I wanted to have black lines on the raw white canvas. The plan was to come up with a pattern, mask off the lines and spray paint them black.

I started out by taping my line pattern and then masking the areas I wanted to stay white. The top portion went pretty smoothly but once I was at the middle (where the lines are busier) it was starting to get confusing and a lot more effort than I really wanted to put into the project. After an hour of taping and cutting I was also getting frustrated.

After giving myself a timeout I decided to rip off all of my hard work and come up with a Plan B instead. A few minutes later I had an 'Ah Ha' moment and wondered why I didn't think of Plan B in the first place.

What was Plan B? Hockey Tape!!

I always have a roll kicking around at the bottom of my roller derby bag so I ran to go find it. Upon inspection I realized that the black hockey tape was the perfect width and texture of what I had originally envisioned for this DIY abstract project.

And the kicker is Plan B took me all of 5 minutes to complete. As easy as figuring out your design and sticking it to canvas.

Voila, DIY abstract art in seconds flat ;)

Diggin' A Hole

Last weekend D and I dug a hole in our front yard. Why you might ask? Cause we were preparing to welcome a new addition to the family :)

A while back I had mentioned that we would like to plant a Japanese Maple in the yard. Our previous townhouse had one in the back patio area and it was gorgeous. I loved watching it grow over the time we were there and am hoping our new tree will provide us me with the same enjoyment.

We dug our hole at the tail end of a two month dry spell. It was quite a process as we wanted to transfer the dirt to another area in the yard. D shoveled the dirt onto a tarp and then I separated the dirt from the turf, removing the weeds as I went. As you can imagine the ground possessed rock like qualities so the digging part was hard work. We also don't own a wheelbarrow yet so we had to transfer the dirt one shovel load at a time. We didn't have far to go, but I'm sure we looked pretty funny walking back and forth across the yard a million times. A wheelbarrow is definitely on our wish list for spring!

We filled the hole half way with water a few times to try to presoak the ground before we planted the Maple. If you don't do this then once the tree is in the hole the surrounding ground can steal the water away from the tree roots. Luckily for us the rain started a few days later and hasn't stopped since. So the ground was nice and moist come planting time. It's funny that now we are home owners with a yard we are trying to beautify, we welcomed the rain with open arms. We were actually quite excited about it :)

Yesterday was the day we had planned our trip to the nursery to pick out our Japanese Maple. I had practice and a game to attend in the morning to mid afternoon so by the time I got home D was itching to go. It was still raining, quite hard I might add, so I had my doubts about being outside. I also thought the folks at the garden center would think we were crazy for planting in the rain but turns out that it was the perfect weather conditions to plant a tree :)

So we chose a 3 gallon tree, grabbed some soil and bark mulch and drove the block home with our new Maple sticking out the back of our hatchback.

We decided to name our tree because we are dorks like that. So let us introduce you to Mr. Roboto, our new Japanese Maple!

And we have been personifying him ever since. Last night we had a discussion regarding if he was missing his friends at the garden center and that now he can watch the traffic go by ;)

We think he's going to be a great addition to our yard and can't wait to see how he transforms over the next few years. 

Mr. Roboto is currently the same height as D. Let's see what the height difference is a year from now. I should also state that the Maple tree is my birthday present (which is today) so we will always know what date to take another comparison photo :)

The final step was to give Mr. Roboto some root booster. Yes, we need an outside watering can as well ;)

Sharing The Love ~ Owen's Room Reveal

I couldn't help but share this absolutely amazing little boy's room designed by Nancy over at Owen's Olivia. The room reveal was featured on YHL this week and it is full of many of my favorite design elements.

This is an excellent example of how a toddler's bedroom needn't be frilly and pink (for a girl) or filled with race cars and blue (for a boy). I am so in love with the monochromatic colour scheme. Surprise surprise ;) Nancy has achieved the perfect balance in the room with the small pops of colour in the art, pillows and accessories.

It is also a perfect example of how redoing a room doesn't have to break the bank. With resourcefulness and creativity the entire room makeover only cost $305! The majority of the large items were either found on Craigslist or at thrift stores (the dresser was even rescued from the dump), and Nancy made most of the fantastic art herself. A little bit of paint, an excellent eye for detail and a bit of elbow grease can produce magical results.

Along with the art, Nancy also made the pallet wall, the floating shelves, the chevron curtains, the blankets, pillows and stuffed toys. I truly can't say enough how much I love that crib blanket! It is Ikat, chevron, black, white and grey goodness all piled into one.  

To be honest I could sit here and list off every single item that I love in this room, which would be every single item. To name a few that I feel I can't stop myself from mentioning are....the grey fabric bunting, the acorn pom-poms hanging from the shelf, the pallet wall, the cloud pillows, the antique rocking chair, the nail head art, the Death Cab for Cutie poster, the little brass whale, the.....OK seriously I am in love with it all!

I just want to stare at these photos all day. Find more photos of Owen's Room Reveal along with the full post here.

While you are there you will want to check out the rest of Nancy's blog. She also shares my love of fabric. Actually there are a few things we have in common....procrastination...umm ;)

Thankfulness

I hope everyone had a fantastic Thanksgiving! Our weekend was jam packed with awesomeness and so much to be thankful for. Including:

• Three Thanksgiving dinners
• Spending time with family and friends
• Enjoying this amazing October weather out in the garden
• Having Minter Gardens Center two blocks away
• Digging holes (I'll explain later)
• Walking down by the river in Hope with the evening sun shining on the mountains
• Having the time to tackle a few more small projects around the house

We've been in our bungalow for a month now and I have been putting off writing about the move. I was initially waiting until the end of September when we had officially moved out of our old townhouse and shop with intention to summarize my thoughts and feelings regarding this moving experience as a whole, but decided not to bore you with the emotional details. Almost everyone has been through a move and knows how it feels right? ;)

In short the month of September was filled with stress, excitement, exhaustion, long nights, anticipation and a few tears. After taking the first week of October to decompress, relax and really enjoy not having to stop at either of the two old places on the way home from work to pick up more junk or clean, I feel much better about the situation and relieved that it is finally in our past. Instead here are a few photos of moving day.

The photos below were taken by D's mum :) 

Before moving into our bungalow we spent an entire day just cleaning and fixing a few things in the kitchen.

We were extremely grateful to have my parents, D's parents, our friends Jon, Ben and Linc, D's sister Cindy, Willow and her bf Dustin help us move. We couldn't have done it without them. The amount of help we received was truly a gift. The day went incredibly smooth and our family members went above and beyond just carrying boxes into the house. My Mum provided lunch for everyone and after the truck was unpacked all family members went to work either cleaning, arranging or tackling the weeds in the front yard.

 

This photo will be a great reminder of what our driveway looked like before the garage was built (which should be happening very soon)! Permit application is in and our concrete friends are coming to do a pre assessment tonight.

Also do you remember me mentioning the new fence panels the neighbours bought here? They ended up at the end of our driveway. Unfortunately they were installed before we had our survey done so they are a little ways over onto our property which isn't really a big deal. Even so, the neighbours have insisted on moving them into the correct spot once the garage starts to go up.

Inspiration ~ Window Seat

This weekend is going to be a whirlwind of last minute cleaning, repairing and organizing. We hand in our keys at the townhouse and the shop on Sunday and we still have things to get rid of at both places.

I'm not going to have time to do any more work on this mini makeover so I thought I would post some inspiration photos for our window seat area in the meantime to give you an idea of what's to come.



  

 



  



  

Source List: Left to Right 

Etsy, Ikea, Design Inspiration, Etsy, Ikea, Design Inspiration, A Beach Cottage, Etsy, Houzz, School House Electric

Weekends, Weeds & Window Seats

I had mentioned on Friday that D and I would be putting the finishing touches on a small project over the weekend but alas it wasn't meant to be. The project was to give our front porch a mini makeover and one of the final steps was to repaint the concrete steps. D works on Saturdays so I set out to Home Depot bright and early to buy what was needed. The stairs do need to be repaired at the bottom so we didn't want to spend a lot of time and money going through all of the proper steps to refinish the porch at this time...stripping, acid washing, cleaning, sealing, painting, sealing again. We just wanted to quickly slap some paint on them to give the porch a fresher look until we paint the exterior of the house next year.

So after convincing the salesperson at Home Depot that we didn't want to spend a fortune and yes we knew that they wouldn't hold up for the long haul, she recommended we use a product called 'Restore'. It goes on thick and covers all of the imperfections in the concrete. You do still need to use the 'Restore' cleaner beforehand though and then wait 24 hours before applying the paint. Reducing the steps from 6 to 2 and only needing to buy 2 products instead of 5 definitely seemed much more manageable.

The salesperson also warned that the paint needed to be applied when no rain was expected for at least 48 hours. Driving home the sky was clouding over and the air felt damp. By the time I had gathered up the necessary tools I realized that painting the stairs or at least cleaning them just wasn't in the cards for the day. To be honest I had also starting losing interest and becoming a little disheartened in the project on the drive back form Home Depot.

All is not lost, I started on a different mini makeover indoors that seemed much more enjoyable than scrapping and cleaning concrete steps. But as to not leave you in the lurch on the outside mini makeover, here is a pic of the work that has been done to the front of our bungalow so far.

So far we have:

• Removed the screen door.
• Repainted the house number and hung it higher.
• Painted the mail box black and fixed it to the side railing.
• Hung some fall hanging baskets.
• Removed the weeds from along the front.

 We still need to:

• Repaint the concrete steps.
• Plant some greenery along the front and add river rocks as a border.
• Put new trim around the front door.
• Maybe paint the door handle (still in discussion).
• Add a couple more fall planters to the porch.

It doesn't seem like much but when you compare it to the before pic it's quite an improvement.

Pulling out the weeds along the front was a tough job. Firstly because they were 60% thistles and secondly because the ground was as hard as cement. D's sister and mum very kindly worked on the left side the day we moved in and D finished off both sides, broke up the soil and leveled it off last week.

Speaking of weeding...D and I spent all of Sunday afternoon pulling out the weeds (again mostly thistles) along the front of the property line in front of the chain link fence where the front hedges used to be. I don't have any photos of this part of the yard, but trust me it was pretty horrible looking.

Back to the indoor project that was started on over the weekend.....it's soon to be my favorite seat in the house....Yep the window seat :)

Here is a before photo as a reminder.

The wood paneling was covered in scratches, marks and quite frankly looked ugly. Too much wood paneling gives me a headache. So I started out by sanding it down and painting it white.

Such a huge improvement already. I will keep you posted on the progress of this little space that brings me so much joy. Or at least it will when it's done ;)

Friday Funnies ~ A Dog's Dilemma

This is what may happen if we cut down too many trees! Global warming is one thing, but the dogs of the world may run into a crisis if we continue to clear our forests! We have to stop cutting down trees! This could turn into a serious problem!

*(this was forwarded to one of  my bosses. I had to share it because it made me laugh out loud).

This weekend D and I are putting the final touches on a mini makeover we have been working on. Looking forward to showing you all.

Happy Friday Everyone!