Did it!

So, we got the door in the kitchen painted (Benjamin Moore, thicket).  It took me awhile to love it (as it does with anything i do) but now I'm all about it.  I'm even thinking of doing some stencilling with the rest of the green paint on the opposite wall in the kitchen

Here's a close-up

... and here it is from the other side of the room.  kinda hard to get a great pick with the sun but you get the idea

oh, and here are the colours we bought for a few new projects.  'Blue Nose' for the coffee table in the living room (which is done by the way but I just have to get around to taking some pics).  The other colour is 'Rust' by Benjamin Moore and it is going in Molly's bathroom tomorrow:)  We've also got a few random stepping stools that might get painted along with the bench in the pic below.  

Just to keep up with my New Years resolutions I thought I'd post some stuff we've been doing on the house

I love our little "labour of love home".  We have so much fun dreaming up things to do to it and I am so lucky to have a husband who encourages and helps me paint and decorate and organize and re-purpose old crappy furniture over and over again.  

Mason jar candle holder


We decided to have a bit of a "do it yourself" Christmas decoration year.  Basically we weren't aloud to spend any money on Christmas decorations.  I have a rule that I'm only aloud to buy Christmas decorations AFTER Christmas when they're 75% off so that kinda puts a bit of a damper on the Christmas decorating but it makes you get creative

Here are our Mason Jars that we decorated with some ribbon I got from Costco last year.  Just glued the ribbon with a glue gun and threw a tea light inside and that was that

Christmas paper creation

I'm actually not even sure what to call this but Nelson took some strips of leftover wrapping paper once a few gifts were were wrapped and he rolled them up and stuck them in this glass jar and there you have it... a "wrapping paper jar thingy"

Decorative Clothespins

First of all I did these a long time ago after finding the idea on Young House Love.  They're sweet to hang pics from and I plan on doing them in Molly's play room with letters from the alphabet once I get around to decorating it.  These are currently hanging in my office/sewing room and if the room was even somewhat tidy there would be a better view of where they are but a closeup was the safest thing to do.  

The paper and yellow ribbon are from Michaels.  Clothespins from the dollar store and a regular ol' gluestick was used to paste paper onto the clothespins

Framing the thermostat

I got this idea from Pinterest and it was the sweetest thing ever to jazz up our thermostat.  The frame is from here.  All we had to do was cut out the back with an exacto-knife and throw it on the wall... awesome!

Here's a little perspective of what it looks like in the house.

Wall Gallery

I finally got around to putting up my very first wall gallery.  We love it:)

Here are the 3 lonely frames I had in this space originally:

Here are the frames we added.  The original 3 frames were from Homesense and the black frames are from Ikea.  The extra white frame is also Ikea

Here's a different angle

close-up shot of a few pics developed from Hawaii and some free printables I  developed at Costco

Printables

I've been quite a regular user of the Costco photo centre lately.  I printed out these prints and framed them for the kitchen.  Frames are from Ikea and prints were found on a lengthly "free printable" search on the web and unfortunately I have no idea where the tree came from now but the Subway art is from here

Fabric

Last but not least I picked up this super awesome Amy Butler shower curtain from Bed Bath and Beyond.  It was regular 50$ but on sale for 13$... yeah!!   I LOVE the pattern and I'm going to make it into two small curtains for the openings to the tunnel in the playroom.  

Yesterday I finally got around to painting our door in the kitchen and Nels is at the paint store right now getting some paint for the upstairs bathroom and the coffee table in the living room... Hopefully I'll have time to post pics of those things in a few days.

You know what is lovely?

... staying in a beach house in Hawaii with my family and dressing Molly up in cute sundresses in the middle of winter and playing paddle ball while Molly sleeps and going for day trips to the North shore and going back to our honeymoon spots at Waikiki.

we have a great life.

a shout out to Grandma Penner who has been with Jesus now for 1 year and 3 months and who made this trip possible because she is one of the most generous people i have ever known.  I am so grateful for her and that she met Nelson and that they had a liking for one another.  We will tell Molly all about her when she is old enough:)