pillow fabric is in!

The fabric I ordered from Spoonflower for the livingroom pillows came in and way sooner than I expected. I got a note late last week saying it was going to be another three weeks, so I'm pretty happy.

I chose the tribal orange fabric along with a fun nautilus orange and grey fabric. I'll be honest, the orange on the first fabric is a bit too bright for me, but I think I'm getting used to it.

Stay tuned for the pillow project to be completed next week!

Have a great weekend!

ps - I just realized there is some nice cat hair on the couch already -- I love that my cat chooses the new furniture for his naps...

turned-leg dhurrie ottoman

Turned-leg dhurrie ottoman. Kind of a long name for an ottoman don't you think?

Regardless, I love it. Can my ottoman look like this please? Perhaps I will take another fabric gander to see if I can find something similar. I did see legs like this at Home Depot so I think I'm good there. And thanks to some good suggestions, I think I'll try some nail head trim.

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On another note, if you like pizza and you live in Toronto, you have to try Pizzeria Libretto on Ossington. It is honestly the best pizza I've ever had. I can't stop thinking about it.

according to plan

In the spirit of Janice's recent post about keeping it real, I thought I would share a project I half completed that hasn't gone according to plan. Like many of you, I have furniture from my university days (can I still say that when I graduated 11 years ago??) namely two Ikea Lack tables. One is a console table and one is a coffee table. I've had it in my mind to make an ottoman out of each one of them - one for the living room and one for my bedroom. So I finally got to work a couple of weeks ago.

Here's the coffee table before:

I took a trip to fabricland* to pick out the fabric and the foam to make it cushy. I hemmed and hawed, but found some cozy grey fabric with some colourful flecks in it that I thought would be nice for the winter months, but when I got it home I just wasn't sure. I kind of thought maybe the wrong side of it would work better because you could see the colours better.

Ultimately, I decided on the right side and I got measuring. Instantly I realized the the cushy foam wasn't going to be thick enough, but it was all I had (and $35 a metre!!) so I stuck with it. I stapled the fabric etc. and all was fine until I was finished and turned it over.

It was kind of blah.

My hubby thought it was kind of blah too so I was pretty disappointed. So here it is... where it has been sitting for a few weeks**:

Leo has been having fun with it -- using it for balance and such while standing. But I have to do something with it. I don't want to spend the money to buy more fabric because I don't want to be disappointed again, so I still might try to make it work. I dunno. Obviously it still needs legs. I might take a trip yonder to Home Depot or Lowes to see what kind of legs they have to finish it off.

Here it is in front of the couch where I would have liked it to go. I pictured it (with legs :)) with a tray on top (and basically nothing else because I have a child who will knock everything off of the tray...).

So there's my dose of reality for today (that and all the toys laying around!).

What would you do with it? Suggestions welcomed!

*this is getting tougher with a little kid in tow by the way - strolling him through the fabric bolts I'm sure he's wondering where the eff his mother is taking him now...
**What do you think of the martini glasses being so close to the kiddie table with all the books? :)

basement reveal!

Thanks for visiting! I have a new update of the basement here!

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I forgot that a million years ago I started telling you guys about the basement. It was pretty dusty down there, so I chose to block it out of my mind until today. Well not really, but I didn't go down there much. One of the finishing touches was added today (there are still a few more things to do!), so I thought I would share the almost completed basement. I still have to add lots of things to make it cozy like a rug, ottoman and photos etc., but it feels so great to get the main stuff done!

Our bevie area. We got the wine fridge from our realtor if you can believe it -- nice house warming gift! Mark wants to fill it with beer and when we were away for the long weekend we found this cute beer sign that I think fits perfect. I placed it over the mat in an ikea frame and voila! We still want to add a counter of some sort to the top of the ledge to finish it off. Maybe splurge on granite since it's such a small area.

(What I'm really thinking about when I look at this picture is that I have a very active baby boy and two very active nephews who I'm sure will use this ledge as a jumping off point sometime down the road. Really, what were we thinking!? :))

Here's the seating area with our ginormous black sectional that barely made it down the stairs. But it did, so yay! I'd like to sell the table pictured here (any takers?) and get a cozy ottoman with storage and a nice area rug to pull it all together.

A shot from my spot on the couch. The fireplace is covered in stone veneer and the tv stand is from ikea. The tv is actually on the wall, but it looks like it's resting on the receiver (it didn't fit in the stand along with the other components unfortunately). I want something straight lined and modern for over the fireplace to balance out all the rustic elements of the room.

We found this clock on the long weekend and thought it would be fun to hang on the column.

Shot of the bathroom from the seating area and also a shot of our barn doors. More on those in a sec.

The vanity is from Muti north of Toronto. We fell in love with the walnut colour. To match it, we opted for beiges (Gasp! Not grey?) because we got a good deal on the floor tile and worked around that. We still need a mirror obviously -- it will be a frameless piece of glass that will go full height from the vanity to the ceiling.

We went with beige-y tumbled marble tiles for the shower -- the shower head is dreamy and I will probably be showering down here from now on. The glass for the shower still needs to be installed.

Obviously we need to fix the window :)

Another shot of the barn doors. The one on the right is for the laundry room, which isn't quite finished yet. We really wanted barn doors, but not the expense, so we faked it. They're basically plain masonite with routed lines to make it look like a barn door. Then we painted them white and added the handles (they were added today and I love them!).

We went back and forth a kajabillion times on what to put on the floor. Originally we were going to put engineered hardwood, but it didn't work out for some reason. Then we thought carpet, but I didn't really want carpet everywhere, so then Mark offered up vinyl to which I made a really yucky face. Vinyl?? Ew. But then he brought home a sample and it looked like aged wood. Kind of fun and I was sold. I think it still needs to be cleaned about 3 or 4 more times because it has a lot of dust from the work that was done, but I just love how it turned out.

We decided to add a wood mantel over the fire place. My mom knew we were looking for a piece and told us she found one in her basement. It was buried back in the deep depths of her basement walls (I used to be afraid of what was in there when we were growing up!). Anyway she figures the wood is about 150 years old because that's how old her house is. Kind of cool to have it in our house.

Finally the pièce de résistance: our custom mirror! Mark just brought it home tonight! This has to my most favourite piece of furniture in the house (besides our dining room table). Mark's friend/co-worker got some barn board and made this amazing frame and ordered some mirror to fit the piece. We're going to hang it on the wall using very strong cleats (can't have this puppy falling down on the baby!) to cover the utility boxes on the wall.

So that's it so far! Sorry for the long winded post!

fabric ramblings

Now that we've managed to get our ginormous sectional into the basement, we're couch-free in the living room. I have two chairs but we've yet to get a couch. As I've mentioned before, we've got our eye on the Karlstad in dark grey and I'd like to pull in some orange for accents. I was on Spoonflower this afternoon and found some fabric I think will do the trick for some cushions.

I love this Tribal Orange colour by Dolphin and Condor

And this Tree Hearts fabric by Holli Zollinger is clean and simple.

And that my friends is where the orange stops because I got distracted (doesn't take much these days) by Holli's other fabric. I love all of them!

Ok I just found her kunda linen collection and now I want reds - beautiful!

This is turning into a weird run-on post so I'm stopping there. What to choose!?

ps-while I was looking over this post for glaring errors I realized it was September. SEPTEMBER PEOPLE. What the eff.