Fun outdoor pillows

It's that time again... the time to be thinking of the outdoors. As I mentioned in my last post, I'm going to finally make a cushion for the couch on my porch and began my search for pillows to go with it. I found some pretty ones on Etsy of course. Outdoor fabric has come a long way and now you can find all sorts of fabric designs for outdoor cushions and pillows. Oh now what to choose? Secretly my favourite are the Tropical outdoor pillows from Anita's Casa.  I love that pink cording! I'm eyeing the Tonga Weave in Grass or the Eaton, Deep Charcoal from Tonic Living for the main cushion. I'll have to see what works.

1 || Navy and Turquoise Outdoor Pillow from Cathy's Custom Pillows
2 || Gray Outdoor Pillow from Cathy's Custom Pillows
3 || Evil Eye Outdoor Cushion from GorgeousGD
4 || Blue Outdoor Pillow from The Pillow Toss
5 || Orange Lumbar Pillow Cover by Anita's Casa
6 || Tropical Outdoor Pillow from Anita's Casa
7 || Banana Leaf Pillow from Tonic Living

Figuring out toy storage

I sold our train table a month or so ago which left me with some pretty unsightly areas of our toy area in the basement. Yes I know, they're toys and they're supposed to be messy, but I prefer things to be tidy at the end of the day so I'm looking for a nice solution.

I don't mind things being thrown into a basket so I'm on the hunt for some nice ones! I found the photo below from Land of Nod and it's kind of the look I'm going for: blocks in one basket, train stuff in another, legos in another, etc. I might tackle this project my self (#wintersewingproject??). We'll see.

Here are some other baskets I found for inspiration:

Half Tone Rattan Floor Basket | Land of Nod

Cream and Grey Storage Basket | Sampson and James

Round Storage Bin | Love Joy Create

Fabric Storage Basket | Empire Eco Designs

What do you think? Maybe I should just chuck it all instead a la The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up..... ;)

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The house Exterior is done [for now]

Well my friends. It has been a long summer of exterior renovations. What we thought would be an eight-week project turned into a 17-project. Guys weren't showing up, things weren't getting done. I was grumpy. #firstworldproblems. Yes I know. But we made it through the other side of the long tunnel and I'm here to show you the final(ish) product. There are still some things to do and some things we need to address, but more on that later. First: the before pics!

This is where we started. We had lots of white siding and pardging as well as stairs that were falling apart. Also, you can't see it, but there is also about 3-inches of water hanging out on the roof right over Mila's bed so the roof was first to be addressed.

A photo posted by Stephanie Fazio (@lealoulemonade) on Apr 14, 2015 at 4:24pm PDT

This was the back during renos. You can also see pics of the original back here:

And here is the after.

We went with a Maibec wood siding in Pepperwood and chose StoneRox Cobblestone in Meaford Mist. The stone is my favourite part of the whole reno. We wanted an old stone look and we're super happy with the result.

Half-way through we decided to add stone and shakes to the garage as well. We still need to paint the door and the side trim.

As I mentioned we still need to address a few things. We want to paint out the windows. As soon as the siding went up we realized that the white windows washed out the colour a bit. We also need to address those darn arches on the porch. The red brick makes the siding look too green to me. We might clad them in something next year but we're going to live with them for now. 

Also next spring we'll be tackling the landscaping. We'll have to re-lay the front stone walkway and put replace all the plants in the front. We also have plans to redo the west-side walk way. All in due time. For now I'm happy to get another major reno done in the books.

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Branch bubble chandeliers

I've had my eye on a certain style of chandelier for the dining room for a while: the branch bubble chandelier. My heart actually skips a beat when I see one. I love how they reach out to every corner of a room and provide an aura of gorgeous light over the dinner table.

Now just to convince the hubby...

Here are my favourites. Most of these are by Lindsey Adelman, but one or two I found on Etsy. I also made a Pinterest board with more variations. Aren't they gorgeous?

Photo Sources

1-4 || Lindsey Adelman

5 || Dutton Brown

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Get more from me here:
IG: @lealoulemonade
Facebook: /lealoulemonade
Twitter: @lealou

House exterior progress

A photo posted by Stephanie Fazio (@lealoulemonade) on Apr 14, 2015 at 4:24pm PDT

If you follow me on Instagram, I asked the Internet what we should do with the exterior of our house. You see... our house is very white. It has old white siding on the upper portion and white shoddy parging on the bottom. In all honesty it never really bothered me but it has bothered Mark for a long time and this year he decided it was time to do something about it.

His way of doing something goes as follows: Research the bazookas out of a project for months (or years in this case) and then suddenly pull the trigger. He pulled the trigger this time by taking apart the front stairs and pulling out all of the plants and then pulling off the parging in the back to expose pretty lath and plaster.

Ok so I guess we're doing this then?

Soon the house looked like this and I felt like I was living in a weird '80s horror movie.

A photo posted by Stephanie Fazio (@lealoulemonade) on Apr 28, 2015 at 10:27am PDT

Cut to today and we have made a bit of progress.

Here's what we've done:

• The roof had to be done so that was done first. Apparently we had three inches of water sitting on the roof over Mila's room. The roof was brown and is now black (no pic).
• We decided to stucco the sides of the house where some old parging was falling apart. The stucco really cleaned everything up.
• We discovered that the front of the house was hanging on by a thread under the white parging. When our handyman started working on it, it was moving around so basically he had to take all the parging off, along with the first layer of brick and re-brick the front and sides of the porch on the right. We're going to be putting stone on the base so it doesn't matter what the brick looks like as long as it's sturdy (hence the two colours of brick).
• We also decided to stucco the caps of the porch to clean them up and create a continuous line. You'll notice in the before picture at the top, there's a break in the cap right under the brick arches and we wanted to fill it in.
• We added a stucco ledge to the side and back of the house. The stone will go under and new siding will go above. It doesn't look level but believe me it is! (Arg old houses!).

Here's what's left to do:

• Install stone the front and back bottom walls.
• Install siding and shakes to the front on the top (the shakes will go in the peak) and install siding on the back of the house. This will include the window frames. We're going with a light grey/brown siding.
• Install two new windows on the far northeast side of the house.
• Rebuild the stairs which will include new stone ledges and caps.
• Later on we'll likely add big stones to the front garden and put some of our plants back!

So that's what's been going on around here. 

Oh and guess what I decided to do before all this work started... host an outdoor wedding shower for my sister! I think I'll be embracing a rustic look ;).

Our vegetable garden boxes

Mark spent a few hours last weekend and this weekend finishing off our veggie garden boxes. I'm so excited to have these done. I've wanted to plant my own veggies in a box like this for years. We used cedar and plan to give it a simple clear coat so we can keep the colour as long as possible.

It's basically two boxes flanking a funny little box in the middle. Mark just put a few pieces of extra cedar on the front of the middle box to cover it up so we could match it to the other boxes. 

I plan to go this week to Urban Harvest this week to get my plants. I'll plant the regulars like tomatoes, kale, and lettuce and then I'll see what else they have so I can add something a bit different. I can't wait!

Mini fireplace update

Do you happen to remember when I mentioned that we were thinking of doing a big fireplace reno in our living room? Well guess what? We ended up doing something but it wasn't a major reno. We made a minor change that made a biggish impact.

Do you see the difference?

After writing the post, I suggested to Mark that we simply put in shelves into the weird side areas of the fireplace and call it a day, so that's what we did. Mark made some shelves out of MDF and then we painted them white to match as best we could. Now we get to keep the texture of the brick behind the shelves, while at the same time breaking up the massive brick area with a few of our favourite shelfie things.

They're not super-styled or full of stuff which is fine by me. I'm really trying not to bring a bunch of stuff into the house just to make it look nice. I want to love what I bring into the house from now on. So I just grabbed some things around the house to add to the shelves and the rest will come later.

Hook nook

We have a little nook beside the stairs that isn't really big enough to fit anything like a bench or table so it just sat empty until Mark had a great idea of putting hooks there.

It was a great idea because, even though we have a closet by the door, we always pile our coats on the bannisters when we come in the door. This way we can hang them up instead. The other issue with the closet is that it's so cold in the winter that our coats are freezing when we put them on. Hanging them on the hooks helps to keep our coats at room temp.

I got these hooks last year at Artefacts in St. Jacobs. They are from 1812 and add a little character to what would otherwise be a blank space. I have three and put the third one in Mila's room.

And because I love you I'm going to keep it real. This is what the hooks look like right now...

Assessing the corners of the house

   

I was bored today so I took some random (fuzzy) photos of some corners of our house. The first four are from our living room, the fifth one is in our dining room, sixth is the back corner of my office, seventh is in my bedroom, eighth is the mudroom and the last is the crazy toy corner of our basement.

Here's what these photos tell me: 

1. I would like to get my shelving finished on the fireplace in the living room but over all I like the room.

2. I need some art for the walls or maybe some frames for my kids' paintings...

3. I really need to get rid of that yellow Bay bag in the second pic. It's full of random things from our street sale and has been there since May.

4. I need a proper kids' art station.

5. I would love to sand the kids' table and chairs (for some reason they think it's paper and write/paint all over it [and get it out of my office]).

6. We had to take some of the plants in from outside, one of which we put in our bedroom, and I love how it fills up the room. I will likely leave it there and get something else for outside next summer.

7. I need to swap out the summer stuff from the baskets in the mudroom (add it to the list...).

8. One would think I run a daycare from the toys in the basement however I do not. I need proper storage or a big garbage bin. :)

The End.

PS: the wall colour in the picture with the easel is pretty true to life. I recently won some paint from ParaPaints and need to let them know what colour I would like. What should I paint the living room and dining room?? The grey is nice, but I feel like I could go with something new after having this colour for five years... Thoughts?

PPS: I can't believe I'm showing these crazy corners of my house! Ahh!