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.

small things: taking off the french doors

We had a few people over on New Year's Eve and we were discussing various things and our French doors came up in conversation. They haven't really bothered me too much, but I haven't really loved them either. First off, the left one doesn't close all the way so we've had to prop it open in front of the side table and they don't look balanced. Also they are really old and have been painted over a million times, so they didn't look great. 

One friend suggested I just take them off - why not? So the next day we decided to take them off to give it a try. It looked pretty bare at first but with a few picture changes and some time to get used to the space, I'm rather liking it!

And now we can actually see the table and I can have fun with little vignettes (if I ever get around to it!).

Now to just find some darn pillows! It's starting to be an issue!

ps- sorry for all the wonky photos and colours - I'm the worst at taking photos at the right time and just take them on the fly!

pillow search - skinny laminx orla love

I've been on the lookout for pillows for my living room for some time. Yes I can make my own, but I've always been a Skinny LaMinx fan, so why not get some pillows from Heather? I already have the Leaves pillow in autumn and recently moved it to the couch craving some yellows in the living room. I'd love to pair it with the Orla pillow in Lemon.

What colours are you craving right now?

orange you glad I made this pillow?

har har

So I took advantage of naptime and made a pillow out of my new fabric. But guess what? I didn't get enough for two pillows, which is so strange for me because I always buy way too much fabric...waaah waaah.

I ended up getting a yard only which didn't take into account the fact that I wanted the circles to be in the middle of the pillow. I played around with the idea of cutting out a circle and sewing it on some other fabric, but I really wanted a fully-orange pillow. So I went ahead and made one with a beige backing and I'll just order more fabric for the other pillow later.

I quite like it! It adds a punch of much-needed colour to the room. I still need to make the pillow with the shells, so that will be next up.

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.

***
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? :)

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.

karlstad

Ok so we're likely jumping on the Karlstad bandwagon.

We need a couch on the main floor when we move our sectional to the basement and we don't want to spend a ton of cash so we trekked over to Ikea last night to check it out.

Honestly I really like this couch. The dark grey is perfect (because ya know we're [I'm] obsessed with grey) and the size will fit nicely in front our livingroom window. It's cozy enough to go along with my livingroom inspiration photo and the best part? It's $599. Can't be that price. The one caveat: the legs! I'm not sure why these are the standard legs but they will have to go. We'll either look into replacing them with the metal legs or do what Sherry and John did and stain them.

Next we'll have to consider the chair options for the livingroom. We'll see what we find!

living room inspiration

Source: themarionhousebook.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

I spotted this living room on The Marion House Book today and I'm in love. Inhabitants Jenn and Marc are lucky ducks. I decided that this is the perfect photo to use as inspiration for our living room once we move our leather sectional downstairs to the basement. I love how fresh and cozy this feels and not stuffy (like main floor living rooms can be). Best part is that we already have the curtains so we're off to a good start! ;)

furniture window shopping

This afternoon we took a little spin down to King Street East to check out the furniture shops. We're going to start renovating our basement soon and when we do that we're not going to have any furniture left in our upstairs sitting room (this is providing we get our GIANT leather sectional down the stairs in the first place...).

Our first stop was UpCountry and this was our favourite room. I absolutely LOVE this coffee table. L.O.V.E. We would also like something like this fireplace for the basement. The stone is a bit too polished for me, but the idea is similar to what we'd both like on a smaller scale.


Mark liked this couch but it reminds me of the couch my grandfather used to sleep on after his meals... a little too grannyish for me...


This was actually a wall in the basement of UpCountry (I think??) but I thought it was perfect inspiration for the barn doors I want to build for the basement.


We found this couch at Urban Barn and I think it's a contender for upstairs. The price is right and it's super comfy.


Some day I'd like to get some new dining chairs but they're just so darned expensive... these would go perfect with our harvest table. Too bad they're $259 each :(.


After all that window shopping we had to make a beverage stop. Leo sure loves his lattes ;)