halloween happiness

This past weekend we went to Leo's first Halloween party. It was with the group of girls from the baby bootcamp class I go to every week in High Park. For some reason, we decided it would be a good idea to get the kids on the couch for a picture. This is the result. It's fuzzy, but hilarious. I can't stop laughing at the tigger on the right. Leo is the spider. So cute.

I'm sorry pardon?

I'm currently looking for a basket to put beside the fireplace in the basement and I found one on Crate and Barrel that I really like. Since C&B delivers to Canada now, I thought I would see how much it would cost to ship it here instead of getting my lazy bum in the car to go to Yorkdale to check it out for myself (I love online shopping and once ordered a pair of Birks from Get Outside on Queen Street when it would have taken me 15 mins to drive there...).

Anyway, I went through the process of checking out to see what the shipping would be and did a quadruple take at the total. Check out it in the screen shot I snapped below. I thought I did something wrong but I don't think so?!

family shots

When we got married in Italy three and a half years ago, we were fortunate to have a family friend travel with us to take our photos. Jennifer Kirk did a great job capturing the wedding week with most of our friends and family. Jenn now lives in BC and made a quick trip to the Toronto area a few weeks ago, so we took her up on her offer to snap a few family shots for us.

I'll be honest, the weather was crap with a capital C, but Jenn is used to crappy weather so she knew what to do. One of the solutions was to focus on shooting in our home. We were able to take a few shots outside in the yard (somehow I don't mind our poor garden in these pics!) and along the street.

Overall we are pretty happy with the outcome and can't wait to see more shots on the CD that is on its way to us now.

Happy Thursday y'all!

chalkboard thingamabob border - done!

Well I did it! I spent an hour painting my new chalkboard in the basement while watching Charlie's Angels last night after dinner (I was excited for this show but I kind of get while it was cancelled last week)...

Can I just take a moment to say this is a big deal for me. You should know that I'm afraid of doing things that involve walls. My husband paints (or we hire a painter), and my husband hangs things on walls for me because I don't have patience to find studs in a wall and add plugs so that a picture holds up properly (I usually use tacks or two sided tape!). This may be the reason why I haven't done this project yet!

So the other day I thought Ok I'm just going to do it.

Again, here are my inspiration photos:

Source: littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

And here's my version as it stands now:

It's a bit wonky, but over all I'm pretty happy with it. Mark doesn't think it's practical for kids because he thinks they'll write on the wall, but I figure if that's the case then we'll just paint out the entire wall down the road. Also, I'd like to jazz up the border a bit, so last night I ordered some chalk markers online and with those I'd like to add a bit of a design of some sort.

ps--I was going to fold up the drop cloth for the pic, but look at my cat! He's so comfortable there! I think he discovered the in-floor heating and likely won't move from this spot for awhile.

blackboard borders

So there's a little area in the basement I don't think I showed you and that's our little desk/play area. It's not finished yet and I'm excited to get it done because when I start work again in a couple months, I'll likely be working down here a lot of the time.

One of the projects I want to get started on is the chalkboard wall. Originally I thought I wanted to paint the whole wall on the left side of the bulk head in chalkboard paint, but then I got thinking it would be fun to try something different. I started poking around on Pinterest to see if I could find some fun chalkboard border ideas.

Source: sweethomestyle.tumblr.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

I love this over all look, especially because it's an office setting.

Source: None via Stephanie on Pinterest

This is cute for the play look and feel I'm going for.

But then I found this...

Source: littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com via Stephanie on Pinterest

...and I fell in love with the shape. So my idea now is to paint this shape onto the wall. I was looking around the 'net for border ideas and found this:

...and then I was on gap.ca and found this!

This is turning into quite the run on post! Anyway so you get the idea now so stay tuned for the final project!

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.

apple picking

This past weekend, we took a drive down to my home town to spend Thanksgiving with my parents. My mom had a great idea to go apple picking, so off we went!

We even got to take some pumpkin shots while we were there!

The one and only downside to the apple picking is that we didn't end up getting the apples we picked! You have to get them weighed and then go inside to pay for them. When we came out, our apples were gone and we were left with someone else's apples. We were all pretty disappointed because we took such care in selecting the best apples we could find. But what can you do?!

the bug

Ya I know I'm supposed to be sewing pillows (not to mention stuff from that summer sewing series I had blogged about awhile back) but I've got a weird bug right now - an organizing bug. I have this need to get house stuff done. So far this week I've organized my front closet and tidied my back mud room. Next up is my sewing room (finally!) and I have a little labels project I want to get started on pronto.

I'm even doing stuff for Leo's birthday which is still a month and a half away. Here's a little hint:

Ok better get back at it before the little one wakes up!

Happy Thursday y'all (and if you live in Ontario, I hope you all are getting out to vote!!)

-Steph