A welcomed break from sewing...

Well my sewing has been on hold the last few months. Mostly, but not entirely, because I had been enlisted to help my sil with some details for her wedding. From invites to pew decorations we've been busy with wedding stuff. I must say I've thoroughly enjoyed crafting on her dime *hehe*. The results of all this crafting and creating all came together August 6th and the outcome was great. Here are a few pictures of the details of her big day. I would say things went very smoothly which is the result of a VERY organized bride with a clear vision of what she wanted. I was lucky to be able to help her with their big day. Thanks Sarah!

Kitchen Inspiration

So our kitchen needs some love. When we moved into our home 3 years ago we painted the kitchen white for the 'meantime' until I could pick an appropriate colour etc etc....and now, well it's been 3 years. Now that my munchkins are big enough (and I have most of my braincells back) I can't WAIT to get my paint on. I have been surfing the web for inspiration for our upstairs for months now and this room is my inspiration for our upstairs. I found this awesome room on one of my favorite blogs jones design company.

Inspiration Room from jones design company

I love this color palette

mmmm green

So then I was on a mission to find some fabric that I could use as a jumping off point. I thought I'd try order some samples from Fabric.com

 I ordered a pile of samples with success and decided on these

Swatches from Fabric.com

So The blue zigzag will be for drapes in the living room. 

The black and white damask will be for romans or valences in the kitchen.

The green geometric will be the jumping off point for accents in both rooms.

So my plan is to paint the kitchen the blue from the drapes for the living room. Once I get the fabric I can color match the blue for the kitchen. But the fabric is back ordered so I won't order until mid March. But I'm so excited! 

I could also do different accent colors if I get tired of the green...here are some I played with

 

 

Mystery Project Revealed

Ok so waaay back in the fall when I ordered some fabric I didn't reveal what I was going to make with that beautiful fabric. The mystery project I was working on was aprons for christmas gifts for my 3 lovely sisters :) and I ended up having enough fabric to make an adorable apron for my little nephew J. The aprons all did arrive just in time for my sisters for christmas YAY!

For my middle sis N the stylista

for my oldest sis D who plays guitar and banjo

For my nephew J who is sister D's little boy.

 I love how little one I made turned out. I got the idea from a friend 

who was also making aprons for her sisters for Christmas 

to make the neck strap adjustable by running it through the armpits to attach to the waist band. (does that make sense?) Ingenious!

Itching to sew.

 

  
I've decided to attempt to make some _____. I've been itching to sew the last little while so I thought I'd get a start on my christmas gifts ;) I best not say what they are quite yet. I ordered the fabric from Hypernoodle2 on ETSY. I love etsy.

Finishes

So here are the finishes we've selected for the basement/kitchen. The lino is one that doesn't need to be glued, and the flooring is a laminate...both we can do ourselves ++. The board leaning against the wall is the paint color for the kitchen...Farrow and Ball's 'Parma Grey 27'. Now we just need a paint color for downstairs and we can get rolling! yay!

Basement Reno

When DH and I bought our first house a couple years ago, we knew it needed a bit of a facelift. We had decided to gut the quasi-finished basement and start from scratch. As DH worked downstairs I attempted to come up with an effective floorplan. This is what I came up with. Now that everything is framed and drywalled I think the layout is actually working out quite well. I used AutoCAD and google Sketch-up to draw everything out (Insert nerd here) so I could see what it would look like. With Sketch-up you can make a 3D model that you can look into - very cool! Sketch up is a pretty great program its free and quite user friendly - I'd definately suggest it to anyone renovating or making major changes. I've also used it for organizing my closet, laying out the nursery, and drawing up railing ideas for our front step.

Testing out the new lens

 Yesterday, i had my first night out with out kids in uh...7 months :D. SIL and I had a girls night in the city. We had a nice sit down meal and a movie - it was so nice! Although I did my little ones terribly - I muchly enjoyed the girl time.
Anyhow...while galavanting in the city I executively decided to buy a new lens for our DLSR. It's a 50mm 1.8...I'd really like to get a 1.4 but I'm liking this one so far. Here are some pics I snapped this afternoon, I can't wait to get outside with it!!


oooo I see evil in those eyes!!

I'm enjoying the pretty bokeh (boquet I think is how you say it) - the fuzzy background.
Little miss H inbetween expressions. SO CUTE! But of course I am biased. ;)

Aww now there are those sparkling eyes.
Yes, I too once judged parents of dirty faced kids...now I am one.

I like the lens but it is a little awkard indoors (as I was pre-warned) - to get more than one person in the frame you need to be standing quite a ways back, but other than that it's ++ so far.