{a new day, a new look!}

Happy Thursday everyone! I hope your week is winding down and you're looking forward to the weekend!! I am uber excited as the IDSwest show is in town and I am looking forward to so many wonderful events including an Opening Night Gala tonight and a fabulous cocktail party on the weekend that we {Karla of Kerrisdale Design Inc., Victoria of Edin's House, Barbara of hodge:podge and myself} designed specifically for design bloggers attending the show. Best part? Ikea Canada is our premiere event sponsor and working with them has been fabulous! I hope to have tons of fab party pics to share with you next week.

On another note, things may look a little different to you around here today :) I hope you like it! I've been working on a little blog face-lift for some time, and I have to thank the people involved: the wonderful Kelly of Fabulous K Creative designed my navigation bar and side bar elements {she's fantastic, contact her if your thinking of a blog redesign!}, and my awesome/patient/skilled husband put together my header art!

Another exciting addition: I've finally put up a little Etsy shop {just a few items, more to come soon - baby steps!}. Here are some of the pieces you will find there:

And I am working on having the large canvas in my kitchen professionally scanned so it should be up there soon too!

Thank you so so much for all of your support of this blog, you have no clue how much it means to me! And thank you to everyone who personally encouraged me to put my artwork out there even though it is a bit intimidating at the best of times :) Have a wonderful Thursday!

{before & after: my kitchen reno}

Finally! I've got pictures of my kitchen renovation {that was officially completed this summer} to share with you. We've lived in our home for 4 years now, and it took a while to get this reno complete. Our goal was to freshen up the space on a budget: we want to sell this home in the next couple of years so only a 'mini-reno' was required. We painted our old oak cupboards right before we moved in, but we put up with the disintegrating laminate counters & floral backsplash tiles for far too long!

Before I show you the space all new and improved, I have to show you the befores {it wouldn't be any fun without them, would it?}. Please keep in mind, the photos were taken when the former owner of the home was living here! {We snapped pics on our home-inspection rounds}. Cue the dramatic music ... duh duh duh DUH!

What did I tell you? So, before moving in, we at least changed the floors and painted all cupboards. We got rid of the box lighting above as well.

So we were in a limbo phase for quite some time:

But I still saw this in my face every day:

Not pretty. We knew we had to be patient and save up for new granite counter tops {our only real splurge} so we didn't want to put up a new backsplash until then. We took Tommy Smythe's advice {ate noodles for dinner for a month} and were able to get those shiny new counters :) We did the tiling ourselves after installation and chose an inexpensive subway tile:

My first time tiling and it was a blast!! I love those little spacers :) So, again the BEFORE:

And AFTER:

The eating area:

And now:

I love my new goose neck faucet and soap pump! It's the little things :)

In order to stay on a tight budget, it really had to be a labour of love, but I think it was worth it! We did all the cabinet painting ourselves, laid the backsplash tiles, and kept all the appliances that came with the home. The hardware was all from Lee Valley Tools, the faucet and chandelier from Home Depot, and the only 'big ticket items' were the pot lights and stone counters {though opting for granite was substantially lower than marble}. The artwork is my own painting - my twist on an old vintage poster. And all in all I think we got the best bang for our buck!

{before & after: my front door}

Finally got one of the smaller projects around my home all done! My front door got a nice fresh coat of paint; it was already black on the outside but was left white on the inside when we bought the house. I had wanted to paint the door black inside since day one, but was warned by others that it may make our little entry way dark and dreary. But I finally threw caution to the wind and followed my heart and I am loving the results! A small makeover indeed, but it's funny how the little things can make you smile :)

We used an interior/exterior paint on both sides in a black semi-gloss latex {from Dulux}, the shine definitely added a glamorous effect:

So .. did you spot my new best friend?? The lovely bronze lion head door knocker is my favorite recent addition ... Hollywood glam or what? And for a mere $39.99 from Lee Valley Tools, I am in love!

This may look like it was a tiny job, but a fair bit of elbow grease went into it, what with the sanding, and taping, and painting etc etc ...  uughh. Another detail we wanted to address was the hardware currently on the door. Though it was all bronze, it was dingy and quite oxidized and we needed it to have a similar finish to the lion head knocker. We contemplated replacing the handle with something shiny and new, but then thought, ugh, an additional cost we didn't anticipate ... total "reno snow-ball effect" as I call it, one thing always leads to another!

But here's where the real elbow grease came in: instead of going out and buying something new, we brought our bronze hardware to life with simple metal polish!! This stuff works miracles, check it out! You can see on the left we just began to put on the cream polish, and on the right, ALL NEW!

Can you see that around the handle above was left white by the previous owners? And believe it or not I'm pretty sure a Sharpie marker was used to conceal that as much as possible {oh dear}. The polish makes a bit of mess, so it may be wise to take the hardware off the door, but since we were painting it didn't really matter.

I had never tried this stuff before, but if you've got exposed bronze that has tarnished I would definitely give it a try! {Autosol Metal Polish, approx. $8.00}.

So here is a view of the interior of the door before and after getting a coat of fabulous black:

I love the peek of black I get in the mirror across in the entry way, although I have to admit that for a few days the darkness would startle me as it looked like the door had been left open, ha ha!

YUM! All in all, I am quite happy with the results :) And the grand total for all supplies was: $40 black paint + $40 for the lion head knocker + $8 for the bronze polish + some sweat = $88 for a brand new glam door! You can't beat that!!

Any summer projects you have been working on lately? I've got more up my sleeve that I'll be sharing with you soon!

{happy father's day}

Happy Father's Day! Hope you are having a fabulous Sunday :) I had to share one of my favorite photos of my Dad in his childhood, I just love this picture!  And what's really special is that I got to see this home pictured below for the first time last summer on my trip to Egypt. Shortly after, it was torn down due to large excavation projects currently underway in Luxor. So glad I got to visit my Grandmother's home before it was gone.

If you ask any one that knows him, they'd tell you I have the best Dad EVER!! Happy Father's Day to you Dad, love you so much :)

{canadian design & lifestyle bloggers west}

Had a fabulous weekend full of sunshine, family, and friends! This Saturday the Canadian Design & Lifestyle Bloggers West network met up for lunch in Vancouver, and it truly is exciting to see our numbers grow. If you are a blogger in Western Canada, please hop over to our blog and contact us to recieve more info!

We enjoyed a delightful lunch at the Banana Leaf, and much of our discussion revolved around our event plans coinciding with the IDSWest show in September {29th-October 2nd}, stay tuned and follow along for updates. Sponsors, seminars, and tours are in the works, but one things for sure ... Western Canadian bloggers will be out in full force!

{diy draper faq's + bedroom before & after}

First a HUGE thank you for all of your kind words and encouragement on my IKEA Rast project, I am overwhelmed by your response! And a big welcome to all my latest followers, I am so thrilled to have you here.

Today I thought it would be fun to include a little before & after of our bedroom, mostly because before & afters are just so darn satisfying aren't they?? We were lucky enough to be able to take pictures of all of the rooms before we owned the house {the day we had our home inspection done} so the before pics are that much more disastrous :)

What a difference simply cleaning and painting can make! We got rid of the fuzzy blue carpet, added baseboards, wood blinds, and a chandelier. Can you believe there was NO light fixture in this room? Only lamps controlled by the light switch. Oh the 80's.

And as a follow up to the frequently asked questions you had posted on the DIY project, here's some additional info:

Rast Dresser Primer: I forgot to mention that I used Behr's Premium roll-on primer in white to coat the dressers. I'm sure black would have been better but I couldn't find and oil based black primer! Oil was recommended to me as I planned to use a black lacquer spray and this would help to hide the grain on these untreated pieces and give a smooth finish. I did 2 coats and sanded with a furniture grade {220} sandpaper in between each coat.

Stencil: I thought images may help with the questions you had about my stencil:

{There's my curious little fur baby ... always seems to make it in the background of pictures ... he's like the Where's Waldo in all our family photos!}

You can see we kept four gaps in the inlay so that the centre of the stencil would stay attached to the outside. If you didn't leave attachments the middle would fall out. More importantly, this means the centre will always be in the exact same spot!

Headboard: This was a very affordable find through Costco online! Believe it or not this piece came in at $339.99 including shipping.

Paint: The walls were painted Benjamin Moore's Escarpment, one of my favorite warm shades of grey.

Pillows: The lovely pattern fabric is KWID's Imperial Trellis, and a shout out goes to my fabulous friend Laura for sewing them for me :)

A big thanks to Jenny at Little Green Notebook for posting this project and Kate at Centsational Girl for linking to it on FB :) Also, I'd LOVE to do a post and have anyone that tries this at home submit your own version! Please let me know if you do give it a try, I can only imagine all the variations on this project that could result!