Antique Dresser

My friend Laura asked me if I wanted an old dresser about a month ago. Laura's parents had just bought new bedroom furniture and were looking for a new home for their 50+ year old dresser. Laura didn't have room for it in her home and thought I might like to have a new project. When I saw it I fell in love! Morgan kindly went and picked it up for me again, and it sat on our back deck for a couple weeks until the weather cooperated with me finding time the time to get started.

Here is the before. The dresser was in such great shape structurally and the hardware was perfect already, just missing one. The original castor legs are my favorite. My workshop - our backyard, when it's nice out. After. The colour I used was called "inspiration white", a little warmer than a bright white. The hardware got sprayed black and I bought 2 new black antique style knobs to make up for the missing piece.

I think this is my new favorite piece of furniture. Thanks Laura's Mom!

Kyle Family Update Via Photos

Here are some things we've been up to this month.

Elizabeth colouring in her princess dress. Grandma Kyle sewed this dress her to wear at Kenny and Britany's wedding 2 years ago but lately it's been her pick for what to wear all day. Wearing my shoes. I don't think I know any little girls that don't like shoes.... Elizabeth had a slumber party (minus the slumber) with her friends Kendyl and Emerson. We had popcorn and watched the Princess and the Frog but that lasted all of 5 minutes and the girls just did summersaults and cartwheels all night.

Elizabeth and Morgan had a mini photosession together. Here, she is pensive....

Sleepy?

Finished?

Dad's turn.

And Mom's? Excuse the creepy face.

My cousin Steve came for a visit and we loved having him around for a couple days!

We went to the zoo to see our gorilla friends.

Steve taught Mason to step down a stair all by himself. His legs are still pretty short for this though so he usually wipes out but he still seems pretty proud about trying.

Awkward snake slide. Maybe not a good idea for 2 people?

How about three?

That's it for now. We are enjoying another 4 days off with Morgan again though most of our time will likely be spent inside....potty training. I swear I'll be able to post someday soon about the success of our almost 3 and a half year old peeing on the potty. Heaven help me.

Flower Urns

Spring has been a real tease. Not because we've had little bits of sunshine, but because we've had lots of it - though just not quite enough to get summer flowers outside yet. For instance it's been warm all week and this morning we woke up to snow. That's Clagary for you.

I found these flower urns at the Thrift Store. They were nice and big, though plastic and stone coloured.

One can of black Plastic Spray Paint later, and the urns could almost pass for the expensive heavy clay ones that I keep eyeing inthe stores and then walking right past. I stuck my indoor flowers in the pots to dream about how they sort of might look with bright summery flowers in them. I spent half an hour at Home Depot today talking to a very kind elderly lady in the garden section who was also eager to get started. She had been all over the world (I think she mentioned countries in about 4 different continents) and had so much knowledge about plants and flowers and their seasons. I wished I hadn't felt so rushed - I would have loved to hear more of her stories!

For now I guess these will wait on my back deck until mid-April when the outdoor potted flowers hit the stores. Oh, and you can see a peek at my new (old) dresser that's been waiting for a paint job for about 2 weeks on our back deck.

M + D Chilvers

My Mom and Dad drove from Vancouver Island to come visit us last month. We always have a fun time together and here are some pictures of their visit. Our kids love both their sets of grandparents and I hope one day they realize how lucky they are to have them. Here are my lovely parents with a little more than half of their total grandchildren on their laps, at the zoo. Hanging out in the basement watching Dad play on his phone.

This might be my favorite shot of the visit.

Giggle-fest.

Snuggle-fest.

Grandma and Grandpa bought this tent during a trip to IKEA. The cookie Elizabeth is about to swallow whole is also from IKEA.

Mason has developed a true "Mason family" characteristic - a love for trains.

Tea parties with G-pa.

Mom and Dad did a ton for us this visit, including showing me how to change a light fixture. Elizabeth still looks up at the light above her while eating dinner and says "hey that's Grandpa's light!". I'm so glad that my kids already have such fun memories with Grandma and Grandpa!

More White Paint

This canister has appeared before in my pictures, though it wasn't always white. I bought this originally brown canister at Homesense, after about 4 mark downs, and gave it a quick spray in my backyard last summer. I then asked a very good vinyl-making friend of mine to spell out SNACKS for me and stuck it on. My favorite thing about the canister is the little pokey-top lid. Morgan's least favorite thing about this canister is that it never actually holds any snacks.

These oringinally cherry stained chunky frames were $5 dollars each at Homesense, more than half off, and were cracking a bit the seams. They also got a spray of white paint and a bit of distressing to match the cracks. I got the idea from my sister here, to add vintage pictures to the frames. She had found a website that you could print good quality vintage photos for free. These are found in our main floor powder room.

Books

Books are one of the easiest ways to add colour, warmth, and charm to a room! While old furniture steals are usually few and far between, old books are a dime a dozen at thrift stores and garage sales. I bet most of us have some tucked away in our closets.

These books on Elizabeth's dresser are from my childhood - and probably exsisted before that. I remember playing library with my sister with the Alice and Wonderland and the Little Women book. Which book doesn't belong? The old Hardy Boys book can be Mason's later in life... Who doesn't remember Beatrix Potter books?

I found this Junior Classics series for free on a local website. There's supposed to be ten in the series, but two of them are missing.

We had a similar set as kids and always enjoyed playing "school" with them. There must be something about these old style books, because every other day I find Elizabeth reading these to Mason in a corner of his room.

Elizabeth's Eye View

Every once in a while Morgan and I leave the camera in an "easy to reach" spot and it quickly gets snatched by Miss Elizabeth. Most of the time I don't notice until after she's taken a picture or two. As much as I don't appreciate her little fingerprints all over my camera lense, I do enjoy seeing what she captures from her level in life. Me getting a snack ready. I guess she can really see our worn-off counter edge stain from her height. I knew this photosession was happening at the time, but they were giggling and having so much fun I couldn't stop her.

I think she snapped about 30 photos of Mason lalygagging on her bed.

I think it was right about now I took the camera away.

She caught me (half dressed for the day) setting up some clothes I was then going to take pictures of to post on a local swap/buy website.

When Dad's home, and Mason gets boring, he is her favorite subject. Maybe because he poses for her.

I didn't know about this one either.

I think I'll continue to be a little relaxed about letting her experiement behind the lens - I love seeing a little part of her view of the world.

Mirror

I saw this dusty mirror sitting in a pile of 75% off clearance/damaged items at Home Depot a few weeks ago. It had scratches all over the frame and was missing one of the two metal buttons that decorated the areas where the cut mirror points meet. I thought the cut glass pieces were interesting and different from a normal mirror and figured it wouldn't take much to fix it back up.

I sprayed a couple coats of "heirloom white".

I also realized it's very difficult to take a good picture of a mirror since there is always a bad reflection!

This is the only angle that didn't reflect the outdoors, or my kitchen, or me.

I learned that the "button" that was on the mirror was actually screwed on like a cabinet handle....so I just took the knobs off my bedside table (which I plan to replace with more feminine hardware to define our "his" and "hers" bedside tables) and sprayed them black and screwed them in place.

Here is our old kitchen nook. Not a great picture, but we don't seem to take many pictures of people eating...or an empty table....so this was Morg carving a pumkin last fall. We had a different oak table, chairs and light fixture. New kitchen nook, a little whiter and brighter.

Family Shots and Thrifting

A few weeks ago a friend of mine Laura took our pictures of our family as practice for her and her husband's new phtography business. It was so cold that day though and the kids were VERY difficult. Josh and Laura were so funny with the kids though that they managed to get them to look at the camera and even crack a small smile. It probably would have helped too if I had brought them hats and mittens to help brave the weather....

Thanks Laura and Josh! You guys are going places I know it.

And on to my Thrift Store finds....Our local Thrift Shop doesn't have too many things to be desired...but occasionally I find something worth picking up. Below is my new fruit bowl.

$3.oo! I love the shape and the beaded edge!

I bought these two wall candle sconces. They were black and I got both of them for $4.00. I gave them a quick spray of white so they would fit nicely in Elizabeth's room.

A cute little pencil holder. Just something a little different than a plastic cup I guess.

I also found a stack of large white Urban Barn letters. I bought the large black ones to hang in our main floor when we moved in, and they were $8.00 a letter I think....and I bought four to spell H-O-M-E. When I found the stack of 7 white ones in the Thrift store for $2.50 for the WHOLE stack I was frantically trying to figure out what the letters could spell.....and came up with OUR BABY.....and that was the only combination I could figure out, so I was wondering what the origianl owners had acutally spelt with them??? Anyways, I started thinking they could spell "RUBY", which I would love for a little girl's name...that is IF we have another baby and IF it's a girl....so since I couldn't come up with a concrete use for them I sadly put them back....better luck next time.