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.

Spring Fever

This week we've been enjoying the sights, sounds and scents of Spring. As I type this, my windows are open and I'm listening to a steady steam of water flowing down the drains outside. The snow is slowly disapearing and my backyard is looking more green (okay....brown.) than white. We are soaking it up as much as we can since this is likely only a tease until the real Spring arrives with more permanency. This week Spring has meant......

Mason splashing in puddles. He's wearing Elizbeth's rain boots from just last fall. His feet are catching up very quickly to hers...someone's headed towards size 15 feet like Daddy....

Going for walks. Elizabeth wearing her new rain boots. We opted to buy her the giraffe boots instead of the pink butterfly boots since Mason will be wearing them soon enough.

Tulips. I just can't resist Spring tulips.

All sorts of fresh cut flowers. I always stop by the "older" flower bucket at the Superstore, and get them for 50% off. You can get some really beautiful bunches of flowers for $5.00 and under, especially if you hit the store the day they mark them down! I've noticed our store does this on Thursdays. These are miniature carnations which I love since they are cheaper than most flowers, so you get a large bunch of fluffy white flowers for a reasonable price.

The kids get new bright Spring coloured church clothes. Elizabeth's dress and Mason's shirt and shoes were gifts from my mom - she has such great taste!

Spring sales! I had some groceries to do yesterday and Morgan said "take your time" ( I LOVE when he says that) and so I decided to make a stop at Homesense. I snagged this spring wreath for $2.00!

I'm sure we'll get hit with a blizzard next week but it sure is nice to be basking in sunshine and have a Spring break.

Ingolf Chairs

Today I enjoyed eating breakfast on my new kitchen chairs. I have dreamed about these chairs since we first got married. At $89.99 a pop, I was never willing to spend $400+ dollars on chairs alone. When we moved to Calgary, Morg and I bought IKEA's second cheapest chairs available, which suited our family and our budget. At the time, I splurged on the Ingolf chair pads to spruce up the more plain chairs we had decided on. I guess I never really got over the Ingolf chairs I didn't walk away with because they've been in the back of my mind since as a "maybe one day..." purchase. They aren't paricularly original in any way, just EXACTLY everything I've always wanted in a kitchen chair. I started looking over a month ago for some interesting and reasonable priced kitchen chairs on my favorite kijiji site. I started off looking for some old farmhouse style chairs, or something antique looking that I could paint. About two weeks ago, someone posted 4 Ingolf chairs! I had plans to paint them white and was so excited. Much to my disapointment they were already sold. Two weeks later, another posting! This time they were in an antique white paint, with a bit of antique crackling - perfect for my already distressed black table. I had my doubts that they would only let me part with 4 of the 6, but when I called, she said 2 were already gone and she only had 4 left - PERFECT! You and me were meant to be, Ingolfs... When I picked them up, it was the woman selling them's husband who was home. It hit me suddenly that this was potentially a very dangerous situation, so I was quick to spit out something to the effect of "my husband is a cop and he knows where I am right now!". Although it did actually came out quite calmly and did actually flow with our small talk conversation..... My Ingolfs.....: These were our chairs before. I put them up on a local swap and buy site and they were gone in a few hours so that was nice. Here are my brighter, cheerier, sturdier, more handsome chairs (you can kind of see my new light fixture that my Dad kindly installed!):

Here they are with my 3 year old chair pads to match - I actually think i might prefer them without them...

One last shot. Look at those sexy curved legs.

There's my rant about my new chairs. Morg says he'll never understand how I can be so excited about chairs. He keeps catching me staring at them and sitting on them. All I can explain is that it's just like when I met him, I fell in love instantly and couldn't get him off my mind. Good thing I only had to wait 5 years instead of 10 to have the chairs!