Rambling Renovators: February 2010

Light It Up

We finally have some snow on the ground. Of course we should - its winter and I live in Canada - but this winter has been surprisingly light on snowflakes. One thing I love about this time of year is seeing all of the seasonal lights on the houses, twinkling and shimmering, giving off warm glows beneath puffy mounds of snow.

HandyMan recently came home with a new light for over the new front door. I'll admit I was skeptical; the vintage bubble type light we currently had seemed fine to me. But he was right. The new light really made our snowy facade look great! Have a look:

Exterior 2008:

Exterior 2009 - old light:

Exterior 2010 - new light:

While the old light gave more overall light and highlighted the door frame, I think this new light focuses on the door and makes it really pop. Plus, it's stainless steel and works well with the stainless steel house numbers and door hardware. We'll have to change the railing to stainless as well eventually, to make the exterior cohesive.

One of our neighbours even told us our house now stands out and looks straight out of a postcard and that's pretty great considering all the houses on our street look exactly the same. Goes to show you that sometimes, all you need is some flattering lighting to bring out your best features.

Hanging with: Our Castle bloggers

Chloe and I dropped by the lovely home of the Our Castle bloggers the other day. Thanks for the tour Meredith and thanks for sharing your toys Mackenzie!

Its so fun to meet blog friends in person. Have you checked out Our Castle? They put our reno skills to shame! They tackle projects that would make HandyMan and I shake in our workboots, like building their own curved stair treads and risers from scratch, rebuilding a sunroom, and taking a 1950's bathroom from scary & pink to spa-like, complete with a hand-laid tile mosaic medallion. Maybe Mackenzie can pass on some tool tips to Chloe in a few years :)

On a fun sidenote, I actually walked through the Our Castle house when it was on the market two years ago and one of my friends was house-hunting. My friend didn't end up getting it, but Meredith and Vez did which is great because they've done a phenomenal job with it - I barely recognized the place. Do check out their blog and maybe you'll be inspired to tackle some projects in your own home!

Feelin' Blue

I wish I could post pics of Chloe's reupholstered chair...but I can't...because it isn't finished. Oh, the troubles that chair is giving me! First we tried using a staple gun to affix the plygrip metal fastener. Nope, our air compressor staple gun didn't have enough kick and the staples wouldn't go all the way into the wood. Then we tried a nail gun. That worked a bit better - until the nails ripped through the metal as I fidgeted with the fabric! And then, I had to figure out a way to prevent the plygrip from poking through the edges of the fabric.

Arrrrrrgh.

So we're left back at square one. I will reupholster this chair, mark my words! Let's just think of pretty happy things instead, shall we? Like these rooms with lovely hits of blue.

All images from House Beautiful.

Party Planning: Pretty Petals

Cough, cough, sniffle, dribble. That's the sound of both HandyMan and Chloe feeling sick this week :( So, the chair makeover isn't quite done yet. But in between making pots of tea and nursing a poor sick little girl, I've managed to work a bit more on things for Chloe's party.

Most of you thought the invite looked better with Chloe's face, but I just loved the idea of incorporating a silhouette somehow so I managed to come up with another way to use it - and save some money while I'm at it!

Did I mention that I have to send out about 30 invitations? Yeah, I come from a large Filipino family. Add in Chloe's baby friends and their parents, and my best girlfriends who I've known for 25 years and their babies and you get a loooong list of invites! Good thing we're only doing a big party for her first birthday (next year, the kid will have to be content with a homemade cake for 3, lol). So I'm trying to keep costs down and make any 'extras' cost effective. Bouncing around blogland the other night, I came across some free downloads at I Still Love You blog. She had a petal envelope - perfect! Here's what I did with it:

I pasted the invite image directly on the petal envelope template - envelope and invite all in one! And to keep the envelope closed, I created this sticker which acts as a return address label. Here's a closer look at the mock up:

I printed these out on Avery 8293 Small Round Labels which I got at Staples. They come in a pack of 400 so I have a few more ideas on where else to use them. Only downside is now I have to cut out 30 petal envelopes. Oh, the things I do for this little girl! ;)

Chloe's Chair: Get a Grip

Time to tackle Chloe's chair! First step was to remove all the old fabric and those hundreds of nail tacks. Beneath the fabric, there was foam on the seat, back, front, and arms, which I'll be reusing. The seat of the chair was made of some leather straping over a muslin fabric. The back of the chair was made of two pieces of foam with a piece of cardboard sandwiched between them. Though the muslin is stained and a bit loose, the straping is still fairly taut and the cardboard is still nice and hard so I'm planning to just leave them all in place rather than remove and replace. So it looks like I can reuse everything; the only new parts will be the fabrics.

As I posted before, the part I was most worried about was how to do the actual tacking of the nails. Katie had a great suggestion for me - use flexible tacking strip instead. Flexgrip, also known as curvease or ply-grip, is a flexible strip with little metal teeth that grip onto the fabric. It makes finishing edges and working around curves very easy. I found mine at the Mississauga Fabricland location which carries upholstery supplies.

With the chair stripped bare, (and this youtube video to guide me) I decided to test drive the flexgrip and see if I could do it myself. I cut a piece the length of the front of the seat. Using the original nail tacks, I nailed the strip, following the curve of the front. You can see I wasn't that precise with this test and some of the metal overhung the edge.

Once the metal was in place, I folded the back of the metal strip forward leaving a 1/4" gap. Then I put the foam back in place and wrapped the old fabric on top. Using a screwdriver, I tucked the edge of the fabric into the gap all along the strip. Finally, I used a rubber mallet to lightly tap the flexgrip down and close the gap.

And tada - here's how the flexgrip test turned out:

Not bad :) For the real thing, I'll have to install the flexgrip back from the wood edge and bring the foam and fabric forward so that I get a nice curved cushion and no metal parts pinching baby bums! We've put a coat of primer on the chair and should have all the paint and reupholstery done in the next few days. The colour we ended up choosing is so yummy I could eat the chair up!

Happy Valentine's Day

Hope your day was sweet!

cakepop recipe here

Party Planning

Its still two months away but I've started to plan for Chloe's first birthday party. How can I not get excited... planning a party for my daughter means that I get to indulge in some of the fantasies I had as a little girl! One thing I loved to do as a child was have tea parties and I thought that would be a perfect theme for Chloe's first birthday. Here's a moodboard I put together with some images that inspire me:

Clockwise: Fabrics for Chloe's chair; Bakerella cake pops; Purl Bee garland; Ikea Duktig tea set; vintage child's apron by Swankythread.

We inherited a whole bunch of mismatched tea cups and saucers from Mama HandyLuster so I'll be incorporating those somehow. I also have many doilies that I didn't use in Chloe's doily art piece that I'd like to use too. Maybe I'll dye them like Eddie did?

One thing I've started on is the invitation. I came up with this poster-style invitation based on trendy wedding Save The Date cards I'd seen on sites like Style Me Pretty. (Wedding sites are such great sources of inspiration and have lots of pretty eye candy!) I'm not sure what I prefer, the silhouette or Chloe's pic...which one do you like?
or

Of course, there's still lots of time for me to plan and prepare...and change my mind about things, lol! I really want to make this first birthday party special and sweet and fun. Tell me, have you had any memorable birthdays? What made them special? The cake? Your party dress? The miniature pony you got as a gift?? Spill the beans.

Blog Cleaning

I've done a bit of cleanup on the blog rolls. There's so many lovely new blogs I've come across lately, like this one, this one, this one, and this one.

I've added a new category too, Family Blogs, since as a new mama I like seeing into the lives of other families. Like the family with twin girls and triplet boys or the homeschooling mom with seven kids (that ALL look like models!). Then there are the photographer moms and the moms with great style (and lovely houses to boot!).

So if you're looking for a new read, follow the links and you may find something you like.

Speaking of something I like... I like, no, LOVE, these scrapboxes by Darcy Miller, editorial director of Martha Stewart Weddings. What a creative and thoughtful way to chronicle family life. I think I will have to make some of these - maybe a new tradition, a birthday gift for Chloe to commemorate some of the important moments of her life.

Images from Martha Stewart.

Master Bedroom: Fabric Hunt, Part I

Thank you all for your comments to my last post. And for those new commenters who came out of the woodwork, it was so nice to hear from you. I appreciate all the support from you my virtual friends.

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A cute picture...just because.
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Its easier to decorate a room when you have some inspiration, be it a piece of furniture, a paint colour, a swatch of fabric. With the master bedroom, I knew I wanted white walls and we already had the dark furniture to work with but beyond that I was stumped. That's the problem with a white room - you can go in any direction, decorating-wise!

To help narrow down the rest of the "look", I went in search of fabric. My first stop was my favourite haunt, Designer Fabrics. Let me tell you, when you don't know what you want, the fabric store is not the place you want to be. I ended up taking home 8 samples, each completely different. I ordered some samples from Tonic Living too and became even more confused. There was no rhyme or reason to the fabrics I chose. Have a look. I picked out patterns in all different sizes:

Some retro prints:

A few colourful trellis-y things:

A bit of glam and some stripes:

And some bold florals.

A schizophrenic fabric frenzy I tell you! But putting all the samples together, I was able to at least narrow down some sort of fabric direction for the room. I wanted a mix of tradition with a hint of modern. Something with a nice weight to it and not on a pure white background. I liked florals too, especially oversized ones. And colour! Ohh, I'm craving hits of colour in the bedroom.

So which fabrics made the cut????
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Well, here is my first draft of the bedroom fabric palette:

Not too bad... but I still wasn't entirely satisfied! So back to Designer Fabrics I went to pick even more fabric samples. The search continues...

Wendy

My friend Willow (Wendy was her real name) passed away yesterday after a 5 year battle with cancer. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that Wendy was one of those people you encounter only once in a lifetime. She was and is a huge inspiration to everyone who met her. I have never met anyone who was so strong and positive in the face of enormous suffering. Beneath my deep sadness, I am happy that now Wendy is now free of pain. The last time I saw her, she spent over an hour just playing on the floor with Chloe, laughing and giggling, playing peek-a-boo, making silly faces. How much energy and happiness they gave one another! In those moments I saw the circle of life, there in my house, in the glow of the afternoon sun.

Two years ago, just before Wendy started her next round of chemo treatments, she decided to cut off all her hair. She wanted to donate her long locks before the drugs made her hair thin and fall out in patches. That was Wendy, always thinking of how to help others even when she had little to give. So in my empty kitchen, before my new cabinets were installed, Wendy sat in a chair and let me cut her hair. I had never cut anyone's hair before so I was nervous, not wanting to nip her or ruin the hair donation! It was difficult for both of us, but we got through, the sound of our tears and our laughter bouncing off the walls of that big empty room.

Someday soon, I will probably be in the kitchen again, with Chloe in a high chair waiting for me to cut her hair. And I will think back to that day with Wendy and I will tell Chloe the story of her Aunty that left this world too soon.

I've spent the better part of the last day looking at old photographs and reading old emails. In one, Wendy had quoted something I once said to her: "God created our life as a package. We cannot pick and choose only to go through the good and happy times, but we have to live the bad and unhappy moments, to experience life as a whole. We need to embrace life, good and bad and live it to its fullest. I believe only through that, can we truly know what life is all about." And she did. She lived a full life. She embraced her cancer and used it as motivation to tell her family and friends how much she loved them every day; to volunteer her accounting skills to nonprofit organizations when she no longer had the energy to work a full-time job; to ride 200km in two days to support cancer research; to be positive and optimistic and talk of the future and be an inspiration for others in their own battles; to epitomize strength and love and caring; and to truly take this gift given by God, this one life, and eke every last moment out of it.

Thank you Wendy for walking through my life. I can't wait to see you again someday.

Rest now, Wendy. xoxo.