fashion friday?

i've finally accepted that my boys are going back to school soon :( they've been asking for some back to school clothes so i made us this for inspiration.



when i showed it to them, they thought i created my own store. ha! love them.

pow-wow powder rooms

it's safe to say that the powder room has one of the smallest square footage in a home (if you're even lucky enough to have one) so why not make it a room that packs the most punch. enter wallpaper. i'm DYING to wallpaper my parents' powder room. it's so bland and beige and blah. it's got honey coloured cabinets with a matching mirror. i'm DYING to paint those too. i've been gathering some inspiration and thought i would share them with you.

via thibaut

via hgtv (sarah's house)

via house beautiful

via elle decor

seeing rainbows

so this whole week was met with lots of challenges on how to get my own site and possibly moving everything from here to wordpress. i've had lots of posts planned but i really wanted to do it on the new, shiny and sparkly site (which is still to come). i also have to get through my reader which has more than a thousand posts waiting for me to skim through them. i also can't wait to share a tour of my home, my sister's and my parents' when we're all done. and my still-jobless state means that i will have time to work on furnitures and things and i'm super excited. way to stick it to the man, right? :) here are my favourite rainbow quotes along with a picture the mister took of the first full rainbow we've ever seen. cole was begging to go to the end to see that pot of gold. ah, kids.

"the work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work"

"somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true"

"life is like a rainbow. you need both the sun and the rain to make its colours appear"

photo by ric

bedroom bind

for some reason, the bedroom really bears the brunt of the collective household mess. see if this scenario sounds familiar: you're having a party tomorrow and the living room needs to be decluttered but you don't have time to sort it all so you dump it all in the bedroom. unless you have a spare bedroom or basement, then those places get it instead. it's the last room we get settled into after a move even though we know it is the room that we'll spend most of our time in. this is the room where it should feel serene and calm. not house a chaotic jumble. so i've rounded up a few beautiful bedroom spaces to inspire us all.

via style at home

via martha stewart


via bhg

via house beautiful

beautiful basements

ah, the basement. at the moment, we don't have one but my parents do. and it needs a lift. a huge one. i want to break down the bar. make a little kitchenette. paint it white and de-mouldify like crazy. i am always in awe of spaces like the ones below where it doesn't even seem like a basement. how do they do this? can i do it too? please? basements don't have to be dingy forever right?

via house & home

via hgtv

via rona

via bhg

stop stair-ing at me

a few years ago, i decided to paint my parents' place. including the stairs. it looked dated and i thought that maybe painting it white would update it. and it did. but i don't think i used the right paint because it is showing a lot of wear on the handrails. so now i want to sand it back to the wood. this is what it should look like when i'm done with it.

via this old house

thank goodness for the sometimes power of reversibility of paint. here are some awesome before and afters to inspire you.

via centsational girl

via your home only better


via future house design

i really love the last one. wood adds so much warmth and texture. so scandi. awesome.

piano problems

we've always wanted a piano in our home. we both had one as kids so it was only right for our kids to grow up with one too. we got lucky, as one day we finally got what we wanted and more. we found one off craigslist for FREE and it was a painted white baby grand. jackpot. then we made necessary arrangements to bring that baby home. a uhaul truck rental which cost $80 and five guys whom we fed pizza for dinner were all we needed. before it got here, we decided it would go in the fireplace room which doubles as the kids playroom. it is also the only the exit to the backyard. this fact seriously annoys me. so we put it there thinking it was the best place to put it. it now covers half of the fireplace and basically impedes traffic to the backyard. it really just throws off the whole room. maybe because it's gigantous. and i stuck it in a small ass space. so i googled some rooms with pianos and tried to get ideas. now if i could only get those guys back to help me move it.

via things that inspire

via house to home

via elle decor

via decor pad