Oscar loves books (Almost as much as I love a good Ikea hack.) Every night he goes around his room picking up book after book and putting them on our lap to read. We know that it is likely a stall tactic, not wanting to go to bed, but we can't help but find it really cute. Over the last week I made some forward facing bookshelves out of Ikea Spice Racks for his room. I simply sprayed them white and ta-da! They were done.  The two shelves hide behind his door in his room and he can now pick out his own as the shelves are at his height.

Originally seen on Mon Petit Amour Blog, Idea from Domestic Simplicity

On the heels of the last post, our Dining Room table has been a hangout for a number of frames and art waiting to find a home on our walls.

Previously all the frames were in hiding spots, but in an act of desperation to get some colour on the walls, I pulled them all out and placed the growing collection on the table. I thought maybe seeing them all together will help me come up with a vision. Not yet. But getting there. ;)

I have a love hate thing going on with RH these days.

 Right now I'm mostly experiencing the love part.

They have some way cool stuff. Like this bedding that I may have coveted once or twice.

Yum.

I also drooled over their very neat line of french grain sack inspired pillows.

So, that brings me to my Craigslist chair. My 3 month old likes to be rocked, so Derek kindly picked up this chair for me.(he actually does most the evening rocking so this was a win-win for him)

Please excuse the fact that I had already put the slipcover on and was too lazy to take it off for this photo.

The slipcover was....easy to do. But mine is faaaar from perfect!! I decided to leave all the mistakes and quirks and just live with it.

One big mistake though...My faux grain sack was painted around 3am and that was bad idea. I am sadly off center and short of sewing and painting another one, this little flaw is un-fixable. Oh well.

I'm still happy with it and it rocks just fine with all the mistakes.

Lee likes it too, most of the time:-)

Well, we're closer to having art....We finally hung some frames in our living room. Since January we debated hanging 1 huge print [see post] but in the end, I liked the idea of having the relief and having 2 frames. I'm trying to figure out what to put in them. What I do know is the Ikea matting is coming out and I'm going to cut a new mat. [I find Ikea matting is yellow] Hopefully I'll tackle that this week. xo Lindsay

I bought a Svala wood table from Ikea for Oscar. I can't get over how cute it is. Granted, he is too young to use it properly but because he is showing little signs of wanting to eat on his own, I thought having a little table in the house couldn't hurt.

Seeing as no Ikea product is safe from hacking in our house, I stained it the same colour as our desk, Walnut, but it soaked in really well so turned out a bit darker. And, originally I was going to paint the top blue like in this post but I realized he will be banging the table with his trains/toys/spill juice and that table top if it was painted would get chipped/stained. So, it's staying as is. Plus, it looks like a "mini me" table beside our Dining table in our [work in progress] dining room.

In other news, check out my post on my obsession with Chevrons over on Style at Home, and my feature over on The Hip Urban Girl's Guide website , I was their "Hip + Urban Girl of the week". [don't laugh, I do think I'm exceptionally hip. ;) ]

I love handwritten thank-yous and that's exactly what we wanted to give our wedding guests. I've noticed more couples using generic, pre-printed thank-yous, and although they look lovely, I really appreciate the extra effort that goes into a personalized note. Don't get me wrong, a thank-you in any form is much-appreciated, handwritten notes just give me that extra tingle. And since thank-yous are so much more fun to write when you've got pretty paper to do it on, I've rounded up a few of my Etsy favourites. Enjoy!

(spotted here)



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I love the recessed shelving next to our bathroom vanity (who doesn't love extra bathroom storage?) - it keeps a few essentials within easy reach and has room for some "just because" accessories too, like my DIY silver-leafed frame. The top shelf used to be empty, until one of our wedding guests gifted us with this lovely lavender (favourite scent) candle and vintage snuffer - so cute!

While I was playing around in the bathroom (that sounds weird), I also added this little guy - my bff and I bought matching birdies to remind us of each other (she lives in Virginia, I'm in Nova Scotia). Hope she doesn't mind that it's in the bathroom!

(yes, that's a zombie survival guide - you never know people)

I'm a painting machine these days. My fingers are stuck in this strange little cramped position. No finger nail polish for me, just splatters of random paint and stain adorn these tattered nails.

Yuck.

I love the painting though, and luckily I have a self cleaning house and my kids are self sufficient at the ripe ages of 4, 2 and 3 months, so I can just paint around the clock.

Heh-heh.

I normally do most of my painting around 12-2 am. Luckily I don't require too much sleep. At least not till my body rebels against me and shuts down with no warning;-)

One of my many sweet little nieces has the middle name of Caroline. Poor thing has all brothers so I decided to paint a sign in honor of her. It helps that I happen to love her name and the song too.

 

I hope I didn't dig a huge hole for myself cause I have like 7 or 28 nieces. I can't paint that many signs. She's the only one with all brothers though:-)

 

I would be remiss if I didn't say a big ol' thank you to my little sister. She is the one I text my finished projects to at 3 AM. (she lives on the East coast) She is always honest with me (I think) and my biggest little sister cheerleader. (because I have older sisters who are great cheerleaders too)

 

See that beautiful Willow Cloche in the pics? Yup, that's the one I got from The Foundary. I've gotten a few things there lately that I'll share with you soon. I love that place though! (Click on their name or over on the side to sign up. It's free!)

By the way, I am trying something totally new for me. Sewing a slipcover. Yeah. Wish me luck. I'll let you know how much hair I lose it goes.

Got more signs coming. Here's a sneak peak.

Happy Wednesday!

I was looking for an old post today and came across The Pool House post. This has been one of my most popular and most featured posts (even made it on The Lettered Cottage! Whoop whoop!).

Anyway, for those that may be interested, read on...
(by the way, this one of those rare rooms/places that I haven't changed anything in)

Are you all ready for this? I know I am! So, to look forward in this project, we must first look back just a little.

Remember these pictures?

Yuck right! Not only was it u-gly, it smelled like a dog. (very badly I might add) It was actually used as a dog house by the previous owners, so decor wasn't high on the list.

So buckle up and brace yourself for a loooot of pictures!

See more on how I did the walls here.

My goal was to keep the whole project under $200 and to try and do all the work myself.

I did keep it under budget and I did about 80% of the work. Thank you to my father-in-law and most of all to my husband for lending a hand!

I also wanted this to be a place where our kids could play, so I changed the dog door into a small swinging door for them.

Look back on my faux stained brick floor tutorial here.

The window seat was the first building project I had ever taken on. My husband and oldest son left for the weekend so my 1 year old and I got to work.

The seat opens up and all our pool supplies and chemicals are stored in there.

Three sets of curtains, one window seat cover and two pillow covers were made out of a package of 2 drop clothes from Home Depot. Only $9.99 for 2! Can't beat that with a baseball bat!

The metal shelf is from Ikea. I love the industrial touch it brings to the room.

I really did have so much fun doing this project, even if it did go on and on... It is such a fun challenge to try and think of creative ways to do things as cheaply as possible. You never know what may happen!

I'm sure many of you wonder why there aren't pictures of the other wall. You see a bit of it in the very first picture with the hooks and stool, but otherwise it has a window with an a/c unit in it, sooo, not very pretty.

Hope your eyeballs didn't fall out with the overload of pictures. I got a little snap happy.

Let me know what ya think of the pool house!