Discovering My Home Style {Farmhouse}

In perusing Pinterest and looking at what I pin, I have discovered that I really like the farmhouse style of decorating. Not the industrial farmhouse style, but the bona fide country farmhouse style. Minus the white kitchen cupboards. Why would anyone living on a farm who was in their right mind put in a white kitchen!? Don't get me wrong, white kitchens are beautiful, but with children, animals, and the dirt that comes with country/farm living, why would anyone put in white cupboards!?

Anyhow, white kitchens aside, I love the farmhouse look and have slowly been adapting it to our home.

This is what you see just to your left when you walk in our back door. Bench, watering can, and mirror were all given to me by my parents. I'm quite liking the fact that they're downsizing! ;o)

I broke down and bought this bouquet the morning of the prom.

The mirror was originally wood that I spray painted white. (Yes, loving on the spray paint again!) The frame is from the Philippines and is made with rolled paper. It holds the first photo of our newly enlarged family.  The jar on the shelf is a painted mason jar (just acrylic craft paint and sealed with a matte spray varnish), and the hanging jar is just from the dollar store. The tulips were picked from our gardens.

To the far right is the laundry room. My dream is to switch the machines to stackers, but if it's not broken, you don't fix it, so I will live with it the way it is for now.

The green mason jar is from Michael's and the multicoloured jar is thrifted, but originally from Pier 1 Imports.

The glass jar is also thrifted, and the galvanized pot is another "cast off" from my parents. It holds luscious scented soaps from The Melaleuca Company.

 Every country home needs rubber boots, right? :o) This pair holds all the random objects that fall out of my family's pockets -- mostly hair elastics, buttons, change, and safety pins.

To your immediate left when you walk in the door is this sign. It's made by a wonderfully talented wife and mom at Owl Craft That.

You see this pic on your right as you leave. Also from my parents. :o)

Every time I paint this room (third time now), I go darker. The colour
is now Benjamin Moore's, Copley Grey. It's my favorite colour yet for this room!

Just a Small Remodel

My gardens are atrocious and some days it's just way to hot and humid to work in them. Instead I do less taxing things. Things such as painting or sewing.

First up were these white wicker chairs. They are old. Very old. My mom bought them used. They sat on her porch for years until she upgraded, and now they live on our porch. We've already had them for more years than I care to count. This year I decided they need a new look.

Below a hint of what they would look like once completed.

Annnnnddddd...................

Voila!

A whole new look!

We have a sweet little fabric shop right here in town now, and even though I am a horrible quilter, I am in love with this store. I popped by one day, picked out two fabrics and made pillows for the chairs. One fabric on one side and a completely different on on the other. I think the pillows nicely complete the look!

A Showoff Moment

I'm thrilled with the new look on my mantel and have to show it off! As most of you my regular readers know, our new additions have been home for almost eighteen months now, and our new addition has been officially completed for approximately the same amount of time.

 For the past eighteen months a very outdated photograph has sat upon the mantel. We finally got our act together and ordered a new one. As photographers, the excuse was not for lack of photos, but more like that phrase, "the cobbler's children have no decent shoes." In the business of shooting, processing, and printing photos for clients, you tend to leave your own photos to the end -- meaning getting to them never. We had some other canvases going off to print for clients, so we figured we'd do a big order and order one for ourselves too!

We knew what we wanted for a picture, but it meant forcing getting the kids out the door to go get it done. It's not so difficult when they know they don't have to actually look at the camera. It is said that every picture should tell a story and that's what we wanted to do. For us at least, this photo does exactly that. It tells a story of our love of the outdoors, afternoons on the beach, time spent together as a family. It's simple, but that's what our family time is about. Simple. Fun. We wanted it unposed and casual to create a sense of timelessness to the portrait. At the price of good canvas photos I want it to last a long time! Beautiful photos are expensive, as are excellent photographers. We have the advantage of being photographers, but even if we weren't, I would pay the money to have my family captured in print. After all, life changes so quickly. A moment captured is exactly that --  there one second and gone the next.

So, in my excitement at something accomplished, I had to share my showoff moment. Take photos, my friends! They don't all have to be portrait quality (honestly, mine aren't always either) because they will bring a smile to your face and special (perhaps sometimes even painful) memories to your heart to see how quickly life changes.

That being said, I don't know about you, but the autumn orange has to go!! Would you my American friends be disappointed if I removed it before your Thanksgiving? I won't put up anything Christmas-y yet, okay?

Blessings!

My Craft Room

I am very blessed to have a room all to me just for crafting and sewing. Do I use it? Well, not much yet. How is it that I have such a room? Truthfully, our house is a really dumb layout, and in order to rectify that situation a little, we put an addition on in 2010/11. Mainly the addition was built to enable us to have enough bedrooms to house seven children, but it gave us the opportunity to have a couple of bonus rooms too. In Canada, we have basements (or most homes do anyways). I think, it's due to the fact that the ground usually freezes quite deep in the winter here. Basements help make better foundations and a big bonus -- make one's house that much bigger!

The craft room is a result of our addition. It's bright with sunshine in the afternoon. I can't wait to spend hours down there creating on wintery afternoons. There's lots of room for me to lay out patterns on the island or spread my scrapbooking everywhere (does anyone else have that problem? My scrapbooking materials seem to have a mind of their own and spread across the entire table.) There's lots of space on the floor yet for the little munchkin to play if she wants to be near me.

Let me take you on a picture tour:

This is the northwest view. The island was the children's work station when we were homeschooling, but it has always been a home for my fabric stash. The ribbon lying on the island is on a curtain rod that has yet to be mounted on the wall.

The south east corner. The Clavinova is in here so that the musicians can practice with out making mom crazy ;o), or to letting sleeping children sleep. Leading out of the room is the little hall that leads to this room. You don't want to see that hall as it's currently full of stuff that needs to be put away in the storage area. Things kind of exploded over the summer :oS.

The east wall, aka the crafty wall. The bookshelves hold craft idea books, my thrifted wool stash, scrapbooking materials, etc.

And this mess? Well that's my sewing table with all my projects, mending, etc. overflowing off the end on to the floor. Yep, I live in the real world. My craft room will never fit the pages of a fancy home decor magazine. It will always be in a state of incompleteness and some form of messiness.

The next step? To get some stuff on the walls, and get a bunch of the other things on my list crossed off so that I can actually do some playing in my craft room.

Blessings!

A Desk Renovation

This computer desk is over ten years old. Not that that's old for a desk, but this was a cheap desk -- you know, the kind that look like real wood, but actually are made of all particle board and then covered with vernier? Yes, that kind of desk. Of course I can't find any before photos of it when I want to, so you'll have to envision that the part that extends out to the left was originally the topper on the desk.

It got to the point where it always seemed very imposing and enclosing to me. On Saturday, the Engineer remedied that. We now have an L-shaped desk. It does seem to open up the room, and I no longer feel enclosed when I sit at it. In fact, I almost enjoy sitting in the "dungeon" now -- especially because I can look up and out a window! This is not in our office. This is actually going to be the password protected computer that the kids use for their schoolwork and games. Someday, I will have my very own computer strictly for photo editing, and it will be in our office and completely hands off for the kids.

Since we had a "new" desk, I decided that I had better get the chair fixed up too. I had leftover vinyl from recovering our piano bench just waiting for the chair.

If I had known it was going to be so easy to recover it, I would have done it long ago! Twenty minutes and we had a "new chair too.

Much better!

Now to get the maps on the wall and the whiteboard moved and the kids have their very own computer work station! I think we've actually accomplished something this week :o)! How about you, are you working on any projects this week?

 

Dresser Re-do

It's finally done. I used the cheap paint that's on our walls to paint this dresser. (A little aside about the cheap paint. If you ever have a large painting job and decide to have painters come in and do the work, be aware of what they are using for paint. The company we had painting our place did a fantastic job, but I do not like the brand of paint they used. It marks ridiculously easily and is not washable. Grrrr! So not good with seven children in the house.)

Once I had the desired look (translated: I didn't feel like putting any more coats on) I was going for, I sealed it with varnish. Two coats on the top, and one on the rest of it.

The Engineer put the handles on this morning. Even though we had the cupboards in our laundry room installed ten years ago, we still found the same handles.

Crazy! So the dresser's handles match those of the laundry room cupboards. We'll use it to hold the off season outerwear.

It'd be nice if I can get everyone's snow pants in those drawers too. Hmmmm...

 

The Sneak Peak Reveal

Remember this photo from this post?

Here's what it is:

I needed something on my dining room wall. They're hung higher than I would like, but I want to keep little hands off of them as much as possible.

I g**gled dining room decor and found a version of this. I'm not sure how they did theirs. They are probably much fancier than mine, but I did what worked for me. They're 12x12 canvases from Michael's (buy one get one free :oD). I painted the perimeter brown, and then carefully (with a glue stick) adhered them to the canvas. Weighted down for a few hours, they came out looking okay. Now to find something for the other wall....

Shortly after I took the above photos my new benches arrived. They are an early Christmas present from my parents. My Dad made them and I love them!! They have made life so much more simple -- especially for sweeping the perpetually crumb covered floor.

Aren't they lovely!?!

One Room Totally Complete

Several of you have asked to see photos of our reno/addition. Everything is done -- with the exception of our fireplace, but we haven't decided what we want for a mantle there yet anyway, so it can sit. It gives heat and that's good.

What isn't done is the decorating. I have blank walls everywhere. I have some ideas, but still more blank walls than ideas. Finally there's the little problem of cash, but we won't go there. That being said, the kitchen is the first and only room that is completely finished. Simply because nothing needs to go on the walls.

So without further ado, the kitchen before:

The kitchen now:

Just a little different, yes :o)?

If you've read my blog for any amount of time, you may remember that I didn't want to redo the kitchen. Never mind that it was actually rotting and falling apart. The Engineer wanted it done. So I gave in with the agreement that it had to be simple, functional, and very easy to clean! I got what I had hoped for. The designer and company we worked with were fantastic! It was almost like the designer climbed inside my head and understood what I wanted.

Finally, here one of two of my favorite things in our new kitchen:

The front bin is garbage and the back bin is recycling.

How cool is that?!? (I know. I don't get out much!)

The other was our big splurge, but it really makes sense with nine people in the house:

Happy dance!! I have not one, but two convection ovens! I can have multiple trays of cookies baking in one and multiple pies baking in another. The possibilities are endless! We use both of them a lot, so it was definitely a wise splurge. The one thing that did not change is the dishwasher. We live by the motto, "if it's not broken, you don't fix it". Unlike our fridge and range, our dishwasher is still relatively new. Our fridge and range were dead or dying, but the dishwasher runs great! Soon enough it will croak too and I can go to black. Did you know that appliances are only designed to last ten years nowadays, and even less with a large family? Crazy! I'm glad we got the twenty something years we did out of our previous appliances.

Well, there you have it, that's our new kitchen.

What is your favorite thing about your kitchen?

In Which I Actually Have Internet Again (For Now)

I thought I'd do another Brain Dump as my time at the computer is quite limited these days....

1} My weekend posts are typically scheduled to publish. I tend not to look at a computer all weekend. I like it that way. The only problem is, I get way behind on my favorite blogs -- especially when GEMS is still in session.

2} We've had sketchy internet for about a week. Between very high winds, rain, and fog, the fact that our receiver is only attached to our house, and our tv tower which it normally goes on is still lying on its side, it's surprising our connection is as good as it is. So,  we are not complaining because we're actually very impressed with the fact that our reception is pretty good -- most of the time.

3} I've had a ridiculous craving for chocolate mint anything. Normally I do not like mint, but for some reason, lately chocolate mint tickles my taste buds. Actually make that anything with fat and sugar. My dreams of being sleek and svelte while in the Philippines are exactly that! I haven't exercised in -- well I can't remember the last time. I'd go on more walks, but you've heard my thoughts on spring.

4}Speaking of exercising, I'm pretty sure I have no excuse anymore. I think there is power in our new workout room. We haven't quite figured out which room is our new workout room. What's more alluring? Windows in the craft/sewing room or in the workout/Wii room?

5}I ADORE our new bedroom. Or should I say master suite. Never in my wildest dreams did I think we would have a room so private and comfortable. I hide in there a lot ;o).

6} Until about noon, whenever the phone rings, I jump. After noon, it doesn't phase me. The reason is that the PI is 12 hours ahead, so any approvals to travel will be at our adoption agent's office when she arrives in the am.

7} My parents are in Holland for two weeks. I won't give details when, but it does throw a bit of a monkey wrench in things for us if we get The Call. On the other hand, Murray is off to Houston again shortly, so we have to hear something before noon today in order for him to change his plans. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm glad we didn't hear today.

8} My friend Annesta and her daughter are coming to visit this weekend! I am over the moon with excitement about this! We met through the wonderful world of blogging. She is one of my amazing prayer warrior friends and a dear sister in Christ. I can hardly wait until Saturday!!

9} I make my children make their own lunches in the morning. In the fall, they all got plastic lunch containers. Since then several have been lost, and found, and lost again. Bub (yes, the high school student) is the worst for losing lunch containers. The girls are down to rotating a lunch baggie containing one of their snacks through the three of them. Almost every day as I am puttering away at something, I will hear one of the girls say. It's my turn to take the baggie today. As I'm writing this, I'm wondering if it is the same baggie every day...

10} Maverick ate a portable phone today. I couldn't figure out where the ringing was coming from this afternoon ;oD! He really did chew a phone to bits though. We can hardly wait to put in his invisible fence. I love my dog, but I've concluded I'm just not a dog in the house all day kind of person. He drives me to drink -- multiple cups of coffee!

11} I do not understand why my fellow Canadians think shopping across the border is so awesome. My American friends, there are plenty of things I love about your country, but shopping is not one of them. We did not find amazing deals, nor did we find anything on our, oh-you-can-find-that-in-the-States list. However, you won't miss us because there are plenty of other Canadians going over regularly. I get great deals here thankyouverymuch. I did find a travel mug I adore though.

12} I painted the Wee Three's room. After moving our bed downstairs, I noticed how badly the walls needed freshening. It now has the palest of pink ceilings and lovely green walls. That brings the total number of green walls in our house up to seven. They're all different greens too. Scary ;o)!

13} I am hoping the electricians come tomorrow. I want to bake in my new oven(s).

14} Our contractor recommended us getting a closet designer in for our walk in closet and our linen closet. He is awesome!! Reasonably priced, efficient, and timely. His installation time is incredible too. He was in and out in ninety minutes or less. We're getting him to do another closet (which will be my pantry). Can't wait to move the rest of our stuff in there!

15} Rhubarb season is beginning. I am thinking about making a pie. (See #13).

16} I have lots and lots of organizing, purging, sorting, and cleaning to do. I hope tomorrow is a productive day. My reward for a job well done will be coffee out with two of my homies ;o). (Fellow, current and former homeschooling moms). Can't wait! Love those ladies!!

Wishing you all a good week and a good night!

The Kitchen

Yesterday the much anticipated kitchen arrived and the crew started putting it into place. Waaay back in oh, about May of last year, when we were toying with moving, building or adding on to this house -- after looking and finding nothing that matched this place in price range/affordability and/or property wise, we concluded that adding on was our best option.

I tried to convince the Engineer that we didn't need a new kitchen. My old one worked well enough, but he insisted. The funny part is, that once that decision was made, it was as if the kitchen heard and decided to begin really falling apart. (I'd like to believe it was more God telling stubborn me that He has my best interests at heart). Our sink kept leaking, the water purifier was losing its seal, the cupboard doors were coming apart (again), and the tap was literally rotting out from the counter top. What a mess!

We've been living in our rustic, minimalist, country kitchen for two -- or is it three (?) weeks now -- not long compared to some folks I'm told. I've been getting lots of exercise running up and down the stairs to get cutlery, dinnerware, measuring items, food, etc, etc. The dining room table has sat in four different spots through this process, and really none of us are going crazy yet.

However, now that I've seen the new kitchen going together, I am super excited! We picked everything out in January, so I'd pretty much forgotten what most of it looked like. It's looking beautiful! The wood we chose is so warm and natural. I can't wait to see what it will look like with the counter top in too. It'll will be another week or so for that though :oS.

It's a wonderfully rainy spring day here -- complete with thunderstorms. Thankfully all the guys are working inside today. I'm going to do some ironing and see if I can't get a couple of sewing projects completed. Hopefully we don't lose power too often or I will be hand sewing instead :oD!

Blessings!