Free Printables!

Recently I did a mini-makeover to my office area, and part of that included making a little print with some lyrics of a favourite song of ours. We have a special place in our hearts for Coldplay, oh 2005 memories...


You can see the print in this picture.





Anyway, I thought I would whip up a few variations and share! Here are the options available:


They should print pretty nicely on a regular 8.5 x 11 sheet, and will fit nicely into an ikea frame! You can download them below. Just click on 'File' above the image to the left and 'Download original file'. If you have any trouble at all (this is the first time I've worked with pdf's on the blog) then let me know and I'll email you the original files!

A little office facelift

Ever since I began my maternity leave, I have spent most mornings with my tea, nursing Benjamin at the computer. I'd like to say I'm perusing news websites and other grown up things like that, but in truth I'm reading blogs and checking twitter. Anyway, this is a little nook of our home that has been neglected in all of my decorating efforts, so I thought it was time to make it pretty.

I also wanted to do this project for little to no money at all. Our rec room is truly one of those rec rooms filled with our old forgotten furniture, so to spend a ton on this just didn't make sense (since if I was doing that, there would surely be a new desk, chair, carpet, drywall....). So I scavaged my basement and spent a few bucks at Walmart, and I'm pretty happy with the result!

The first thing I knew that I wanted to have was a mini gallery wall. I am borderline obsessed with these (also planning a larger scale one upstairs later this year), so I needed to get together some frames. I happened to have a bunch of these lying around, so the first step was to pull out the old crappy pictures in them and paint the frames.

I also knew that I wanted a bulletin board...which sounds very grade school but I like the look of inspiration boards when they are done right, so I headed to my local Walmart and grabbed one for about ten bucks.

Lastly, I had been itching to make a new painting or two, so I took some paintings I had done years back, repainted them all white, and started over. Gotta love it when things are 100% free!

So, after a bunch of coats of white paint on everything, I was almost done! The last thing I did was gather some pictures, have a few new prints made, and started matting everything. For those of you who don't already use it, I highly recommend Walmart's Photo Centre. You do everything from home and a few hours later they call you and tell you it's all ready. And it's cheap! I spent another ten bucks getting the prints done up...not bad at all.

So, first off a gruesome before shot. This is WAY before, as in before we painted anything in the house and just threw our desk against the wall. Pretty right?

And now the after!

Same old desk and chair, but it's much better I think! As you can see we added a picture of Benjamin, one of our wedding photos, a vintage Vogue cover, a Picasso print, and a custom typographic print. And my new paintings of course!

Here's a bit of a closer look at the inspiration board. Everything seems to look better to me when it's been painted white, ha ha. And I finally have a cute spot for my Audrey calendar!

So that's it! I'm so happy with it, and it makes my morning routine much cuter!

Mantel Makeover

I have never really been happy with our mantel...I often see amazing mantels in magazines and try to think of how to arrange ours, but I've never really tackled it. I recently made a painting that I thought would look nice above it, and now I'm moderatly happy with things. 

I will surely change it ten more times, but for now I think it's looking nice. Plus, I love a good free makeover. I'm making headway on the other project that I mentioned in this post...should be done soon! Very excited!

A banister solution!

A while back we gave our rec room a face lift. As you may remember, initially it was, well, awful.

And then it was pretty nice!

But one problem remained. The banister.

Initially, it was horrific. Could not be worse, really. (Also, look at baby Finn!)

And then it was great! We fixed the holes that were behind those squares and reinforced everything. Done and done!

But, over time, we realized just why those hideous wood blocks were there. The walls are pretty much made of Styrofoam and don't hold ANYTHING. So, you could actually shake the banister if you wanted to. Not great for the holiday season when Grandma's will be in the house. And not good when in a few months we'll be carrying a baby down those stairs.

Luckily, my talented and handsome hubby came up with a solution and I LOVE it! We decided to just buy nice wide planks of wood, and use them almost as a moulding down the stairs. We'll still attach the banister to this, but I think it actually looks very cool! AND, problem solved :)

A sneak peek

For those of you who will be popping in to our place this year for the holidays, you'll get to see this in person soon! But here's a little preview, isn't it adorable? This may now be my favourite room in the house, it just makes you want to wear cozy slippers, watch movies, and drink hot chocolate (and tear open Christmas presents).

(Please excuse the graininess of this photo, I have become one of those lazy iPhone users who only uses the camera on her iPhone).

The Basement - After

Truth be told, the basement isn't 100% done yet. We will be replacing the carpets shortly (no thanks to Empire Carpets, who stood us up! And didn't call us back when we called to ask why...). We also are thinking about installing a fireplace...and the DVD storage situation leaves much to be desired.

That being said, most of the basement is looking great! The whole theme of this project was to work with what we already had, and brighten the place up. I really think we did just that. Here are a few afters for those of you who haven't seen it yet.

The gaping hole:

Billy is actually less than pleased with this area, despite all of his hard work. Patching drywall is really tough, and I told him it's nearly impossible to have it look 100%. I'm SO proud of the job he did!

The ceiling electrical box solution:

This little ugly thing was in the centre of the ceiling. It was not an area that we wanted an overhead light (I hate them anyway, lamps all the way). I LOVED this quick fix, and again, Billy made it look perfect!

The stairwell:

So much brighter and clean looking. This wall colour is so lovely in the daylight.

Room Pics:

(Before)

(After)

(And yes, Brandon Flowers has now made an appearance. Best part of all!)