Family Room

There are so many talented people that I get countless ideas and inspiration from. I have a long list of blogs that I check on a pretty regular basis and they never cease to amaze me with their creative ideas and great photography. On the top of my list would have to be the incredibly talented Ashley Ann with her blog "Under the Sycamore Tree" I love what she did for her daughter's nursery, and pretty much everything else she has done. Not only is she very creative, but she has amazing ideas of things to do with your children, and unique ways of explaining concepts to them so that they understand. I won't go on and on, because I just cant do it justice, but go check out her blog if you are interested.

All that to say that my most recent project was inspired by one of hers, you'll have to check it out here: http://ashleyannphotography.com/blog/2009/12/24/merry-christmas-our-cards/

And here is my version of the chalkboard frame:


Right now I have pictures of our summer memories on it, but it is so easy to switch up, and have new art in your family room. All you have to do is put up new pictures, and write whatever you want on the board with chalk. Mine is a little smaller than her's, and in my opinion not quite as awesome, but I am really happy with it! So with that project finished my Family Room is now complete.

Here is the before pictures:


Basically we did a facelift to the room. New flooring, paint, trim, lights (there were none before) and tile on the fireplace hearth. Here are the after shots:


The paint looks pretty blue in these shots, but in reality its a little more gray. My favorite feature is the fireplace. I love how it looks, we wanted to stay true to the style of the 60's rancher, but just make it a little more modern.

Art Corner

Our basement is now finished in terms of paint, flooring, electrical and all that other fun stuff that had various strangers walking in and out of our house for weeks. Now the fun part begins!

I am very excited to be slowly unpacking all my boxes of supplies for the sewing room. It is seriously like Christmas sometimes as I come across things that I either forgot that I had, or have been looking for for around two months now. It also means that I have been able to get back to working on a few of my projects, and even finishing a few of them! Tomorrow I will post pictures of something that I was pretty excited to get done. Unfortunately I didn't get it done with enough daylight left to take some good pictures of it today.

I did finish one corner of the basement though, and Liam has been getting a fair amount of use out of it, in between pushing every button on my washing machine, and "re-organizing" everything I have unpacked.

This table we had sitting in the attic of our old place for a while just waiting for its turn to be made over:


I originally had just painted the whole thing white, but then one day I had my chalkboard paint out for something else (you'll see what tomorrow) and decided to paint the table top with chalkboard paint.


It turned out to be a good thing. We painted the walls in the basement white, because the one room has no windows, and was looking pretty dark before. Liam is at the stage where is is wanting to colour, on everything. Chalk comes off VERY easily if he does happen to "accidentally" colour on the wall.


The clipboards are a fun way of displaying his art work, and pretty easy to switch up when he comes up with something new.

Finished Kitchen!

The kitchen is done! We were going to put crown up on top of the cabinets, but after Jake put one piece up we decided we like it better without.

Here is the before pictures, what the kitchen looked like back in June:








And here is the kitchen now! We ended up gutting it down to the studs, and starting from scratch. You can't see the lights in the before shots, but it was one box florescent light that we swapped out for some pot lights, and then re-designed the layout of the cabinets, adding an island in.







I am really happy with how it turned out! There isn't anything that I would change, and my favorite part is the big greenhouse window (which was there before, we just re-finished it) looking out onto the backyard.