Christmas Home Tour

I know I said that this post would be my last on Christmas decorating, but then I found out that The Inspired Room is hosting a Christmas Home Tour link party! That link just goes to the annoucement, not the actual party. The actual link party goes live later today.

Because I like to pretend I'm social (even if it's just virtually social), I wanted to particpate. The rest of this post will be a summary of what I've done around here in the way of holiday decorating. If you've been reading along for awhile, all of these photos are repeats! My apologies.

Here goes!

Welcome to our farmhouse!

Christmas lives in the living room.

Read more about these here.

Read more about this here and here.

Our fake mantel (fantel?).

 

Read more about this here.

A little bit spilled over to the banister.

And just a touch in the kitchen.

More on this here.

You've probably noticed that we're missing the most famous Christmas decoration of all...a tree!

We've chosen to not have a tree this year. And that's because I will be flying out of the province on Friday to go to Vancouver Island, BC to spend Christmas with my family. We didn't see the point of spending the money (I will always have a real one) and effort on a tree when I wasn't going to be around to enjoy it (and let's face it, Mike doesn't want to play babysitter when the cat and dog try to climb it).

I can't guarantee regularily scheduled content while I'm away (or even for the rest of this week, since I have a million things to do before I hit the airport). I think all will be fine, though, since people will be so busy with their own holiday schedules that they won't have time to pop by and read anyway!

In other news...Mike and I are now engaged. Hurrah! Let the planning and wedding focused Pinterest board begin!

Pssst! You can check out The Inpsired Room Christmas Home Tour link party here!

Frivolous Friday

If you read the last post, you know that I'm gearing up to make one of our spare bedrooms way more functional than it currently is. And the biggest step to doing that is giving the current bed the ol' heave-ho. In it's place, we're going to bring in a sofa-bed!

This is one Frivolous Friday feature that is most definitely going to be purchased.

At $799, this Ikea Manstad sofa-bed will be the most expensive thing we've purchased for the house so far(excluding the new oil tank we had to get last year). But, despite the cost, we (well, me, because Mike is essentially indifferent) like it for several reasons:

• it will open up a ton of space, especially in the center, of the room
• it has storage in the chaise end
• it pulls out to a pretty generous "bed"
• we like it enough to use in the living room, if/when we need to use this room as a bedroom again

It comes in two colours, and while on it's own I like the blue-gray (pictured) much better, I think the dark beige will work with the wall colour better. Just to make sure, I decided to check it out in Paint.

In real life, the trim colour leans more to white than how it's appearing above, so I think the dark beige sofa-bed is a better choice. I don't think the blue works quite right with the green of the walls, but I'm interested in hearing what other people think.

Before we can actually purchase the sofa-bed, a few things need to happen. We need to get rid of the old bed (at least the mattress and box spring - the frame we'll keep because it is easy to store and will likely come in handy some day) and I want to refinish the floor. Might as well get it done when the big furniture is out of the way!

In other news, today is my 25th birthday and I'm making Mike take me to The Simcoe County Museum's Christmas, Past and Present exhibit! I've also just discovered that the museum has a Victorian Wing...hooray for old things!

Have a wonderful weekend!

The most finished room in the house...

...is not so finished. Although it has come a long way.

What started out as this

Is now this

 

Please excuse the picture quality. This was in March/April 2011 before I was blogging and taking pictures with the good camera.

That being said, it's current state is a hot mess (something a little like this, maybe). And that's because the spare bedroom is hardly ever used as a bedroom (we have had over night guests once). Instead, it acts as a holding room for my clothes (until we do the master bedroom), book storage, and craft/sewing junk storage. Basically, if I were to have a home office and a walk in closet in one, this would be it.

The majority of what you see in here was either free or a gift, or something I bought long ago. The only things I bought specifically for this room are the mirror, the black frame and photo print above the bed, the curtain rod and panel, pillow cases, throw pillow, and pillows (which we were long over due for anyway and have since moved onto our bed). Of course I had to buy paint, too (walls - Behr Lotus Leaf, trim and ceiling - Behr Snowy Pine).

None of the furniture cost us anything. Rocking chair? Free from family. Antique bookcase/desk? Free from family. Bed? Free from family. Dresser? Free from Craigslist back when I was moving into my first place by myself.

That's all well and good, but it doesn't help the fact that this space is not being used to it's full potential. And after Christmas, I have plans to fix that.

Check back on Friday for what will be one of our biggest purchases yet!

Remembering on December 6th.

I'm making an extra post this week (and stepping away from regular programming) to write a brief post remembering 14 Canadian women. I know many of my readers are American, but I hope you read on anyway.

On December 6th, 1989, at the Montreal l'ecole Polytechnique, 14 women were shot and killed by a single gunmen.

The man responsible shot and claimed female lives throughout the school. The most horrific instance, though, is when he entered an engineering class full of 60 people, men and women. He seperated the men from the women, and had the men leave the room. He exclaimed his hatred for feminists - and despite the women pleading that they were not feminists...they were shot.

I am a woman who attended university - in a science program no less - and there are still some people in this world who would consider me to be a feminist*, just for being educated.

So today I remember these young women, who needlessly lost their lives for no reason other than someone's ignorance and hatred.

Anne St-Arneault (23)
Genevieve Bergeron (21)
Helene Colgan (23)
Nathalie Croteau (23)
Barbara Daigneault (22)
Anne-Marie Edward (21)
Maud Haviernick (29)
Barbara Klueznick (31)
Maryse Laganiere (25)
Maryse Leclair (23)
Anne-Marie Lemay (22)
Sonia Pelletier (23)
Michele Richard (21)
Annie Turcotte (21)

*Not that there's anything wrong with women who ARE feminists...I'm just not.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas - Outside!

This will be the last of my Christmas decorating posts for awhile...I'm officially sick of talking about it!

This past weekend I concentrated my efforts on the outside of the house.

 

I love poinsettas, but can't have them in the house because of the cat and dog. They also don't thrive outside in the cold. So I grabbed some fakers, and put together two matching arrangements.

You might be wondering what the heck is going on with the trim around the door. We removed the old brown aluminum storm door sometime in the spring, with the intention of replacing it with a salvaged restored wooden storm. Of course, restoration never goes as quickly as we'd like, and that project is currently on hold until spring rolls around again. When we do get that door finished and ready to install, the trim will be fixed (replaced?), caulked, and painted.

Notice anything else different?

This is our new front light (to see it's twin, go here). It was free - we won it in a raffle a few summers ago at a Buck and Doe. There used to be an ugly white motion sensor light there. I had plans of removing it and installing the new one all on my lonesome, but ended up having Mike help me - I could not get the neutral wire of the old fixture loose! 

I would love to have a reproduction bulb like the one above to put in it (picture source), but for now a regular bulb will do. I know a lot of people would like to see a CFL bulb in there, but we can't stand how long they take to heat up enough to produce good light. Incandescent it is.

This painted pie plate was purchased last year. I love it despite the fact that I would never spend $15 on a single decoration again now that I know how fun it is to make things yourself.

Our front window also got some action.

I love the details of this window. Fancier Victorians often have a true bay window, a window with a leaded or stained glass (or plain) transom window above, or even a combination of the two. Like the rest of the details in our house, the front windows take a (big) step away from traditional fancy Victorian towards simple farmhouse.

Instead of a transom, we have curvy woodwork and these neat little medallions, that kind of mimic the bulls eye corner blocks of the trim in the living room. I can't wait until we're ready to tackle restoring this window.

I am terrible at tying bows, so I was happy to find this tutorial (via Martha Stewart Weddings) to help me out.

The second floor of the house got a little love, too.While we don't have a grand sweeping staircase like many old houses, we do have a very traditional newel post and balusters on the second floor landing.

The faux bois definitely needs some work, especially the ball on the top of the newel post where it's almost been worn down to wood.

In other news, we're on Facebook now! Come check us out and follow along, either by going to http://www.facebook.com/FirstHomeDreams or by clicking "like" on the Facebook thingy at the top of the sidebar.

Did anyone else get up to anything this weekend?

It's December! Winter Window Dressing.

If you're new to the blog, you might not be aware of how much I love my windows. They might look like junk right now, but I love the light they bring into the house, and I know that with a little bit of work they can look fabulous again.

With that in mind, I knew I wanted to give one of the windows in the living room a bit of a face lift for the holiday season.

If you read my last Christmas decorating post, you know that I took apart my original Christmas centerpiece, because it was driving me crazy. This is where the painted styro foam balls from that project ended up:

I hate this vase. No matter what I put in it, it's just not a shape that I like looking at. So out came the balls, and the vase went into the basket that's destined for Goodwill donation.

The painted styro foam balls got a makeover, in the form of a little bit of ribbon held in place with a straight pin.

I added some thread (although I would rather have used fishing line) and I got...

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I bought a sheet of 97 cent window clings from Walmart to fill in the gaps and make it a little more cohesive than random floating balls.

I used two tension rods (around $9 a piece, which I bought for a future, after Christmas, project) to hang the balls in the window frame. I used varying lengths of thread to get some definition, which was attached to the styro foam balls using fabric glue. 

It was so hard to get a good picture of this! I'm going to have to learn how to shoot on something other than auto one day...

The other Christmas decorations that I plan on putting out have been brought up from the basement, and Tahsis seems to find the whole thing perplexing. Also, yes, Lumpy the Ottoman still lives.

Is anyone else decorating this weekend?

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