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 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?

I linked this post up to...