Piano Bench

A while ago, I found an old piano bench on craigslist. I had plans for making it over, but it ended up sitting for quite some time before my husband sweetly offered to paint it for me (I was pregnant at the time and didn't want to be around all the fumes). While Patrick painted the bench, I re-upholstered the cushion using a burlap coffee bag. Here is the bench before:

And here it is after:

At the time, I had it in our living room. However, I have recently added a different piece of made-over furniture to that space, so the bench has been relocated to our entryway. Here is how it looked when it was in our living room:

I am quite happy with our little find and makeover! 

On a different note, I am thinking of making some changes to this here blog. Since becoming a new mama, I just haven't had the same amount of time to devote to the little house projects I used to dabble in, so I am considering making my blog more general. I would love to include the other aspects of my life, so that it is not just about decorating, but anything new that is going on here in our home. I'm going to be brainstorming some ideas in the next little bit, but I'll let you know what will be going on!

Introducing...

Parker James MacGibbon!

Our sweet, baby boy was born on January 13th at 3:04 pm. He weighed 9lbs. 5oz. and was 52 cm long! We love him more than words can say!

Today he is 2 months old and weighs almost 14 pounds! I can't believe how fast the time has gone! The above pictures are from when he was about 2 weeks old. Below are some pics from his first few days:

And here are a few more recent pictures:

Every day he is becoming more interactive. It is so fun to watch him learn and grow! I couldn't be happier to be a Mother! And now, we get to wait for the arrival of Parker's cousin in June. We're getting very excited!

The Living Room

Before I deck the living room out in our Christmas decorations (it has already somewhat begun), I thought I should give you a quick tour! When we moved in we really didn't do anything to the living room other than add our own furniture and art. I already liked the colour on the wall and we just left the curtains up that the owners left. Here is a picture of the space when we first moved in June...

And here is the room a few weeks ago at the beginning of November....

On the wall opposite these pictures we have a big shelf that used to be in our dining room at the cottage. 

And that is our living room. I love the space! It is very cozy at night and there is a ton of natural light during the day. It is totally different than our living room at the cottage, but I'm very happy with it. Now, I can't wait to finish decorating the room for Christmas!  I am so excited that tomorrow is December 1st! This is the last month with just Patrick and I. January is when we will meet our little babe (unless he or she decides to come early). 

Have you got all your Christmas decorating done? Do you have a tree up yet? We are planning to cut ours down on the weekend!

The Kitchen

Well, it has once again been far too long since I have posted on this ol' blog. I hope you have all been enjoying a cozy and crisp autumn. We totally have. Just the other night we started using our wood stove. This is the first time we have lived in a place with a wood stove and I am in love- it just makes me enjoy this time of year even more. We have been super lucky to have some beautiful weather this season. Normally, there is a lot more rain, but we have been blessed with some gorgeous, sunshine-y days!

On one of those sunny days, I took advantage of the light and I finally got around to taking some pictures of our new home, so I thought I would share them with you. Let's start with the kitchen. When we moved in, the kitchen was painted a dark purple. It suited the owner's tastes, but it didn't work with our style, so we painted.  Here is a picture of the kitchen before (sorry for the poor quality, we were getting ready to start painting the room):

As you can see I had already been testing paint colours in the kitchen. We decided to go with a nice grey-blue colour that the owners had actually used on one wall in the master bedroom. It is a gorgeous colour and I find that it actually changes a lot depending on the light. At times, I find it to even have a bit of a green in it. I wavered a lot between what colour to paint in here. I wanted to try something other than blue, considering that our kitchen at the cottage was painted a blue, but I found that I liked blue tones best with the grey floors, counters/back splash and with the cabinets. If I owned this place, I would love to paint the cabinets white. However, seeing as how we are just renting, I found that the grey-blue we decided on complimented the room the best. Since, we moved when I was in my first trimester, I didn't have a lot of energy to work on the house, but luckily my parents came for a visit soon after we moved and they helped us get the painting done. Thanks Mom and Dad! Here is how the kitchen looks now...

I find those built in shelves with the huge drawers hard to work with decor-wise! They are so big that I never know what to put in them. Right now I've just got some various items and all my jars displayed. It kind of works.

On the other side of the room we have our little kitchen table and the french doors that lead out onto the deck.I don't have a before picture for this side, but it was the same purple.

The kitchen feels huge compared to our last one at the little cottage. I do miss the charm and character of our old place, but the space is also really nice (I am SO happy to have a full size fridge) and I think we have done a decent job of adding our touch to this place.

Next time I will show you our living room. Here is a little sneak peek...

The Last Day of Summer

Tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox and I am so happy that my favourite season is finally upon us. I found this quote yesterday and thought it was lovely,

"All-cheering Plenty, with her flowing horn,

Led yellow Autumn, wreath'd in nodding corn."

-Robert Burns, Brigs of Ayr

There is something about this time of year that makes me rather giddy- the golden tones, the crisp air. However, this year it is even more special as it means that we are closer to meeting our little one, due at the beginning of January! Anyway, I'm hoping to be back later today to show you a bit of our new home and some autumn inspiration, but for now I thought I'd show you a picture of my growing belly...

Baby Room Progress Part 2

Last week, I had some time off and I felt as though I had an extra spurt of energy and productivity! So, taking full advantage of this, I did some work on the baby's room. I already wrote a post about some of the work we had done, like painting and putting some furniture in, but we've now also got some other details added to the room. We're operating on a very tight budget, so nearly everything we have added over the past few days have been things we already had. I just poked around in some of our storage, or in some other rooms for items that might work in the nursery.

Anyway, here is the nursery before again:

And here is the nursery (still in progress) as it looks today:

Here is a picture of the room where we last left off...

So you can see we have added a lot! The first thing we did after this point was put up the shelves above the dresser. We have had these shelves for several years now, they were purchased at Ikea for our first apartment and we had them above the couch in the little cottage. 

Right now the shelves are displaying a little assortment of some baby things and art that we have collected, but it will probably still change a bit. I just love the little owl! My sister hand felted this little guy for me a while ago and I thought he would look perfectly at home in here.

The next detail we added was a cute little hook in the opposite corner of the room. This was something that we didn't already have, but we picked up at Ikea when we bought the dresser. It was just too cute and I thought it may come in handy for various purposes.

Another thing we put up was the little branch with birds hanging in the corner near the crib. I got this idea and free pattern from here. It was so easy to make and I absolutely love how it has turned out. I have seen some  people add leaves, so I decided to sew and add some to mine as well. 

To hang the branch, I simply put two little hooks in the ceiling and used some white thread to hang the branch from the hooks. I think this could be my favourite project in the room so far!

Next, we added a little art. One of the very first things we bought after we found out I was pregnant was an adorable set of alphabet cards. We were browsing through Chapters and I came across them and thought they were too cute to pass up. Originally, I had plans to hang all of them in rows from twine with some clothespins, but after trying that, I realized that it would take up too much room on the wall (each card is 8x10).We're still planning to hang up more, but for now, we decided to frame a couple. The frames I already had. I painted them blue a little while ago and I think the colour looks so cute next to the green walls. However, I didn't have any mattes for the frames, so I improvised and used some cute fabric scraps to go behind the cards.

I love how it turned out! The second frame is currently sitting on top of the dresser, but it won't stay there. I'm just not sure where I will hang it yet. Oh, and in case your wondering, the little pennant banner is one that I made a little while ago and thought it would look sweet in the room. At the other end of the nursery, I added some embroidery hoops with some cute fabrics, both of which I already had!

Finally, we added a rug to the room as a well as a little table lamp. Both of these items came from the computer/spare room in our house. I actually had a rug that I wasn't using that worked better for the spare room, so it worked out perfectly.

I am really happy with the look of the natural jute rug in the space and it feels like a good size! I think I might have a bit of fun with the lampshade, but I'm not sure what I'll do yet. Maybe add some cute trim? 

Anyway, that pretty much covers everything that we have done so far in the room! I still need to hem the curtains (the heater is just below the window, so they will have to be above that) and I'm thinking about dressing them up a bit too, so they aren't plain white- still not sure about that though. The crib bedding is still to be made, but you can see bits and pieces of the fabric we will be using because I used some of the samples to sew a few of the birds on the branch. We will also be adding a chair to the room and I will be organizing the closet. I'm probably forgetting a few things, but that's what I can think of for now. Oh, and I definitely will still be adding some art and some other little details to the room. Before I go, here is one last look at the room...

I'm really enjoying putting all these things together and making the room ready for our little bean! Anyone have some good ideas for organization for the closet? I'm going to start some brainstorming soon....

Pants!

I've been having the urge to sew lately, so when I stumbled across this free pattern for some baby pants, I knew I would have to give it a try! I made a quick trip to the fabric store, picked out some cute fabrics and set to work. The pants are super easy to sew and before long I had a couple of pairs of pants sewn for our little one.

The first pair I sewed are for 0-3 months, though I think I made the elastic a little tight, so I will have to adjust that. I just love the pea pod material and I had some leftover that I was able to use for a little project in the baby's room.

The second pair I made are for 6-12 months, but I can adjust the length by rolling down the little cuffs (the cuffs are rolled up in this picture). I also added a little pocket on the bum- so cute! Our little one should be able to wear these in the fall, so I used the fun autumn leaves pattern for this pair.

I think I'm going to have to make some more of these pants! I'm thinking I'll make some in a solid colour and maybe some corduroy for something a bit dressier.

Enjoy your weekend!