October 31, 2010

Happy Halloween!!


What would Halloween be without a Cute Reminder so that we always remember our October Engagement :)

Plus a few creepy pumpkin friends we brought along to celebrate ;)







Wait.. who is the guy in the top window????? LOL. HAPPY HALLOWEEN !!!!!!

Master Suite


 
I have been seeking inspiration for our Master Bedroom (shown above) since we moved in....

I finally came across my dream master suite!!! It's got the perfect combination of Masculine and Feminine Charm


In fact I would take this entire house designed by Jeff Andrews :) 

 




 



 So charming :)  If we ever get the bathroom done, I think the Master is my new Project to tackle. 

Photos Via: Jeff Andrews Design

A Blogging Bride!!

 
Now that I am officially a Bride-to-Be I have to say that most exciting part of all of this is getting to share my journey with all my blogger friends :)

I really want to take the time to enjoy every single moment of this experience, and hope that you'll join me along the way.

Future Hubs and I don't have a date set yet... however ever since I was a little girl, my favourite time of the year was always June. For many reasons:
  1. It is my Birthday Month 
  2. It is the last month of school (that joy no longer applies!)
  3. Summer Starts!
  4. My grandmothers gardens were always FULL of giant, gorgeous, vibrant Peonies. 
I always knew that June was the BEST month, and the month that I would ultimately get married in. Since Future Hubs proposed during October (His favourite Month of the Year!) , trying to pull a wedding off by this June just didn't seem feasible. The response I got from most vendors included a huge sigh and a "well... we can try". Nope. I don't want to make my special day a hassle for anyone, nor do I want to rush. I'm a stop and smell the roses kinda girl, so why not take our time? So we've scheduled a wedding for June 2012 and I couldn't be happier :)

 This gives us 20 months of planning!! With lots of fun along the way :)

Slowly but Surely

It has been 2 months now since we discovered our Laundry Room was cloudy with a definite chance of RAIN.... and sadly there is not much new to report.


The walls have been patched, the tile has been selected, the floors have been ripped up... so now we wait... and wait... and wait.

The problem for me with waiting? Waiting makes me think... which makes me consider the new possibilities of my bathroom. I'm dreaming of something like this, courtesy of the great Margot Austin:






I absolutely love the gray and adore the fabric!!  The touch of dark wood makes the whole thing a perfect bathroom oasis. 

For now I wait, hoping some day I will have a floor in my bathroom.... hopefully it gets finished soon or who knows what I could dream up in the meantime.

Photos Via: Margot Austin 

October 21, 2010

Here Comes the Bride!


I have been MIA for a while. I have good reason- I swear. 

I got engaged over Thanksgiving!!! 

I can't wait to share my journey with you as we plan, plan, plan in the next year!!! 

So stay tuned for lots of ideas, inspiration and celebrations coming soon!

October 3, 2010

More Kate

Now that I am super excited about Kate Spade at The Bay, I simply had to share my next favourite thing about Kate- Her genius use of book covers as art!

My favourite book of all time is The Great Gatsby- She's turned it into a clutch!! 
 
 



 SOOOOO CUTE!!! Equally as cute, her Fall 2010 line, vintage & chic!
 


 

 All Photos Via: Kate Spade

Belle Boulevard


I adore Kate Spade. Everything she does is Fabulous. My front door is Kate Spade Green.

So imagine my astonishment and bliss when the weekly flyers arrived at our home on Thursday, and inside the mailbox was this:


Not only is Kate Spade now available at The Bay....
her line Belle Boulevard (which I have been drooling over for a year online) 
is available in store .... to touch.... for real!!! My dish dreams have come true!! 

 Now I just need an excuse to buy this gorgeous set!! 
For now I can smile knowing that whenever I want to go visit my favourite china, 
all I have to do is go uptown to the mall :)

All Photos Via: Kate Spade & The Bay

Love - Seat


I am in Love with these bar stools. Are-You-Kidding-Me Cute.


Photo Via: Designitalia

Design Diva

 Don't you love when you meet your idols and they turn out even better then you dreamed they would be? It happened to me this week when I met Design Diva / Style at Home Magazine Editor Kimberley Seldon!


 I was at a design seminar entitled "Define Your Style" and I must say, her advice really helped me figure out what my key design style is.

Because as all designers know, designing for ourselves is probably the hardest task to undertake!! We like it all! Or hate it all! Depends on our mood!

I thought I would dedicate this post to all things Kimberley and share some of her tips and tricks that helped me with my own home:





 If you live in a modest-size house, condo or apartment, chances are you're keenly aware of the limitations of small-space living. Don't despair: designers have a stack of tricks for making close quarters appear more spacious. The strategies below will help you make less seem like more!

DO hide storage in plain sight. Look for coffee or end tables with storage beneath, bookshelves that run from floor-to-ceiling, and armoires to house anything from linens to entertainment units.

DO create a seamless flow by covering furniture and walls in a single, unifying colour or pattern. The cohesiveness can visually stretch a space.

DO visually enlarge floor space by installing wall-to-wall carpeting rather than laying down multiple area rugs.

DO choose an ample two-seater sofa rather than a three-seater. You'll have room for an end table, and guests rarely occupy all three seats, so that third one is often wasted, anyway.

DON'T inadvertently emphasize low ceilings by choosing too-tall sofas and chairs or by highlighting wainscotting or chair rails. Instead, to open things up, aim for long low lines with major furniture and either eliminate chair rails and wainscotting or paint them the same colour as the walls.

DON'T block off open spaces. Choose furniture with legs rather than skirts, and console tables rather than chests of drawers. A low bookcase can act as a room divider between the living and dining areas; a glass coffee table allows the eye to travel unimpeded through the space.

DON'T underestimate the space-amplifying power of wall-to-wall mirror.

Using creative design strategies, you can give even the most diminutive items the prominence they deserve. These four simple ideas have enormous style potential -- any one will make a big difference in your small space.

1 Photographs and paintings
They trick the eye into perceiving even small rooms as gallery-like and spacious by using wide mats and large frames, both of which are often associated with more important pieces of artwork. Use artwork to create focal points in a room, but surround each piece with visual breathing space rather than crowding them together.

2 Sculpture or pottery
Rather than hiding impressive pieces, create an arresting display by placing a sculpture or unique item of pottery on a plinth (a platform built to add height and prominence to displays).

3 Windows
Hang draperies outside window frames and as high as possible in order to stretch their perceived size. Keep draperies the same colour as the surrounding walls to increase the impact and make the wall appear larger. Using fabrics with vertical stripes can add height, too.

4 Small furniture
Accent with high-contrast detail. Take, for example, a small bergère upholstered in pale yellow; it will assume larger visual proportions if outlined in piping in a contrasting colour like black.







Flooring Fun

It has been an incredibly busy couple of weeks around our place! With our bathroom reno starting to make a turn around we are now in the stages of picking new finishes!! But where to start? Flooring? Tub surrounds? Fixtures?? It all seems so overwhelming.

We decided to start with floor tile- mostly because our floors are being ripped up soon and we had to make a decision quickly so the tile could be ordered by our supplier.

Floor tile selections are painful- you walk into a huge warehouse style building with ENDLESS samples of tile... I could see my boyfriends eyes gloss over as he saw the drool start to form from my lips as I walked down isle and isle of sweet succulent marble / quartz / porcelain / travertine.  I did narrow it down however, to a style I knew I liked.

I knew I wanted a 12" x 24" tile (to add a bit of visual interest to the floor) and I knew I wanted a creamy/white/light grey finish. Any of these would do:


 Here's what we found that we liked at the store:



The hardest part now was deciding which to choose. I knew the first two were too light and too dark, though I loved their pattern, the 3rd one was great, but maybe a tad too grey?

Finally the flooring Gods smiled upon us and we saw our tile:




It is a light grey, a bit of white veining, some texture, and each piece is completely unique!! The downfall- our budget for flooring from our Insurance Company was $3.50 a sq. ft. This tile came in at $6.99 a sq. ft. (insert sad face here)

Lucky for us there was a limited amount of tile left in the warehouse (barely enough to do our bathroom even) and the salesman could see that it was going to take me all night to choose a tile (it was nearing closing time) so he offered it to us for $4.50 a sq. ft !!! A mere $1.00 over our budget. Our bathroom footage is only 40 square feet resulting in a $50.00 upgrade to get the tile I fell in love with!!

So we brought it home and tried it on for size:


Perfection!! I'm dreaming of a layout similar to this:


Picking out our tile was a huge success.... and just goes to show, sometimes a little pouting and indecision can make all the difference in getting the tile of your dreams. LOL.

Falling in Love Again

Fall is my absolute most favourite time of year. One thing you can count on every year in Ontario is the spectacular colours of the trees. Look at these shots my mom took just last week-





I mean..... love. 

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