Walking into the New Year

I'll be following these little people.

And walking together with him.

Can't wait to see where we end up in 2012.

Merry Christmas!!

Going Grey - the coffee table

Let's talk about the coffee table I got from my mom that used to belong to my Grandmother. Here it is medium brown stain, very shiny and classic.

Then a few months ago I decided to finally go ahead and paint it grey. So I sanded it. And it sat there ugly and sanded but not painted for quite sometime.

Then I got a bit organized and primed it with the killz spray primer we had in the basement. I kinda liked it white. And I'm lazy. So it stayed white for a while.

Then we had that big baby shower in October so I thought I'd better get organized. I bought some grey paint and went for it. It's not perfect, it needs another coat when the weather warms up. But I like it grey. I want more of my furniture to go grey this summer. Or maybe the walls. You never know.

Anyway, back to the coffee table. I think it looks more modern and you can see the details even better now that it's painted. Love it!

Deck the Halls

Almost every year I have some kind of a theme. Usually rustic Christmas with natural greens and browns and some burgundy thrown in to be festive. Last year it was more teal and burgundy. I usually pick a wrapping paper theme and go from there. This year's theme is relaxed Christmas. We used up bits of all the half rolls of wrapping paper and cut bits of that paper for tags. I let the children do the tree almost entirely. The mantel decorations took over 2 weeks to finish. And it was all fine. It actually looks good I think. And I haven't had any perfectionistic meltdowns. None. That makes it so worth it.

Kinda magical even. Don't ya think?

Fun with a chalkboard

I made this little chalkboard we keep in our living room. Can't quite remember what it was before... but I think the frame was dark brown. Anyway, that's not the point. I use it all the time and change the sayings to suit what is going on at the time. We used it here for the baby shower. And then I had an idea to change it up for December. I thought for sure it was a brilliant original idea. Then I remembered I had seen this on pinterest.

So it really was a brilliant unoriginal idea. Oh well, it looks nice. Even if I am a copycat.

Finding Surprises in the Everyday

Occasionally I clean my house. Oh we tidy up every night, but actually dusting? Not all that often. I got a little surprise the other day I was dusting the cabinets next to the fireplace.

See the glass insulators:

See the surprise:

I wonder who did this? Now you will believe me when I say we have LEGO everywhere in this house!

Slightly late Insta- Friday

Here is the last week or so as it appears in my camera roll:

'More is more' approach to accessories

A sweet brotherly moment that was totally not posed, aww!

Movember keeps getting creepier

See an empty planter in a parking lot and insist on posing as a statue.

Little sis gets in the act

And one more cool pose.

Thats it. I love how my bad pictures look so great thanks to instagram. And I love having pictures of the everyday things that go on in my life.

Pinspiration- Ear Warmer

My poor sewing machine has been so neglected since I had kids. It spends most of its time in the original box encased in the original styrofoam, living under the stairs. Sad, I know. But this month I pulled it out and gave it some love.

I resisted the urge to photoshop out my forehead lines and under eye circles

What could have possibly prompted this, you ask? The threat of snow. "It's supposed to snow tomorrow." said the hubby on Sunday. Immediately, I remembered a cute ear warmer I had seen on pinterest, with a link to a tutorial.

I already had a plain grey fleece scarf that I had sent to the sewing box to be used as scraps. So I was all set.

Throw in a button I had lying around that belonged to one of L's outfits she has long since grown out of, and were done. Oh, except the flowers. They were free hand cut and hand sewn slightly off to the side using the scarf scraps. It was a very easy project. I didn't have to re-do anything, not one step. This in itself is a major victory for me!

back, I made 2 button holes in case it stretches

Yay for pinterest inspiration (pinspiration)! And it really did keep me warm in the snow/slush on Monday.

Art Display Solutions

The other day I showed you how I found a place for the many art projects that L makes. But the boys have twice as much. They often entertain themselves by drawing or cutting or making books just for fun.

Recently, R made tickets for everyone to come to his martial arts class. He doesn't actually take martial arts, it was just a made up class that he made up tickets for. The tickets were so detailed they had all of our full names on them, including middle names! He does things like this all the time, but then he never wants to get rid of these little scraps and drawings.

Then I saw this on pinterest. Um, cute!
Way back in September I stained some new yardsticks to make them look less, well, new. I also painted up some clothes pegs then asked A to work his magic. He can figure anything out!

A few minutes with drill and here it is. R gets the top row and K gets the bottom. I told them they can keep anything they want as long as it fits in their clips.

Can you see how many things are in each of R's clips? Yep. Never wants to get rid of anything. But now my fridge can relax and these can take over!

Room Rearranged

After the photo shoot with Rosa, L's room was completely switched around. We were going to put it all back but... we kinda liked it. So here is the way it looks now, not perfect but we are seeing how we like it.

K and L like the new reading corner quite a bit!

And there is one other thing I wanted to show off. Since L started preschool the amount of art coming into the house has increased, again. We set up this magnet board for her treasures. I keep a few special ones in a drawer with the artist's name and the date. The rest can be displayed here for her to enjoy!

For the boys I made something special inspired by, where else? Pinterest!

Stay tuned for that little project!

Photo Shoot

This week Rosa came by to take some pictures of her new juju hat in L's room. She has boys, so I am sure pink bedding and tiny pink ballet slippers aren't floating around her house. We rearranged everything to get a good shot and we fought the crazy windy weather making moving leaf and branch shaped shadow dart all over the wall. But in the end it turned out pretty cute! Go take a look!

WIWW-copycat

What I Wore Wednesday returns to walking the rocks this week. Check out Lindsay at the Pleated Poppy as always. (for some reason can't link to the post right now...)

I have been trying to draw inspiration for many places when I get dressed these days. Pinterest is a big one.

This picture of multiple necklaces looked great to me, so I tried it out.

anniversary gift from my hubby (way back, year 2 I think)

hand me down from A's grandma

plain chain with my grandma's engagement ring

And paired it with a plain navy tunic , jeans and boots. It's boots almost every day now that the fall has begun.

navy tunic: Reitmans

grey tank and jeans: Pure at Zellers

grey boots: Old Navy

Another inspiration is the J Crew catalogue. Here is mustard yellow under navy polkadots.

Just so happens that I have a mustard henely and a navy polkadot t.

Easy peasy, and a bit cuter than just a t and jeans.

mustard henley: H&M

polkadot T: Joe Fresh

jeans: Pure at Zellers

shoes: slippers in this picture

but I really wore grey city flats from Gap

The only problem with the J Crew catalogue? (Ok, besides price and the fact that the nearest store is in another country) I totally want to dress like the kids more than the adults! They are so darn cute and not over the top 'styled' I guess.

That's it for today!

Halloween crafts

I love dressing my kids up and they love getting dressed up. They think you should wear a costume for your birthday, and they usually do. Making these dress up accessories for Halloween was tons of fun for me and the kids appreciate it so much and it doesn't have to be perfect.

Obviously the major creation was the LEGO block. I saw the idea on Pinterest, showed Mr.K and that was it, he was all for it! I ate a lot of yogurt after we decided on his costume, and we collected a few cardboard boxes from Costco and from A's work. The trick was making it so he could still sit down. A's is amazing at things like this, so he thought about it, then when I was at work he constructed this masterpiece:

The box we used in the end was from work, maybe a box for chest tubes or something. Before he built it, I had written the word LEGO on each container with a glue gun for a more authentic touch. Then he cut out holes for each yogurt container and secured them inside. We used green duct tape to seal the edges, then came spray paint:

Green is K's favorite colour so I bought a green shirt and pants for super cheap then bought the spray paint to be close to the same colour. The hat has a label on it that says LEGO in the lego font. Yes, I just happened to have the lego font on my computer, ok? Anyway, I made the hat because although the costume was cool, it didn't have many accessories and he was feeling left out. About 5 minutes of work on the hat and that issues was solved. He also felt pretty cool when all the teeneagers loved his costume, and one mom offered to buy it off us:)

Next up was Indiana Jones and his various accessories. The hat and whip were borrowed, thanks Jo! The clothes were ones we had around the house, the colours aren't perfect but the styles match and R didn't care. The main picture on every Indiana Jones video game cover is that of Indie carrying a golden "idol" that he gets by switching it with a bag of sand. That's the scene right before the giant boulder starts rolling after him if you have seen the movie. Well our Indie had a leather bag (my purse) and a leather journal inside (that we labeled with 'Archeology'), but an idol and bag of sand were needed.

I bought a styrofoam ball at Michaels and A shaped it with paper mache. Here is a bad iphone pic I took on my way to work that morning:

Then R and I painted it, I put some steel cut oatmeal in a bag I made out of a drop cloth, and that was it!

He carried the idol the whole time!

I wish I had made something cute for Sleeping Beauty too, but I didn't. Call it Third Child Syndrome. She wanted to be a princess and this non-licenced costume was cheap from Costco. I did braid up her hair cute, and 'hem' the dress up with safety pins so she could walk. She didn't mind though, just look at that smile:

That's it for this year with my cuties and their imaginations!