New Addition.

Meet Twinkles!! 

The newest addition to our little family!

We adopted her from our local animal shelter. She is eight weeks old and we are smitten!! 

How could you not love that cute little face?!

I am not up to the Challenge.

The Pinterest Challenge is over, and I failed to meet the deadline. I'm sorry, forgive me and let me explain.   

I had my heart set on a round star/sunburst mirror as my challenge project, but I couldn't find a round mirror; apparently, small town = no round mirrors. I decided to give it a go with the oval mirror that was in our bedroom.

I picked out my favourite tutorial; it uses shims (wooden wedges) and, again: small town= no shims. They had never even heard of them.

What are we up to now? Plan C? Ok, plan C was bamboo skewers and while shopping for bamboo skewers, I found bamboo chopsticks. 

They are thicker and sturdier than the skewers, so I thought they would work pretty well, and they did; until I ran out. I don't have any pictures of the gluing process because I only have two hands! But, basically I just used a hot glue gun to stick the on the back of the frame. I got this far before I ran out.

I wish I had taken the amount of chopsticks I had into consideration and spaced them accordingly. I hopped in the car and went to grab another pack. There weren't any. When they get some more in, I will finish it. 

I decided I might as well paint what I had.

I used spray paint in a silver hammered metal finish. I wanted bronze, but they didn't have any. Anyone see a pattern emerging??

Anyhoo, this is what I have so far. It looks very silver in this picture but in real life it looks a little more pewter-y. I like it, maybe I'm even glad they didn't have bronze!

I may have failed miserably at my first Pinterest Challenge, but I think I'll have an o.k. looking mirror in the near future!  

Moral of the story: If you live in a small town, always go shopping BEFORE you commit yourself to a certain project!

Oh and stop by and visit the Pinterest Challenge hosts; Young House Love, Bower Power, Ana White and House of Ernest, there are a tonne of great projects from other challengees!

Challenge Update.

It took me a while to make a decision on what I wanted to do for the Pinterest Challenge, and I finally made up my mind to have a go at a starburst mirror.

It's not exactly been smooth sailing; but more on that tomorrow!

I couldn't give up the idea of doing something fun with the kids for the challenge, so we did a few little projects on the weekend; I didn't get any photos of us in action, but we did these;

Ice Eggs

Bubble snakes

Shaving Cream Paint

We had a tonne of fun; it was a great way to spend the afternoon! Thanks Pinterest and everyone who shares and pins their great ideas!

I'll be back tomorrow with my finished mirror. Hopefully!!

Challenge Time

Katie, Sherry, Ana and Erin are hosting the Pinterest Challenge, and I have decided to get in on it! I was going to have a pin-pun title, but I decided against it, it was a pinteresting decision, but I stand by it! (See that? how funny am I? ok, not at all)

Moving on...

I'm not sure what I am going to do yet. I have wanted to DIY a starburst mirror for a long time.

Here's a few I like.

Or, I might try a fun crafty project with the kids.

It's such a fun idea, and a great push for me to do something that I usually wouldn't get around to! I'm looking forward to getting started, once I decide on a project!

Pictures originally from here, here, here and, here and pinned on Pinterest.

A little switcheroo!

While we were shopping for our desk, I came across some cute little clips.

My photography skills never cease to amaze me!

I thought they would look great in place of the clips I already had on my kids art display. And, I finally got around to changing them over! This is how it used to look;

I pulled the old clips off. It was a little tricky; who knew glue was sticky? 

There was a little bit of residue left, but it scraped off without too much trouble.

With the old clips out of the way, all I needed was a little dab of glue to hold the new, cuter clips in place. I'm not too keen on measuring, so I kind of eyed the position of the clips.

And there you have it, all done! We have also added some new works of art. It's so great that we can change them whenever we feel like it - I'm thinking I might have to get the kids to draw some chirstmas-y pictures for the holiday season!

So, there it is; some new clips and a quick switch! 

This almost makes me clucky!

If you know me (which you most likely don't, because my friends and family don't even know I started a blog!), you know that I am done having babies. We have two and it feels just right for us. But, I came across this nursery, and it almost changed my mind! Almost, but not quite.

 I wish I had done a nursery like this for my daughter. My kids still don't have a (nice) room of their own. Sorry kids.

Window Treatment Thoughts

The next big job that needs to be done in the front room is the window treatments. I'm having a hard time deciding on these. I have been scouring the internet for inspiration (thank you pinterest!) and I've got some favourites. I thought I would share them with you today, maybe 'talking' about them will help me decide!!

Okie Dokie, firstly: curtains.

I'm loving imperial trellis curtains right now, but geez they are hard to find, and they can be fairly expensive once you track them down.

These ikat curtains, are one of my favourite things ever!

You can't go past stripes!! I actually love this whole room, so comfy and cozy looking!

Curtains are great; I love curtains, but I also love roman blinds.

Oh, look at that, stripes again!

I even considered DIYing my own blinds, using something like this;

Or, this;

And, lastly some examples of plain and simple, which is where I normally land; mostly because I can't make up my mind, so I take the safest option!

So... that didn't help at all - I'm still undecided! What to do? What to do?

Any thoughts to add?

A home for the Mac.

I mentioned in my last post that we bought a desk! Yay us!

It has taken a long time to find and decide on a desk. We didn't want a classic heavy style desk like this.

Yet, we didn't want a really modern desk like this, either.

So we were looking for something modern, but not too modern, preferably in a dark timber/espresso/wenge finish. For a long time, I had my heart set on this. 

The picture is a toffee finish, it also comes in chocolate. This mirror (from the same site) is a chocolate finish, so I assume the desk would be a similar colour. What is it they say happens when you assume? Hmm...

Anyway, it's not really as dark as we would have liked, and I kind of like to see something as substantial (and expensive) as a desk before I buy it. I came across this desk in the Freedom catalogue. I even shared it as part of my inspiration pics!

We decided to go on a shopping trip and see what we could see. I had big plans to take my camera and share all of the options we considered with you guys, but after visiting five stores, I had zero photos. Yep, zilch. We didn't come across a single desk we liked. Most of them were too big or too office-y (if you know what I mean!) so off to Freedom we went! And, we ended up buying the Shorthand Desk that I showed you. It is A LOT darker than it looks in the picture, but that was ok with me! Here's a close-up so you can see the colour.

And, here is how it look right now. Ignore the bare walls, bare desk and cords, if you can. I haven't done anything in here since I plopped the desk in place on the weekend. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea what I'm going to do in here, and I'm feeling a little discouraged and lost! I think I have lost a bit of my deciding-on-decor mojo!

Do you like it? We do. I think we will like it even more when there's a picture on the wall, and some pretty things around the place!

Art display

You might remember this picture I showed, as part of my inspiration for the front room. 

It's creator is the very clever Sarah from A little of this, a little of that, she even has a great how-to!

My plan was to do something similar on the wall here, above the table. 

Sarah uses pine boards, but I'm incredibly cheap, so I used a couple of old boards, that were hiding out in the back shed. 

I  took the rusty nails out. Then I gave the timber a really quick sand; first with coarse, and then fine sandpaper. 

To give them some colour, I used Wood Gel in Wenge. It's super easy to use, you just squeeze some onto a cloth and rub it on in little circles!

I gave both bits of wood a couple of coats of clear finish, glued on six 'thirty-nine-cent' clips and used picture hanging strips to put them up on the wall. Then I only needed to add some drawings and paintings!

You're probably thinking it's too short for the wall, and it is, but there is a reason; I want to put a photo of the littlies on either side. Kind of like this, either printed on canvas, or just framed, I'm not sure yet!

I'm sure I will make up my mind eventually (Indecisive? Me? No way!) but for now, I'm happy to have something on the wall and show off some of this beautiful art work!!!

On a side note, we went shopping on the weekend!! We bought something that we have needed for a long time... A computer desk! 

How was your weekend? Get any shopping done?