Colour Dilemma

I think choosing a colour for our front room was harder than deciding to buy the house in the first place. We had a couple 'obstacles' to work around before we came up with our colour combination. First there was our red IKEA Billy bookshelves...

{subtle they ain't}

They were purchased on a whim a couple years ago without thought to future decorating choices. I read a couple tutorials about how to paint IKEA furniture but it looked like a big hassle without a guaranteed result. The red had to stay.

Secondly we had a 7ft long brown leather couch that is probably the comfiest couch out there but we scored it secondhand off Craigslist about a year ago and our kitty's claws made quick work of poking holes in it. It's definitely seen better days but Hubs absolutely refuses to let it go.

If you're keeping track that means I have to work with cherry red and brown. Awesome right? Awesome not. We started with neutrals; grays, tans and browns. Then moved on to soft colours like pale green and blue - but nothing came even remotely close to the clean and fresh look that I wanted. After multiple trips to the paintstore and many testers later (like 12 different testers) our front room looked like this...

...on all 4 walls. And then it stayed that way for weeks while I scoured the internets for what my subconscious wanted but my brain didn't know how to produce.

Then I found this picture...

...and everything fell into place.

{stay tuned!}

Newest Addition to the Family...

With the Hub's birthday coming up a couple weeks after the move I knew I wanted to get him something special, something that would commemorate such an awesome occasion as turning 26 and buying a house. One night during my latenight internet wandering I came across DNA11. They can take your actual DNA and turn it into a work of art. Because I am a geek and I married a big nerd I knew this had the potential to be an amazing gift. After you choose your canvas size, colours and place your order on the website they send you a DNA collection kit {I chose the 2 person split screen in 'Inferno'}...just one problem...how could I get a cheek swab from my darling husband without letting on what I was actually doing.

Long story short, I made up a big complicated un-truth about some long lost cousin in New Zealand who was researching our family tree and she wanted everyone's DNA for some obscure reason...and it worked! I got the sample from him, sent it away and in 6 weeks this beauty arrived.

{Love the colours!}

It fits perfectly over our couch and is the first thing you see when you walk in the door. Jeff is on the left side and I am on the right. DNA11 can even take your children's or pet's {!} DNA and do the same thing. Oh science, how I love you.

Movin' On Up!

Moving day flew by and I hardly know where to begin!

It all went extremely well. We managed to pack all of our belongings into a Honda Fit, Chevy Equinox and Uhaul Truck...

{Our Moving Fleet}

...and made the trip across Toronto during rush hour. Should I have planned that a bit better? Yes, yes I should have. But we all arrived in one piece except for a small chip off the frame of a mirror...which some super glue fixed right away.

With the move on Oct 28th it meant that Halloween was only a couple days away and my priority was decorating and making sure we had enough candy for the neighbourhood kids (important stuff, right?). I had no idea how many kids to expect so we bought way more candy than we thought we would need, but by 6pm we hadn't had a single Trick-or-Treater. I started getting nervous thinking that maybe parents were keeping their kids away from our front door because we were new and in this day you can't be too careful, so I started snacking...and snacking...until the doorbell started ringing and the parade of adorable children didn't stop. We actually almost ran out of goodies so the Hubs went sprinting down the street to the grocery store for more.

With Halloween gone by we started thinking about...dun dun DUN....{The Wall}. The Wall is the exterior side wall (we're in a semi) that was covered in Insulbrick siding that had seen better days {it was roughly 20 years old and was starting to fall apart}. Insulbrick is a paper based siding material with an ashpalt coating made to look like real brick from a distance.

{Before: Ugly, gross and falling apart Insulbrick}

It had to be fixed so we dipped our little toe into the big, bad, scary world of contractors. Luckily, through some research and referrals we found a great guy who did a stellar job at not only properly sealing the house, but also installing brand spanking new siding. It was a huge sigh of relief when it was all said and done - pictures to come!

Officially Homeowners {keys in hand}!

We purchased the house in August, but didn't close until October so it was a long wait to actually be able to move and sometimes we never thought the day would come...Closing day! In October we found ourselves in the lawyers office signing our lives away...ahem signing the mortgage papers and when we finally had our keys in hand we couldn't get over to the house fast enough.

By the time moving day rolled around we had been living amongst boxes and bags for way too long as we slowly packed up our apartment and our lives.

 

Please excuse the terrible pictures taken with my Blackberry. I had packed up my camera somewhere and although ripping open all the boxes to find it is tempting I just couldn't do it.

Kuro {our cat} was curious and confused by these events. When we moved her the next day she was terrified.

Hello World!

I am so excited to finally get this blog rolling...

My husband and I bought a house roughly 6 months ago and have been working hard to give it some personality and a little pizzazz. With so many projects going on we needed a place to keep everything in order and let our friends and family updated on what we've been doing - so this blog was born.

We have so many plans {and even more dreams} to make this cute, little, semi-detached two-storey our homey getaway in the big city. We hope to do most of the work ourselves and only call in reinforcements if absolutely necessary.