Decorating bathroom shelves

I love the recessed shelving next to our bathroom vanity (who doesn't love extra bathroom storage?) - it keeps a few essentials within easy reach and has room for some "just because" accessories too, like my DIY silver-leafed frame. The top shelf used to be empty, until one of our wedding guests gifted us with this lovely lavender (favourite scent) candle and vintage snuffer - so cute!

While I was playing around in the bathroom (that sounds weird), I also added this little guy - my bff and I bought matching birdies to remind us of each other (she lives in Virginia, I'm in Nova Scotia). Hope she doesn't mind that it's in the bathroom!

(yes, that's a zombie survival guide - you never know people)

Installing a new shower head

Adam's brother stayed with us for a couple of days last week and although we forced him to sleep in a room without a door, he was nice enough to install our new Moen shower head (a wedding gift from our friend Kate - thanks Kate!). This is our old shower head.

Small, but mighty. Taking a shower was a bit like having an overly-aggressive massage, while using a MASSIVE amount of water. And we couldn't give our dog a bath (we were secretly dreaming about a rain showerhead, but decided it wasn't worth the smelly dog).

I'm happy to report that we can now wash our faces without crying, we're saving water, and our dog smells a little better (for now).

Yard work

Since our wedding on Saturday, Adam and I have been "honeymooning" by putting in long hours working on our lawn (we're taking an actual honeymoon to Iceland this fall). We started the process a few weeks ago, but we had to take a break for our DIY wedding.

So far, we've 1) given our weed ridden driveway a facelift with peastone 2) disguised an ugly cinderblock retaining wall with multicoloured patio stones 3) covered a former flower bed, but more recent dirt strip with peastone (next year we'll add planters and annuals) 4) overhauled our jungle of a front bed by ripping out weeds and invasive ground cover (which we then replaced with peastone and black bark mulch), moving plants and adding a few new ones, and building a few rock walls (including one to help stop the spread of our pretty, but invasive ornamental grass) 5) replacing an overgrown, weed-filled flower bed with a holly shrub, a blue star juniper, a dwarf japanese juniper, a couple of brightly-coloured annuals (just for fun) and some bark mulch (I want a border, Adam doesn't). Oh, and I finished painting the windows.

Unfortunately it was raining when I took these pictures (I was going to wait until the weather cleared up, but who knows when that will be), so they aren't the best. Remember when it used to look like this?

We still need to thin out some of the upper beds and finish mulching the new bed around the side of the house, but we're super excited about our progress so far. It actually looks like a flower bed!

It's official

I haven't posted in a week, but I've got a good excuse - Adam and I got hitched on Saturday! I'm working on a post with all the details (i.e. lots of photos), but for now I'll just say that it was, literally, the best day of my life (I've been watching a lot of Parks and Recreation lately).

(Photo by Chelle Wootten Photography)

Tweaking the living room + another gallery wall update

Decorating is an ever-evolving process. A few weeks ago, the gallery wall in our living room looked like this:

We planned to slowly keep adding frames over time, but I had officially checked it off the 'to do' list. Except, something wasn't quite right about it: the dark frames, next to the dark bookcase, weighed the room down and didn't fit with the light and airy feel we were going for. So I took all the frames down, spraypainted them white, and put them back up again.

(I also moved a few pictures around, so now we need a new piece of art to fill that big empty frame).

I'm much happier with the new look - the white frames make the art stand out and a few dark frames keep the wall from being too light and bright.

I also moved that large print on our mantle to the opposite wall. Another small change, but I feel like I've found the right 'home' for it. And since my hanging mirrors didn't work out, I still have to figure out what to put on the mantle...

Another new light

We've made a lot of progress in our dining room since we moved in...

Except for that crooked, sad little light fixture. I came across the perfect replacement on theFoundary.com: a woven wire pendant light - for just $34. Unfortunately there was no shipping to Canada, so I had it sent to my dad, who not only drove it from Wisconsin to Nova Scotia, but also installed it.

Love.

Installing a bathroom light fixture...finally!

My dad is in town for my upcoming wedding and while he was checking out our new place, he installed a new vanity light in our bathroom.

It works! I've been waiting months to have it installed (the placement of the junction box + my paranoia around all things electrical = too complicated for me). I love it, mostly because we now have a lighting option that doesn't involve a noisy overhead fan (which made quietly getting ready in the morning next to impossible).

Next steps: paint the ceiling gray and add crown moulding.

Mirrored mantle display

Hello blog friends! I took an inadvertent break from blogging to catch up on some DIY wedding projects and to enjoy some pre-wedding festivities, like my second bachelorette party and wedding shower (I'm a lucky girl, I know).

I managed to slip in a few home improvement projects, including this mantle update:

A cute start, right? I used heavy-duty double-sided tape to hang the mirrors, since I didn't want to mess with drilling or nailing into brick (to make it look like the mirrors were hanging from the ribbon, I hot-glued small nails to the ribbon and used tiny pieces of double-sided tape to attach it to the brick).

Apparently the tape wasn't heavy-duty enough, since hours later I heard a smash when one of the mirrors fell to the floor. Oops.

DIY planters

I found these gorgeous French planters at Winners - on clearance - for $29. It was love at first sight.

I drilled some holes into the bottom of each one and added a few handfuls of gravel for drainage...

Then planted some lavender - one of my favourite scents - for a pretty and fragrant way to greet visitors.



At less than $50, it was a relatively inexpensive way to boost our home's curb appeal.

Exterior Update

I checked a few things off the 'to-do' list this weekend. Finish painting the shutters? Check.

There's still lots to do outside - paint the windows, replace the rain gutters, finish digging and mulching the flower bed, redo the driveway, replace the light fixtures - but I'm thrilled with the progress we've made so far.

DIY wedding cutlery

Our wedding reception will be more of a fancy backyard BBQ than a traditional reception, and since Adam's band is playing a big outdoor festival the day after our wedding (oh life, you and your timing), clean-up needs to be a breeze. Enter paper napkins and plastic cutlery.

Each guest can grab a knife, fork and spoon wrapped in a napkin and tied with a simple piece of twine (we're also using twine in our centerpieces) from galvanized planters that will sit on the buffet tables.

I decided to add handles to the planters by drilling two holes into each side, threading twine through each hole, and knotting the ends to create a handle.

Pretty pretty, non?



Painted shutters

Adam and I have slowly been trying to improve our home's curb appeal (it turns out peeling windows and beat up shutters don't give a house that "cared for" look). For reasons that probably involved some discounted green paint, the previous owner started painting the exterior...

and then stopped (apparently it wasn't until they got to the shutters that they realized the colour didn't work).

So we pressure washed the siding and painted over the green paint...with more green paint. It's actually called "Dark as Night", and it's an example of why you should never ever buy paint without seeing the colour in person. I chose the colour online (obvious mistake) and asked my mom to swing by the hardware store to pick it up for me (the store, which is close to my mom's house and not so close to our house, was having a big sale on paint). When I opened the can, it was hunter green. Which was not what I wanted. At. all. Luckily we were able to take it back to the store, where they added some more black. Phew (wipes brow).

Then, while we hummed and hawed about buying a ladder, it rained for two months and Adam had to listen to me start every conversation with sentences like, "Imagine how much better the house will look after I paint the shutters" and "I really can't wait for this rain to stop so I can paint the shutters" and "WHY HAS THE SUN FORSAKEN US? P.S. Still excited to paint those shutters."

Luckily, he's pretty patient. And frequently has an excuse to leave town with his band.

Anyway, it finally stopped raining, we bought a ladder (which Adam used to take down the ugly string of Christmas lights running along the front of the house), and I got started on painting the shutters. So far it's five down, three to go, but I had to share a little preview:

So. much. better. Up close, you can tell that they should really be replaced (I scraped and painted them without taking them down for fear that I wouldn't be able to put them back up again), which we fully intend to do, when we replace the windows. And speaking of the windows, unfortunately the newly-painted shutters make the peeling windows all the more obvious, so that's painting step two.

Bachelorette weekend + pink peonies

I'm back! I spent an amazing bachelorette weekend in Ogunquit, Maine at the oh-so-lovely Achorage By the Sea resort (followed by a few days of visiting friends and family in New England). It was an awesome, awesome vacation (yes those are penis-shaped glow-in-the-dark straws) and I feel incredibly lucky to have such wonderful friends :)

Of course it's always nice to come home, especially to bright pink peonies blooming in the garden.

Beautiful, eh? They're a perfect match for the cocktail napkins I purchased for our wedding (our colours are white and pale green, but I'm using a few bright pink accents). Too bad my peonies won't be blooming in August - how pretty would they have been at the wedding?

Instead, I clipped a few blooms and arranged them in a simple white bowl in our bathroom. They look - and smell - amazing!