The Love List

Serena's gorgeous farmhouse kitchen is almost done.

Videos not made for kids that the kids should see. I like the one about Oliver Jeffers and Chloe was fascinated by the one about balance.

A fascinating history of typography.

Free vintage posters, just the thing to brighten up that bare wall.

I bought this and its my new favourite outfit. I love one piece dressing.

The sweetest little nursery.

The most brilliant kitchen sink drawer.

I saw this bench at the West Elm summer preview. I think it would look so cute at the foot of Chloe's new bed.

This is my favourite part of Holly's latest house flip.

A Little Girl's Room {In Progress}

Hopefully, that's what we'll have soon enough. We finally had the wallpaper installed in Chloe's bedroom and I love love love love it! I've been crushing on this Nina Campbell Swan Lake wallpaper for a long time but I didn't want to use it unless Chloe loved it as much as I did. Luckily, the girl shares mama's taste and picked it out of a pile of 20 wallpaper samples. That's my girl!

I really love this colourway. The trees and swans are a pale silver, their shimmery quality only visible when you see the wallpaper from an angle and light hits it.

We've paired the wallpaper with a light aqua paint on the other three walls. We had the paint from our bathroom colour matched and then made it 25% lighter so this is a custom colour. Depending on how the light hits, it can look more blue or a bit more green.

So a few things have to happen in this room. First, we need to deal with the radiator situation. As you know, HandyMan is pretty handy at building lovely little rad covers around our house (like this one and this one). Since this is a very small room (only 8'x11') we want to maximize use of the space. This is one of our ideas:

Just like in the nursery, we could build a small bench seat over the radiator. A narrow bookcase could fill in the space to the left of the window. To match the style of the bed, we would add turned feet to the bench. You'll notice that we "cheat" the space: the radiator cover extends further to the left than the actual radiator so we don't have to deal with building around the shutoff valve and it stops short on the right so we can fit in a post (to both hold in the bench cushion and to give the bench a finished look).

But this is just one idea. We'll probably come up with three or four more before we settle on a final solution! As for the rest of the room, I'm thinking it will look a little like this:

Chandelier | Pink polka dot sheets | Scallop drapery fabric | Thrifted paintings

Floral duvet | Geometric pillows | Rug

Chloe wants pink in the room so hopefully she'll be happy with the pops here and there. The mattress arrives tomorrow (we had the best sales experience ever at Sleep Country on Bayview Ave.) and hopefully we can get the rest done over the long weekend!

Relaxed Roman Blinds

Do you ever have design roadblocks? With me, it's draperies. I love love love getting fabric samples and dreaming up looks... but when it comes time to actually decide on draperies, I can be so indecisive. Hence, that's why it has taken months for me to decide on window coverings for the basement.

I knew the feel I wanted - something more casual, relaxed. But our whitewashed plank walls are so neutral, I had limitless options: bold florals, geometrics, solids, striped. Most anything could work. It was like standing in the grocery aisle and trying to decide between 42 flavours of ice cream. Impossible!

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll know that I finally did make a decision. I am really loving linen lately so I went with linen relaxed roman blinds from Tonic Living. The fabric is Brussels Washer Charcoal with a 1" band of Tuscany Linen Oyster on each side. It has a muslin lining which softly diffuses the light. I think the dark colour and lack of fussy details really suits our easy breezy basement.

 

We have other roman blinds in the house like this one in our upstairs bathroom which a seamstress simply made with the fabric attached to a piece of wood. I was impressed by the higher quality of these blinds from Tonic Living. The fabric is held to the wood with velcro and detaches for easy installation. The blind comes with instructions and all the hardware needed so we were able to install it in about 10 minutes. I quite like the little piping detail at the top of the blind. It really gives it a finished look.

After installing one of the blinds, I instagrammed a photo like the one above. Janine from Tonic Living saw my photo and asked if I had considered installing the blind flush with the frame. No, we hadn't! Pre-renovation, our basement bathroom had a deep window just like this with the blind installed up against the window so I guess I thought it was the norm. But we decided to try the drape flush with the frame...

and it looked much better (although you still notice the junk under the back deck through this window, ha!)

We have three blinds in the basement. Most of the time, I'll keep them half open because I like to let in some natural light. I could have gone with faux romans but I wanted the option to keep the blinds closed in the wintertime. Who needs to see all that snow anyway!

Do you have design roadblocks? Any design decisions you're procrastinating on? Tell me I'm not the only one!