Yummy Entry Ways

All for different reasons. Quite possibly for different homes. All delicious and I'd take any of 'em!

Crown Royal

A surprise transformation is taking place at our house right now, and I love it.


Hubs was given free reign to some extra crown moulding from his constructon site and is taking FULL advantage of it. We've always have dreams of having crown moulding, but they were future dreams and weren't planned for a few years.



He started last week with the powder room. I don't really have a before shot because the room's too small to get far back enough to see the ceiling, but here it is after it's been installed, caulked and painted:


The powder room is the only spot that's actually finished, but he made some great progress last night on getting a whack of it up:

Wall above powder room before:


Wall of powder room glamified:

Here's a shot looking out of the dining room into the front entrance post-install:

And my handyman working on that very same section:


And finally, here's our post. It's kind of the trial area for all of hubs' trimming ways, so it was the first main area he installed the crown on:
Doesn't it make it look so lush? And for the price of the little ruler thingy that measures angles, in these parts, we call that a bargoon.

It makes going home so exciting--I never know what I'm going to find.

Milestone

We have blinds people!!!!

Oh it's wonderful: we FINALLY bit the bullet and got some window coverings!

We've ordered blinds a couple weeks ago from Sears for our ensuite window. Kind of as a trial for future blinds because it's a catalogue order and I like to see what I'm buying. Unfortunately they screwed up and the order got lost or something. So I cancelled it last week and said I'd find it somewhere else. Beat it Sears.

Enter Bou Clair Home.

If you haven't been to Bou Clair since it because a home store rather than a fabric store, go there now. It's fantastic. Plus, now they cut blinds in store and are having a great sale on ready-to-hang drapes and 2" slat blinds. Parfait!

So hubs and I were running errands Saturday and stopped in.

Here's our front entrance doors Saturday morning:

And then Saturday afternoon during prime glare time:

Although it looks like the blinds are quite see-through, I assure you (becuase we tried) you have to be nose-pressed to the window and squinting to even see silhouette's.

And Saturday evening while my sister was visiting:


They already make the house seem so much cozier and it's so nice not to have our front door open for viewing.

For $19.99 each, and according to hubs: incredibly easy to install, these are a fantastic purchase.

The best part is that we finally made some decisions and will probably go and purchase a few more windows worth of coverings this week...woo hoo!

Even more baby steps

These baby steps are really adding up...or so you'd think.

Here are a few more glimpses of little things we've done here and there in an extremely gradual effort to get our home "done for now". A quick observation I've made while reviewing the photos, though, and a bit of a disclaimer: Everything that's put up on our walls photographs very, very plain and forlorn. I don't think they look so bare when I'm actually in the space. But then again---we're taking our sweet time filling up the space, so it could very well be a bit of bareness as well as bad photographs.

Regardless, here they are-don't judge me by my sparseness:

Our garage entry:
This is definitely the most used entryway for our home. It's pretty much the only one hubs and I use. Guests obviously use the front door, and if we're not driving, so do we. So we needed a little mirror here for our last-minute glances on our way out. This one is a find from the Third World Bazaar a couple years ago. We also picked up some nice hooks at HD last week which we'll screw to the bottom of this mirror for our keys.



One of the dining room walls:
Until I find an affordable mirror like the ones in yesterdays post, or a suitable alternative, we've decided to put up this Robert Bateman painting. It's a lovely houwewarming gift from our last home from hubs' dad and step mom. You can't tell, but it's a beautiful hand drawn jaguar. There will also likely be a shelf underneath it at somepoint in the future (not to mention the replacement of that bare lamp in favour of a chandelier if we ever agree on one we like):

Upstairs hallway:
On the wall between the 2 spare bedrooms is this little wall. I've always loved this frame (an engagement gift from my Godparents) but have never put it up. By the time I found (read: decided on) suitable photos, it was time to stage our house for selling, so I was minimizing the personal photos everywhere. Now it's a wonderful reminder of our wedding day and some of our favourite photos. Hubs and I aren't big with PDA's so we love that it's upstairs, so we can enjoy the memories and reminisce but it's not on display to anyone and everyone who enters our home. The quote in the middle says "All because two people fell in love". I love it:

Entrance Trial

Only after my post the other day about the monogram we hung at the front entrance did I realize just how bare the front entrance was (and is). My rational side is (very) slowly taking control of my frivolous side and I'm realizing that we don't have to do everything right away. We don't have the time and we certainly don't have the money to do it all right now. We've got forever, I know that logically and it's better to live in the space for a while and sort out what you need and what you want.

Yah, yah---I still want to go shopping.

But...I'm trying to be good, so I've made some changes in the front entrance using stuff we already had. So I moved a console table and a flower arrangement (fake flowers, thanks Pier 1) to fill that space a little bit and make the picture seem a little less random:

And, since apparently it's cat day on Setting up Home, and because this little guy turns 3 today, here's our other cat, Max modelling the new set up.

I think it's a definite improvement and it'll do for now. What do you think?

PS-Happy birthday Maxers! I can't believe you're 3 already.

Baby Steps

Slowly, but surely, we're starting to actually hang things up. Shocking, I know.

Almost the first week in the house, we hung some sconces in the dining room. Then last week we hung a picture in the powder room and another in the main bath (which we soon after took down-indecisive much?) and last night I hung this:

I wanted something for the main entrance, but there were already loads of mirrors, so that didn't make sense. It's not a carnival fun house afterall. Also, I didn't really want actual pictures there. I'm not entirely sure of the reason, I just don't like the idea of strangers stepping in or peeking through the windows and being able to see pictures of us. Paranoid? Possibly.

Anyways, so I played with a couple fonts and printed out this large monogram in a chocolate brown on cardstock. Framed it in a frame we already had and hung it here:

Although, in that picture it looks a bit lost-it does look quite good and immediately I really liked it. Plus it's just a letter printed on cardstock, so we can easily change it as the mood and/or season strikes us.

Oh, here's a slightly better shot:

Now all you need is a small console table or something under there and it's good to go.