A couple quick touches

Home Sense is a dangerous, dangerous place.

The new store opened in Ottawa October 1st. I've already been twice. And I don't go shopping very often.

Last weekend with my younger sis who I totally got hooked on the place as it was her first visit.

This past weekend with my older sis who is also not totally hooked after it being only her second visit.

I picked up a couple random things, despite going in with the intention of doing a return only. But...isn't that always the way.

Excuse the crummy colour in the pics-camera's being hormonal again.

First in the main floor powder room:

Cute, non?

And also in the ensuite. The monogram hand towels I got for my birthday , so not totally vain. The brown bath towel I found in the almost exact-matching colour as the monogram thread and, I gotta say-the towel is pretty much the softest towel I've ever felt.

A bit fromage, I acknowledge, but also (I think) pretty cute. It is our master bath afterall, so other than house showings, we're the only ones who see them, and it feels pretty posh.

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.

Store Gush: Canadian Tire

I'm obsessed with shopping. There are too many stores that I can write raves about right now. Pier 1 last week, CT now, and a few more to come I think.

For any americans, you'll have no idea what this store is. Too bad for you.

I popped in this past Friday to pick up a shelf for the powder room (see last post). I'd looked at a few places and couldn't find one I liked, but hubs had told me that the Centrum location had a great decor and furniture section I should check out. And check it out I did.

I'd looked at their website and found this shelf from the Debbie Travis collection for $34.99:

It was more or less what I was looking for. A little simple, but the right size, colour and decent quality. So I headed over there. Fortunately, I found the shelf I ended up purchasing from the same Debbie Travis collection while I was there (there's no image online available):

Which I liked much more for that space. It was like crown moulding a bit and a perfect fit.

While there, I found some rugs, some other furniture, some window coverings and even some lighting that I liked. Along with, of course, loads of baskets and closet organization stuff (CT is great for both of those things). But...while weaving through the home aisles, I saw a wonderful display across the hall.

Method cleaning products.

If you read my blog-letter to Target, you may recall that one of the many reasons I crave Target is for their cleaning products. Method is eco friendly cleaning products, which I search out. Plus-as a frivolous bonus-they're packaging is totally cute. So I tossed a whack of Method products onto my growing pile. Added a doormat and another broom to the pile and beelined it out of there for risk of being drawn to something else.

Needless to say, it was a productive shopping trip and I think I may have found another regular.

If you're from the Ottawa area, though, and want to check it out-definitely go directly to the Centrum location. There's also a new big one on Carling that's probably a similar caliber, but don't waste your time in Bells Corners (sorry, guys)-it's nowhere near as good for home stuff and may turn you off their entire chain. If you're looking for automotive and more construction-y stuff, they're fine, but not pretty things.

Anyways, I need to stop falling for these stores. Our bank account can't take much more of it.

Powder Room

Unfortunately I accomplished zero house stuff yesterday. Not because I was getting trashed on green beer or even really celebrating the Irish all that much. One of my very best friends from University was visiting and our other friend was "sick" yesterday to hang out. I booked the afternoon off and we just caught up. I was so nice and so fun, and I ended up forfeiting my ticket to the Sens game last night so I could spend some more time with them.

The (very slight) downside to that is that my Tuesday list has nothing crossed off of it. I was able, while popping home to pick up some shamrock cupcakes for my friends, to snap a few pics of our powder room though.

It's an incredibly small powder room-barely big enough to move around in. But, then again-you don't really need to move around all that much in a powder room, right? So we were able to more or less 'finish it for now' (hubs' and my term for good enough for a while) pretty quickly and pretty cheaply.

Some bathroom hardware (since there was none) and a shelf for above the toilet were purchased and a photo (after I painted the frame white), a plant, candle, reed diffuser and other odds and ends were moved there.

Pretty decent I'd say.

Clearly the accent colour in there is blue, all pulled from the Ikea print of an astranaut's view of earth. So eventually we'll paint it, but not for a long while.