We have been working on my office (the smallest room in the house). And there is so much more to be done than originally thought! Isn't that always the way. 

We started painting the room with a can of paint we already had around. However, after assessing the room, there was a bunch of other fixes that needed to be done. It seems like most of the walls and base boards in this house are in rough shape, and with a closer look the ceiling (once white) is now turning a little brown with age. So we have been working away on this room for the past little while. Slowly and steady we are getting through the check list. Hopefully this weekend we will get it all finished!

We ended up having to buy more paint for the office as we went through the left over can quite quickly, so now we have more leftover paint. In the past we kept forgetting which paint was used for each room (especially when some colours were quite similar), so I added a label to this paint can so we would remember. 

Over the weekend was The Interior Design Show here in Toronto. A good friend of mine (who has also moved into a house recently) and I decided to check it out. It was really a lot of fun looking at all the amazing things you can get to make your place awesome. 

Most of the products shown were a lot of the high end stuff. We probably won't be outfitting our homes with it, but it sure was lots of fun to imagine. However, it gave me lots of inspiration and ideas for our place even if we don't end up buying the actual high end products. We picked up lots of information pamphlets to go through and continue our interior decorating research. A great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. 

We have been having extremely cold weather recently, which makes it really difficult to be outside for any length of time, but we had to get out. Fresh air was much needed after being cooped up into for so long. I took these photos over Lake Ontario near our house one early morning. It was so cold, I was surprised the camera even worked, but it was worth it. The lake looked so beautiful with the shining sun over it. There were also low lying clouds that formed just above the lake from the water evaporating. So amazing to see, and definitely worth the cold trip!

The library has now become the entertainment room. As it now houses the TV and a games area, including a dart board! So not as much reading is happening in this room. That tends to happen upstairs by the big bright windows. 

We have started planning this room. It's exciting to finally be starting in on some decorating. 

So far we have rearranged the book shelves that came with the place. However, when we took half of them out we discovered that when the pervious owner put down new carpeting he didn't remove the bookcases. So there is a different carpet under the shelves, which means we are stuck with using these shelves to cover up the old carpet or replace the entire room. Yay for surprises! For now, we have kept half the shelves, and the couch is covering the rest of the old carpet, with only a small corner showing. Not ideal, but for now it will have to do. We didn't plan on getting into carpet buying just yet! 

However, we did buy a games table and four comfy chairs for playing endless board games with friends by the fire. This is something we had always wanted to put in our house. And our old dart board is back up! We had this guy at our old old apartment, but never had any place for it at the condo. It's been years since our last match, let the competition begin!  

This is what we found waiting for us when we pulled the dryer away from the wall. 15 years of dirt! Other people's dirt, ewwww. The main purpose to get behind the dryer was to change out a plastic dryer tube for a metal one. We were concerned the plastic one could over heat and cause a fire. However, the job ended up being a big cleaning project and only a small amount of time was spent changing the tube. But in the long run it's great to get it all cleaned out and fresh. 

1. First pull out the old one, and clean behind there because you know you will have to. Hopefully it won't be as gross as this!

2. Buy metal tubing and stretch them out to the length you need. Jeff and I had a tug of war game pulling these guys out to their full length.

3. Using metal tape, tape tubes together if you need extra length, like we did. The tubes should fit into one another, one end being a bigger opening than the other end. 

4. Attach the two ends of your tube to each the dryer and the outside venting hole. Use the metal tape again to attach the tube to the dryer and outside vent, and also attach dryer tube clamps on either end to keep them together (shown below). 

So far this is our laundry room, still stuck beside the furnace. Not sure how to change that other then creating some kind of partition. However, for now it is a lot cleaner and tidier. We bought some hooks to hang up our mops so they aren't all just sitting in a pile. 

Sometime I'd like to try and make our laundry area look something like this photo below. It would be great to add some cabinets to keep all our cleaning and laundry stuff in. Then I'd like to enclose the sink and add a backsplash. Another project! I'll add it to the list, we are probably up to 600 items so far! 

Finally, Jeff and I are feeling better and were all prepared to get to work this weekend. Then on Saturday, as we were about to start a project, the power went out! And it stayed off until around 11pm. So we ended up heading to Ikea to look around and get some ideas for our downstairs living/entertainment room. 

Sunday was spent dealing with our icy driveway. We knew we needed to get rid of the ice, but Saturday night confirmed the need. We took the car out to a friends place, after getting tired of hanging out in the dark, and we actually slid, a little sideways, down the driveway in the car.  When we got back we just parked the car on the road and climbed up the yard to get to the door. So on Sunday we started chipping away at the ice with a metal shovel, taking turns, as the other person tired out. It was quite literally three inches thick in many areas. 

Then a very kind neighbour came by and offered us a large metal rod to hammer away at the ice, which worked a lot better! So nice to have real neighbours now. 

The ice was breaking up in huge chucks. It was great that it was now breaking so easily, but it was ever so heavy! It took about two hours or so to get to the bottom. We both are a bit sore today.

AND done! Well mostly, we carved a path for the car to get up the driveway and anyone walking won't kill themselves now. We will continue to work on it over the next couple of days as it is going to be warm. Good friends of ours also came by with some salt, so we will have to put that down too. We have the best friends and neighbours!

We are both still suffering from this flu/cold, which is so frustrating when you have a new house to decorate! Something needed to be done to make the place a bit more homey. So I used the little bit of energy I had, and put up some art on the walls. We have some pretty huge walls, and even our largest pieces from the condo look tiny in here. So we will have to wait to find some giant art pieces for the those walls. For now, we got some of smaller ones up! It makes a big difference, and makes me feel a lot better.

Our largest piece looked best on this smaller wall off the kitchen. I think it will look a lot better up there once we paint the walls. In fact, most of the pieces we have are very white, so right now it's all a bit too much white on white. 

I added a little collage for the bedroom wall. We used to have most of these on our large bedroom wall in the condo, and they took up most of the room! Now they only take up a small area beside the fireplace.

In the downstairs living room a bit of a red theme has started. Two of my mother's art pieces (both red) are now hanging in this room. I thought this one looked great over the mantel. 

Hopefully we will be feeling 100% soon, so we can get on to real work around the house. 

For the past week Jeff and I have been sick with the flu, making it almost impossible to work on our house. So what does one do who can't actually work on anything? Dream about it, plan it out! I have been thinking about our little powder room. And the repeating theme is funky. 

The main idea was spurred from these yellow flowers in the photo below. They would look amazing with a deep dark purple on the walls. Then add some funky lighting and accessories! Below is the look-book of sorts, with some of the ideas I have found so far for the powder room.