Hey....I can make that!!

What do you do when you fall in love with a discontinued item? Make it yourself!!
I saw this adorable Amy Coe canvas for a baby nursery and thought it was such a fabulous way to decorate a baby's space without being too 'frou-frou' or 'babyish'...if you know what I mean. 
Love it....gotta have it! Where can I find it? Well....nowhere....as it turns out, it was discontinued!
Don't you hate that? It made me want it even more!! 

 I checked all the auction websites and googled obsessively until I could google no more. I was almost ready to give up on it....then I realized..."Hey! I can make that!!" 


So I did. And it was practically free! I had an old canvas under my bed and the leftover paint from the last item I fell in love with and decided to make myself (Sugarboo Designs pillow project).... then all I needed was to find the right font to print off and transfer somehow onto the canvas! Here's how I did it:

Step 1- Print off the outline only of the letters you need in the size you need (in this case I printed off 1 letter per page)


Step 2- Cut out carefully using scissors and exacto knife for the inside pieces


Step 3- Lay out the letters on the white canvas and secure them with tape once you are happy with the layout


Step 4- Using a sponge paint over the whole canvas with your chosen paint colour. This is kind of like a reverse stencil. So the area around the letters will be painted but the shape of the letter will remain raw canvas


Step 5- peel off the paper letters and Voila! you have your fabulous 'PEACE LOVE BABY' canvas!


(Optional)Step 6- With a small brush I added in the little specks within the letters by hand. I tried to match them as closely as possible to the original....not perfect, but not too shabby either!

 And here it is displayed on our wall above the baby's dresser    


(side note: this dresser is the  next project for hubby and I...it's not in bad shape but needs a little freshening up. Can't wait to get it painted with some new hardware and cute drawer liners. Stay tuned to see how it turns out!). 

Cute right?!

♥ Lindsay

Bittersweet farewell to my beloved Jetta

I know I shouldn't have attachments to 'things', but sometimes I can't help but be sad when something that has been in my life for 8 years is suddenly not. Yes friends....I am talking about a car! 8 Years ago (almost to the day actually) I bought a fabulous little black Jetta, who I affectionately called Jezzy (short for Jezzebel) and just last week I had to say good-bye. *sigh*.....I loved that car..... sure the speedometer would stop working from time to time, but it was nothing that couldn't be remedied by a few loving taps on the dashboard. And I thought for sure our inability to open the trunk at the border crossing was going to get us in BIG trouble....for some reason the border guard didn't like my suggestion of going in through the folded down backseat (who knew?) but after he realized we weren't lying, it was totally fine!! I know deep down that with a baby on the way, I guess it is kind of important to have a safe vehicle with a working speedometer and a functioning trunk.

 I don't know if it was the hormones or my fear of change....or maybe a little of both but I was really sad to see Jezzy go.... quirks and all!! 

 I do love our new Subaru Forester though!!! Isn't she beautiful? 

 Welcome to the family.....Freddie? Frankie? Farrah?

 Hmmmm.... this could be harder than naming our baby ;)

#6 New Car ✓

♥ Lindsay

Courtney? Really?

Well last night was the final night of the Bachelor....and I am not going to lie Jill and I didn't get much crafting done! We ate lettuce wraps and treatza pizza while we held on to the hope that Ben might pick Lindzi, although we already KNEW it was going to be Courtney. I don't know why I watch this show anymore.....I can predict the winner 9 times out of 10 and out of what? 20 seasons of the show? And only 2 marriages....not great odds....but hey everyone needs a guilty pleasure show right!?! Well last night Courtney was the chosen one. Really Ben? Not sure why the guys always choose the mean girl that "isn't here to make friends, but is here to win" ? Usually even if I am not particularly fond of the winner, I still love the proposal....but let's just say this year the highlight of the evening was the treatza pizza!! 
So, although I don't think this relationship is destined to be the third ABC televised marriage I do wish them the best and hope they truly found love. Guess we'll see in a few months....


♥Lindsay

Seattle Shopping Getaway

They say that the second trimester of pregnancy is where you feel your best and therefore it's the perfect time for one last mini-getaway with your spouse before baby! Although it would have been nice to escape to somewhere tropical, we were limited by time and money......so we opted for a mini road trip to the America version of Vancouver. I don't know about you, but the perfect getaway for me has nothing to do with distance travelled and more to do with what you do when you get there. With Ty doing his masters and the craziness in our schedules right now, what we really needed from this Seattle weekend was some quality time together! It was so nice to have a change in scenery, to be able to do whatever we wanted, not have to cook or clean....and of course throw in a little shopping and I am a happy girl! So that is what we did.....

We ate.

From my first breakfast in bed room service experience (so luxurious) to my guilty pleasure the Olive Garden and Tyler's guilty pleasure The Cheesecake Factory....

food was a big part of the weekend. 

I also have been on a bit of a lemonade kick lately (craving perhaps?) so I think I probably drank my weight in lemonade of all forms....plain, raspberry, frozen....you name it, I drank it. Yum! We even got to try out the famous Top Pot Donuts (Obama has eaten there...FYI) where I had the most delicious blueberry donut ever! 

So let's just say....we ate well in Seattle :)

We relaxed.

Since we don't have a television in our bedroom at home, one of the biggest treats for me when I stay in a hotel is being able to watch TV in bed! There is nothing like a cozy hotel bed for snuggling up and watching a movie before going to sleep or lounging in bed longer than I should with a coffee in hand and The Price is Right on the television. It's the little things....right?

We shopped.

It was President's Day Weekend, so between the fabulous sales and our trip to the Premium Outlets I had to really use my self control to stay within our maximum allowance of what we could bring back into Canada without paying duty. Let me tell you, the only thing that held me back from spending hundreds of dollars on baby items was my severe anxiety of crossing the border. Buy one suit at 50% off and get the second one free? Take an additional 55% off the already ridiculously low clearance priced items? I mean really....we just don't have sales like that in Canada! I could have literally outfitted our baby in Carter's gear for the first year of her life for a few hundred dollars. But, alas I am too much of a scaredy-cat to lie to the border agent (I mean really...they are government employees....who knows what they could do to me!!), so I came home with a small fraction of what I wanted to..... but still $250 worth of Carter's baby items for only $60 is pretty darn good!!  

Overall...a fabulous weekend getaway in Seattle with the hubby( #11 ✓)!

♥ Lindsay

#2....✔ and boy does it feel good!

Is it too soon to be nesting? When there is something that needs to be done I usually like to get down to it and not stop until it's done but this urge to prepare our house for baby has become even stronger now that I am almost 5 months pregnant! So I think that nesting instinct has definitely kicked in and has made me even more obsessed with starting and finishing a task as quickly as possible. I have always been the type of person that comes home from a trip and immediately unpacks, starts a load of laundry and then goes grocery shopping to restock the fridge with food.....I have also been know to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning on moving day so that I go to bed with everything in place and wake up feeling settled and at home. I guess I really like to limit the time that my life is in chaos so if the task involves ripping the house apart, organizing and rearranging then it needs to be done all at once....like list item #2 for example! I have been itching to organize our storage room and filing nightmare corner for months and finally one weekend I just couldn't wait any longer and I just had to get it done. All weekend long my husband and I purged, sorted, rearranged the house, shopped for storage containers and organized.....I think I drove Ty crazy (he was so busy with school I am sure this was the last thing he wanted to be doing) and I definitely overdid it (I was in bed by 8 on Monday night and my back was aching for 2 days)....but boy does it feel good now that it's done!!! 

Before: In all the chaos I forgot to take a before picture of the filing nightmare corner....but picture 3 file boxes jammed to capacity stored inside an old tv stand with our phone on top and pens, papers and other miscellaneous items strewn about. 

After: So we got rid of the file boxes and tv stand and got a real grown up filing cabinet....
I  streamlined the computer desk area, organized all our office and art supplies and  finally put up our degrees that we had framed over a year ago! And......Voila.....
from filing/office nightmare corner to our fabulous new, organized 'office space' in the corner of our living room. I love it!!! 

Before: Our storage room in a nutshell? A mess!!! 

From snowboards, golf clubs and two sets of hockey equipment, to camping gear and luggage....not to mention Christmas decor, crafting supplies, yarn, material, purses, shoes and coats....phew! Where do you put it all? You jam it in the storage room of course......and this is the result of that 'solution'!! Not exactly a thing of beauty right?!?

After: With a few purchases like a new shelf and some storage containers, a little bit of purging and a lot of organizing....we were finally able to create a much more usable (aka....you can now easily go in and out to access the items in it) storage room! 


 Is it just me or does organizing not give you the most satisfying feeling ever!?! This was a BIG list item and it feels so good to check it off!


♥ Lindsay

Amendment to my list

So I came across this list of 15 things to do before baby according to The Nest Website and thought it was worth checking out....just to see how many things I have already done, or how many I can still accomplish etc. 


I was happy to see that there were plenty of items like Road Trips, Boozy Lunches with friends, being the last to leave a party and taking a Wine Tour that I had already checked off (what kind of Okanagan girl would I be if I hadn't been on my fair share of wine tours right!?!). Others would be entirely inappropriate since we are expecting already and not just thinking about adding a baby to our lives....for example I am pretty sure there is a rule against pregnant women skydiving or bungee jumping. And many of the items that I haven't yet done are luckily also items that I don't really have any interest in! But there was one item in particular that had me wishing I had seen this list before I made my 2012 list!

# 9: Spend an entire day in bed together watching movies??...Ummm, yes please!!!

When are we ever going to be able to do this again? Never!! I must make an amendment to my list!! Is that allowed?? Well, I made it.....so I can change it right!?! So, since I was starting to feel depressed about the idea of going to Whistler without being able to snowboard and we already have another weekend getaway to Seattle planned anyway....#3....you are being replaced! Can't wait for a rainy day to snuggle up with my hubby and have a luxurious, uninterrupted day of watching movies and snacking on popcorn. Perfection :) 

♥ Lindsay

#4....read 5 books....what was I thinking??

Ok so I just realized that I have less than 5 months before baby.....which means just 5 more months of luxurious, uninterrupted reading time!! 5 non-baby related books in 5 months....no problem right?!? After all, I did read a book a month last year as part of my no-shopping project. I love reading....so it shouldn't feel like a chore but I guess it may have slipped my mind that there are a few slight differences this year.... not only am I working full time but I also have millions of other things left to do to prepare for baby!?! Not to mention the fact that I also have these 7 books (that my fabulous Mom friends have so graciously lent me...thank you ladies) to read along the way too!! 

Although at this moment I may have lost sight of why I thought this list item was a good idea, I am sure I will appreciate it when I am sleep-deprived and the only books I am reading are of the children's variety (not that I mind, because I kind of love *kids books....I think all elementary teachers do)! Since last year I didn't buy any books and I finished reading all the books on my shelf that I hadn't yet read, I thought it might be nice to reward myself with a few new books for this list item. I got 2 new books in my stocking for Christmas, so that left 3 spots in my '5 books in 5 months' project. So I headed to Chapters, gift card in hand (Thanks Josh and Robyn) to find 3 more books to get me excited about list item #4. 

Here is the final list.....

I am officially ready to go and enjoy my last few months of relaxing, reading time!

*Side note: speaking of kids books there was a tiny impulse buy that I couldn't resist....this adorable boardbook is too cute!! It's never too soon to start (or in my case...add to) baby's first library right?

 

♥ Lindsay