a little kitchen refresh

Happy Monday!

Last week I was telling you I went a little paint crazy so today I'm going to share the other room I went paint crazy on. Well maybe not crazy but refreshing. Before I share the pics of my house, first I wanted to share a couple of inspiration pictures of the eventual look and feel I would like in our kitchen. I'm working with a very limited budget so this is going to take awhile but I hope you enjoy coming along on this journey with me.

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I definitely love the open shelved, modern farmhouse/industrial little bit of Provence look about the kitchens and I love getting inspiration from seeing real chefs kitchens (a la Julia Child, Michael Smith, Jamie Oliver etc) and how they work. I have lots more inspiration  pics on my Pinterest board HERE

So, here we go with my progress so far and first off we have a picture of the "before" what our kitchen looked like on moving day just over a year ago.

And here's the "After" or I guess more like "progress"

As you can see in the photo above, I took the doors off a couple of cupboards, partly to get a more "open shelving" look and partly to try out living with open shelves to see if I like it and if it works for me and my family. And you know what? I love it, these shelves have our most used cups and dishes and bowls and it is so quick and easy to grab and put away from the dishwasher and also for guests to find what they need. I also changed out the valance for something a little lighter and brighter (spoiler alert, its actually three cute dish towels clipped up there!)

The colour I chose is a soft grey but it shows quite blue in some lights

Most of the containers and glass canisters are hand me downs from my hubby's grandma or are thrifted finds.

The really fun part of my painting spree is this chalkboard wall. One side faces the kitchen...

and the other side faces the dining area where my kids have been having a blast writing up the supper menu (and various other doodles :-)

Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful week!

A Living Room Refresh

I have been on a bit of a painting spree around here and one of my favorite projects has been lightening and brightening our living room. That chocolate brown was fine but it was quite dark especially as this room is North/North-East orientation and it made an already fairly tight space feel more tight.

 I have been in love with that cow painting since the moment I spotted it and she has become my colour inspiration. We also want our house to reflect who we are and some words we would use for that would be fun, comfortable, colorful, eclectic and sentimental.

So, here we go...

Before  

Master Bedroom mini update

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas? We all had a lovely time, lots of family time and this is the first Christmas in a few years that no one's been really sick!

During my Christmas Home tour I showed a few pics of the mini makeover I did on our master bedroom, but I figured I should show a better before and after :-)

So this is where we were last time we checked in the master, I had done a bit of picture hanging and bed making...

2014 Kozy Kabin Christmas House Tour

Hello!

Welcome to my corner of blogland. For any of you who regularly stop by, thank you for doing that and I apologize for leaving you hanging from my last post. I guess I'm just not cut out for daily posting (plus truth be told i only took 3 pictures that whole weekend...oops) Anywhooooo, on to the tour!

This is definitely my favorite time of the year, I love touring around all the houses on show, seeing what creative people have done to put some extra sparkle in their homes, so enough rambling grab a cup of eggnog or hot chocolate (or my personal favorite eggnog latte!) and lets move on with the tour! 

 I have to say I'm particularly proud of that picture above (although not so proud of the orangey look of the walls, what is that?!?!)  as I found that vintage chalkboard at the thrift store! I've been dying to get one of these but they're just not in the budget this year. So I made my own :)

The living room change up

Just dropping in to share a couple pics of our little living room change up. I think I've said this before but I'll say it again, I love love love rearranging furniture! I used to beg my mom to let me change our living room around all the time when I was a kid. Also, Pat hardly ever bats an eye when things get moved around because it happens that often ;) I think this is about the 7th or 8th incarnation in the last ten months we've been living here.

Anyways, enough chit chat, on to the pictures! 

This is what it kind of looked like before...

A 9 year old girls room that isn't pink!

   Since Cadence and I finally went through her room and organized and discarded a bunch of stuff she's grown out of and we can now walk into her room without fear of stepping on some small painful item IE barbie shoes or playmobil animals, I figured it was high time I shared all the work we have accomplished in her room so far. The last time I shared her space, it was just after I painted both girls rooms and there was a considerable amount of stuff everywhere (my little girl is a bit of a hoarder :s) Hence the picture only shows the top half of her room ;)

  But let's not dwell shall we? Moving on, here's Cady's room now:

A Long Overdue Picture Hanging

Some of you may or may not remember this little post from 2 years ago in which I made a couple old windows into picture frames.

I have a confession to make, I have never hung these on a wall nor have I done anything with them since I made them! And it's not like I don't like them, in fact I still love them and they are still one of my most favorite projects ever! No, the reason I've never hung them etc is two fold; #1. Just a short time after I made these, we found out our house was sold and then we were moving. #2. Since we lived in a travel trailer for that summer  the frames were in storage and then when we rented our next place I didn't want to hang them and wreck the walls or something (these windows are quite heavy!) So, yesterday, I did this...

I finally hung them up in our master bedroom! I quite like them flanking our bed in there. I also hung a few more pictures to the far right (although now that I'm seeing them in the picture I think they're a bit too high. On the other side, I hung that wooden shelf (my hubby made that many years ago) and decided it was the perfect spot to hang my scarves.

One of these days I'd like to get/make some new window coverings and maybe a different paint color on the walls, but probably not for awhile since my focus will be changing soon from inside to outside areas.

See that little campfire thingy in the picture below? Gabe made that and decided to give it to his dad for his birthday, isn't it sweet?

Lots of things I want to do/fix/buy/make etc but I'm trying to not to get overwhelmed again. Although I think with everything we've got going on this spring there might be a good chance of that. Hopefully reading about "highly effective people" might help ME be more effective ;)

As always, any questions,comments, advice, let me know in the comments below :)

A Boy Bedroom Update

Hi everyone! First off I have to say Happy Valentines Day!  

OK so it's more like a mini update, but I'm so happy to share with you some updated photos of Gabe's room. First of all, lets remind ourselves of what I started out with;

Yikes! Poor Gabe had to live with this for nearly five months (since the girls rooms took precedence in their unfinished state and then there was Christmas etc etc ;)

I'll be honest and tell you that I've been waiting awhile to try and get a good photo to show off his new color and since that just isn't happening I figured what the heck, Ill show you anyways :) So, here it is...

A vast improvement for sure! The color I used in here is called Silver Mist by Benjamin Moore

It's a nice light grayish blue as Gabe wanted his room to be grey (actually her originally wanted it to be all black but I nixed that since his only window is north facing and doesn't get much natural light, especially in winter) although, it is quite light and sometimes reads as a soft white. Not to worry as I have a plan to deepen the color a bit. I'm also super excited about this room as I got a fantastic idea for a sort of theme for his room. I'm thinking (and Gabe agrees with this idea and is sooo excited) that his room will be a ski theme or winter wonderland. Gabe loves to ski and I have some ideas to make his room cool for a little boy of 6 as he is now and also that he can grow with for many years to come as it won't be too cartoonish.

Have a great V-day and a wonderful weekend!

Tween Room Mini-update

     Way back in November I showed you what colors I painted my girls rooms and mentioned that we wanted to do something on those newly painted, bare walls, either a frame collage or banner or something fun like that. I knew Nyla would be getting a few posters for her room for Christmas, so I put off doing any hanging of stuff on those walls until after that big day. So, that's what we did! A few days after all the Christmas hoopla settled down we got down to business and hung some art. 

Some things you may notice, this girl is obsessed with cats! Also, that thing dangling from her ceiling is a dream catcher with a small stuffed animal attached to it :)

Voila!

Christmas Home Tour

I am linked up at The Nesting Place 2013 Christmas Tour of Homes so for anyone joining me from there, Welcome!

It's that time of year again, Christmas home tour time!

I'll be honest and say this is not a Perfect home tour in fact its anything but, (moving six people into a smaller house takes awhile to get things Perfect ) Good thing I'm not striving for perfection! And like one of my favorite bloggers, the Nester, always says, It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful.

So without further adieu, here is the tour!

Our tree was incredibly easy to find this year, we actually found it in our back yard! It is set up right in the middle of our great room so it can be seen from the kitchen, living room and dining room.

Christmas Inspiration

I've been getting my Christmas inspiration on!

Picked these up last week,

and of course I've been pinning away. I just love the simple red and white looks, like this;

(SOURCE)

although now that I look at it again I realize there are pops of blue in there too! I love it!

and there is this

                                                                    (SOURCE)


                                                                            (SOURCE)

*sigh* I love this upcoming season!
          I'm not the only one in our family who is ready to crack open the bins of Christmas decorations (if we can find them in the crawl space!) the kids have been asking when we can get started on decorating :) Especially Gabe, that boy is a decorating maniac, for every holiday he begs to start decorating weeks and weeks beforehand. This morning I took down our basket of Christmas Books (it was in our closet as I don't want them getting wrecked somehow in the crawlspace) because Gabe asked if he could bring one for his sharing at school, so I guess our decorating has already started!
     How about you? I know a bunch of you from the States have Thanksgiving to get through this week first, but are you dying to get out the tinsel and lights? Or is it something to be put off as long as possible?
Have a fantastic week!
Update: You can check out my post from last year about our Favorite Christmas Books by clicking the links above highlighted in blue!

Girls rooms are painted!

Update! The paint I used in their rooms is Icy Moon Drops 2056-70(walls) and Baby Boy Blue 2056-50 (ceiling) in Nylas room and Soft Pumpkin 2166-40 (walls) and Golden Honey CC-214 (ceiling)in Cadences room all by Benjamin Moore in their eco-spec line (no vocs)

So, last time I shared what the girls rooms look like, they looked a little like this,

A little lackluster in the colour department (a gross understatement :) Well, I finally primed and painted both of the rooms and now they look like this,

New House Pictures (aka the before pictures)

OK so if you are looking to enjoy a really wordy post today, this is not the post to be looking at :) This one is all about the pictures! They are probably not the best photographic quality as they were taken on my first trip on moving day and I raced around quickly before they started bringing furniture etc in and there are a few random belongings scattered here and there, but they are a pretty darn good depiction of our new place. Also, these will most likely serve as Before shots for any future updates (I know this place doesn't look very Bad and it really isn't, in fact it is pretty darn nice, but we definitely want to put our stamp on things around here) Now enough chit chat, on with the pictures!

 

This is the view to the left of the front door

                                                                       Kitchen

                                                                 Living room

                                                               Dining room

 

Laundry room 

                                                                      Gabe's room
(the window in his room had to be moved as we added on a couple rooms and his room would have looked right into Nylas :)

                  this bedroom will definitely see some painting done in the near future :)

this is my sisters room (she lives with us full time)

                                                               Kids bathroom

 

                                                                    Nylas room
                                     (it has been painted so stay tuned for that update!)

                                        I love the sloped ceilings in here, so charming :)

here you can see over to Cadys room, hers is a mirror image of Nylas but it was so jam packed with stuff (all her stuff plus most of Nylas as I was getting ready to paint in there) I couldn't get in to get pictures. These pictures were taken after we moved in.

 

The Master bedroom

this is looking in from the door

                                                            and last but not least, the master bath

 

So there we go, our new Kozy Kabin :)
Its been a busy busy month and a half and we are settling in quite nicely. I have been painting up a storm in the two girls rooms so stay tuned for that and working on major decluttering and organizing as we downsized a bit and now have a crawl space instead of a full basement to fill up with our crap unused stuff. Feel free to question or comment below