Christmas House Tour 2012

I know I'm late inviting you in for a house tour this year.  I don't know where the time went, but I figure better late than never.  
Our front porch is decorated with extra branches that we cut from the bottom of the Christmas tree. I put them in pots on the front porch and tied them with some leftover ribbon that a friend at work gave to me. 

The only other new thing I have on the front porch is the Christmas tree tin I bought at the thrift store and filled with reindeer moss and little berries.  

Come on in and have a visit.  Let me show you around the living room.  There are lots of little vignettes including the miniature village on the cabinet.  I added the vintage toy car with the tree on top ... along with the extra dollar store tree ... and the extra dollar store presents ... and an inexpensive snowman.  You might say this is the cheap end of town.

I try and use mostly copper and golds and aquas in the living room as those are the colours in the carpet (although as you can see I am not rigid about it).  Our coffee table is decorated with a collection of favourites, including the books we read from on Christmas Eve.

The kitchen has a few decorations on the open shelves.  The wooden Christmas trees on the middle shelf are a family craft project I enlisted everyone to do this year.  I had everyone decorate a piece of wood that was cut from a window frame from my grandmother's house in Toronto.  I painted them all white and then provided red and silver paint markers.  There was a lot of protesting over the fact that I hadn't bought green, but I wanted a red and silver palette so I ignored their moaning.  They were actually good sports about it and chocolate rewards were given out afterward for their effort.

The dining room's sideboard was decorated with the spindle Santa's that were on the mantel last year (you can read about their story here) along with the plates I decorated last year with a red Sharpie (you can read about them here).

I also put a favourite little German wooden scene that my friend gave me centred on the sideboard (you can see the tree scherenshnitte I made at art class in the background of the photo below).

In the middle of the dining room table I have a few votive candles in ruby red dishes I found at the thrift store surrounded by fake snow and a few shiny baubles.

The Christmas tree is really a memory tree as every ornament has a story from our travels or interests.  I added some ribbon this year, but I'm not sure I love the effect - maybe it needed more than I bought.

The mantel you have already seen (here), but just so our tour is complete - here it is again.

Before you go I want to offer you the most requested drink at the craft party I had last week - a decaf latte with a french vanilla candy cane to stir it.  YUM!

I also made you a little beaded snowflakes and have it all ready to wrap up in the adorable paper bags that I won from a giveaway on Echoes of Laughter - thanks Angie!  I gave the same thing to some of the teachers I work with and taped the bag closed with red tape from IKEA.  I love the look.

I still have grocery shopping to do, tourtière to make, and a few presents to wrap which I will do tomorrow.  Our eldest son and his wife are coming over tomorrow evening and then the fun begins. I want to thank all of you that took the time to read my blog all through the year.  May you have a wonderful Christmas with lots of rest, lots of good food, and time with your family.  

Blogger Showhome House & Home Event

I attended the Blogger Showhome House & Home event tonight.  What a blast it was!  We got to tour the showhome, meet the people involved in creating it, and ask questions. 
The house is a modern take on a traditional Ontario farmhouse and hit all the right notes in my mind.  It is a lovely house and really should be seen in person to be fully appreciated.  Tickets are on sale now to tour the house and it is open for viewing starting on Saturday (you can find out details about ordering tickets here).  Not only is touring the house a treat for you, but all the proceeds go to the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre to help conquer cancer in our lifetime.

I don't want to give away everything about the house so I thought I would show you a few take-away ideas I saw while touring the house and my favourite room.  
1) Make your pathways from rectangular stones separated by grass.  The pathways looked like modern stepping stones.  

Even the patio was done this way.  This could totally work around most homes and would be much easier to do than laying a solid stone pathway or patio (well not having done either - I assume it would be anyway).

2)  Decorate the dining room table with a series of bowls, vases, and bottles in a unified colour palette   I've done my homework and counted the containers for you - all it takes is three white vases, seven blue glass bottles, three low blue bowls, and an assortment of eight pottery vases in a variety of patterns and shapes and sizes.  Definitely doable!

3) Add some stripes.  In the basement a variety of stripes added interest to the TV room.  There was an interesting patterned rug with red, green, and beige stripes, as well as a black-and-white patterned throw on the chair, 

and painted striped sticks in a vase in the corner.  I love this!  I'm so going to steal borrow this idea myself and paint some stripey sticks for our house.

4) Use a large wicker container as a bedside table.  The ones used in the house were a lovely mix of a modern form and traditional material.

And as for my favourite room in the house - it would have to be the study.  I loved the cheerful colours on the chair, the sofa, and the throw cushions.  And I loved the tall stack of wood on either side of the fireplace.  And I loved the round table that was so simple, yet so elegantly constructed.

There were several Toronto area bloggers that I chatted with.  I was also excited to meet many of the well known faces from the pages of the Canadian House and Home magazine.  I particularly enjoyed chatting with Lisa from the blog Wicked & Weird and Margot Austin, the Editor of Special Issues for Canadian House & Home (you can find her blog here).  
I featured Margot's kitchen awhile back on one of my WISH Wednesday posts (which you can see here) and I've obsessed over her house that was featured recently in the magazine.  It is a perfectly decorated tiny jewel of a house and it is just what I would love to have (well that and a country place).  We had fun chatting about design and the showhome and the maritimes and lots of things. 

Being a good blogger, I thought to ask Margot what her favourite parts of the house were and she wanted to give me a list of ten things.  Given that my brain can't hold that much information without pen and paper, she restricted herself to three things.  So here they are ... drum roll ...
First, she liked how the house is the perfect blend of traditional and modern.  The outside being more traditional - like a farmhouse that has had additions built onto it - yet when you step in the door you are immediately drawn to all the openness and light and modern clean lines.  As you move from room to room you are struck by the balance between the modern and traditional elements.
Second, the marble island in the kitchen (not the best photo of it, but you can see it in the background in the photo below).

Third, the AGA stove (I was rather agog at this as well as I had never seen one in real life before).

I had to agree with her on all three counts.  
It is a wonderful house - decorated thoughtfully and beautifully.  I would encourage anyone who lives in the Toronto area to buy a ticket and go and tour the house.  And for those of you who live too far to see the house, you can see more photos here.

A Walk in Waterloo

I've ended up with a lot of posts about our road-trip to Waterloo on the weekend, but we visited so many interesting places and I wanted to share them with you. 


The last thing we did on Saturday - after we had a bite to eat -

was go for a walk through a beautiful neighbourhood in Waterloo that my son Malcolm has been wanting to show me for the past four years.  It always seemed there was something else we needed to do when we visited him in Waterloo so we had not got around to going on the walk.   Malcolm is just finishing his last course of his undergraduate degree and will be graduating this month and moving when he gets married in May, so this really was our last chance.  Malcolm took us on a guided tour showing us his favourite sights. 


The subdivision was built in the 1960s and has mature trees and landscaping.  There was a lovely mix of house styles, including several modern homes.  This one was one of my favourites with all the big windows, the stacked stone walls, and 

the curved bank of windows opening on to a curved deck at the back. 

Here's another modern one that looks incredible with the stone wall, and vertical windows balanced by the dark horizontal wood siding.

Behind this house was a cute little shed in the backyard that would be so much fun to decorate. 

I loved the decks and fencing that some of the houses had.  This next one had a lovely arbour built over the deck with arched pieces incorporated into the ends.  I also loved their simple trellis-like shutters.

The house in the photo below looked like they had an architect completely re-work the front of the house.  I loved the little deck down the side of the house covered with an arbour.

It was a surprisingly hilly area, given that the university is just across the street and has a very flat terrain - I think the glacier left a big load here.  As a result of the steep landscape some of the properties had terraced rock walls,

and others had hills covered with trees and ground-cover, like myrtle, instead of grass as they are too steep to mow,

and others had beautiful rock gardens.

The area also had a meandering brook with some lovely little bridges,

and the first snowdrops I've seen this year (growing right beside a large patch of snow),

and the friendly neighbourhood cat who welcomed us.

It may seem quintessentially Canadian, but I've never seen it in a subdivision before - someone was tapping the maple trees to make maple syrup.

Do you see those blue buckets - they are for collecting the maple sap and it will be boiled down to make maple syrup.

It's a lovely neighbourhood - I can see why my son liked to go for walks there and I'm glad I got to see it before he moved.  Just in the nick of time.  Thanks for the tour Malcolm!

Linked to Good Life Wednesday at A Beach Cottage