Monday, September 30, 2013

Weekly Recap

This week was actually a pretty busy week. I had a couple job interviews throughout the week. I am happy to announce I did get one of them (the other one is still unknown). Brandyn and I have been living off of one paycheck for 2 years so it will be nice to bring in another one. 

On the weekend I also went out to my first Toronto club called Aria. It was actually pretty cool because each floor had it's own style so if you were sick of a type of music you could just switch floors. 



As for this week, we have another feature of my monthly favourites, some more tutorials from the shower and we are moving into our new place!

Friday, September 27, 2013

DIY Balloon Chandelier

For the shower I made a balloon chandelier to go over the gifts. It was actually a pretty simple process. The only thing was it was time consuming to do. Before I start, here is what it looked like all set up:




Here are the supplies needed:
  • 5x7 Cardstock
  • Pictures
  • Balloons
  • Single hole punch
  • Double sided tape
  • Ribbon
  • Scissors


I took each picture and taped it to the card stock. The reason I taped it was so that I could easily remove it and use the pictures for something else or put them in frames. 
 

I then punched a hole in the tops of each card stock.  This step is where I left it. The rest needed to be completed at the shower.


Once we got to the venue the shower was at, I started blowing up the balloons. You have two options, blow up the balloons or get helium. Either work fine. This was probably the most time consuming task. 

I apologize for not having pictures of this. Like I said, these steps were done at the venue and I was trying to get it all done fast.

Anyway, next I cut all the string to the length I wanted and then tied it through the holes in the card stock and then around the balloon tie.

Then I took double sided tape (this is why it doesn't matter what kind of air you put in the balloon) and I taped it to the ceiling. You want to tape it to the ceiling so the balloons don't end up blowing around (or falling down if you blew it up using human air). Warning on this one: you may need a lot of tape. The card stock put a bit of weight and a few of the balloons ended up falling towards the end of the shower.

So there you have it; an easy project that guests really appreciated. I got quite a few compliments on it! 


Thursday, September 26, 2013

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

DIY Milk Vases

Instead of renting some old looking ones or traveling to a vintage one for some old ones, I decided to make some milk vases for the bridal shower centerpieces. 

If you saw in this post that I put up yesterday, they looked like this:


Do you see those spots where you can see through the vase? I will tell you about that later.

So I went to the dollar store and picked up 5 vases (one for each table). They were just clear vases and $2 each. I also bought 2 bottles of just white paint from the dollar store. I bought regular but I would highly recommend glass paint. I also got those sponge things shown in the picture but didn't end up using them.


I placed a piece of tinfoil down which kept the paint from getting anywhere and then I just squirted about half the bottle in there.


Then I tipped the vase over and started swirling the paint around making sure it was covering all the areas.


After I tipped it over and let it dry upside down. This ensured that all the paint would cover all the sides. 

This is the finished product: 


If you get clumps of paint around the rim, I just scraped off the thick parts with a knife and then used my nail to scrape off thinner parts. 

Now remember in the first picture where you saw pieces of clear vase instead of white vase? That is because I didn't use glass paint. Basically when the paint dried, some areas looked like the paint had evaporated a bit. It did it to all 5 of my vases. Also, once we had water in it, the paint started to come off. It wasn't a big deal for me because I only used these once but if you were planning for a permanent figure in your home, definitely invest in the glass paint.

Here is a budget breakdown of the project:
Glasses vases: $2x5 = $10
Paint: $1x2 = $2
Total: $12



Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Bridal Shower

As you may know, my bridal shower was on Saturday. I had a great time! Everything turned out so good and I am so grateful for all the presents I received from my very generous family and friends :)

We did all of the decorations ourselves so I will be sure to post about that, the games, and some tips. A lot of the decor was loaned to us from my Aunt who threw my cousin her shower last year so that was a huge help.

We also ordered all of our food from a Portuguese place. Chicken, rice and potatoes :) And we asked all my Aunt's to bring in a dish of some sort of dessert! In reality we had more food than needed but it is better to have more food than to run out! So without anymore said, here are some pictures from the shower!














Monday, September 23, 2013

Weekly Highlights

This week, I spent a lot of time wrapping up everything for the shower which happened on Sunday. 


I will be posting a series of posts the next few weeks with pictures of the shower, DIY tutorials, and tips for planning. 

I also went to go watch my brother's baseball tournament with his school team. This was his first time ever playing and he did an awesome job. He also said that now that he has played it, he realizes it is actually really fun and it is his 3rd favourite sport (soccer is first of course).




Friday, September 20, 2013

New buys for the new place!

Over the past few months that we have lived here, we have picked up a few things for our new place!

I got this TV bench on a Wacky Wednesday special at Ikea. We don't have it put together yet but this is what it will look like. The middle "drawers" fold open so you can have it open when you are using your DVD player, game console or whatever and then when you are done you can close it to have a nice clean look. I especially love the huge drawers on the side. They are so deep and come with DVD trays that slide back and forth so there is loads of storage in this thing. 


Urban Barn was having a sale - extra 50% off already reduced home accessories. We picked up this regular I think $30 rug for ... wait for it.... $6 bucks! I know, unbelievable. I wasn't thrilled with the greens when I got it because I'm not a huge fan of green but it has grown on me. We plan to put it in our kitchen.


I picked this up when we were in Niagara Falls at the little Coke shop. I love it! It will sit right on our table (when we get one) :) 
 

This is another thing I picked up at Urban Barn's sale. These were regular $6 bucks and I got them for $1 each. They are so pretty, I haven't seen anything like it around. Unfortunately they were almost sold out of them so I only got 2 of each. I love that the wine goblet is so large because I don't really drink wine so I can use it as a water goblet but when people come over, they can drink wine out of it :)
 

Brandyn and I have been going without bed side lamps since we moved in together (and out of our parent's house). I am so picky and I find them so expensive. Well one day I walked into HomeSense and found these suckers. It was love at first sight and they weren't even that expensive! I have kept the wrap around the shade to protect it during the move ... it doesn't actually come like that lol


And last but not least, Ikea had a special where we could get 2 of these Malm drawers for a certain price so I went and picked up 2 in the white color. I plan to do some DIY with these to spruce it up but they are going to be used as our bedside tables. The other ones I had wanted to get were just too expensive but I still wanted something with 3 drawers so we had extra clothes storage (I'm losing my walk in closet... shedding a tear right now). These are the perfect size to do just that.
 


That is all... for now :) 


Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Blog Love: House Pretty

Before I start, I originally had this post for yesterday and another post for today but I've been kind of preoccupied with other stuff so I will try to do better with the rest of the week and my schedule but if not... I promise it will be made up next week :)

House Pretty is another blog I would like to feature. Amelia is from Nova Scotia and her blog is basically a documentation of her journey to turn "an ugly house into a pretty home."

If you are like me and into more simplistic and realistic home design, then you should definitely take a look. I love reading her posts. She always has the most creative ideas!

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Monday, September 16, 2013

Weekly Recap

This week nothing too exciting happened. I did a lot of running around to pick up the last few things for the shower, went to my brother's last game of the season (which they won) and we went to the Reptile Expo which was....gross needless to say lol! But we did see a baby Kangaroo there!