Sunday, August 29, 2010

baby shower bliss

i guess more like baby sprinkle bliss
you see my niece, Ella, is the second baby, her older brother Liam got the full shebang of a shower when he was born, but because we wanted to celebrate the anticipation little Ella's arrival the girls and i decided we needed a sprinkle....you know a little smaller than a shower :)
now this sprinkle was months ago and now miss Ella is here!!! but it was soooo cute and pretty that i thought id share a few snapshots from that day. it was awesome! all the women in my family coming together to celebrate the impending arrival of a baby girl!

(the last picture is of Olivia...she was the most recent point winner for the girls up until Ella's arrival. My nieces are soooooo cute! i need to find a recent picture of Ella, she has changed so much in the past few weeks)

fyi the girls are beating the boys in my family :)

Saturday, August 28, 2010

say cheese!


just a few shots of the Sammy bam!

one of these days i will learn all the functions of my baby (aka my rebel) but for now i fiddle with buttons and hope for the best. sometimes it really works out in my favour and thankfully this little man is always game for a photo shoot! if anyone has any tips for getting kids to look at the camera, without blinking a billion times, fill a sista in! i also never edit my photos...truthfully dont really have the resources, any tips in this area would also be appreciated :)
xo,
Laura

Friday, August 27, 2010

a little before and after

so about two months ago i completed this coffee table turned ottoman and just realised i still hadnt posted it! truth is i have HUNDREDS of pictures and post ideas that i havent done yet and now that school is in full swing (holy crap grad school is time consuming!) im feeling a little crushed that i wont have time to post but we'll see how it goes.

so the quick breakdown is that i needed an ottoman for my new place and it needed to be either free or dirt cheap, ummm hi im a student :)

sooooo i got this amazing charcoal colored fabric from my employer, she bought it years ago and had been keeping it for a project that just wasnt going to happen so she let me have it! it reminds me of men's pants. the table, aka the base for the ottoman was a goodwill find, it needed a good clean and a screw or two. the paint was lent by my cousin, and so was the batting. i purchased the table (obviously cheap) and the foam, which was cut to size for only $30! considering how big it is and the fact i asked for 3in foam i'd say 30 bucks is beyond reasonable. so very quickly what i did was sand the whole table, just to get the grime off and give myself a surface that paint could stick to. i knew i wanted a distressed finished, and i knew i wanted the base white but i also knew i didnt want the distressed part to be brown, so i used black spray paint to give the table a very light coat and then once that was dried i gave it a couple coats of white, again using spray paint, it makes the finish a bit more even. the foam/fabric part was simple, just make it like a sandwich and be sure to use batting, it keeps the fabric from moving.
ive noticed ive been a bit of a rambler in previous posts so im going to shut up now and just let the pictures speak for themselves! im going to do a post later on about a round ottoman i did for my sister and two chair re-cover jobs that look AMAZING!

Cheers blogland!





Monday, August 23, 2010

just going to take a minute and let it slide

UGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
ive had a rough freakin' day

started out with bathing my cat. NOT fun. followed by a car ride with a freshly bathed cat, who HATES BATHS AND CAR RIDES. Spice, my fur child, freaked me out the entire drive, she started to heavily pant. cats ARENT supposed to pant. and she literally looked like she couldnt breathe, i knew the car ride was going to be at least an hour and a bit (i was finally moving her to my new place) and so i pulled over several times to calm her down and make sure she was still ACTUALLY breathing. we got to our destination, i got her out of the car and inside as fast as humanly possible and within 20 minutes she had stopped panting and was checking out her new surroundings, mean while i was frantically googling what it means when your cat pants and things like "respiratory failure" kept popping up. i called the vet and she explained that panting sometimes happens when cats are stressed out. so i finally calmed down as i realised it was clearly the bath and car ride. it was just odd because she has been in the car numerous times and has had quite a few baths in her long lifetime and has never once panted.

so that was shitastic event number 1, moving right along.

when i got home i noticed a puddle on the ground, at first i thought ms spice had an accident but upon further investigation i realised it was water and appeared to be coming from under the fridge, i cleaned it up and went about my buisness unpacking. after about 15 minutes when i returned to the kitchen i noticed the puddle had returned. i thought at first it was just condensation but that wouldnt create two huge puddles and then i realised the fridge wasnt making ANY noise. i opened it up and immediately wished i hadnt. everything was ruined and enter shitastic event #2: my fridge was dead. i called the superintendent and he is working on getting someone out to look at it. i was VERY clear with him that i either need a new fridge or this one needs to be fixed by tomorrow night NO EXCEPTIONS. ive learnt that being a single female living on my own i need to be direct and firm. and i cant be without a fridge, part my new not eating any garbage deal is that literally all of my food is perishable and is in the fridge, i literally have nothing in a box or can so without a fridge i am without food.

so after the cat and fridge ordeal i decided that things had to perk up, i met up with two friends for coffee and we chatted and laughed till we were all teary eyed messes.

when i got home i decided i should put on a load of laundry. now i have not done laundry in my buliding yet, ever since ive been here ive just taken a load with me when i go to my sister's or aunt's house but i wont be going to either for awhile, enter shitastic event #3.

laundry went down as follows:

-i threw the dirty clothes in a reuseable grocery bag, grabbed the detergent, my keys, my phone and ran downstairs
-loaded the machine with the clothes and poured in the soap
-i then realised i had forgotten quarters, so i ran back up stairs and grabbed my pouch with just quarters (ive been setting them aside for laundry)
- run back downstairs and spend 10 minutes trying to jam the quarters in the machine only to realise it only uses loonies. shit.
-run back upstairs to discover i dont have a single loonie, so i grab my wallet and keys and phone and run out to the car and drive to convenience store
-get to the store and politely ask the woman behind the counter for 2 loonies as i hand her a toonie, she proceeds to yell at me and argue in god knows what language, after what felt like an eternity she drops two loonies on the counter, i scooped them up, thanked her and ran back out to my car and zoomed home
-i get back to my apartment, run downstairs and pop in the loonies and the machine swishes to a start


yes i know what you're thinking, doesnt sound too bad....but im not finished


-i proceed to grab the grocery bag, throw in the detergent, my keys, my phone and wallet, run back up the stairs only to realise the lid wasnt on the bottle and now everything is covered in detergent. fighting back tears at this point.
-i frantically fish out my blackberry and immediately wipe it off, all the while cursing and fighting back tears of frustration
- i clean everything up and quickly test out my phone, it's okay minus the ringing and notification sound is a bit off, kind of muffled, but the ear piece is fine and so is the battery, thank God!
-i sit down to reflect on the craziness and i am about to start laughing about it all when i open my mail to discover ive received my very first electricity bill that has a surprise $200 security deposit charge. fml.

-at this very moment, i hear my hot aussie neighbour and the girl, whom i had thought was his sister, from the other side of the wall. i have made a mental note to inform him tomorrow that his bedroom wall is VERY thin and maybe they should move their bed to the other side of the room

-then i just sat there half laughing hysterically half crying because really what else could happen.

so i think i need to take a minute to breathe, maybe have a glass of wine and then go to bed and pray that this day was just a nightmare and i'll wake up tomorrow to a better day. for now im just going to look at the below pictures that i took of a bunch of roses i picked up a couple weeks ago for just $6!!! a good flower deal always makes me happy.