Dipping my toes into the Kijiji ocean

As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently became the owner of a pair of cast iron planter urns.

I'm not much of a gardener, I'm rather like my mom in this way. We both love gardens and the idea of flowers and vegetables all over the place, we just don't quite have the gift of keeping them alive. We've even managed to kill bamboo somehow.

But that has never stopped my mom from buying hanging baskets of flowers and having planters all around the property. It really does wonders to brighten the exterior of a home and make it look like the people that live there care at least a little bit.

That was my intention when I decided that I wanted to buy some urns. I wanted something classically beautiful, that I could swap flowers out seasonally, and place by the front door to make it look like we cared about how our home looked. Even if that home is the back apartment of a house.

And so my hunt began!

Of course I could have taken the easy route and just picked up a set of these from Home Depot:

24" Classic Urn, on sale for $20/each 

Incredulity instead of heartbreak

House hunting has proven to be a very tiresome business. Particularly since the Hespeler market is currently cheering vigorously for the Seller's side. I check realtor.ca every few hours to see if something new in our price range shows up but it has been pretty slim pickings thus far.

To make matters worse, nearly every house in our price range is selling within a few days (sometimes hours) and since there's usually a bidding war occurring, they sell for asking price or well above.

When something catches our eye, I usually email our real estate agent and we set up a time to go see it and Jake and I so far have left feeling disappointed and uninterested.

Until we found the house.

Picturesque front view of house.

Productivity for the win!

I think this may well have been the most productive long weekend I have ever experienced. I had an incredibly long list to work through, and while I did not complete quite everything on that list, I did manage to knock some pretty big items off of it.

Here is the list I started with:

 - Deep clean entire apartment (this includes steaming the floors and finally finding a spot for all of the things that we had to bring from my parents' house when they started their renovations a few months ago)

- Wash the windows, inside and out

- Plant flowers in my new urns (more on the urns in a later post)

- Apply another layer of teak oil to our outdoor rocking chairs

A simple flower arrangement I put together for our dining room table to brighten up the space after I cleaned.

The things you learn on the internet - Quilt Rack Revealed!

We left off with me buying what I knew would one day become the the coolest looking clothes drying rack ever. But after piling it in the complete disaster that is recently the back seat of my car, I realized I needed to do something about the tarnished state before I'd be willing to even put DIRTY clothes on it.

This required some research.

I used the Google logo, but in reality I'm one of the only people on the planet that uses Bing. 

Go ahead and judge me, I like the pictures.

Buying on a whim should be called “Instant Clarity”

A few weekends ago, Jake and I decided to do one of our favourite “non-lazy” time wasting activities. We went antiquing.

Yes, we are THAT couple. The kind that looks 25 years old but is probably closer to 70ish on the inside. We’ll often go to different antique stores, spend an hour or two, and buy absolutely nothing. Or, if we do miraculously purchase something, it will be for a gift.

This is the tea set I bought as a wedding present for my friend three years ago. 

Teapot, four cups and saucers, cream and sugar bowl WITH the dish for them and it all cost me $80. 

(I  priced it all out online and it comes to $320, plus taxes, and shipping)

That’s why we went out this particular time. It was a drizzly spring day and we had every intention of staying inside to curl up on the couch and watch a movie. But then panic set in when I realized we had a wedding to go to the next weekend and I hadn't even started putting together the gift I wanted to make (more on that later).

And It Begins...

Lately I've become addicted to renovation blogs. Specifically blogs about renovating old homes (looking at you Victoria Elizabeth Barnes and Old Town Home). I'm a colossal history nerd and have always loved the way that old homes could exude elegance without even really trying. BUT I have lived in brand-new, custom-built homes almost my entire life and thanks to my parents' good taste and appreciation for things done right, there are a number of things about old houses that drive me insane.

This is one of the houses my parents built. We lived here from 2006 - 2010.