Name that Plant because I really don't know!

Allrighty, Now onto the glorious garden at my new home. One of the reasons I loved this house so much was the great garden in the back, however, I am a beginner gardener and know oh so little about plants and their care.  My friends were joking about how I was a control freak, wanting to know what all of the plants were in order to properly care for them, but isn't that what gardening is all about? Anyways I would appreciate it if out there in the blogosphere folks could help me identify these plants because I have no clue! I have also given them my own names for right now...

 "Weed Looking base Morning hello Flower"

These were a lovely surprise, when I began taking a look at the garden about a month ago, the bases for these flowers looked like a variegated red and green weed. Because I knew that it had the potential to be something else I waited and my what a surprise, they are such a lovely delight to see. They come out in the mornings and the evenings when the sun isn't too hot and they close themselves back up again when it is...

 "Horton in purple"

 All I think of when I see this is Horton hears a hoo...

 "Clover looking base dew drop fancy flower"

I have these flowers all over the yard, there are pink ones and purple ones and the bushy thing in the background of this photo is one of the bases for these a plethora of these flowers.

 "Neat Leaf Plant"

 A lovely little plant with very interesting leaves, but what is it?

 "Mega size lily of the valley"

I know this is fairly common, I just don't know what it is!

"Could be Dogwood"

This is a bush that is in the back, I thought it might be dogwood,  but when we bought the house, the branches were not the colour of dogwood in winter, so any guesses would help!

Round 1 of Renovation finished

Well, I haven't posted in awhile cause, gosh, I have been busy! In three weeks, my husband, mom and dad and I, all did so much to our little house. We took down four rooms worth of wallpaper, put holes in the walls, fixed the holes in the walls, painted, put down laminate flooring, painted over wood paneling, painted ceilings, put in a dishwasher, fixed ALL of the electrical in the house, painted and put down new baseboard, packed up one house, and moved into another. ( Thank you to everyone who helped us move!) We are really happy with our house and still have a ton of unpacking to do, however we are now living in the house permanently! There is a lot more space in this house, so I have room for more art and more fun! Once I have my spaces a bit more organized I will show better pictures, but this is all I have for now, sans furniture.I don't think anyone will be terribly excited to see rooms full of boxes.

This is the bathroom fixer upper. All we really did was take down the wallpaper above ( they were so kind to leave 2 more rolls of it for us...yeech) , remove the medicine cabinet at the bottom right hand corner, and then we painted.  The bones of the space were okay.  I actually really like some of the detail that they put into the space, I like the lamp, ( my parents think Paul and I are crazy for liking all of the old lamps in this house..) and I really like the built in stained plywood paneled storage space. The Grey colour I picked looks reallllly purple in the light, but it matches the tile in the floor, so I like it.

I have painted this mirror a nice clean white, because I wasn't crazy about the gold, sorry no pictures yet. Also Paul and I were antiquing on the weekend and we found this exact same mirror for sale.  Now we know were cool, tee hee..

So that is all the renovating we are going to do for awhile, but we plan to paint the basement, organize and decorate my studio, Paul wants to build a murphy bed into the office, update and organize the workshop, oragnize alllll of our books and find places for everything!  I could go on with the wish list though! I am really happy with our little house.  Everyday it feels more and more real.

Day 13 - Kitchen!

 I have been reading a lot from a website called retrorenovation.com, and their philosophy really makes sense to me.  It talks a lot about preserving some typically well made 50's and 60's kitchens and returning them to the state they began in. Mine is such a kitchen! However, I think I will probably still keep the things I love just throw in hints on the vintage!

Here it is before we began doing anything. This kitchen was interesting. It clearly had gone through several remodels through the ages and quite a large one in the 80's. There were two different wallpapers on the walls and neither of them went with the floor. I was not a fan of the floral baskets which adorned most of the walls so it all came down. The Kitchen walls had been wallpapered over wall paper in some spots and overall we found three different types of wallpaper.  Underneath all the wallpaper we discovered un-primed gyprock paper.

 It was really tricky when trying to take off the wallpaper as it got confusing which was the wallpaper backing and which was the gyprock paper, however it all came off with the help of a few friends ( Thank-you guys!).  We then put up a TON of putty to try and even out the surface along with a lot of sanding. It took three days to get it to a point where we could prime the walls.

We chose kind of a crazy colour for our kitchen. I really liked this colour the minute I saw it and most people would say it is a bold choice, however, I think it goes really well with the kitchen and the style of the kitchen as well. It is called "Sweet Pea" and it is from Home Hardware.

I can't say we did a lot to this kitchen except take down wallpaper and paint. We both loved the bones as crazy as that might seem to some who are used to massive white kitchens, so we really didn't want to change much. It is quaint and cute and is actually totally reasonable for two people who communicate well to work in ( the communicating well part is essential!) There were three people in there working for a bit and it was not good, so if we stick with two we will be fine. I really love this kitchen and can't wait to move in and finish dressing it all up with the things we have and get new funky things to adorn it!

Day 13 - Studio Renovation moving along...

 Above you can see a picture of what my studio looked like before, faux wood paneling with white doors. 
Also please take a close look at that carpet. When we ripped that out there was a sticker on it that said "1981" and the underpadding on that turned to dust when you stepped on it. It was a non-negotiable demolition that had to happen because it was just so gross.

 Below you can see what we have done in the room so far!  We have taken out the carpeting, fixed the electrical and updated it, we have painted the ceiling, walls, window casings and doors in that room in "Believe" which is a warm white from Home Hardware. We have also almost finished putting down the laminate flooring which is an "antique oak"plank style from RONA.

It is actually really amazing what some paint can do and a lot of hard work.  The ceiling was very difficult to paint. I was very lucky I had help from my parents for a couple of the coats! We still have to put trim up and baseboard, but it is going to be a wonderfully white clean space to work in! I can't wait to dress the windows and walls and decorate to turn that into a productive little space for myself!

Day 6 of the renovation!

 Well, it is now Day 6 of our renovation... Things are going really well. The Electrical took a little longer than expected and there are a lot more holes in my walls than there were before, however it's safer and updated so that is very good.  By fixing all the electrical though we added two more rooms to be painted as otherwise they would have big gaping holes in them -ugh... So the bathroom was one of them. 

The above wallpaper ( sorry about the photos our camera is on the fritz..) was underneath a 1985-1990 renovation which was worse than this - it was kind of dusty rose and pale green splatters. eww... This wallpaper is bright pink, yellow, orange and brown. It was interesting- on first glance I totally hated it, but then I looked at all of the elements in that space and I thought, well, that actually all works well together for the time.  It's going to be painted over, but I can appreciate the previous owner's choice!

 Here you can see the wallpaper in the kitchen and the archway of the living room/ dining room with it's first coat of paint on it. The paint colour is "wondering thoughts" from Home Hardware.  I think perhaps we should have chosen a colour called "focus" or "concentration" or "task oriented" but they would probably be ugly colours... hehehe.

Here is the hubby using our 1960's kitchen, pretending to be a housewife. I really like having a stove that high, I don't have to worry about the dog sticking his nose into a hot oven. He can't even jump that high.

At first when we saw this kitchen I was reticent but it has really grown on me. It is really well made. It is stamped in all the drawers with "Hanover Kitchens" which is a local Cabinetry place.  I am really impressed with how it is constructed and how well it has held up. We have already moved most of our kitchen stuff in there and I can not believe how much space is left.  I am not used to the luxury of tons and tons of storage!

The backsplash had wallpaper on it that has now been removed. Unfortunately in both the bathroom and the kitchen they had wallpapered over unprimed gyprock which has meant a lot of plaster and sanding and probably two coats of primer. 

This weekend we really did get so much done. It is really starting to feel like we actually have a house now!

Day Three of Renovation!

 The Demolition has begun! Now my house is without carpeting upstairs, without wallpaper on some of the walls, without the built in twin bed upstairs. As well, some of the wood paneling is gone and we made a lot of interesting discoveries.

 We discovered that the wallpaper in the Living room was on top of primed gyp rock, which was great because I had heard all of these horror stories about trying to get wallpaper off of an unprimed wall. I was also kind of afraid there would be paneling underneath the wall paper. It came off pretty easy which was a blessing!

This was one of the most awesome discoveries we made. We were very curious as to what was underneath the wood paneling in one particular room. Well the answer? Underneath the Wood paneling to the left was the wood paneling to the right. Both of equal "not awesomeness".

 We took down the above pictured vertical blinds and discovered that without them, our house looked so much more modern! The window casings were really well done and seeing those made the space just look lovely. Also Creme and pink are lovely colours, they just are not my style. 

We also discovered that there were some interesting/unwise choices made regarding the electrical work.  So we are trying to fix the "bones" of the house first before we get to a lot of the aesthetic stuff (which is what I really want to do!) For instance there is a dimmer on the light in the bathroom, which I thought was great because I could turn the lights down and have nice intimate lighting for a relaxing bath, however the electrical outlet in that room is also on that same dimmer.. not cool former home owner, not cool.

My mom and dad are here helping us out and I can not tell them enough how much I appreciate their help.  We really are lucky to have extra hands as we are both still working as this is going on.

Featured in the British Horological Journal

Have any of you recently read your copy of the British Horological Journal? NO?  Well, it is a journal or magazine specifically made for Watch Makers and I am featured in it. Why? Because I am the butt of a joke, a joke I let myself be the butt of ... ( this is starting to sound bad..) anyways... For the April Edition of the journal they wanted to play a prank on the readers so they put my Gingerbread Clock in and wrote the weirdest article about it that barely made sense, a lot of it was in Latin and very much lost on me.. One of my British friends read it and said "Oh, this is funnier if you are British.." I could only laugh!

The good news is this is the first time I have ever been published in a magazine and I am going to take that as a win even if I am the April Fool!

It is a bit silly really on it's own isn't it ? Anyway, If you would like a copy you can go to to the British Horological Journal website and get yourself one...