Wallpaper Love

I will never understand why men don't like wallpaper!
How can you not love wallpaper?? This room re-do is all the proof I need to show that wallpaper is awesome! haha

We received an email last week from Johanna (from Sweden) telling us that our home had influenced the design of her dining area and nook. She thanked us for the inspiration and send us a couple photos of her space . . . .

I have no idea why she is thanking us for the inspiration because this room is way cooler than our house! I LOVE that wallpaper. And although we have a round dining table, I am a sucker for a long rectangle table to seat family and friends at. And you know I have a soft spot in my heart for tulips in white vases, and apples in white bowls!

She let us know she did it all on a budget:
-The Table and Chairs were off of a Swedish version of Craigslist . . . for the Canadian equivilent of $155.
-The carpet was made by Johanna's husband's grandmother a long time ago (The red stripes are beautiful with the colorful wallpaper). 
-And  the wallpaper is from a collection named Wallpaper By Scandinavian designers and you can find the entire collection here: http://www.borastapeter.com/sv/hitta-tapet/kollektioner/254

Thank you so much for sending us your room Johanna!!! I am definitely the one who is inspired now!!!

Everyone has these on their face . . .

TULIPS!!
hahaha It's was an Oh so corny joke but it made me giggle.

I love this time of year, tulips are everywhere and they are so well priced. While I like all of the fancy varieties of tulips, in my opinion nothing beats a vase full of simple white ones.

There is something so elegant, yet kind of rustic about a bouquet full of tulips.

I hope you have a great weekend! We are headed to the Home and Garden show, I'll be posting lots of photos on our instagram account feel free to follow @minimanor

The Worst Dinner Party Ever.

So we invited a couple over for dinner . . . and let me tell you, it was the worst dinner party ever.
It was awful! They didn't talk at all, I totally had to carry the conversation all night.

They barely ate anything . . . and at one point they called us fat! Seriously . . . the nerve! ;) 

The last straw was when he started to smoke a cigar at the dinner table!! Geez! 

All joking aside we are having a dinner party THIS weekend so I set the table in a spooky fashion, our current dinner guests will soon be outside on our front lawn for Halloween night!

I picked up some black fabric for $2 a yard, I needed a yard and a half to do the two black runners. If you can sew a straight line (or even a moderately straight line) you can sew a table runner.
The patterned black fabric on top was part of Lee's Halloween costume last year (it was a cape), he didn't need it this year so I cut it up and sewed two more table runners to layer on top.

We didn't have any napkins with a Halloween vibe so I knew I would have to make a set (and I knew our local fabric store had a sale on Halloween themed fabric). I thought about doing orange but it seemed too . . . expected. So I went with a spooky, kind of yellowy-neon green color with some spooky spiders and spider webs.

Some white plates to pop against the black runners, and some creepy crawly bugs (big pack from Walmart $3).

A bouquet inspired by All Hallows Eve. I chose some dark purple alstroemeria. mixed them with some orange Gerbers, and some bright green button mums. I love the combinations of dark purple, orange, and green, I find it really fresh, but still very "fall". :)

A little skull statue, a la Lee!

And lastly a feather wreath (Walmart $14.99). I bought this wreath for the front door, but we get such gusty winds our here, it kept blowing off and rolling down the street. So we brought it in, used a command hook and hung it on the barn door. I think it's my favorite part!

So, in conclusion,  I don't want to discriminate but if you're having a dinner party I would leave Skeletons off the guest list . . . they are no fun at all! ;)

Fall Dinner Party!

Last week we had a small little 4 person dinner party, some vegetarian lasagna, salad, zucchini cakes and flourless chocolate cake.

(please ignore the small pink pig in the bottom left corner of the picture, Max drags that toy all over the house it's become a staple, I don't even notice it's there anymore). 
We already had the pretty sunflowers from last weeks flowers on Friday post.

I added some very neutral plates from Kmart, some slanted Asian bowls from Homesense, some napkins I sewed myself and two table runners from a recent Zellers Clearance sale ($2 each!).

And lastly, my favorite bottle of wine. I am definitely the farthest thing from a wine connoisseur but I really do love this one it's called "The Show" and like any good bottle of fine wine you can find it at Target for just over $11!  ;)

Fall Flowers

We're gearing up for our Fall Decor post on Monday. Today I just have a very lovely bunch of fall flowers Lee brought home from work earlier this week. We've been looking for a second car for a few months now and we have had NO LUCK. I was getting a bit frustrated, anything over 300,000km is not what I consider "low mileage", and if your car smells like you've been hot boxing cigarette smoke for the last 5 years it's not in Immaculate condition. And last, the sentence "No Accidents . . . claimed" is just plain worrisome! Phew I'm glad I got all of that off of my chest! So if you have an abundance of car hunting luck, send a little my way!
Lee could sense my frustration, I've been more than a little grumpy being stuck at home with no car. He brought home some Beautiful Yellow Sunflowers to cheer me up!

We're suspending our car  hunting this weekend for Canadian THANKSGIVING! Gobble Gobble! This year it's my sister's turn, so we'll be heading over there for dinner! But in case you're looking for some thanksgiving ideas check out our posts under Holiday!!

Centerpiece

You might have noticed on yesterdays post our dining room table centerpiece. It's a glass cloche with some wheat grass inside! Okay, so it might not be "real" wheat grass. It's actually a small plastic plant from Ikea! I know I swore I wouldn't have any plastic plants but I tried, I really did! I put a real live plant under there (a small fern), and it died! In fact not only did it die, it died in the grossest way.

How does a plant die gross you ask, well let me tell you:
-  First the leaves start turning brown instead of green
-  Next instead of clear beads of water on the glass there are brown beads of water
-  And lastly when you open the cloche to see what's wrong you are met with a smell I can only describe as an assult on your nose.

Sorry about all that yuck, now moving on to the pretty:
I replaced the fern with a yellow pot and some nice, albeit fake, grass.

 The cloche itself came from my mom. I totally raid her house every time we go and last time I found this beautiful cloche with a little dragon fly on it! If you are looking for something similar here's the link to one in our Amazon Store.

Make sure to pop back tomorrow we're featuring a painting my sister did, and bonus it's for sale!! :)

Dining Room Rug

I finally broke down and did it . . . I ordered a rug for the dining room.
It took us a long time to take the plunge, the first year we were here I wasn't sure we needed a rug in the dining room. The second year we were here I couldn't find one. Okay . . . . we couldn't find one in our price range.
Then the stars aligned and we found this fabulous round, jute rug on Overstock.com It is perfect! It fits the shape of the room, and the size of the table. Our table is BIG, so a 6 foot round rug wouldn't do . . . we needed an 8 foot round rug! But again we had a 6 foot budget!
I've been following this rug for a while . . . like a bit of a rug stalker! I saw it go from $249, down to $234 at which point I bought it (put it in my online cart and everything) but because they didn't accept paypal, I put it off. Then I saw it drop to $174 and freaked out!!!! We said when we got back (we were visiting my parents at the time) we would buy it. When we got home it had dropped in price again, down to $157. There was no waiting . . . it was on like Donkey Kong!

The icing on the cake was that overstock was also offering free shipping for first time customers. And when I saw the Promo Code box, I was on the HUNT! I found a coupon code for another discount of 12%! Total Cost . . . . $138.59!!!! Timing is EVERYTHING!
So what do you think?

 It fabulous right?? I Know! ;)
It's actually a lot softer than I thought it would be! I kind of expected it to be rough but it's not at all. 
I love the texture it adds! To me, it give the room some life!

I AM IN LOVE! It anchors the table, breaks up all the repetition of the wood floors and generally warms things up a bit!

I think what surprised me the most was how a few changes in the dining room have made such a huge difference! A new Barn Door, some new artwork and now a rug and it just seems so polished compared to how it looked a year ago!

 I hope you like it as much as we do! And if you're looking for the perfect piece to make your room come together don't worry . . . . maybe you'll fall ass backwards in to an awesome deal like I did. :) haha

Pop back later today and check out how much Max loves our new rug!  That's right it's a two post kind of day!!!

Statement Piece

Lately I've been thinking that our dining room might be in need of a Statement Piece. I'm not about to switch out our dining room pendant just yet, but I am on the hunt for something large and in charge!
Here's what I've sourced so far . . . I might be seeing some DIY lighting in our future:

Option 1: From Pottery Barn. I love that it's totally weird and kind of quirky. And the small space dweller that still lives in me thinks that storing your wine glasses as a chandelier is a great use of space ;). I thought with Lee's welding skills DIYing something like this with dollar store wine glasses would be kind of cool.

Option 2: Is from Candelabra and at $1200 a completely unrealistic choice for our Manor. But I could also see some form of DIY maybe using an existing Chandelier from Craigstlist and some Beads.

Option 3: Is from Lucy Renshaw, I have no idea how much it is, but I saw it on Apartment Therapy a while back and the image has always stuck in my head. It's made from wood but it looks like ribbon, I'm seriously in LOVE. I'm not sure if it would fit into our existing decor but who cares, for something this cool I'll redecorate the entire house (Lee if you're reading this Calm Down I'm not going to redecorate the whole house!). ;)
Anyone else have any DREAM pieces they're dying to put in their house? Window Shoppers Unite!!!

New Kitchen Bar Stools

We ordered some new House Candy from Target.
For a while now the kitchen bar stools have been a thorn in my side. You might have seen me mention all the bar stool drama on Facebook or Twitter. But in January I decided that because the bar stools aren't technically in the kitchen, and were in fact in the dining room, they needed to be more formal.
We moved one of the three into the office as my new corner desk chair, and the other two we were able to sell on craigslist, earning back $100 to add towards new bar stools.  Just to make it clear, we were really happy with the quality of the Ikea Ingolf stools we had before, I just felt they weren't formal enough.
So, Here's the Short Version of what happened:
Back in January, I decided we needed new bar stools, so the first thing I did was sell our two remaining bar stools. NOT SMART! It would take until the middle of April to source, buy and ship new bar stools.

But oh, so worth the wait, here's how it looks now:

Our New stools are so comfy, thanks to the large seat for your tooshie. And I think that they are a bit more stylish then their white wood predecessors.
Like I mentioned before we were able to sell two of our old bar stools for $100 ($50 each woo hoo), so with $100 from the sale, I set out to spend no more then $200 total for bar stools (that's only $100 out of pocket). I had a really clear idea of what I wanted! Because our stools are technically in our dining room I think that they should be a little more formal. So Upholstered, parsons style stools were on my short list.
I ignored my number 1 rule, if your working with a strict budget you have to stay open to options that come up. I wasn't open, I was as closed as a teenagers text book on Friday night. I wanted upholstered chairs and I wasn't willing to settle for anything less. I did eventually find what I was looking for, in my budget, but it cost me time  . . . 3+ months to be specific.

Speaking of budget, how did I do? Well I came in WAY under budget! Each Stool was on sale for $82, then it was save 20%, and free shipping. My total came to $143.17! Subtract the $100 we sold the old bar stools for and we spent a grand total of $43.17 out of pocket!!!

With our new neutral scheme deciding on a color for the stools was easy enough, a nice neutral taupe. I think they tie into the dining room, with out being too matchy matchy.

And I like the way they work with the dark wood cabinetry we have going on in the kitchen.

My only concern is that the backs of the stools don't stick up above the counter top as much as I would like. Not because the chairs are the wrong height, they're a perfect 44 inches, but our builders seemed to have picked the height of the bar out of thin air. It's a minor detail we could always fix in the future, but since both Lee and myself are on the tall side, the slightly higher then normal bar, is actually a pretty darn good height for us.
We're both really happy with the bar stool switch up. I love the way they look and Lee loves their large size and comfy seat.

Mostly we're both just thrilled to have bar stools again, I didn't realize how much we used them until we didn't have them there anymore.
What do you think??? Worth the Wait???

btw . . . we'll be posting the winner of our "No Brainer Wardrobe" E-Book giveaway this afternoon. Make sure to pop back and see if you won.

Easter Brunch Table Setting

Lee's exact words when he came home from work and saw our Easter Table was "It looks like Easter pooped on our table", Quickly followed by "In a good way". Not exactly the reaction I was hoping for but I'll take it!
To me, it's not Easter without Tulips! So I knew we had to have tulips, in multiple shades, and since you can't go wrong with more flowers I added some orange-y red Alstroemeria!
So in case you were wondering here's what it looks like when Easter "poops" on your table:

You can see our new little yellow bowls, I specifically chose a bouquet of Yellow Tulips to match into our yellow bowls. The yellow bowls sit on top of of two crisp white plates.
I wanted to add a little sparkle we used our crystal candle  holders, both for tapered candles and pillar candles.

I added some Spring-y Napkins I made using our napkin tutorial (the fabric is from Jo-Ann Fabrics).
Then as a bread plate I had these little Easter plates, it's a set of 4 with each one having a different animal in it, ones a bunny, ones a duck, ones a chicky and ones a birdy.

And last I added some little ceramic birdies!
And in case your wondering why there are champagne flutes on the table . . . what's Easter Brunch with out Mimosas!

I hope you like Easter Poop as much as I do!

Flowers on Friday: Dining Room

To simply call today's post Flowers on Friday doesn't do the post justice. It's Lots and Lots and Lots of flowers on Friday.
For some reason or another we had 4 bouquets in the house at one time . . . It could be because I have a super sweet husband or I could have bought them for my self at the market, on sale 4 bunches for $10. Or Oprah could have sent them over to let me know how much she loves the blog ;).  Either way I ended up with a whole schwack of flowers on the dining room table!!!

Happy Spring!!!!

How To: Sew Napkins!!

Since Lee bought me a new sewing machine for my birthday (in November), I've been sewing like a crazy old lady making outfits for her cats (that just means a lot!).
I started with our recovered ottoman, moved on to some curtains, made a couple dozen bar mops, sewed some table runners for Chinese New Year, and now I'm making napkins!

I Love Napkins . . . They're the more eco friendly choice over paper towel, they come in great fabric, and they make the dinner table look AMAZING!!!

In the words of Montell Jordan "This is how we do it"

• I use quilting fabric (usually from Jo-Ann Fabrics)
• It takes 1 yard of Fabric to make 4 napkins. (That's 1 'fat quarter' for each napkin). There is NO wasted fabric!
• And your iron is almost as important as your sewing machine.

1) Lay the fabric out flat and cut in half, then cut each half in half (so that you'll roughly have the size of napkin you want!!)

2)Iron you fabric, then fold a 1/2 inch seam down one side and iron into place, fold a 1/2" seam down the opposite side and iron into place.

3) Now fold over and iron 1/2" seams on to the other two sides.

 4) Now, I do a double fold because I like a nice finished edge, yes it's the back of the napkin, yes nobodies going to see it . . . but I still like the nice edge!
So if you're like me and still want a nice finished edge, repeat step 2 and 3, and fold those edges over on more time, in the same order.

5) For the corners I like them to look like a little miter corner, so I fold under the top fabric in each of the 4 corners Fold back over and Iron in to place!

5) Start sewing in a corner, and work your way around, when you get to a corner leave the needle in and turn the fabric, making sure those mitered corners are lined up before you sew them down!

End result:

Napkin making might be my new obsession, there are so many fabrics and so many different combinations.

So far I've created Yellow ones (my personal favorite):

A set 4 of Chocolate Cloud Napkins:

Chocolate Brown Paisley a set of 6:

Leafy multicolored ones with a red polka dot stripe running through them. To do these ones I just followed all the steps I listed above, then I took a strip of fabric and sewed it to the napkin just like I did with the Bar Mops I made a couple of weeks ago.

I also sewed in a little M :)

Making your own napkins is super affordable!! A yard of quilting fabric will cost you about $7. The Yellow fabric was $7 for 4 napkins.
The Chocolate Brown paisley was free because it was leftover from a recent pillow project!
And the red/multicolored napkins were $5 for a set of 4!

I think Napkins are the best part of a table! So what do ya think . . . planning on sewing some anytime soon??!!