New shoes

I gave in.

{image from TOMS}

I still think that TOMS shoes look like your feet are swaddled in bandages, but I made the mistake of testing them out at Whole Foods the other day (I was just curious!) and they were so comfortable I couldn't convince myself to take them off. I think my feet may have actually let out a little sigh when I slipped them on.

I'm kind of in love with slip on shoes. Because I always seem to be running late in the morning and spending an extra 30 seconds tying my shoes makes me miss my bus, without fail.

*Posts might be a little late this week - they connected our phone (yay!) but managed to disconnect our internet (boo). We're working on it.

what a teak!

We found a new vanity!! It wasn't easy but we did it! And we kind of changed our colour scheme along the way and now I think it might have been for a reason because I actually like it better!

We went to Vienna Douglas Collection {which by the way is the most amazing and gorgeous store!!} and she had a 27" vanity that was pretty much exactly the same as the one we bought at Gingers {but cheaper!!}. It even came in a grey oak that was pretty darn close to our original vanity. The only problem, it was not in stock and the shipment was supposed to come in the next week or two. If it came in week two we would have been in the same position of starting our reno without the vanity! BUT...she had one in stock in teak. A big change in terms of our original design plan, but the more we looked at it beside some grey tiles she had in the store, the more we loved it. So we took it! Yay!

Here are some pictures that we are now using for inspiration. We had already ordered our medium grey tiles for the floor, white glass tiles for the tub and for half the wall where the toilet and vanity are. We are thinking we will probably paint the remaining walls a shade of grey similar to the first pic below. I'm excited about having the teak colour as it will add more warmth to the room. The grey oak one would have been stunning but maybe a little bit too cold? {Clearly I say this to make myself love my teak even more since we don't have much of a choice!}

I wish I had a picture of actual vanity to show you but it isn't on the website yet. But this vanity in the first picture is similar except ours is a wall mounted vanity and doesn't have legs.

And just for fun, check out this awesome teak tub inspired by Japanese design! So cool!


Also this weekend we picked up our sleek Toto Aquia III dual-flush toilet {that the City of Toronto gives you a $75 rebate for!} and ordered our cheapy cheap bathtub. We decided to suck it up on get one with a detailed apron {bleh...still hate that word!} but the one we found has more of a geometric design, not a swirly swoopy loop, so we felt ok about it. And it is a steel bathtub instead of acrylic. Two reasons for this, one because it was ridiculously cheap and meant we could buy two large mirror medicine cabinets that will provide us with a wall of mirror and storage space {!} and two because I realized I actually preferred the look of steel over the molded fakeness of acrylic. Score!

ABS Gala Provides Money for Worthy Cause

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of hosting the first ever Fundraising Gala for Applied Behavioural Services (ABS). ABS is a Cincinnati school that provides services, therapies, and education to kids with autism and other learning setbacks. The school is small, progressive, and private. Like many other treatments for autism, it can be very expensive. Saturday night's gala was an effort to help defray some of the costs for families that desperately need it. At the end of the night, I was blown away by the support the community and Cincinnatians offered this worthy organization. More than 250 people packed the banquet hall at Molloy's on the Green in Greenhills for five hours on Saturday night. A live auction, silent auction, performances by the local band ChaseLounge, and a video documentary about ABS's wonderful students highlighted the evening. At the end of the night, more than $25,000 had been raised for the school's tuition foundation. What a great thing!

Dressing on the Side

Hello! I hope you all had a nice weekend. I thought I would start off today with a little giveaway from one of our sponsors Dressing on the Side. The winner gets to pick their very own t-shirt out of her Dressing on the Side's etsy shop. Aren't the shirts quirky and fun? Please leave a comment below by Wednesday night.

UPDATE: Winner randomly selected is : Stacey Haslam. Thanks for entering everyone and thank you Dressing on the Side!

We are off and running

Good Morning -
You can talk to us here on the FOX19 Morning Blog on FOX19.com. We hope that you enjoy watching and now talking to us.

and then there were bricks

All the other blocks on our street are red bricked. While I like the red, it secretly excites me that ours is the ONLY orange-y coloured bricks on the street. Yay!

Bloomies and Blooms, my house has bricks. It has windows and doors too. And shingles. It's not finished my any means, but I'm very excited that I will have a space that the big bad wolf can't blow down. So here's a bit of my inspiration, and was wondering if you'd like to weigh in on some of the decisions? Craigger came home with a business card one day, and said "I like these colours". They were beautiful, and we thought, hey, I think they would be gorgeous in our house - especially throughout our bottom floor (aka dining room, kitchen and living room). So we went to the paint store, fell in love with Ralph Lauren paints (yes, I know expensive but I'm allowed to dream), and matched up some combinations. BUT THEN, we also fell in love with a pomegranate red in addition to the blue. But we don't want to use both. So we're deciding between the two for our bottom floor, and I think I might know which one I'll go with, but I want to hear your thoughts first!!

what is your favourite combo for our bottom floor?

...so, the piano could be blue, like my initial inspiration (remember my blog post?? pic from Snazzy Jazzy)...

...or, RED like this super awesome piano I saw in Martha Stewart Weddings mag...

My friend Tahlia, who luckily understands my desparate need for a coloured piano, found me this piano that's on sale for $40!! I am going to see it on Thursday with a piano tuner to see if it actually works (so my future kiddies can learn on it in addition to it looking pretty) or if it's actually garbage. If it works, I think it's a good candidate for painting either blue or red, no?! Cross your fingers for me...

The weekend, briefly

We had oh so much work to get done this weekend, making sure our old apartment was in perfect shape before we hand over the keys. The downside of brightly colored walls is the number of coats of paint it takes to get them back to white.

{paint}

We also met up with friends for a pretty intense three team game of Pictionary. Playing drawing games with architects is a bit scary.

{pictionary}

And we made time for Sunday brunch in our new kitchen, just the two of us.

{sunday morning}

We're making progress settling in. We didn't coordinate everything very carefully so we spent the last week without phone service (and I lost my cell phone charger during the move, so I am completely unavailable - it's like being back in the 90s!) or television. It's been kind of relaxing but we're re-joining the rest of the world tomorrow, hopefully, if Verizon wills it.