I’ve recently been on a ‘kinda-sorta’ search for a piece of furniture for my place. It’s a ‘kinda-sorta’ search because it’s not a need – more of a want, so every few weeks I troll Craigslist and Kijiji to see if magically what I want is available. Here’s where the difficulty lies – I very rarely find what I’m looking for, but instead find quite a number of things I’d buy if I only I had the space/money. Does this happen to anyone else, or am I the only one afflicted with this problem?

Last night I spent WAY more time than I should have looking online at other people's used stuff, and since I found a few items I’d consider bringing home if I had the space, I thought I’d share.

Morning everyone! I hope you had an excellent weekend. Is anyone else having a hard time believing that it's the last week of August already? Where has this summer gone? It seems like just last week I still putting a hat on when I left the house and already there's fall clothing in stores, and today I saw Halloween decorations for sale in Home Sense.

You may recall that this summer I was taking an Intro to Drafting course (this might be part of the reason I feel summer has flown by). Anyways, the final grades were released yesterday, and I'm a little pleased with myself.

Yay me! Anyways, I hope you all have a wonderful week!

My Mom came to town on Friday to see me and to give me a bit of a hand with trying to fix my dining room (also to see my brother who's in town from the UK - it's a bit of a family reunion this week). You may remember that I recently shared my big shame - my dining room, complete with globs of wallpaper paste and cracked plaster walls. I've gotten a few quotes from professionals to get the walls and ceiling skim coated, but when those quotes were from anywhere from one to two thousand dollars I've decided that I'm suddenly much more inclined to try the DIY route. So far we've sanded every surface trying to remove as much wallpaper glue as possible, and primed using a plaster friendly primer. Next up - adventures in skim coating. Wish us luck.

Anyways, in keeping with this weekends activities I thought I'd share this dining room that was featured in Elle Decor.

On Monday I mentioned that I was almost finished the final project for the Intro. to drafting course I’ve been taking. I’m happy to report that I managed to finish it, and get it submitted on time – Yay me!

For the project we were given a condo plan, and we were supposed to draw a presentation drawing of both the living and dining rooms with furniture, do two wall elevations of each room, and then do an isometric drawing of one room. Not only did we have to draw the rooms, but we had to fill them with furniture, and draw the furnishings to scale. By Sunday evening after more than 12 hrs. of work I was pretty pleased with my drawings and on Monday I only had the colouring of the two floor plans to complete. I honestly don’t remember when the last time I coloured anything was, but I’m guessing it was about 15years ago, and unfortunately my colouring skills haven’t improved with a decade and half of being unused.

Despite my rusty artistic skills I was pretty proud of what I created. Well, I was until I got to class on Tuesday evening and saw some of the other student’s projects - some of them were really good, and a lot of them have obviously been using their colouring skills more regularly than I have.

Anyways, here is my final project:

PS - If you'd like to see what the furniture was that I was trying to draw, I created a Pinterest board to make it easier for me to find them when I needed dimensions. You can see the board here.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. I didn't. I spent it working on my final project for my drafting class. I think I may have a permanent crick in my neck from hunching over my drafting board. My project is due on Tuesday and then I'll be done the course. Hallelujah! In all honestly so far I'm pretty happy with the way the project is turning out. If that's still the case once I'm done I might share it here - but we'll have to see how the colouring portion goes since it's been quite a white since I've coloured anything and I'm out of practice :)

Anyways, I saw this image on Friday evening when I should have been working on my project and I fell in love - isn't it the neatest looking house you've ever seen?

What do you think? I've always been a bit partial to stone houses, and this one is no exception.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret – I’m a bad blogger. I start all sorts of projects (sometimes I even finish them) and then don’t blog about them until months later. Here’s one such project which I first mentioned in March.

You may remember last year I asked for a little help in figuring out how much fabric I needed to makes drapes for my living room. I was planning on buying some lovely fabric and wanted to make sure I bought enough given there was a pattern, and the window is rather large. I bought the fabric and then had a bit of a nervous breakdown at the thought of trying to actually makes drapes as I’d never attempted them before. Adding to the panic – I wanted to make pinch-pleated drapes – not the easier tab or rod pocket style, and I wanted them to be fully lined. I decided a trial run was needed to assure myself that a complete novice could do it.

My bedroom windows were elected for my first foray into sewing drapes, and I collected my supplies. I decided to keep it as simple at possible and stuck with a plain white fabric (I think it was this, and this was the lining). While it wouldn’t allow me to practice matching a pattern, the plain white best suits the design plan I have for my bedroom. I also wanted simple drapery hardware so I chose this rod and finials from Ikea because they were simple and inexpensive.

I think I've mentioned that I'm taking an Intro. to Drafting course, and it wraps up in just over a week. For the final project we have to draft a floor plan for a condo which mean I've been trolling Pinterest and the internet at large for inspiration on furniture ideas.

What do you think? Could you live with a pink couch?

Having an Irish mother meant that growing up I spent a bit of time in Europe visiting relatives. On one such trip I was introduced to Zara, and I was amazed by the store filled with lovely clothing, and very pleased to be able to buy some clothes that nobody had at home.

Zara eventually opened stores in Canada, and it remains one of my favorites for fun, fairly inexpensive clothing. A few years ago I discovered that Zara had a housewares division and from time to time would browse the European web stores to see what they had. When I was in Ireland last fall I even checked to see if there was a retail store so I could finally go shopping, but was disappointed to discover there wasn't one.

This past spring I heard some Internet rumblings that Zara Home would finally be opening an online store in Canada, and unbelievably a retail location as well. I tried not to get my hopes up, and refrained from perusing their wares online. This past Tuesday I heard that the first Canadian retail location would open at Yorkdale shopping center on August 22nd, and that the online store would open that day as well (a second retail location in Laval, QC will open on Aug 29th). After hearing the news I  jumped right online and picked out a few favourites.