Happy New Year's Eve!

Hopefully everyone is getting ready to head out to your own celebrations, like me, or perhaps planning for a quiet night at home.

Before I head down the road for a night of indulging in great food with great friends, I promised I'd share my 'collection'.

With 2 more coats of paint (yes, that's 3 total + 1 coat of primer!), and the closet done, it was time to take down my "Got Milk" collection. For years of my adolescent life, I scoured magazines, going so far as to steal ads from friends' magazines when they weren't looking to add to my collection. As it grew, and space on my ceiling thinned, my interest in finding more faded, but I continued to proudly display the collection on the roof of my bedroom. 40 ads in all adorn the ceiling, featuring everyone from 'N Sync and the Backstreet Boys to Kate Moss, Johnathon Taylor Thomas (remember him??!) to The Simpsons, and two Britney Spears ads from 2 very different periods of her life.

I haven't decided what to do next with the collection. I suggested a mural in the barn office, but my dad wasn't so fussy on that idea.

I didn't have any luck finding wallpaper yesterday for my shelves, so the hunt continues next week when I go back to the city. Keep posted for the big reveal when I get the room all done!

Stay safe this evening! Happy New Years!

Much Ado About Window Treatments

I promised to reveal my collection, and I will shortly. This has been bugging me all day though, so I decided to share while my search continues for ideas.

I'm stumped on the window treatments for my old bedroom. I've been searching for ideas, but so far it's been challenging :

1. The room is small. Just over 80 square feet to be exact. The windows are already the focal point, located directly opposite the door. Anything too extravagant will overpower the entire room.
2. The windows are tall, nearly reaching the ceiling and just over a foot off the floor.
3. My mother would like the solution to act as insulation against the cold in winter. They are in the 'snow belt' after all.

Here are a few ideas I'm pondering....

Roman blinds, or similar.

The window sill is huge, so these could be mounted close to the window without too much trouble. (I also really like this "living window" idea from The Nest).

Sheer Curtains.

The right curtains will pull a colour scheme together perfectly in a room. I like these sheer panels because they provide both an air of subtlety and colour to the room. Can sheer curtains help the heating bill is the next question. My instinct is no, but I may have to ask an expert on this one.



























Blinds + Curtains.

Jon & Sherry over at Young House Love (my all-time fav blog) love pairing blinds with curtains. I love you can use this look to create a 'perfect window', but I wonder if it would be as effective in my small room. Would too many treatments create a 'heavy' feeling?














Nothing at all.

It works here in this farmhouse at Country Living. It's worked in this room for 26 years. Perhaps it's also an option. As a guest room, however, the yard below is a busy spot during any season and even I would like more privacy than this provides.














Whatever solution I find, I plan to duplicate in my brother's old room. It's also a small room (only 10 1/2 ' x 8') with ambitions of being a guest room when it grows up. But, one project at a time, as my mom would say.

Progress so far:
- 2 coats of paint
- Tentative wallpaper picked out
- Bed linens purchased
- Ceiling collection down (mom wants me to paint the ceiling... ick that sounds, in no way, fun)

Days to go:
Officially - 2
Realistically - 1...  New Years Day will not be a productive day, I suspect!

Then There was WHITE!

One coat down. One to go... hopefully. I finished priming and the first coat of paint on my old bedroom today. I learned a few things in the process:

• Be prepared! I forgot the Brownie motto on this project. I had already started priming when I realized I didn't have the roller I needed and there was gooey stuff on the wall that still had to come off.
• Put primer in the panalling cracks with a small brush. A roller won't cover these, and it will save a lot of work later.
• Always keep a wet rag close by. No matter how hard I try, I still end up with paint somewhere I don't want it!

I have to admit, I'm not 'wowed' yet at the change. I haven't painted the closet doors though, and I left the backs of the shelves because I plan to cover them with wallpaper. I think this will really pull it together...

I also noticed the paint is yellowing a little. At first, I thought this was the panalling coming through the primer, but now I'm not so sure. Is it possible the paint is pulling the stain off the panalling?

Tomorrow, I'm off to get the wallpaper and will finish the painting. I will also have to take down a beloved collection of posters I've had for almost 15 years! Can you guess what they are?

Sharing Some Olympic Spirit

On a break from paint prepping, I thought I'd share some Olympic spirit. That's me with my pair of the coveted red mitts below! (Thank you to bf's company Christmas party!)

Here are my pics from last weekend's torch relay through Niagara. The torch came through my old stomping ground today, and I had full intentions of attending this evening's ceremony, but the snow squall warning and wind gusts up to 60 km/h have scared me away. I ventured outside earlier to pick up my bedroom paint, and it was downright nasty. The roads were deserted, not even a plow in sight.

Instead, I'm cuddling up tonight in my parents' cozy living room with "The Nanny Diaries" - have I mentioned I'm going to be an aunt. My youngest brother is expecting a little one in March!

My Farmhouse Bedroom - The Before

Here we go. Here are photos of my old bedroom, in my parents' farmhouse. This is before I began cleaning on Saturday.

First to note: PANALLING! It's in every room in our home! I struggle to believe this will ever come back in! By Thursday, no one will ever notice it was ever there. The potential of the closet doors and shelves has me extra giddy. Stripes perhaps on the doors or funky wallpaper on the back of the shelves! I haven't quite decided, but I know the inspiration will come once I start painting!

This is the east wall of the room. It's currently a soft yellow colour, which is going to stay. What you don't see is stencilled vines along the ceiling. When I sat my mother down yesterday to help her 'envision' my plan, she specifically asked I don't touch the stencilling. She likes it. Deal. (I'm still kind of proud of my 18-year-old self's work anyway!)

Finally, we have the shot looking into the room from the door. It's a little dark, but you see it's not a very big room. You also see the mess of boxes on the floor. This is not the product of my cleaning, rather the result of moving back between 'houses' after my third year of University. Yes, these boxes never left. Let's just say the dust is very thick! One other important thing to notice in this photo is the open cupboard door. Both my room and my brother's have these storage areas in the wall, beneathe three shelves. This will be the perfect spot to store the stuff I want to keep (lifeguarding manuals, old 4-H books, projects I can't part with for example), but also keep it out of sight.

So, after a family Christmas yesterday, I'm so well-fed, I will not need to surface for several days. Bring on Day 2.

Goal: Finish cleaning and sorting. Buy the paint.

A little Christmas project

For the last few months, every time I went to visit my parents' farm, I couldn't help but think about the lack of 'guest' accommodation in their farmhouse. Sure, I always sleep in my old room, but I've had friends stay over and they are usually forced to tip-toe through the storage room that is my brother's old bedroom to find a bed.

Shopping for new bedding for my mom's Christmas present, I decided about a week ago to redecorate these rooms over the Christmas break. After all, I have been promising my mom for years now, I would go through the boxes of 'important' books and papers on my bedroom floor and take it back to the city with me.

I even took some before pictures yesterday when I was getting started (I'll post shortly). All of the rooms in my parents' farmhouse have some amount of paneling on the walls. When I was little and hated it, I was told it couldn't be painted. When I was in Grade 12, I decided I needed a change and painted one wall of paneling anyway. The world didn't end, and my mom was actually impressed with how it turned out. Armed with a dog-eared and bookmarked, borrowed copy of Better Homes & Gardens New Decorating Book, I am expecting a couple coats of white paint and some 'de cluttering' to create an entirely new living space. Not to mention, a guest room my mom would be proud to show off.

My mom thinks I'm crazy, so not only do I have to finish to show you the final result, but I have to prove it to her also!

Let the room makeover begin!

Have a Savvy Merry Christmas!

From my family to yours... whoever and wherever you are out there, I want to wish you a very merry, savvy Christmas!

Over the years, my family has started to spread out and Christmas Day had became rushed and hectic. In an effort to remove some stress from the day, we opted to celebrate a little early around the farm. Following a yummy lasagne dinner (I love my mom's lasagne) and our local church service, we opened gifts and enjoyed a few drinks in each other's company.

>

Fergie & Penny didn't miss out on the action either. Doesn't Fergie realize that we can still see him, just because he can't see us? This ripped apart bag of paper, which was in the bag before we went to bed, was his little gift to me. On the right, can you spot the feline? This spot beneath the tree has become her favourite spot to take in the action.

This Christmas again blessed me with gifts that will head right to good use in the Savvy home, but the chance to relax at my parents' farm with my family is always the most welcome present for me during the holidays. This year, there was an extra bonus! The expectation of a new baby in the family means I'm going to be an aunt!

I would be remiss if I didn't share my gift from my parents, who I think went a little over the top, but I'm going to let you guess what they bought me anyway...

• It's in 2 boxes, one is a huge, rectangle.
• It's for every room of the house.
• It sucks a lot.

Okay, the last one was the gimme - they gave me a central vacuum! The bonus? My family will have to come visit me to install it in my home! I think this will call for an extra-special trip to Buffalo for chicken wings!

Hope Santa has been extra nice to all of you this year as well! Take care today, whether you're relaxing with family, like me, or you're heading out on the road. Merry Christmas!