A letter to our Brick House

Dear Brick House,

It has been exactly one year (May 26th!) since we moved all our belongings from our little blue house to you, our new brick house.  It was a 9 hour day ended with a pizza celebration in our new kitchen at our old table, one of the few pieces of furniture we brought with us.

That night when the others (James included) went to bed, I stayed up well into the night unpacking the kitchen, because lord knows I spend most of my time in there, and I wanted a sense of normalcy the next day not only for the kids, but for myself.  When I was done, I crawled into a lawn chair and watched the new Dirty Dancing movie, which was kind of lame.

I was so excited to finally be in our new home.

While I knew that I loved you I was having a hard time feeling like this big newly decorated home was ours.  After all, we got rid of all the stuff that made our old house a home and we were starting from scratch.  It kind of felt like we moved into someone's house to live.

Slowly we filled you with things we chose especially for you and over the course of the next 12 months it became obvious that you were meant for our family. 

I was so excited.  The first time I was in the house all alone after being handed the keys.

We've been through a lot, you and I, and working through some our issues is what made us closer.

We survived renovations before and after we moved in.  Remember when the railing contractor called me after not having a railing on our staircase for 5 days and telling us that he molded the wrong wood for the staircase and the job would be delayed a week???  I remember.  It wasn't funny then, and it still isn't funny now.  Though I am glad that we went ahead with the railing reno and that I didn't know how much of a nightmare it would be.  I am so happy with the end result.

We won the battle against the mice.  Yes, you read that right, mice, in the house.  Remember how I had to empty the bottom 2 levels of the pantry to make sure those rodents couldn't find food and I put all its content on the dining room table for weeks while we hunted for the issue?  Then, we found the entry point in the garage and boarded it up and waited less than a week for the mice that were now locked in our house to die. I remember.

We caught the leak in the basement before much damage was done.  Remember when Jasmin texted me frantically at work to tell me there was water coming from the ceiling.  James had to rush home to turn the water off since Jasmin and I didn't know how.  We do now.  Thankfully it was a slow leak and we only have a hole in the ceiling to remind of us our leaky pipes.  I remember.

Yes, we've had our issues but I like to think of them as relationship building.

On the flip side, you've given us so many new memories this year.  And with each one you become more and more our home.

We celebrated birthdays.  Grady, James and I all have birthdays between June 24 and Aug 17th, so we had the opportunity to celebrate all 3 of our birthdays very quickly after moving in.  Grady chose a red bedroom because of his love of the Chicago black hawks and so as a part of his birthday gifts he got a giant decal and new comforter.

He looks so young!

First days of school.  Moving at the end of May meant we only had a few weeks before school ended and didn't have a chance to develop a routine.  Well come September we got into the groove of our new routine with 2 schools, 2 drop offs, and 2 pickups, and you know what, it wasn't that bad.

We celebrated our first Thanksgiving. This was our first holiday where I cooked a full meal and we sat at our new dining room table that I waited almost 6 months to receive.  It literally arrived with less than 10 days to spare.  When I ordered it in April all I wanted was a table by Thanksgiving and that was barely achieved.  Read about the issues I had here.

We celebrated Halloween.  Halloween this year was so cold that we had to take our costume photos inside the house.  I love this stone wall that we inherited with the house and I've always loved these photos of Freddy and scary clown.

We celebrated our first Christmas.  Christmas... I loved Christmas in our new home.  The best part was that we added a second tree that I decorated with fancy matching ornaments.  Don't get me wrong, I love our memory tree but I also grew quite fond of my fancy tree and the soft white light it gave off in our living room while I read.  It was the the first year ever where I wasn't over the moon to take my ornaments down. 

We filled the house with all the things!  I've spent the last year shopping for all the things that the house needed.  From new shelves, to vases, to photos, to couches, you name it, I bought it.  I really didn't realize how time consuming and expensive moving was.  Truthfully, I'm still buying things.  You'll notice that I have not toured the dining room yet an that is because I still have a really big wall that is completely bare.... should it be pictures or a shelf that fills the wall.....?  Only time will tell.   

We added stairs to our deck.  And by we, I totally mean we hired someone to do it.  Ha!  We tried out no stairs last summer and it resulted in a lot of kids running through our house with their shoes on leaving the sliding door in the basement wide open.  This summer brought a deck reno with new vinyl decking and stairs to the yard.  We've already got our money's worth and it is only May!

Met our great neighbors.  The hardest part of leaving our old house was leaving behind our neighbors.  Grady's best friend literally lived across the street from us.  It was hard.  Over the past year we've gotten to know one set of our new neighbors really well.  We both have 2 boys and they range from 6 to 9 (almost 10!).  She is a runner and he and James have mutual friends.  The friendship was meant to be.  To top it off, Grady's best friend can now bike to our house so we see him almost as much as we used to. Almost.

Boys, boys, and more boys!

After a year of living here I still sometime look around and am in awe that we actually packed up everything we owned and moved it.  We took a risk leaving our little blue house that held all the memories we've held as a family since we got married and before. I am not a big fan of change.  Change is scary, change is stressful.  After 2 years of looking i remember when we were finally $7500 apart in negotiations and putting out the last offer to split the difference.  i was terrified. I was laying in bed with cooper when James told me it was a done deal.  My first reaction was panic.  OMG we are moving, insert hyperventilating.  Then after an house and James talking me off a ledge I was excited.   I'm so glad that we took the risk and moved.

If I've learned anything about what makes a home, it isn't what is in it, it is who is in it.  I brought my family, my most prized possession with me, so no matter where we live, it is home.  You can never take our past memories away and we are always open to creating new ones.  Do the kids talk about the old house?  Sometimes. I choose to look at that as a sign that they have good memories in the old house, but so do I.  We've started making new memories in our new brick house and will continue to do so.

We had our good friends over for a visit Saturday night and she snapped this photo as she left.

Here we are, standing in the entrance of our home exactly one year after we moved in.  I feel like it was meant to be that she looked back and felt the need to snap the picture.  

Thank you Brick House for making our first year a memorable one. 

All our love,
Christy

House Tour: The Castle

Our new home has 4 bedroom upstairs, and since we only have 2 kids, that leaves us one bedroom to spare.  The question was, what were we going to do with it?  We also have 2 rooms in the basement so we left our spare room down there.  My suggestion was to turn it into a bonus room and we all agreed that it would be the best use of the space.   It quickly became the room in the house that I felt the most at home in when we first moved and I was struggling to feel at home.

The only thing left to do was name the room.  It wasn't really a bedroom, but it wasn't really a bonus room either.  Then what was it?  I suggested Christy's Castle which was largely vetoed by everyone.  Grady suggested Grady's Gaming Room.  We compromised with and called it the Gaming Castle, or just the Castle for short.

Welcome to the Castle!

This is my room.  The room that I am fee to do with what I want since I am essentially the only one that uses it.  While the decor is not complete, I wanted to fill it with things that make me happy.  Things that I couldn't bare to part with when we moved but that I had no where to put in the new house.

The 2 frames between the windows were the first things I hung in this room.  My SIL did a cross stitch for each of the kids when they were born.  As a former cross stitcher I know how long it takes and I wanted to have them on display.  They no longer match the decor of the boys room, and truthfully I appreciate them way more than them, so I proudly hang them where I see them all the time.

The closet on each side of the built in desk are filled with my extra clothes that don't fit in the closet.  The one on the left has all my fancy dresses and stampede wear while the one on the right holds my seasonal clothes.  I just last week loaded it with all my winter sweaters since I refuse to believe that the cold weather is coming back!

Ironically, I thought James had more room in our old closet than I did.  Apparently I was wrong since my clothes is overflowing and James has ample room to store all his....

Cooper painted the large blue flower on display and each of the shadow boxes holds memories from our wedding.  They were tucked away in the basement before and I just couldn't bare to get rid of them. In the middle is a hand made photo plaque I got from Dee when I turned 30.

This is the room where the binge TV watching happens and also all the blogging.  You will notice that Pretty Little Liars (season 6!) is on as I take the photos.

The couch was actually left behind by the new owners.  It was originally in the master bedroom but we moved it in here.  Eventually I'd like to get a pull out in here so the kids can have their friends sleep over or my for my Mom who sometimes complains about sleeping in the basement.

I bought the table specifically for this room.  It is the holder of all important things.  The lap top, my phone, the remotes, and many nights, a glass of wine.  It fits the space perfectly since we don't have a lot of room in here.

I love this room.  It is simple. It is lived it.  It is home.  I want to add stuff to the walls eventually but for now, it is perfect just the way it is.

House Tour: The Family Room

I can't believe I haven't yet shown you the most used room in the house!  Here it is, our family room, as you come down the hall from the entry way.

I was always surprised that in the listing to sell the house that they didn't have any pictures of this room.  I find it so cozy and a room that with a modern rock wall that you would want to show case it in your listing.  Their loss is our gain.

The wall and the light fixtures on either side of the fire place is pre-existing as are the grey shelving units.  I think the room needs little decor with the large accent wall.

Looking into the family room from the kitchen

Again, everything you see in the family room is new.  Interesting story about the couches....  We had couches almost identical to these ones in the old house and we go them when we moved in 13 years ago.  I remember that I used the money I earned for making top 50 in Canada when I wrote the UFE (a story for another day) to buy the couches for our new (at the time) home.  Anyhoo, the couches were blue leather and cracking all over, especially in James' spot on the couch.  He always sat on the far right.  The only way I could convince James to get new couches was if they were the same as the old ones.  So when his mom bought these exact couches, James had the chance to test them out, sit and lay in them, and decide if he liked them.   A quick trip to the store and we were the proud owners of the exact same couch.

We purchased them in December and then they were delayed and then they were delayed again.  By the time they arrived, we had already bought our new house and I told them they had to hold them until after we moved.  They were the first item delivered to our new home the day after we moved in.

Because I was overwhelmed with all the decorating when we moved in we used an interior designer to help give us some ideas.  I couldn't decide what to put over the fireplace since the wall was loud and so was the carpet.  For a long time i was worried that the rug was too busy for the room but now I don't even notice it!  James and I argued over whether the mirror was right for the spot and in the end i won.  Happy wife, happy life.

This is the view from the couch.  James sees this view more than I do as my TV room is our fourth bedroom upstairs fondly referred to as the Castle.  I found this wall very had to decorate.  I pondered Pinterest for months before settling on the 5 photos the run above the TV. They are all photos we took in NYC on our trips.  I still have to get a basket or a plant to go beneath the photo on the left of the TV to hide the plug in and balance out the large vase on the other side.  I'm still hunting for this.....

Here is another shot looking from the fireplace out towards the kitchen.

And another look from the TV into the room.  You can see the kitchen eating area off to the left.  Another great suggestions that the designer made was to hang curtains on this window.  I loved that idea as like I said, between the rug and the wall there is a lot going on and I didn't want to add more with busyness with art. Unlike the color that I am usually drawn to we kept this room very neutral.  Not even an accent color, all black, white, and shades of grey.

It may be odd to admit that I rarely sit in this room.  i see it all the time form the kitchen as I pudder away making meals and cleaning up, unloading the dishwasher or baking.  As much as I look at this room, I very rarely use it.  The kids and James dominate this room so when it is time for me to sit and relax I head to the living room where there is no TV And I can read in silence.  Or as silent as it gets with 2 boys in the house!

If you came to our house for a visit, you would find James sitting on the far left of the couch, closest to the end table and you would find 2 boys sitting on one cushion of the love seat, each with an electronic device playing the same game.

That is our family room.

House Tour: Kitchen

Like most people, we spend most of our time in the back of the house in the kitchen and the family room.  For me, the kitchen, for James and the boys, the family room... Ha!

This is the view as you walk into the kitchen.

As I've said before, we looked at this house almost a year before we actually bought it and I remember that it was the kitchen that I wasn't sold on.  I think it was because when we looked at the house that first time they had the moving island in the middle of the kitchen as shown below.

With that island in the middle of the kitchen it made the cooking area seem so small.  How would you unload the dishwasher or get things from the fridge.... it seemed to small and cramped.  That was a huge oversight on their part.  Every time we went to the house after it was in the position that we have it, off to the side.  At our house, this has become the dumping place of all the things.  I am constantly tidying it up and finding homes for the things that people throw on it.

One of the biggest selling points of the house for me was the view from the kitchen.  Like i said, I spend a of time in the kitchen and I love backing on to a green space.  Out of interests sake, this kitchen table and chairs was one of the few pieces of furniture that we brought with us form the old house.  It was a wedding gift from James' parents almost 13 years ago.  Now it is constantly covered because there are 2 damaged spots on the table.  One from before we had kids and one from when we took the cover off for a few days while we were selling the house.  Just another reminder why it is always covered.....

There is so much natural light that makes it way into our kitchen and eating area which is such a welcome change from our old house.

With that being said, we rarely sit at the table to eat together. See these bar stools looking into the kitchen?  That is where the kids eat 90% of the time.  They eat every single meal and snack there except the odd  dinner that we make them sit at the table to eat as a family.

Personally, i love this eating arrangement.  I am able to pudder in the kitchen, make lunches and empty the dishwasher all while facing them and able to chat.  With that being said, the reason the kids like to eat the the counter is that if you look to the far left of the photo you can see the TV quite clearly from the counter.... so sometimes conversation is limited!

This is a photo looking from the eating area looking into the kitchen.  It is a tall persons kitchen.  I need to use a stool for absolutely everything!  No need to worry there is a stool stashed in the pantry to the right of the pantry.

I'd like to say that our pantry is tidy and give you some tips on that... but that is not me.  This is my first walk in pantry and while i love it, it is so disorganized most of the time.  But there at the bottom you can see my trusty stool.

We are lucky to have dual ovens in this house but I can't honestly say i use them much at the same time.  I only use the bottom one since I am scared of burning myself lifting things out of the top one....  Most people are surprised to know that the bottom area beneath the oven in our microwave and not a warming drawer.  I thought I'd hate it but I actually like it  out of the way and off the counter.  The kids like that they can make their own popcorn.

Here is a closer look at the cooking area.  If I have one complaint it is the shortage of counter space.  I have to work very hard to keep the counters clear.

Many people are interested in our clock. I bought if off Etsy and the owner of Clockworks Canada was excellent to work with and local so she delivered it to our house for free.  Bam!

Considering it was the kitchen that i was concerned about when we looked at the house, it has everything we need.  The pantry made up for the fewer cabinets along with all the extra storage in the mud room for the kitchen appliances we rarely use.  Any deficiency in the kitchen is clearly made up for when I look out the window and see my kids playing on the soccer field behind us.  In the summer, of course!

If you come to visit we will most likely be standing around the island full of munchies and wine.  Why does everyone always gather in the kitchen?  Good think I like mine!

House Tour: Living Room

Next up, let's take a peak at the living room.  When you walk into our front door of our home this is the view to the left.

Absolutely everything in this room is brand new except the photos on the wall.  They will be new eventually when we find the perfect art work but, alas, this has not happened yet.

For comparison, this is what the living room looked like when we first looked at the house.

Over the course of move I've had many people ask about where I was buying most of my furniture and hands down our store of choice became Urban Barn.  Both James and I like the casual, with a hint of modern, style.  It is an added bonus that there is one right in our neighborhood.

We bought the lamp and the chairs from urban barn.

Here is the view from the stairs looking down into the living room.

Another favorite store through the move has been Wayfair.  If you have hesitated about trying them in the past, hesitate no more.  They have a great return policy and fantastic customer service!  I bought 3 rugs before finally settling on the rug in the living room and UPS picked them up from my house to return.  For free!. I now wish I bought one size bigger but live and learn....  And to think I bought the size smaller first! 

I also bought this mirrored coffee table from Wayfair.  The end tables were back ordered by I went ahead and ordered it anyway.  In the end the end tables were discontinued and I am left scrambling to find something that will match but not be too matchy-matchy.  

I also did a ton of Pinterest searches on coffee table decor since I'm clueless on that sort of thing.  I learned that you have at least one thing vertical, one horizontal, and a 'unique' item.  Mine is an owl, ironically also from Urban Barn.  Ha!

After Urban Barn, Revolve is the other store that I have been shopping locally.  I found the tuffed velvet sofa from there back in April before we moved in and the entire living room was decorated around this piece.  When we went shopping for furniture that day I wasn't even looking for a sofa yet, but this one spoke to me.  What sealed the deal was when I showed James and it was the first item he didn't make me fight for.  #win

Here is a different view of the room looking from the dining room into the living room.  You can see the front door on the left had side of the photo.

I really didn't know how much time I would spend in this room but I find that I use it way more than our family room.  The family room always has the TV on and I prefer to read in the living room where it isn't at noisy and to avoid the distraction of the kitchen.  What really surprises me is how much the kids also choose to chill in the living room.  I'll often see Cooper lying on the couch, or under the table, with the ipad.  

I didn't buy the most kid friendly couch given I didn't expect to see them on it very often but now I find myself constantly reminding them not to eat in the living room after I once found tic tacs stuck to the brand new sofa and had to ban all food substances from the entire room!

If you ever come to visit, this is the room we will have wine and visit!

House Tour: The Mud room

This week we talk mud rooms.  The mud room was huge selling point for this house since our old house didn't have one at all.  Our front door and our garage door came into the same small cramped hallway with one closet that was overflowing with all our jackets ans shoes.  Now we have a full room to store all our outwear and more!  This photo is taken from the hall looking into the mud room.

The upper cabinets are filled with kitchen appliances that we couldn't squeeze into the pantry.  Another cool thing in the mud room is that the squares below the counter top are swing doors into the recycle bins.  Considering we had a large recycling bin just sitting in the kitchen of old house this is a huge improvement.  We usually keep the water bottles in the garage but the day that I took these photos it was VERY cold and the jugs were freezing so we had to store them indoors.

This photo is taken from the wall opposite the entrance to the house.

For interest sake I decided to show you inside my messy closets.

When we first bought the house both closets were filled with shelving units.  Where did they keep their jackets?  Within the first week that we took possession I was in there taking down the shelves so the closets could be patched and painted.  I love having the other closet for random storage but I equally love the closet that is now filled with outerwear.  In the other closet we keep our hockey jerseys and long underwear, bandaids, batteries, extra paper products and any other misc house hold items you can think of.  We used to store our paper products in the bathtub in our bedroom.  For real.

This photo is taken from the closets looking toward the other wall.  I love all the hooks for the kids jackets so we don't have to make room in the closet for them.  That and they are at the perfect kid height for the kids to hang them up themselves.  But they don't.

And because this is real life... we have this area tucked behind the washer and dryer that is the storage of all things.  Thankfully it is tucked around the corner hidden from most people! 

Finally, here is the entrance to the garage.  The door to the left goes out to a small dog run, you know, in case we ever get a dog.

Now you've seen our 2 main entry ways into the house let's take a step further.  Next up... the living room.

House Tour: The Main Entry

Hello! Welcome to our home!  

This series is long overdue.  We moved into our house the last weekend in May, so we have been living in our house for 8 months and I have yet to give you a tour, #badhostess.  In my defense, the first month we were in the house it was still somewhat of a construction zone while we redid the railings.  Then, we had to wait for all our furniture to arrive and the last piece arrived the last week in December.  So if you look at it that way, it's only been a few weeks....

We had been in our old house for 13 years and decided we didn't really want to bring any of our old stuff with us.  On our main level, we literally brought our kitchen table and the blue shelf you see in photos below.  That is it.  The rest we bought just before or after we moved.  And by 'we' I mean 'I'.  While you may think that house shopping is fun, it was stressful for someone that prefers to shop for clothes.  I am happy the major purchases are done.    Now hurry along and come in!

This is the entry way from the upstairs landing, the white door is the main entrance into our house.  The living room is off to the right.

This is a photo of from standing in the living room looking into the house.  The kitchen is down the hall on the left and the office and mud room are off to the right.

This is the blue shelving unit we brought from the old house.  I am a fan of all shades of blue and we went with teal in the entrance.  Looking at the picture I realize I should have taken the time to straighten the vase, but this is more likely what it would like if you came to visit!

For the first few months after we moved in, these stairs were always a discussion point when someone came to visit for the first time.  We have granite stairs.  Apparently one of the old owners did a barter deal when someone couldn't pay a bill and instead gave them granite stairs.  Personally, I love them.  They look so elegant and before you ask, they are not slippery.  Or dangerous.  People assume they are dangerous when they are no more slippery then hardwood.  One of my friends suggested that I put a sign up that said 'Before you ask, no one has fallen on the stairs'.  I seriously considered it for while...

Let me give you a better look at the railings that almost got installed with the wrong wood. The job that took double the time it was supposed to and one that had us sleeping in the basement for 5 nights.  At the time, I was starting to regret our decision.  We couldn't squeeze it in before we moved in since our buyers needed possession a week earlier than I wanted to give it up.  Living through the reno was worse than I expected, especially when they took double the time and had grouchy and rude workers.  Now looking at my railing I am glad we did it.  I know if we waited it would never have gotten done.  I would have gotten used to the old one.  I think it showcases the stairs and makes the entry more modern.

Notice the touch of teal at the top of the stairs!

I brought this sign of our last name over from the old house.  I bought one for myself and gifted one to my Mom.  It was in our entry in the old house and continues to welcome our guests in our new home.

This is what you see as you walk into our house.

The canvases of the kids when they turned 1 are perfect.  James and I argued about how they would look and I think they were clearly made for this wall for all to see.  James disagreed and even refused to help my hang them until I could show him a photo of pictures hung so low on a wall.  Apparently he had never heard of a gallery wall.... In the end I won and he agreed I was right.  That doesn't happen often!

This is the area above the stairs.  I love the touch of teal.  I don't love the floral arrangements in the vases or that it looks so bare.  These large nooks are hard to fill.

Here is another one of those nooks.  I love the vase in the middle that I scored on discount at Pier 1 and the topiary trees (a new word I learned while decorating) add just the right amount of height.  This nook also catches a lot of things tossed from the landing when the kids think we aren't looking.  Not to mention a tuque that you can see tucked behind the right hand size of the vase in this photo.  It is too much work to drag the ladder in so there it has been sitting for 6 weeks.  #boys

Here is a different angle from the landing upstairs to show the 2 nooks on the front wall and a better photo of our chandelier that came with the house.  

Now that I've showed you what we have done with the place, let me show you what it used to look like.  Can I just say how good a professional photographer can make a house look.  The pictures do not show how orange the walls were.  I would also like to know how they get the pictures so bright.  Mine seem dark in comparison.

And another....

The biggest things we updated in this the entry way (and the whole house!) was to paint it all Revere Pewter by Benjamin Moore and to refinish the floor to a richer color with a grey undertone.  In addition, we replaced all the baseboards on the mail level and scraped the ceilings to make them flat, neither of which you can tell in these photos.

When we were looking for homes, I knew as soon as we walked in to a house whether or not it would be a contender.  Oddly enough, we saw this house a year before we actually bought it and I'm not sure why I didn't like it the first time because the second time I loved it.  I love that it is big enough to hold an entire family and their winter boots on the mat.  I love that it has oodles of natural light. I love that the ceilings are 18 feet high.  I just love the way I feel when I come through the front door.

Now that you have been 'in' the house, I'll invite you in to see the rest soon!  But probably not too soon.  Remember how long it took me to get this room posted!