Now that I'm 30 weeks pregnant, I feel like I'm almost ready for the little one to arrive, but not quite. Today I thought I would share a few things I've done to prepare for baby without breaking the bank.



Maternity Clothes

Although I did buy some new maternity clothes from Old Navy (during the 30% off maternity sale), I had some success with my local thrift and consignment stores. I was able to get a few pairs of pants and shorts for significantly less. These stores had a specific maternity section, so be sure to ask if you can't find it.

I also made a few Wikston Tanks (seen here and here) that are still fitting nicely, but I may end up sewing some DIY shirts using these great tutorials from diymaternity.com.

Prenatal Yoga

I really wanted to do some prenatal yoga during this pregnancy but found the classes to be quite expensive (usually about $100 for 6-8weeks). My cousin told me about a great website called www.yogaglo.com, that provides unlimited online yoga "classes" for only $18/month. They have an amazing selection of pre- and post-natal yoga practice for all levels. It has been really great to do this in the comfort of my own home, especially now that the moves are getting harder!

Baby Gear

Try looking on Kijiji for used baby items. Tom and I scored a $600 stroller for only $350 (which included the car seat too). Before buying a stroller, I visited a local store to try out a few different brands. I settled on the Britax B-Ready, which has so many different configurations and allows easy removal of the infant car seat. But the price of $529 for just the stroller (add another $250 for the car seat) was just so much!

I was able to find a used 2010 model on Kijiji and negotiated a price of $350 for both the stroller and car seat. That's a savings of over $400! I know some people will not be comfortable buying a used car seat. But I did a lot of research to figure out if it had any product recalls and I trusted the Kijiji seller to be honest about it having never been in a car accident. Perhaps I'm naive but I like to think another mother wouldn't lie about that sort of thing!

A great source for brand new baby/kid items at discounted prices is babyhalfoff.com.  A friend told me about this website and we scored a great diaper sprayer for 50% off! There are different deals every day from clothing to cloth diapers.

Baby Freebies and Samples

Sign up for great baby product samples and coupons! Read this list of baby freebies put together by Coupon Christine.

Nursery Decor

Setting up the nursery can get expensive. Try painting or refinishing an old wooden dresser to use as a change table, like here and here. Mine is currently sitting in the garage with the drawers all primed, but still need to paint up the rest!

Make our own crib sheets! This is a relatively easy sewing project and I used this Tutorial by HoneyBear Lane. I bought a double top sheet from Value Village, gave it a good hot wash and sewed it up into an awesome crib sheet! I think there is still fabric leftover for another one too.

Family Photos

I was a bit disappointed with how our wedding photos turned out, so I've been looking forward to having an excuse for updated family photos! A local photographer was offering a mini-marathon photo session in October this year, so I decided to book a 20-min session and save some cash! This October marathon just happens to coincide with my last month of pregnancy, so we will get some nice maternity photos too. A 20-min marathon session cost us about half of what a full maternity/family photo session would cost. Obviously this is not a priority for everyone, so it may seem like just an "extra" cost.


Those are some of my thoughts and tricks for saving money! I'd love to hear about any ideas you have!

Whew! Is it seriously almost September? Where did August go?

I'm getting prepared for Fall and the onset of third trimester! But today I felt the intense urge to do something crafty, so here is my result: a Fall inspired burlap and chevron front door wreath.



Materials included a grape vine wreath base that I picked up at the Goodwill, a piece of burlap from Michael's craft store, various decorative flowers and feathers from Dollarama, a glue gun and some paint chip samples!


To assemble, I just dissected the feathers and flowers from the wire base and started glueing! The chevron was cut from some paint chip samples I had in one of my many craft drawers.



I really love how it turned out! Sometimes the best projects are the ones I don't plan down to the last detail.

Hope you have a great Labour Day weekend!

The guest bedroom in the basement is what Tom likes to call the "Outlaw Suite". It's not very big but at least gives us some space to throw a mattress on the floor. Except my parents (who use the room most often) started complaining about having to get up from this low mattress on the floor - so my dad and I came up with a plan to build a platform bed frame.

The problem with the basement is that nothing large will fit down the small staircase. The only options we had for a queen size mattress were to purchase a split box spring, or build something in the room that would never come out again...

I found this 'Hailey Platform Bed' project over on ana-white.com that worked out to be about $100 worth of wood and materials instead of $400+ for a split box spring. Plus, my dad and I like to build things.

I'm not going to go into details of how we built it since the tutorial above explains it all, but we omitted the headboard and sized the plans up to fit a Queen-size mattress.

You can see where this basement bedroom is on our House Floor Plan.








Like I mentioned above, we followed the instructions for the 'Hailey Platform Bed' project over on ana-white.com. She has great instructions and lots of example pictures. The only problem I have with this bed frame (and it's probably just me because I'm accident-prone) is that I bash my shin off the corner of the frame every-single-time I make the bed. I still have a scratch and bruise from the last time!

As you can see the room is FAR from decorator fantastic, but it's functional for now.

Four years ago today, I married the most caring, loving, accepting man, also my best friend. It was an amazing day full of memories with our family and friends.

Today I thought I would share some of my favourite details, DIY and otherwise, from our special day.

Some people would call me cheap, I like to use the term 'frugal'. I can't believe the price of wedding gowns these days....there was no way I was paying $1500 for my dress. So I found my dress at Gown Go Round, a "used" wedding gown boutique in Newmarket. Funny thing is - my dress was never actually used by a person. It is a pure silk gown by Canadian designer Alfred Sung, that was used on a department store mannequin for a perfume advertising display. Essentially a brand new dress that I got for $500! With such a sleek smooth fabric like silk - all I can say is thank god for Spanx.

My mom and I made the birdcage veil from $5 worth of fabric from a store on Queen St W in Toronto. The hair flower I made from a faux white peony and small feathers from Michael's craft store. Since the temperature decided to drop to a mere 2 degrees Celsius, I was so grateful I could wear my Grandma's vintage mink cape. It was so warm!



Our wedding venue was totally beautiful! The reception was held on the second floor of the The Gibson Centre in Allison, Ontario, an amazing old industrial building that was converted into a community, arts and culture centre.

My parents helped me rig up the head table backdrop. It was a collection of white fabric, vintage picture frames, and tissue paper poms. The centrepiece flowers for the guests' tables were a labour of love. Thank you to our wedding party and crazy friends for helping us make all of those paper flowers! My mom graciously assembled them all in pots covered with vintage nautical charts.


Each place setting also had our "glad-iola thank you" favour - a gladiola flower bulb inside a paper box (made from the same nautical charts/maps as the centrepiece pots).

I also loved our cake! My bff and dearest friend offered to make this cake and it was stunning! Such an amazing gift to us. Funny story though - she made the exact same paper flowers for the cake as I did for some of the church decorations, without even knowing it! The bird toppers were something I commissioned to my mom after I saw these on Etsy (the crafty gene runs in the family you can see!).

Instead of a traditional guest book, we had people sign the back of a vintage post card. We now have the post cards in a photo album which is fun to look through and read all the wonderful sentiments.

There are so many other details of the wedding that I could share, but this post would be a novel. Although these little details of the day are some of my favourites, the most special and amazing part of the day for me, was our ceremony. Being surrounded by the love and support of our family and friends was unforgettable. We were also so blessed to have my university a cappella group sing for us, which still gives me goose bumps. My uncle did such a wonderful job officiating the service and bringing such meaning to an important event. I remember standing at the front and looking out at everyone - I really tried to be still, breathe and take it all in. I am grateful I did.



Thank you to all of our family and friends for all of your help that day and before! You made our wedding day truly unforgettable. I cannot believe it has already been four years and I somehow love my man more and more each day.

So remember a few weeks ago I posted about the Washi Tape Light Plate Cover?? I'll let you click over and refresh your memory....



Turns out - that was a big DIY FAIL!!!! Let's all do the Failure Dance now - I failed today, I failed today, yeah yeah yeah!

I did this project while Tom was at work/school, so when he saw the blog post and came home and saw it in person....he basically told me that he hated it...sad face. To be honest, I wasn't totally in love with it either.

I decided to live with it for a little while to see if Tom would grow to at least 'like' it. Not happening...

Also, since I had to wrap the tape around into the hole in the cover, the extra thickness of the tape caused the button to 'stick' every time we turned the light on. And after a week or so, the tape started peeling off the plate.

So I chalked this project up to a big DIY Fail and ripped it all off.  I have seen other Washi switch cover projects turn out really well, but I wanted to let you all know that it just did not work for my type of switch cover. Gotta keep it real!

Here are some much better looking Washi tape projects:

• Washi Tape Light Switch Make Over by A Contented, Common Life
• Washi Tape Light Switch and Outlet Cover by That's What She Said
• Washi Tape Light Switch Cover by Clever Thursday

Update - see the results of this project

Our bedroom (bedroom #1 on floor plan) was a menagerie of colour when we moved in - orange and various shades of cream and taupe.  Once we painted all the walls and ceiling in one colour (Benjamin Moore - Portland Gray), we realized the trim was seriously yellow/cream. Painting out all the trim in Benjamin Moore Decorator's White brightened the whole room and just made it look crisp.

There is a funny little light switch in this bedroom; I'm not sure if it's even legal anymore. So when the previous owners painted their yellow trim, they also painted the light plate cover.  It's so weird, because it's painted from the inside of the plate. If you are wondering how the plate is attached to the wall, it kind of just pops on and off the clips near the button.




I probably could have just painted the same Decorator's White over the top of the plate, but it's super glossy plastic and I wasn't sure if it would stick.  Until we get an electrician in to switch the switch, here is my temporary solution to the yellow light switch plate - Washi Tape!


I picked up this cute ikat inspired washi tape from Michael's and basically taped over the plate cover and switch nubby.


I overlapped the tape slightly to match up the pattern. And I also matched up the pattern for the button.

A super simple project and temporary solution to an ugly looking light switch plate!  I think it works!

We've been living with a crappy IKEA Lack coffee table (you know the one that every single student buys) since before we were married four years ago. After seeing this coffee table from West Elm, and then seeing it's price tag, ($400!!!) the wheels in my head starting turning - maybe I can build something like this myself and get my dad to weld some legs?! Well that's exactly what I did last summer, with a lot of help from Tom and my family.

I decided I wanted to build the top from reclaimed barn-board, but needed to find a good cheap source for it.  Then along came my mom! She was living in Gimli Manitoba last summer and discovered the historic H.P. Tergeson & Sons general merchant store was undergoing a huge restoration of the pressed tin cladding on its facade. The restoration involved removing the original tin and 113 year old wooden panels from underneath and replacing it with specially pressed tin panels stamped from the original pattern.



As the bold confident woman that she is - my mom asked the construction crew if she could have some of the old wooden panels that were destined for the landfill. She called me and said "I found you boards for your coffee table!". I was a bit hesitant at first because I wasn't sure how we could refinish them. But after thinking about it, I got really excited about preserving some of this history and re-purposing it for our family.

We visited my parents in Gimli for a week last June and had the opportunity to work on this project. They have an awesome tool shed and barn to do the work in, and a bonus 50,000 mosquitoes biting every inch of your body! The boards were quite weathered and rough on the outside, and I didn't want the new coffee table to be a sliver-fest, so we borrowed a belt sander and planer from a family friend and got to work on making those boards look beautiful (but not before we removed every last nail so as not to damage the borrowed planer) - that's a really long sentence.







You can see this little video of my superior planing skills below.



Once the boards were planed down, we could see the beauty and character of the old nail holes and the colours that the boards had acquired from being outside for over 100 years. We had to leave Gimli at this point, so for the remainder of the summer, my dad worked on welding the steel angle-iron legs together and my mom finished off the boards with some boiled linseed oil. Thank you!





We were reunited with our beautiful boards in September, and as my birthday present we got to assemble it all together to see the finished product!




Whew! That was a lot of hard work. But I am thrilled with the result and how it looks in our new living room. It's a great conversation piece and I love having a little piece of Gimli in my home.

I work best under deadlines. So when we set a date for our housewarming and Tom's 30th Birthday open house, I knew I had to get some art on my walls. Traditionally I use the easy wire and hanger method for displaying art on the walls, but I was tired of that and wanted something different.



The materials for the ledge are straight off the shelves of Home Depot. I didn't even have to cut anything ....bonus! I used two 1x4 pine boards, and one 1x2 board at 6ft lengths. I also stained the assembled shelf with Varathane Wood Stain in American Walnut. Attaching it to the wall was pretty easy (with Tom's help), I just used five wall anchors and screws (oh and a level would be good!). To determine how high the ledge should go, I sat in the dining room chair and Tom positioned the ledge until I could no longer see its underside (where the pocket-holes are), no magic formula or number.

1. Norwegian Fjord Print by Paul Zizka Photography, custom framing by Creative Art and Frame, London, ON
2. Sunrise Embroidery Fibre Art by Kathleen Campau, custom framing by Saline Picture Frame Company, Saline, MI
3. "Resting" Artist's Proof by Kristina Campbell
4. Bergen Harbour Linocut Print by Ketil Kvam, Bergen, Norway
5. Vincent van Gogh, Almond blossom postcard from the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam
6. Handpainted deer antler by me, inspired by Cassandra Smith on Etsy
7. "You are sweet like honey" print by Katie Daisy on Etsy
8. Bee watercolour, original by Margaret McFetridge
9. Our Ginger girl, original oil painting by Emily LeMesurier

Does anyone else collect art like we do? What's your favourite method of hanging or framing?