Growin' Stuff: One Become Two

Last year we had a fantastic idea to have a garden box to grow some of our own veggies.
To my mind, it was a great success.

I blogged about it here:
http://wheelehouse.blogspot.ca/2013/06/growin-stuff-garden-box.html

It was a 6'-0" by 12'-0" box and did extremely well for us last year.

It was so exciting to see the first of the plants starting to grow from seed, and even more exciting to see it really flourish.

Reclaimed Coat Rack: Everything Old is New Again

This house and the modest sized yard, have been a great source of found items. I kind of love how I have managed to find new uses for them.

Included in this found items list is an old coat rack that we found in the shed.

It is a simple design, not necessarily something to sand, stain, and bring inside, but certainly can be a very useful item.

Easy Home Fixes: Replacing the Thermostat

A bit of a benign project, but aren't most household jobs?

Anyway, I thought I would share changing an analog thermostat to a digital one.
For some reason, I have to do this every time we move into a new house.
This house being 140 years old, it is understandable that it had a crappy analog thermostat, but our last condo was brand new, and still had one???

The before photo - pretty standard old thermostat. Ours is really not very accurate either. Also, perhaps being a designer has made me nit-picky, but I can't stand the fact that it doesn't line up with the switch plate.

Christmas Fun: The Annual Card 2013

This is a lovely winter we are having this spring, don't you think?

As we speak, I am watching the snow fall here in Carleton Place. It looks like we already have 6-9 inches out there. I wonder how much longer it will fall?

Anyway, last post I showed you all our first annual Christmas card of 2012. 
This time, I will show you this year's annual card.

Of course, we enlisted the help of our very talented friends from heLENS photography, Jeff and Helen again.
You can find their photos here: http://www.helensphotography.ca/PhotoShoots/Friends
I had a wacky idea to do a cabin theme with the whole family's head mounted on the wall. Fun idea, but the execution of it was interesting to say the least.

Christmas Fun: The Annual Card 2012

We just received another 10 cm dump of snow, so I feel justified in doing some more Christmas catch up.

Today, we talk about our annual Christmas card!

We started thinking about our annual Christmas card after we were married, but didn't actually put one out until Christmas 2012.

I am not sure what caused us to be so daring, but the idea was in my head, and there was little I could do to stop it. Also, as usual, our friends Jeff and Helen of HeLENS Photography were more than willing to help us out with this little project, no matter how bizarre.

You can check them out here: http://www.helensphotography.ca/PhotoShoots/Friends

Anyway...

...We invited them over to our house and gave them the basic concept. We were hoping to get all three of us in the photo, but Grey was less willing to stay put, or to catch the light the same way our extremely pale faces did, or keep his Santa hat on.

They say never work with kids or animals...

Christmas Fun

Alright it is has been far too long since my last post - Soooooo you are in for a bit of a Christmas re-cap.
Besides, the way I look at it, winter is still in full swing here in Carleton Place. As I speak it is -20C and with a huge dump of snow a couple of days ago, I think winter will be sticking around a while longer.

This year the in-laws were coming to see our house, and spend Christmas with us for the first time.
Of course, we needed to do a little preparation before they came, you know, clean and Christmas-i-fy the place.

Retro Cabinet: Painterly Approach

I picked up this great little retro cabinet a long while back, and it has pretty much sat in our sun room all summer. All I really managed to do in the past year is give it a light sanding.

Being that it was just a cheap laminate finish, I didn't hesitate to paint it.