Hannotte

it’s like everyone forgot.

…that I forgot to mention last week because of aforementioned infections:

1) The Marion House book Hello! Neighbor Post went up!!!!!!

2) I’m starting a business!!!!

Before I show you the pictures of my mom’s house (dad lives here too but has nothing to do with how it looks so he gets no credit, but MAYBE i will post a picture of his WINDMILL THAT WILL SAVE THE WORLD later) - anyway, before that, I thought you’d like to hear about my massive ear infections that I got last week.

No? This is the house I grew up in, 15 minutes outside of Saskatoon, Sask. When we moved in it hadn’t been touched since it was built in 1977 - rust coloured carpet and all. I’m not the way I am because of some fluke - my mom re-wallpapered our dining room in Hamilton about four hundred times. She has every issue of Canadian House and Home. She is the thriftiest renovator there is (but not by choice, DAD). The kitchen was renovated when we moved in, but she kept the same cabinets and just re-purposed them, and has since re-painted them/added new hardware at least three times. Also the counter tops, which started out PINK, have been painted with a faux-stone look! It looks better than it sounds, and my dad is a painter so you have to paint every surface at least seven times before you’re allowed to replace it. But I wasn’t allowed to take pictures of the kitchen because it’s messy. So use your imaginations? Next-level blogging.

Here’s the living room:

Cute, huh? The art is done by my cousin (I have one hanging over my couch) - Humboldt Magnussen (fake name alert).

This is a table and chair set that they have had since before they got married (35 years ago). It’s been stained, stripped, painted, etc a million times. I don’t know when it started, but now the top has the names of everyone in our family engraved on the top. Beatrix has started making her marks, too.

The bathroom - this was just done last year. The chair was in the barn and I love it’s shape and matte paint. The colour on the walls is one of the best gray’s i have ever, ever seen. Good work, ma.

First, let’s all agree that it’s great to be bombarded with inspiration day-in-and-day-out from the gazzilion blogs we read, tumblrs we follow, etc, etc. But let’s admit, too, that seeing things makes us do dumb things sometimes. Like buy gigantic rugs. Like 11x12 rugs for the pretty paltry sum of $200 because earlier that day you saw this image:

Or Erin @ Design Crises’ Playroom

And even though your house looks nothing like this, you think, “I NEED A RUG LIKE THAT.”  And you begin to think of all the places you could use it, and so you go on CraigsList and you find this:

And you think, “Okay, it looks pretty neon. Maybe that’s good. I don’t know. It’s so big and the price is amazing for something so big. DO IT.” So they kindly deliver it to you, and it is beautiful, but yes, it’s big. Very big. Too big? So you try to put it in your master bedroom, which looks like this (yes, this is where I sleep. yes, the ceiling fan. YES the curtain panel nailed up. YES the mint green.)

But I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried, by yourself, to maneuver a rug of this size and weight under and around furniture because it friggin sucks and hurts and I went to bed that night with it half shoved under and piled up around the bed.

So the next morning I decide to try it in Bea’s room. THIS PURCHASE WON’T BE IN VEIN, being the idea. Yeah, looks okay in pictures against the blue-black wall (from the iphone, natch), but it’s wall-to-wall and I can’t close the door. Sometimes function rules over form, I’m afraid.

So then Willa pipes up that maybe it would work in her room so I haul the mother in there and lift the mattress and various other furnitures to get it in there. And it looks like this:

BARF.

The only way I could tell this story is because my sister is buying the rug off me for her house which has a circus bezerkus theme and will work perfectly in her TV room for wall-to-wall luxury. Happy ending, yes - raw fingers, sore back and children exposed to much swearing? Not so good. Lesson to learn? CHILL OUT.

I’m looking for lighting. Just looking. Pretty much every fixture in the house needs replacing. So, I head to my usual cheapo resources and noticed today that IKEA has these crumpled characters and I loooove them and they’re SEVEN bucks. Probably ONE dollar in the states. They remind me of this creation in a kitchen featured in Restoration Home, one of my all-time favorite decor books.

(excuse preamble goes here)

Here’s what I’ve been up to - last Monday, The Marion House Book was here taking pictures for a Hello! Neighbor feature so OBVIOUSLY in the days leading up I had all kinds of things on a to-do list and exactly ZERO of those things got done. i wanted to paint the entrance way, the stairs, etc etc etc but when it came down to it: it was nice outside, Marc was home for once, and it didn’t take priority over family fun times. It was great to meet Emma finally, and I realized after they (Emma and photographer Kristen) left that I didn’t even offer them anything to eat or drink and I’m a huge asshole. That’s what happens when I’m nervous.

And then I had some great news from Arren Williams and we’ll be shooting my kitchen in a month or so for a feature on his site. This means that we need new appliances. The fridge, which is approximately 4ft high and 1 ft wide recently lost its last condiment shelf and I think Marc would stab it if he could. The dishwasher and the stove we bought used which is fine, but they are both lacking and falling apart in various ways and guess what? If you get the appliances in a package, you usually save. So we’re looking for something ECONOMICAL. And NOT STAINLESS. Over it.

Also, I’ve been working with a couple who recently bought an awesome mid-century gem out in Scarborough. So nice to not think about a traditional Toronto house for a bit! Here is how that’s coming along in Olioboard form:

It’s an L-shaped living/dining that requires two seating areas, but it’s not big enough for two REAL seating areas, so I’ve put a day bed smack in the middle on the far end of the room. But, this is only the first round of design-vollying so expect the final result to look nothing like these!

Now. Where the f is spring.