At-Home Beach Retreat (Vacation Gallery Wall)

This weekend was all about finishing off our half-done projects. While Tom installed a new toilet at his parents' house on Saturday, I finished staining the deck furniture and left it to dry. Then on Sunday we framed and hung some of our favourite vacation pictures in the computer room that was recently painted. (Go here to see the before.)

The computer room is really a multi-purpose room - Tom has his computer there, but there's also a television and a loveseat so other people can hang out with him. And Sasha has claimed the ottoman as her own. That window is her big screen TV.

So why not make it a little more comfortable to hang out in? On one of our last visits to Ikea I bought a bunch of 8x10 Ribba frames, but then I got home and didn't know where to put them. I had considered putting them in the living room, but with the white photo shelves it was just too much white. So they've been packed away for months. But now I had this expanse of blue wall that was looking bare and begging for some accessorizing.

I couldn't decide if I wanted them to hang horizontally or vertically, so I did a little photoshopping. It was just a quick-and-dirty job and nothing is to scale, but it gave me an idea of how it would look. Horizontal definitely looked better.

I went through our vacation photos and picked out the ones with the brightest colours - lots of oranges, reds, and greens, and a few with every colour of the rainbow. The frames come with white matting, but I wanted to tie into the colour of the loveseat and ottoman, so I used tan dropcloth material as additional matting and printed the photos out as 5x7's. Getting dropcloth to lie flat is a chore, people. I ironed that sucker forever and there are still a few wrinkles that I'm just going to have to live with.

To hang them, we found the centre point of the couch and made a mark above it on the wall. Each frame had a piece of paper inside that was almost the same size as the frame so I used those as templates and taped them to the wall to get an idea of spacing. We moved them up and down until we liked what we saw, but it soon became apparent that the wall would look better with eight frames rather than six. So I had to go back and find two more colourful photos that I liked.

Our method of hanging:

The frames are 16¾ inches wide with 3 inches between them, so we measured out 38 inches from the center mark (16¾ x 4 frames plus 3 x 3 spaces, divided by 2) to find the outer edge of the last frame. The first hook then went in 8⅜ inches (half the width of the frame) from that mark (and about 2 inches down from the top). We used WallBiter hooks because we've used them before and they are very strong. To hang the lower hooks, Tom first hung all of the top ones and then measured down from them. The frames are 12¾ inches long with a 3 inch space between them, so he measured down 15¾ inches from the top hook to the spot for the lower one. Once the frames were hung he made slight adjustments to the hanging wire on the back of each frame to get them level.

I pulled some square, white napkins out of my fabric stash and quickly made a couple of throw pillows. I used Polyfill to stuff them so they are nice and squishy. I'd like to find some pillows with blues and greens in them, but until I do I've added a super-soft throw that I found at Goodwill. The white pillows are small so I added the map cushions that I had in the living room (Benzy Land from Ikea but I don't think they have them anymore).

The rest of the room looks like this - we still need something for the wall above Tom's desk. He's thinking maybe a large framed map - possibly an old one of the Hawaiian islands.

The word cozy keeps coming to me whenever I try to describe the room now. I'm so drawn to the beachy look, and this makes me feel like I'm hanging out in my very own cottage.

Anniversary Adventure Weekend (Blue Mountain Resort)

Our anniversary was a few weeks ago, but we didn't have time to celebrate until just this past weekend. We don't normally make a big to-do about our anniversary - just dinner usually - but we were bored and decided to have some fun.  So we went to Blue Mountain resort near Collingwood, Ontario to try out the summer activities. The last time we were at Blue Mountain it rained the entire weekend, so we weren't able to do anything outdoors. This weekend was beautiful though and we "played" until we were exhausted.

We stayed in the resort village at Seasons at Blue - with a room that looked out on the mountains. This was the view on Saturday morning. Perfect.

We started the day with a trip to the Collingwood Farmers Market. It's a small market, but they have a wide variety of things for sale - vegetables, fruit, smoked meats, bread, jam, cookies, and handmade furniture. We bought some salami, jam, zucchini, and...something else, but it's a gift so I can't talk about it.

We also met this German shepherd puppy. He came from a litter of eleven puppies that had been abandoned. How adorable is that face? I didn't want to leave him. Sigh. Puppies.

But we had to get back to the resort because we had an appointment with some trees. We'd signed up to try out the Timber Challenge High Ropes. There are seven different courses with rope bridges, cargo nets, zip lines, and wobbly wooden bridges, all 10 to 50 feet above the ground.

You start out with ground school to learn how to use the equipment, then you work your way up through harder and harder elements. I'm not particularly afraid of heights - if I feel secure - but when the bridge you're on is swinging around, or you're walking across a cable with just dangling ropes to hold on to - that's scary. 

Here I am on my first zip line. I forgot to plant my feet at the end and almost fell backwards. Bit of a moment of panic there.

There aren't a lot of pictures of me on the course as Tom got yelled at for using the camera phone up on the platforms, but I got some photos of him once I was back on the ground.

This one scared me the most. Tom called it the "pogo sticks". He crossed it twice, but once was enough for me. Those poles are only attached at the top. If you go back to the first picture you can barely see the bottoms of the poles in the top left of the photo. That's how high up we were.

And check out my new bruises! I didn't even feel them until the next day. Both of my forearms are pretty beat up too. One guy who did the hardest course came back down with scraped and bloody arms. This was tough!

After 3 hours were were tired and hungry so we headed back down the mountain for some food. But on the way Tom decided that he wanted to try out the climbing wall. It wasn't a difficult one but he'd never done it before so he couldn't say no.

We stopped for dinner at Rusty's at Blue, a restaurant in the village, and I had the most amazing Cajun catfish tacos. These were seriously the best tacos I've ever eaten. Huge pieces of fish, spicy sauce, guacamole, and homemade tortillas.

We spent the rest of the evening in the pool and hot tub, and then crashed for the night. The next morning we got up and headed out again, to the Ridge Runner this time. It's a mountain coaster where you control how fast you go, and you can reach speeds of 25 mph if you go full out. I couldn't take pictures while on it (holding on too tight!), so here are some from our last visit and from around the 'net.

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Once the adrenaline rush had worn off, we grabbed some lunch at an Irish Pub, and then rode the gondola up the mountain to take a walk around the Niagara escarpment.

Watch out for those Segway gangs!

By this time it was starting to get overcast and threatening rain, so we toured through the shops, grabbed some frozen yogurt, and headed home. This is the first time we planned something for our anniversary, and it was a blast. Can't wait 'til next year!

Lego Table from a Coffee Table (Flashback!)

When I was putting the bookcase back together after painting the front room, I came across a photo of my very first DIY project. This thing has to be 10 years old at least. Before I even knew what a blog was.

The table was a Christmas gift for Tom's nephews and I was so darn proud of it. Unfortunately I only took one picture of the finished product, and no pictures of the steps taken to get there. Please excuse the Nascar blanket thrown over the couch - it was that era too.

The table started out as a plain coffee table that my mom found for me at a resale shop. I was in college and didn't have very much furniture of my own. The center had a glass insert, and the shelf underneath was perfect for storing remotes, books, cookies...you know, the usual. Years later we upgraded our furniture and I almost got rid of this guy, but then inspiration hit.

First I removed the glass insert (I wonder what happened to it?), and stripped the honey-coloured finish off of the wood. I remember I then restained it in a dark, dark shade (think ebony) with a poly topcoat. But I didn't like it, so I stripped that off too and tried again. I think this might be Minwax's Provincial.

There is a mesh net in the center well to hold all of the loose Legos. It was the bottom of an unused laundry bag - something like this:

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We glued the raw edge of the bag around the frame of the well, and then finished it with some white cord as the glue was a little rough to the touch.

We bought a huge sheet of grey Lego baseplate and cut it to fit the two flat surfaces on the top. We just glued it right to the table. This gave the kids a place to build at a comfortable height, and all of their Legos were right there close by. There was some baseplate left over, so we cut it in two and glued each piece to the edge of the center shelf, to give them a couple of extra places to build.

Nowadays, you can find hundreds of homemade Lego tables out there, but back then, we were feeling pretty original. We had seen a couple of pre-fab, factory-made tables, but I liked the sturdiness of ours. And with that solid wood, I think it's something that could get passed down from generation to generation. Do you think Legos will be around in another 60 years?