Mercury Glass Meltdown!

The other day after class I headed out to Ikea for some much needed retail therapy! I really wanted to dress up my dining room table area and so I went to the big blue and yellow store with a plan. First on my list were slip covers for my two leather end chairs...which one of my darling cats recently took his aggression out on ( I was so sad too because these leather chairs seemed to be the only ones the cats had kept their paws off of). Then I picked up some new curtains and headed over to look at the gorgeous candle holders they had in a polished silver look! I wanted to make a collection of them on my dining table but at $16.99 each I just couldn't afford to make a collection. Then I spotted these cool packages of 5 pillar candles (all different sizes) for $8.99. So I scooped up 3 of them and headed for home....

I didn't make it too much further before I saw Home Sense and thought I'd pop in to see if maybe they had some polished looking candle holders for a cheaper price. Well needless to say they didn't but what they did have were some mercury glass candle holders that I had actually been eyeing for quite some time now. So I purchased a few of them and made one last stop on the way home....the grocery store.

Heres where the meltdown part comes in. When I was putting my groceries in the car my new beloved candle holders fell out of the car and smashed all over the parking lot pavement :(

I was determined to fix this situation lol! So I pulled out the crazy glue and went to town....talk about the biggest and hardest puzzle I have ever done!

So  before I show you what my dining area looks like now, I thought I'd post a few before photos of how this room has evolved (keep in mind it looked even more different when we first moved in).

And here it is now.... it looks so soft and romantic in person! Can't wait to have a candlelit dinner with my soldier when he gets home!

The slipcovers were a near perfect fit even though the chairs were from Pier One!

Have a Wonderful Day!

Let the Fur Balls Fly!

Fur balls and hair clumps are about as common in our home as the all too familiar dust bunny! Sometimes it feels like the Wild West around here....I'll look out of the corner of my eye and a fur wad resembling a bramble bush will roll by. I swear if I collected them all I could make a whole extra animal! I really don't know how its possible for them to shed that much hair!!! And surprizingly Toto is the worst culprit. Funny since the webpage I read about his breed described him as a minimal shedder....LIES!
So since I am having Linen slipcovers made rather than Fur slipcovers I thought I might as well think about the pet hair issue I have with most fabrics I have encountered. I really really want to go with Linen, especially since I really want the look in my inspiration photo. So I set out to find out which would attract pet hair the least: 100% Linen, Linen and Polyester blend, or Linen and Cotton blend. So I asked the lovely posters over at DecorPad for their advice on this. And while I was at it, I also asked what fabrics in general are not pet hair magnets!
My friend Norma posted this awesome link for me of an article from Apartment Therapy. It was so helpful! This article led me to this cool website called Crypton Super Fabrics. Their fabrics claim to give you freedom from stains, spills, bacteria, and odour...by the sounds of it they were created by Superman himself! They had some nice looking upholstery fabrics which you can order swatches of. Their twill  fabric would be great for slipcovers...although they didn't have any shades of white in the twill, Oat was pretty darn close! And they don't have any linens either but they did have a fabric called Bianca Snow (a pure white) which sounded amazing....inspired by men's suiting...'unexpectedly soft but able to withstand intense wear'!
Not only do they sell fabrics but they retail many items from furniture to dog beds!

Love this one!

I think I know a couple of dogs who would just LOVE to curl up on these!

Their dog beds are both disinfectable and washable! They cost between $109-175 depending on the size you need. Considering their durability and all their customer appreciation photos they have I think it's worth the extra bucks...especially if you want to get your dogs and cats to sleep in their own bed instead of yours or the couch (in our case).

So I'm thinking Toto and Calypso just might each get a gorgeous doggie bed for Christmas!!!

Our Red Letter Day

If you are wondering where I have been this past week, I was enjoying my last few moments with my husband Nathaniel before his deployment for Afghanistan. Actually Halloween fell on the day before Nathaniel's departure. I was so fortunate to have my Mom, sister Jessica, Dad and Leah all fly out to Edmonton to give me some much appreciated moral support. We had a lot of laughs and fun. We all had planned to have a pumpkin carving contest only to discover that ALL the grocery stores in Edmonton were sold out of pumpkins!!!! AHHHH! So what did we resort to? Well, we carved watermelons, honey dew melons, and pineapples. Lets just say we got quite the cool reaction from all the little trick-or-treaters! Here is a photo of Nathaniel and me on Halloween dressed as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf (in Grandma's clothes):

Here is our front grave-yard and one of our fruit pumpkins!

Here are just a few photos of me and Nathaniel saying "see you later" to each other. It was a hard, hard day. I'll spare everyone the really emotional photos. I'm doing my very best to keep extra busy and think positively to pass the time. We are SO proud of him.

Here he is about to head out the doors

But he came back for one last kiss :) I love you

Thank you for looking,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Halloween

And I just wanted to also take a moment to thank everyone for all the positive thoughts and prayers for his safe return! I am SO grateful for this.