Around This House

I've been wanting to start a post series to chronicle everyday life in our tiny home. I know that everything seems to familiar right now and completely "unspecial" but when I look back on these days I'll miss them. Having some small snaps of the tiny little corners of magic in our home will help me see them now, and give me something to treasure later. I hope that if I look back at them they'll give me a rush of the same feelings I'm feeling now. There's something so cool about seeing a picture, or smelling a smell, and instantly being transported back in time. So that's what I'm doing here, creating my own little time machine.

So without further adieu, here is what life is currently looking like around this house:

 << The perfect welcome home >>

 << The cosiest bed >>

 << Current reads inspired by watching Montage of Heck.  One is a fictional book about a girl who O.Ds and comes back to life with Kurt Cobain as her boyfriend- full disclosure: the idea is interesting but I'm still not sold on the execution so far. The other is a collection of Kurt Cobain's journals >>

 << Helping hands >>

 << Home Sweet Home >>

 << Demin jackets and summer evenings>>

 << Indoor not-so-wildlife>>

<< My favourite corner>>

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown

Time Traveler

Happy Birthday Shauna!

My wonderful best friend Shauna turned 25 this month and we thought she deserved an adventure. 25 is a big deal. A quarter century, ten years into our friendship, a time to celebrate!

First up for the day was a trip to Centre Island. While Toronto is an amazing, bustling metropolis, if you hop on a ten minute ferry you can get to a beautiful island with endless activities. We grabbed some drinks and lunch on the island before setting out to go canoeing and kayaking.

When we found out that our rentals would take a bit, we went exploring. We precariously climbed over rocks, trying to get as close to the lakes waves as we could. Surprisingly none of us fell in.

When it came time to get in our rentals we have one canoe, three single kayaks and one tandem kayak. We raced each other, we splashed around in some questionable water, and when we all got tired we linked ourselves up and floated next to each other in the shade.

What I didn't know was that there is a pirate ship that people can go on that lets you blast people with water. Unlucky for me, I was sharing a canoe with two other people. One of them was dead set on getting us wet, so under the wrath of water fire we went. I did not handle it gracefully but looking back it was hilarious, especially when we were getting so soaked that we couldn't see anything and we rammed our canoe into the boat and almost tipped. So many close calls with that mystery water that day.

After that we got ready for dinner and went out to Tequila Bookworm. We picked it because it had a patio that was the perfect little nook in the city for our dinner.

Of course we couldn't stop at dinner. Our original plan was to go go-kart racing but our timing was very off because by the time we got to Playdium, the go-karts were closing in 15 minutes. Instead we spent the night acting like children in the arcade, playing virtual reality games, and collecting tickets, which we eventually used to buy candy, like the true adults we are.

It was a completely wonderful day and I couldn't have thought of a better group of humans to spend it with.

I had to include the below picture because it's my favourite thing that I've ever laid eyes upon. Welcome to your 25th year Shauna!

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
Birthday Hype Man

Climbing Rocks

About a year and a half ago Jordan and I decided to join a rock climbing gym. We found Grand River Rocks in Kitchener and it has been one of the best places in the world to us. We've brought tons of friends to join us, I've started taking yoga, and we've really seen our skills develop in the time we've been climbing.

This past weekend we got the chance to move on to the next big, bad challenge: outdoor rock climbing.

Jordan had met a friend at tradeschool who had a lot of experience in outdoor rock climbing so we had a great guide for our first time climbing outside. We met in Milton and climbed Rattlesnake Point.

Let me tell you, this was WAY harder than I had imagined. This was definitely a step up from indoor rock climbing! When you're indoors you're following a set path that someone engineered for you. Outside, you pick the path, and that can make it a lot easier on you, or a lot harder.

I was climbing up a wall and following the crack of the wall when my instincts took me to the right. I found myself very far right from where the rope was, which meant if I fell, the rope would swing me back underneath it. The below picture shows in green where I should have been and in yellow where I actually was:

I was holding on to the wall trying to find my next hold and my legs started shaking. I didn't feel confident enough in my next move to just go for it so I decided I'd rather let go and be prepared for the swing. I sat back, let go of the rock and the rope pulled me quickly back towards the crack. It was a quick swing and I hit the rope on the way, almost pulling my belayer over. The hit didn't hurt and I mostly had control of my swing, not to mention my belayer quickly and confidentially handled the whole situation. It was a bit scary, but also exhilarating. That's just an example of how much harder outdoor rock climbing can be.

 All together it was an incredibly great day. It was definitely one of the toughest things I've ever tried, but I want more than ever to go back out there.

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
The Girl Who Fought a Rope and Lived to Tell the Tale

PETER!

Last weekend Jordan and I welcomed a new edition into our fam. His name is Peter and he is the cutest/also rudest member of our household and I love him.

Jordan and I had been discussing getting a cat for a few weeks and we decided that last weekend would be the weekend we'd bring a baby kitty home. I was sitting on the couch Saturday morning scrolling through the selection of cats at the KW Humane Society when I saw they were having an adopt-athon THAT DAY. All adoptions were $50 (versus the usual $150 adoption fee). Um. Yes.

We ran our butts to the Humane Society to see if there was a cat there for us. I saw a little black kitten and said to Jordan "We have to get that one, then I can pretend I'm a witch." He agreed to look at him and we went into his room, which he shared with a little grey kitten. Well the black kitten was zonked out and did not pay attention to us at all but the grey kitten was happy to have us there. He let us pick him up, he was friendly and while Jordan was holding him I said "I think I like this guy better" and he said "Me too!" So we got Peter, the cat who never caught our eye. Sorry dude.

We are so happy we got him, though. He's definitely a bit of a jerk sometimes (which I think is just a personality trait shared among cats), but he's adorable, he loves to fall asleep in your lap, and we're completely smitten with the crazy, hyper, cuddly kitten.

I can now officially be the crazy cat lady I always wanted to be.

<< Matching Mean Muggs>>

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
Cat Mom (Non-Witch)

DIY Couch Table

When Jordan and I went to buy the wood for our headboard I picked up a piece of wood for a project of my own.

I had fallen deeply in love with this couch table when I saw it here. 

I showed anyone who would look this amazing piece and declared proudly that "I'm going to make that for myself!" We bought the wood and then I was fully committed. 

The table looked pretty easy to make so I drew up some simple plans with Jordan using our couch to decide the measurements. 

The first thing we did was cut the wood.

Word to the wise: bad things happen when you stand down wind from a saw. 

Next step was to give it a good stain. I used the same stain from our headboard a) because it's just economical and b) because its a b-e-a-utiful deep, stain that I'm completely smitten with.

I then enlisted Jordan's help to screw the thing together. This was probably the trickiest part of the whole endeavour. It involved a good amount of team work to make sure you were holding everything together and keeping it straight while the other person screwed.

Ta-dah:

The last step was my least favourite of all: varathane. 

Here's a little something about me: I'm pretty impatient and I love instant gratification. This does not always go well with projects, but I push myself anyways.

I knew I wanted a really glossy finish on my table and I knew my impatience would keep me from sitting around putting coats of see-through goo upon coats of see-through goo. I thought I could bypass this by buying a more expensive varathane that boasted a 1 coat finish while the other varathanes  called for 3. The joke was on me because I ended up having to do 3 coats. This ended up being the longest process of all as I left a day for drying in between coats. You also have to sand in between coats- sanding is the bane of my existence (for reasoning: see my love of instant gratification vs the basic non-existent visable change of sanding).

I pushed through and I'm glad I did because I am now the happy owner of a beautiful couch table that I brought to life from a simple picture.

Now to go convince Jordan that we need to build a new coffee table....

From the desk of: 

Taylor Brown
Future Ron Swanson 

Our DIY Rustic Headboard

Ever since Jordan and I moved in together last year we have had one lasting struggle: the fight for a good nights sleep.

I am not going to try and play romantic here: life is better with a bed to yourself. Yes, if Jordan decided to buy another bed and sleep in a separate room than me I would be pretty dang upset, but I will not for a second pretend like I don't get a little giddy when I know that Jordan is going out of town and I'm getting the bed to myself. Being able to sprawl across an entire bed is one of life's greatest luxuries. I think Jordan would agree too.

My incredibly dramatic stance on bed politics comes from the fact that our first 8 months in our house were spent sharing a double bed. We recently upgraded to a queen and team moral has greatly improved.

The only problem with our upgrade was that I had to lose my beloved rod-iron bed frame and we were left with a pretty underwhelming scenario:

Instead of spending the money on another bed frame we decided to strap on our work boots and make our very own headboard. 

We started with 8 pieces of furniture grade lumber (plus one extra for a special DIY I'll be sharing with you soon). 

1. I cannot tell you what size the lumber was. I just looked at the different sizes of wood and chose what I thought best matched the picture in my head

2. Do not bother with furniture grade lumber... you'll soon see why

We then destroyed the wood (see why you don't need to start with nice wood?!)

We hit the wood with hammers, banged screws on it, scratched it with the back of a hammer, took a drill bit to the edges...we did it all. 

After we had thoroughly destroyed the wood to our liking, we got to staining! We chose a dark stain and left it on for 15 minutes before wiping it off. 

After the staining was done I drew up my idea for how I'd like the wood to be laid out.We chose to cut each piece randomly so it would look more rustic.(Full disclosure: this probably would have best been done before staining since we had to cut the wood, destroy the edges,  and then stain the edges .)

This shot provides the best example of our headboard once it was done:

Once everything was dry we simply nailed the boards to the wall and voila! We had our rustic headboard!

This is a pretty simple DIY if you have the tools. Luckily Jordan has every tool in the book so we were all set that way, otherwise you better go to the hardware store with some seriously well thought out plans and you can get them to cut the wood for you. Time-wise we did this over a weekend, as the stain needed time to dry. So if you have some free time and the will to do it, I highly recommend this DIY. 

Now our bed is not only a place where two people can comfortably sleep, but it's a place we actually want to sleep. Three yawns all around!

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown

Capturing Moments

A few weeks ago Erika and I decided to take a photography course to finally learn how to use our cameras without the assistance of the automatic feature. I've had my camera for years but until I took this course I had no idea how it truly worked. Besides that I had almost zero understanding of what makes a good picture. The answer: light and shot setup (basically, how you capture the things in your shot and where you place them).

We learned things like how to focus on something in the foreground:

And how to focus through something onto it's background:

We learned about portraiture:

And colour and shot set up:

And then things got really fun when we experimented with some new tricks:

Now we feel like certified pros with our cameras in hand and we can't wait to continue to build our skills outside of class.

From the desk of:

Taylor Brown
Lensgazer