A New Look.

When I first started blogging over 10 years ago, so many of the blogs that I was attracted to featured soft lines, cozy photos and daily life content. That is still what I love about blogging and I set out to create the same. I chose a background I loved and never thought that I'd wake up one day to find my background blank. No graphics, no color, boring! It's taken some time to find another template, and though I'm not complete sold on the one I installed today, it will have to do for now until I can either gather some pennies to pay someone to make one, or I keep looking until the right one comes along. If I had a huge readership and even had commenters, spending the dollars would be fine. Time will tell which route to take. Hope you like this tiny fix!

~ Chy

Inside Views.

I'm going to start my video series this month of our little cottage in the big woods. For now, two shots of a view I had the other day when I was sitting at our dining room table. Both are at the front of our cottage. Our little living room is across the hall from the dining room. In our other house, we had double french doors on the living room and I loved when my kids were little, we always had a beautiful, sun filled tidy room. We lived in the family room that was just a step down from our kitchen and nook. It filled the entire back of our house and was comfortable and our favorite place. The living room was our special spot at the end of the day, or when guests popped in. Where our Christmas Tree landed, and the best place to read a book on a rainy day. The move for designers and home builders to delete formal living rooms and dining rooms from homes now may work for many. But not for our family. We had to design this cottage because every house plan we looked at had no living and dining rooms options, which was sad. I love these intentional, comfortable spaces and so glad we advocated for both.

The second photo is looking thru the french door to the butler's pantry (aka the tea cupboard) and the kitchen. My apron is hanging on the right side. I'm so thankful we again advocated for what we wanted. In this case, a vintage inspired kitchen, with solid wood cabinetry painted a sage green, with ivory accents to match our AGA range from England. Black granite to keep the look with the black top of the range. We continued the cabinets in the laundry room, which is the sliding door at the back of the hall, as well as in our bathrooms, the desk under the stairs and the bookcases in the family room. The only cabinet that is different is the half bath on the main floor. We bought that unit and painted it to match the other cabinetry. A uniform look with a vintage style. And our own eclectic design all over.

More to come this month as Spring begins to emerge.

~ Chy

Vintage Home.

I love my Country Living magazine, the U.K. edition that I have to search for each month but always find. It's often a month behind and yesterday, we stumbled upon the March edition. Such a good read and I love how some of the little character styles we incorporated into our cottage show up in homes featured in the magazine. Love the articles, the artwork and the inspiration. Recently we discovered that Country Living has created a new version called "Country Living Vintage Home" and I'm in love again! It's a huge edition as you can see by the first photo. I'm not sure and will have to check later if it's going to be a monthly offer or periodically. I'm going thru it slowly and enjoying each and every page. When we were at Indigo yesterday, they still had copies of this first one, so it could be a quarterly.

It was a busy day yesterday, between work and connecting with my staff virtually for resident rounds in the morning, driving our car in to town for a new windshield and then running back to pick it up again later in the day, and then a board meeting last night. All good stuff but I was tired last night. Expected to sleep through the night but actually had a crappy night. So now I've woken up exhausted. However, once I'm done my post, I'm off for my workout and then a nice shower. Then I'll be good to go. A quieter morning today, which is perfect, so I can catch up. Then a counselling session @ 11, lunch, then my team and I meet each Wednesday @ 1. I love this meeting as we talk about our clients and dream about new projects! I have to check if I have another session @ 4. Can't recall if last week we decided to book again, but it will be in my case notes for that client. In between, I plan to drive in to hospice, get dressed up in PPE and check in quickly with a new resident who I've been chatting with on the phone, pick up a few items I need (files and my laptop) so I can keep working from home as directed by our ED, and water my plant. Then home for a quiet night. Not a super exciting day but I am looking forward to connecting with my clients, my team and to be outside as much as possible ~ it's a blue sky day with a 20 degree C prediction. And then, can you guess what? Yup! Snow tomorrow! Photos to follow ....

Namaste my dear bloggers. 

Enjoy your beautiful day!

~ Chy

One Day. ....

.... might be closer that originally planned.

With this Pandemic, we are still working

our full hours, at full pay but from home.

To keep busy outside of our work, we're

currently working on crown moulding in

the main floor 1/2 bath. I'll post some pics

once it's all complete. So far, we're doing

well with this project. And still married!!

Once this is done and if we're still at home,

I dream of starting to create this  sweet look in

a few key spots in our cottage. This seems

to be a very popular look at the moment but

I do think it's best in vintage styled homes.

Very classic and one I hope we can duplicate

in our home. In the moment, the plan is to

start in our upstairs hall. It is long and narrow

and leads to the Art Studio. We'll do a bit

of an art gallery above the trim. This should

break up the hollow look and feel. We'll

continue down the stairwell, another area

with length and height. More pictures along

the trim line at the top. The next area will

be our mudroom leading out to the garage.

This will extend going down the stairs to

our lower level and then in the hall going

to our daughter's apartment and our little

theatre room. I'd love to create this in our

tiny living room and the dining room across

the hall but think we'll do the first phase

and see how we feel. I don't want any space

in our house to look cluttered either. This is

the next project I've dreamed about forever.

What do you think about our plan to create this look?

Do you have board and batten in your home?

~ Chy