DIY pallet dining set

Recently one of my sister's asked my husband to make a really low platform type bed for my 2 yr old niece out of pallets. It's a cheap, easy way to create a bed for a growing little girl (and one that can have her toppling out of it without any injury). So I have pallets on the brain, and coincidentally Robert emailed with this cool DIY tutorial on how to make a dining set out of pallets. What a great idea for outdoors! (Or indoors if you're really into rustic furniture). Instructions can be found here. 

You start with some basic pallets:

And here is how you create a chair: 

Now for the table:

And voilà!

A few new goodies

Yesterday on my home from work I stopped in at The White Monkey to give myself a little rest from trudging through the snow. Last time I was in there I snapped up a few West German vases for a great price. There was a third I loved but it wasn't West German and since I did not have a third arm to carry it home, I left it behind. To my delight it was still there (the white one below). I found 2 other adorable vases I could not resist (medium sized one says made in Germany, the small one says made in Japan).

Though my home is completely lacking space period, much less to display my new vases, I decided to rearrange the shelving in the kitchen to fit the 2 smaller ones. Here is what I came up with. (I got tired of the mostly white colour scheme).

I wanted to display the new white vase so I decided to remove the woven baskets I had on top of the kitchen pantry and added a vintage apple basket (needed to store my lunch bags and extra chip bags that won't fit in the cupboards) and all of my large white vases (all West German but the new one), along with my collection of antlers.

I love this quote

of all modern notions, the worst is this: that domesticity is dull. inside the home, they say, is dead decorum and routine; outside is adventure and variety. but the truth is that the home is the only place of liberty, the only spot on earth where a person can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim. the home is not the one tame place in a world of adventure; it is the one wild place in a world of set rules and set tasks.
--- g.k. chesterton

Thanks to Suzanne of the Glebe House Tour for sending this to me. 

A dinner date at Fraser Cafe

Last night my husband and I went to Fraser Café (in New Edinburgh) for dinner. We had never been there before but I had heard alot of good things about it. For the family Christmas gift exchange my aunt and uncle got us a $200 gift card there so we were excited to eat and drink to our hearts' content. And we SURE DID. It was awesome. Awesome food, drinks and service. We will definitively go back (to use up the $13 we have left on the card LOL). OK so here's what we feasted on:

{ salt lick - grapefruit juice, vodka, campari, salt rim }
{ thyme lemonade - vodka, thyme syrup, lemon juice, soda }
***the lemonade was so damn good we need to attempt to recreate this at home***

{albacore tuna - stuffed and fried jalapenos ~ apple ~ salsa ~ lime ~ coriander }

{ beet salad - bacon ~ dill cream cheese ~ pickled fennel ~ honey sherry vinaigrette }

{ scallops – Israeli couscous ~ grilled veg ~ harissa cream ~ preserved lemon }

{ BBQ beef & fries - horseradish cream ~ sliced tomato ~ carrots ~ jus }

{ pineapple upside down cake - coconut ice cream ~ pecans }

{ espresso chocolate tort - hazelnuts ~ whipped cream ~ raspberry purée }

The best part was when my husband picked up the remainder of his tort (mostly the crust) with his hand and says "don't mind me!" and then while lifting it to his mouth, proceeds to drop it on his plate, narrowly missing the table. We laughed so hard I was in tears.

P.S. I blogged my atire for this dinner date over on the mourning cloak.  

some stuff and things around the house

There are a few new things around my house that I acquired lately I thought I'd share with ya. First up, something I'm really stoked about. There are a few light fixtures out there that REALLY turn my crank. Tolomeo (I have 2 in my kitchen), Tom Dixon's copper shade and Beat lights, and Jieldé. My husband bought me 2 wall mount Jieldés a couple Christmases ago that sit in a box in the basement because they need to be wired, and I have no place for them in this house. I was excited when an email came in a couple of weeks ago via our blog contact form from David, who recently acquired a Jieldé and was looking for ideas on how to sell it. Why not to me??!! :-) And that is how I came to own my third Jieldé light. I'm not sure what someone did to this lamp but about 1/3 of the shade has the silver "rubbed off" so copper is showing through, and a really crappy non-original base was added. I plan to get a brake disc to replace the base but I'm not sure what to do about the shade (likely just leave it be). It has 2 arms but they are really long so it ends up practically being a floor lamp. Anyway, it's awesome and I am pleased to have it join my always expanding collection of lighting. (It's an illness, I swear). 

And because Felix (whom I caught mid-lick) is so fat and cute....

While on the subject of cats, I finally got around to taking a picture of something that honestly just warms my heart every time I see it. Our oldest cat of the 7, Cheeks is about 20 years old. That is OLD. He has arthritis, among other health issues, and had a hard time jumping up on the bed to cuddle with my husband (Cheeks LOVES him). One day my hubby went out into the shed, sawed some scrap wood, and in the house he came with this:

In just a few short days, Cheeks began using these stairs to get up on the bed and has used them every single time since. SO CUTE! (Edgar has pretty bad arthritis now too so we'll have to start teaching him to use them).

I bitch every now and then to my husband that he hangs too many clothes on my precious Eames limited edition walnut Hang-It-All. Recently he went out into his shed again, came back in, went upstairs, screwed something into the wall, and I discovered this:

While still on the subject of my husband, we were in Homesense recently and we always check out the lamps there is almost always a gem among them, and he found this one for $40:

I allowed him to get it (LOL) to put on his side of the bed because he detested using the Tizio that he kept knocking over. (Yeah, Tizios do not make great bedside lamps - WAY too tippy for something you reach for in the dark).