Friday faves - falling

Now that it's the end of September I can fully embrace fall. We've had some beautiful fall days so far, and I'm hoping that continues into October! I am off to what is sure to be a gorgeous fall wedding tomorrow, and I can't wait!

In the meantime, some of my favourite fallisms...



I love me some hot apple cider in the fall...sooooo good.

All images via Pinterest

Style at Home feature!

Hi friends,

I was featured over at styleathome.com! Yay! Remember that post I did on Style at Home's Fall Trends? Well, the wonderful Elaine contacted me to do an additional write up for Styleathome.com! She rounded up 12 Bloggers' Favourite Fall trends (Love it!).

Here's my piece:



"My favourite one has to be modern global. I love (really love) traveling, so incorporating global trends into my home is an ideal approach to decorating. I interpret this trend as a mix and match approach where nothing is perfect, but there is a good flow between elements in a room. I think of things like interesting artifacts on shelves (Buddha head or a native wood carving), a lavish rug (Turkish rug or maybe an animal print), and hits of colour (maybe a susani-patterned throw or bright, textured pillows)."

Check out my feature and others from blogs I already love like aDESIGNdock , Desire to Decorate, Wicked&Weird, and The Fabulous Design File. I'm excited to see the other bloggers' choices! Thatnks Style at Home!

DIY painted curtains + tutorial

Thank you all for your lovely comments on my post yesterday! We went to Nota Bene (if anyone in Toronto wants to try somewhere new, for a special occasion, I highly recommend it!).

Today I am finally featuring a project that we completed in our uber productive weekend a couple of weeks ago! I thought I could post about it the day we finished, but the rod we had was wooden, and it really didn't look good dark, so I had to paint it white. Anyhoo...without further ado...

I started seeing these curtains a while ago, and posted about my search for bedroom curtains here. I couldn't find fabric in the scale of stripe that I wanted, so I decided to go the painting route! Recently some of my fave bloggers have shared their projects - check out The Design Pages and View Along the Way for a couple of examples.  Here's how mine turned out:

What do you think? I am loving them!

You can find tutorials around the web, but I was diligent in taking photos of the project this time so I am sharing my steps below:

1. Buy curtains - I went with Ikea Lenda tab top curtains. Iron them before you start your project so the paint will go on smoothly.

2. Choose a paint colour - I kept it simple by using leftover wall paint. We have a few patterns in the room so I wanted to keep the drapes pretty neutral. I bought a fabric medium that I added to the paint - it makes it slightly softer and less likely to crack. I didn't use the 1:1 ratio it recommended (solely because I didn't want to spend a lot of money on fabric medium). Here's the one I used - it was about $13 at DeSerres (art store):

3. Plan plan plan! Choose a pattern - I went with stripes. I was initially liking the large chevron patterns, but I decided to keep this easy.

Quite honestly, it took me MANY tries to figure out the measurements to get the coloured stripes where I wanted them! I wanted to keep it white close to the top (so I didn't have to paint the tabs), but didn't want a full stripe measurement up there...and I wanted white on the bottom to ensure they hung nicely.

4. Once that is done, measure your stripes / pattern and start taping. Note - I used a pen for measurements...as I was doing it Sarah Richardson popped in my head saying "You always use pencil when painting, pen shows through"...I thought that was only for walls - but no, it applies to fabric too! Use pencil.

Remember when you're taping to be consistent with inside / outside taping for your measurements. For mine, I taped on the "inside" of the white stripe lines (that's why they look narrower in the pic). I also put a piece of tape on the stripes that were to remain white - such a simple trick but it saved me a LOT of headaches and potential mistakes! It's probably my favourite new trick from this project.

5. Get painting! I mixed the fabric medium with the paint and used a small foam roller to paint, did two coats of colour:



6. Say some choice words for being careless with the paint when going from rolling pan to drape...argh!



7. Remove tape (I used frog tape and removed it after the paint was dry and it was a nice sharp line)

8. "Heat seal" the paint...this is what the fabric medium said to do - it's simple enough, you iron the painted sections once very dry with a cloth on top and underneath. To be honest, I'm not sure if it made a difference.

9. Hang your curtains and admire!















Happy Anniversary

Today is our 2nd wedding anniversary...I loved loved loved our wedding day (hopefully all brides can say the same!). Despite a few glitches (what's a wedding without them?? Ours was with the officiant performing the ceremony...pretty important part of the day, but it all worked out), I love looking back on my wedding day. It was so much FUN!  The Mr. and I are celebrating today with a nice dinner at one of our favourite restarants. Here's to many many more years of wedded bliss!



Friday faves - Winners wanders

Happy Friday everyone! Today I'm featuring some recent great finds from Winner's (ok, I didn't buy any of them - my wallet says hoorah! - but I did like all of them...)

How cute are these little ceramic baking dishes? Mini-lasagnas anyone?

Some uber-chic-looks-like-they-just-came-from-the-french-countryside-dried herbs (love the jars!)

While we're on the subject of cooking...did you know Winner's has real cook books? I've only ever seen reject cookbooks before (you know the ones...where the photos don't even look good? Yah, there's a reason they're $0.99) I've been eyeing Gwyneth's cookbook for a little while, and have heard it's quite good.

On trend with owls - wouldn't this be adorable for the kids table at Thanksgiving?

This could be a super cute jewellry holder or make-up holder in a dressing room

I like the shape of this serving bowl and picture it filled with rustic pieces like artichokes or pinecones.

This mirror was stunning...but at $200 it was a bit pricey for such a bold colour.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Feast

{Warning...this post contains photos of a meal and a couple of treats - if you are hungry, step away from the computer, grab a satisfying snack and come back to read. Or better yet, read and hopefully my treats will guide your appetite :) }

Remember when I said last week that I had the urge to cook with this cooler weather in the air? Well, cook I did. I made a whole whack of food this weekend and it was delicious. I might have to get serious about inviting more people over to the Guest Room to help eat it all :) Just joking...we're making good headway in the eating department, and rightfully so - we tackled a few projects this weekend that I'll be featuring throughout the week.

But first, the food.

It started with me having a hankering for pie...and I had a ball of pastry dough in the freezer, so the tough part was done. I didn't see any Spy apples at the grocery store, so I went for pecan pie instead - my mom's recipe is amazing and this one didn't disappoint:

And, the finished product:



I had a little extra pie dough (and luckily, some buttertart filling in the freezer) so I made some mini tarts:

When I say mini, I mean mini....bite sized, even for me. And for anyone in my family who knows how small a "Heather sliver" of cake or pie can be, me saying something is small means something!

That covered desert on Saturday, for dinner we made "Chicken Paprika Birds" from the Autumn 2010 Food & Drink magazine. This is a great recipe for a hearty but not heavy dinner - click here for the recipe.

I tried to get a photo of it when the sauce came together, but it was too steamy! And when I plated them with egg noodles and steamed vegetables, my picture taking had run out of steam and I just wanted to eat...so if you want to see what it all looks like, I highly recommend making them yourself , they're delicious (I cut the recipe in 1/2 and use yoghurt in place of the sour cream).

Sunday morning we had french crepes for brunch - so tasty and just like they are on the street in Paris! At first I was using a non-stick pan (don't bother) - my advice is to use a metal pan and just a little bit of butter brushed on and they'll work perfectly.

Classic, with citron and sucre

With black currant spread (PS - this "jam" is amazing...it is litterally a jar of full black currants. Pure preserved fruit, barely any "jelly". Delicious. Obviously, it's from France).

I also made pumpkin muffins, but at that point I just questioned how much more food you could handle on my little ol' interiors blog.

But there you have it, my weekend in food. :)  How was yours?









Roomspiration: Guest room

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! I sure did (oh, and I finally joined Twitter - follow me @interiorgroupie)...more on that later this week, because today I am joining the Roomspiration Link Up party! This couldn't have come at a better time - last week while I was looking through my blog for a photo of my guest room to put into my post on Style at Home's trend of new neutrals (sage), I realized I hadn't shared anything about my guest room. Shortly after, I came across the Roomspiration Link Up party via View Along the Way (by the way - if you haven't checked out Kelly's blog you definitely should) and discovered Sept 19 was Guest Room day.

My guest room was actually one of the first rooms done in our house. I'm not sure what the motivation was - maybe we had most of the pieces so it was easy to throw it together?  Some people consider guest rooms as the rooms where unwanted furniture / decor goes to die, but ours came together naturally with all new stuff.

To show you what we were working with, here's what it looked like before we moved in:

And after...

The room is painted in Benjamin Moore Saybrook Sage (I got my colour inspiration from the lovely Mrs. Limestone)  The lamps and duvet cover are from Homesense (great score there!). You can read about the rad covers are DIY's, which you can read about in my previous posts here and here.

This photo shows the shelf / armoire that I still need to style (woops) and some basic "for now" tables which are essentially places for guests to put their luggage or toiletries.

The nightstands were I think the first furniture refinishing DIY I took on at our new house. Here they were before:

And after...

A little sanding, a bunch of paint, and some glass knobs from Target, and voila. I couldn't pass these beauties up, they were the perfect height and size for nightstands in the room.

The "art" in the room is a super simple DIY - blow up a couple of your favourite pictures, cut a mat to size (ok so that wasn't so simple without a mat-cutting kit), paint Ikea frames black (I forget what frame this was...but it was only $5 and only available in natural wood), and there you have it - some large scale frames. You could easily do this with pre-matted frames, but I liked the size of these so I had to do it custom.



Anyone want to come for a visit?

If you want to see more:



Guest poster - stylish closets

Today I have a Guest post from Design Shuffle, looking at gorgeous closets! You know that we recently did our closet project, so this post definitely hits close to home :) Hope you enjoy it...

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Hi all, I’m Susi, a writer for Design Shuffle, a fabulous social media site where you can browse through tens of thousands of photos from designers from around the world. Speaking of around the world, I'm happy to be guest blogging for Interior Groupie and Heather in Toronto. As someone who lives in an older home with tiny closets, I have major closet envy. So here are some of my favorite fantasy closets with loads of style and cool decorating ideas. A girl can dream!

Apartment Therapy via

When I think of stylish closets, I still think of Carrie's closet from Sex and the City. It's probably all the amazing clothes and shoes in the closet. Love the blue paint and open storage in this hall closet.

Honey We're Home via

This custom closet looks more like a boutique than closet. Love the chandelier and center table/island for storage. Color coding clothes helps give a closet that boutique look.

Pinterest via

Even a small walk-in closet can be stylish when well organized. Love all the cubbies for sweaters and the colorful shoe display.

The via

Old Post Road

Traditional style makes this closet stylish. A window lets natural light pour into the space. Love the mirrors on the tall cabinet doors and other great interior design ideas.

La Dolce Vita via

More dressing room than closet, I love this room's elegance. The stylish antique table in the center is gorgeous.

The via

Old Post Road

Wallpaper is a stylish addition to any closet (even tiny Victorian ones.) A chandelier is a glamorous touch for a walk-in closet or dressing room.

Marcus Design via

Dramatic black cabinets are stunning in this stylish closet. Recessed lighting provides ample light for choosing an outfit while the chandelier provides glamour. Good interior designs combine beauty and function—this lovely closet does just that.

Martha Stewart via

A well organized closet can be chic even if it is small. This coat closest has tons of style and storage options despite its diminutive size.

This post has been created by Design Shuffle, a social-media network created specifically for those who love interior design.

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Thanks Design Shuffle! I hope you all enjoyed that as much as I did...I love that 4th photo where everything is neatly put away :) Make sure to check out Design Shuffle for more images and ideas.