Living Room Mantel Shelf ~ A Canadiana Christmas Stop One

Welcome to stop one of our woodland Canadiana Christmas 2010!  

Our suburban small town home in Ontario, Canada, has lots of natural elements all year round and a country rustic style of decorating. This season I am trying to focus on a woodland Canadiana Christmas decorating theme. 
I love the vintage wavy glass of these zinc lanterns and keep them on our mantel year round. Pinecones, strands of bead berries, and faux and real pine add some natural elements. I think the red and black buffalo plaid ribbon adds the perfect touch of Canadiana (a la ROOTS) to our Christmas mantel. I would love to find some birch twigs to add to the pinecones.

We are planning to paint our living room a darker colour in the New Year, and I am still considering painting this mantel shelf a distressed black, but all of our trim is white.

Our tree in this room last year was decorated for a Cowboy Christmas. I reused many of the decorations this year, but added more Canadiana elements with animals like bears, loons and moose to remind us of our true Canadian wilderness. The rusty sleigh bells to recall winter sleigh rides with my father-in-law's Percheron team. The buffalo check to symbolize the warmth and coziness that blankets and handknits bring to our long Canadian winters. Little cabins, canoes and fishing creels help us to remember our time spent in the outdoors. The cows and barn stars, for our family's love of farming and barns. The full reveal of this Canadiana inspired tree in the living room is coming soon, but here is a sneak peek collage:

We have been working on our wall trim but might not get our family room fireplace mantel completed before Christmas. In the meantime, we are enjoying our mantel shelf in the living room.


Oh, I'm really loving this ribbon and the little cabinet doors propped on the mantel. I played with Picasa but the doors are an off white and our walls are a very soft buttery yellow, not pink!

I found these new cabinet doors for $1 each at a local recycling place and painted them off white with a glaze and distressing. And a true Canadian decorating or painting project is not complete without a Tim Horton's coffee or hot chocolate ;)

I'm joining the Christmas Mantel Link Party hosted by Layla and Kevin of The Lettered Cottage.



I'm also joining MetMonday at Between Naps on the Porch.

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I'm Addicted to Rustic Pine Hutches

We had lots of snow flurries yesterday, but it melted after a few hours. The flurries didn't stop us from driving to the Stoney Creek and Grimsby areas to pick up this pine hutch I found for a great deal on kijiji. We put up two of our trees today, and added some Santa's and snowmen to the new hutch. I may still move some things around.



Rustic pine is not everyone's first choice in furniture these days, but it is still my favourite. I want a bigger hutch for our kitchen, but this smaller size works well in our living room for now. The beauty of hutches and cabinets is that they can often be used in more than one spot. 

Above and below are the seller's photos from the ad on kijiji.

I hope all my American friends are recovering well from Thanksgiving and Black Friday adventures. I'm really looking forward to the Christmas link parties coming up. Have a wonderful day!

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Woodland Christmas Inspiration

Our exterior Christmas lights are up, the porch planters are filled with natural greenery and I hope to begin decorating our indoor trees this weekend. I'm sharing a few inspiration photos that I hope you enjoy.



I love decorating for Christmas and this year I am focusing even more on a natural woodland Canadiana style Christmas theme. We already have lots of country and natural elements, and I hope to only buy a few new things. We have more than one tree, so each will have a bit of a different focus.



above two images: Home Hardware, Home at Home Expressions e-catalog.


Simple greenery can add the perfect touch to Christmas decor. (I came so close to scoring a china cabinet just like this one on kijiji for $175, but someone else called half an hour before me. I'm still searching!)

I'd like to find a way to get one of our trees into a bucket like this, though our bucket is green.

above two images: Country Living


 I hope to take photos of the porch planters this week if the sun cooperates. It is quite cool here today (-4C or about 24F) and I'm looking forward to snuggling up with a hot cup of tea and some old magazines. Wishing you a great day! Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends.

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Glimpses of White

Glimpses of white in our home...
(from my picture archives)



lots and lots of white candles

white poinsettias at Christmas

adding white trim

white wedding tree in our bedroom

fluffy white towels

 moire cotton table runner 

cream lace dish collection

baking canisters

crocheted granny square afghan 

 slipcovers and pillows
more white slipcovers 
vintage crochet and white pitchers

 collected pitchers and dishes

 dishes and vintage table runners

 pitchers for cooking utensils and enamel bread box
 lots of white curtains


hydrangeas in summer

 soaps and faux eggs

I'm linking to Donna's White Themed SNS at Funky Junk.

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Adding Some Architectural Interest~Tackling Another Wall

The trim above our kitchen cabinets is installed and today we picked up trim to start on the kitchen wall/TV nook/fireplace wall. (An updated puppy picture is at the end of this post.)
Our plans to add architectural interest with trim, and some inspiration photos, are in my previous post. Getting good photos with the lighting in our kitchen is challenging but I'm sharing the progress we made today. I was having trouble deciding what width of trim to use for the horizontal and vertical pieces on the lower walls, but after trying out a few, I decided on 6" and about 17" spacing between horizontal pieces.

We used 8" mdf for the baseboards (finishing trims will be added soon) and 6" for the vertical, horizontal and top pieces. The thickness is 1" (3/4" true dimension.) There is still lots and lots of caulking and painting to do, but I really like seeing these three lower walls roughed in. I dislike my kitchen floors (even though I picked them 12 years ago), but replacing them won't be in our budget for some time.


 The breakfast bar will be getting some trim in the near future too.

The trim (without a top trim piece) is 61" tall overall. The trimmed area will be painted white after the caulking is done. I considered using another horizontal piece of trim, essentially making three boxed sections, but saw this idea in my inspiration home dining room, Blue River Cottage.

The photo below shows the height of the wall at this end of the kitchen and family room. Another future plan is to beadboard the yucky popcorn cathedral ceiling around the skylights. I figure that has got to be less messy than scraping and sanding it all down.

 Before:

It is amazing what a bunch of mdf and a few hours can do. I will be leaving the freshly painted white backsplash as it is until after Christmas. Now the really difficult decisions begin as I try to figure out what to do with the TV nook/ off centred fireplace side of this wall (the TV nook is still the former BM Concord Ivory.) I really want some kind of mantel before Christmas so I hope we figure out what to do soon.

For those who kindly inquired, Remington is doing really well and she is growing quickly. This is her with our oldest, K, tonight. He was trying to get her to stay still for a photo, but not tonight apparently.

 If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them!


Since this project is helping to add more white to our home, in the form of trim, I'm linking to Funky Junk's SNS White Theme link up. Be sure to stop by for an awesome time, but get yourself a snack and a drink, 'cause you're going to be there for awhile.



I'm also linking to Volume 9 of Project Diaries at Stories of A House. Thanks to Crista for hosting this link party that has so many great projects linking up.

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