My New Favorite Thing

When we were in Canada we were at my sister’s place for a few evenings to visit.  While we were there, one of the things I loved most was her fireplace… it made her livingroom so cozy and really added to the atmosphere.  Of course, I couldn’t stop thinking about it since.

I never really knew much about the fireplaces before.  For some reason I always figured that you had to have a chimney to have any kind of fireplace and was completely unaware of these fake ones.   Had I known there were fake-but-real-looking ones out there, I would have had one long ago!

I know, I’m a moron… they’ve been around for a while now but I tend not to notice things until I have some personal interest in them… and yes, I also know there is probably some psychiatric term for that including the letters ‘e-g-o’.

As I was saying, once I had an interest in these fireplaces, they were everywhere!  All the sales papers that came in the mail had them, they are in the catalogues, and in the shops that we go to.   I was a woman obsessed with the cozy.  I had to have one!

So I did what any normal wife would do, sat and figured out a way to rationalize it… then, I remembered the money we had left from our kitchen budget.   The kitchen is finished after all, so what would it hurt…

Xander did what any wise husband would do, agreed – then took me to get it.

WALLA!!

Ok, I know it’s spelled VOILA but Xander and I have this habit of always saying ‘WALLA’ because we saw it on like three different American websites within a single week spelled like that.   Like, actually spelled ‘Walla’…   So instead of saying it like it’s meant to be said, we say it like that to be funny sarcastic bastards.

Oh, and speaking of the kitchen.  It’s been a while since I showed any photos of it and I don’t think I ever showed it totally complete, so here are a few photos of our totally completed new kitchen!

No, wait… let me show you a before shot so you can get the full effect (or is it affect, I swear I always confuse those two.  I think I got it right though).   This pic was taken during the process of taking the old kitchen apart, but yeah, it really was usually that cluttered.  God, how I hated that kitchen…

This is our kitchen now…. sorry I have to say it….

WALLA!!!!  (Last time, I promise)

When the kitchen was installed at first, we were in a bit of a pickle because we measured wrong and we had a big gap on one side of the water boiler, and also some nasty pipes that needed disguising… oops!

In the end we figured it all out though.  There’s no hiding the big boiler itself, but we prettied up around it as best we could.

A little cuteness…

… and a little Christmas!

The only thing left is window treatments.  Curtains or blinds of some kind.  I’ve still not decided on what I want to do with them, so until I do they are bare.   Maybe I’ll have a go at making my own curtains, that should be interesting.

Christmas deco is in full swing, I’ll have photos of that soon… until then, check out the rest of our pictures from Canada!