A Second Look

Sweet Sixteen

2013-01-14T22:39:00.001-08:00

Today is my little mighty mouses 16th birthday, she is my youngest and the only one still living at home. Time has flown, it seemed that only yesterday was her first day at school and now she is old enough to drive.


My Sweet Angel


They grow up so fast!

Happy Birthday to our gorgeous girl, we are so proud of you.

Love you heaps!!!!!!!!!

Happy New Year

2013-01-01T10:30:00.001-08:00

Hi all I hope you had a safe and happy New Year. Wow I can't believe that 2013 is here all ready. Looking back at 2012 it wasn't the best year for us, we certainly had a lot of ups and downs and to be honest I'm thankful that it's over.

2013 A new year and new look at life.

My resolutions for this year:

Be healthy and lose weight Jillian Michaels here I come....

Finish our renovations

Complete at least one project a week if not more.
Become a better blogger and learn more about the blog platforms.
Take a photography course and generally just improve myself.

What have you resolved to do in the New Year?

Have a great day.

Stairs

2012-09-29T18:23:00.001-07:00

Yes I've done it again, been missing from blog land for a very long time. I will hopefully be able to share the reason with you soon, once all of the final details are in place. A little hint...... I was asked by a dear friend of mine to join her in a venture that we are both super excited about.

Apart from being busy working on the above I've been busy at home trying to make the foyer look more welcoming and fix the mistakes made by the previous owner. For those of you out there that live in a high ranch, split or what ever they may call it, you will know how hard it is to decorate. When you walk in our front door you are greeted by a staircase going up or one going down. This is normally separated by some kind of half wall or banister. The previous owners of our house decided to cut down the half wall, I assume to put in an open banister, the only problem being they didn't cut the wall in line with the stairs. This left us with no way of putting in a banister. Mr ASL decided that we needed to cut down the wall before we could figure out the rest.

The stairs prior

This was a big job and after measuring and marking Mr ASL was ready to bring out the circular saw and the reciprocating saw and start cutting. He decided that I should be out of the house for this part so I was sent to visit with our lovely neighbour Karen.

I gave him about half and hour before I returned to the house and when I walked in I was greeted with this....

I told Mr ASL what a good job he'd done and that I was surprised there wasn't too much mess......at this point he smiled and told me to look upstairs.

This is what I found........

Yep dust everywhere!!!!!!

It took me 3 hours to clean the 1st floor of our house, the dust was everywhere, it even managed to get into the bedrooms.

The next part of the process was to cap of the newly cut wall and paint the stairs, we tried to sand and stain the treads but they where just too damaged and unfortunately oak veneer not solid wood.

Looking better already

Painting the stairs was a very long process which involved us having to walk all the way around the house for almost a week. I used porch paint on the treads and semi gloss white on the risers. I will post later on the fun
we had installing trim and a gallery wall.

Have a great weekend.

Very Very Tired

2012-04-09T03:49:00.000-07:00

It's 3.30am and this is our 3rd night without sleep, my little mighty mouse has a severe case of Strep and we are still waiting for the antibiotics to kick in. The poor thing spends more time coughing than sleeping. We have tried everything to alleviate the pain but not much is working so I'm pretty sure it will be back to the doctors in the morning.

I hope you all enjoy the rest of your Easter weekend.

For the Love of a Tufted Sofa

2012-03-26T19:28:00.000-07:00

Hi all I hope you've had a wonderful start to the week, mine was ok apart from waking up this morning with a cold. Typical in this household, we managed to get through winter with just a few sniffles and the first sign of sunshine and both mighty mouse and myself are sick.

Never mind it gave me an excuse not to start sorting out the basement which had been my plan for the day, instead I was able to catch up on reading some of my favourite blogs.

But enough about that I'm here to share with you some of the sofa's that I've been looking at and some of the rooms that have been my inspiration. I am hooked on tufted sofa's, I think they are just beautiful and make any room look classy and elegant. Mr ASL doesn't feel the same way, he doesn't like tufted sofa's at all.

I have a vision of what I want our living room to look like.

Image Via Decorpad

Image Via The Cross Design

Image via Eclectic Revisited

I like that the first image has more of a retro take on the tufted sofa and I love the pops of yellow and gold. The second image is probably my favourite although I think I would change the art above the sofa to maybe some black and white equine art which is another thing I love right now.

Mr ASL was a sweetheart and bought me a horse painting for Valentines Day. I love it so much and will share it with you when it's been framed.

The third image is more of a casual look and I could see myself snuggled up on that sofa with a good book.

The sofa's that I have been looking at for our living room are as follows

Chloe Sofa from Macy's

TJMax sofa from Jordans

Sofa from Decor Rest

My first preference is the Chloe sofa from Macy's I love everything about it and the price is fantastic but unfortunately they will not ship to Canada. So I'm left to choose between option 2 and 3. I like option 2 because it's a more modern take on the tufted sofa but in regards to comfort it's not quite there so that only leaves me with option 3 the sofa from Decor Rest. While this sofa is not the tufted gem I had hoped for, it's very comfortable and Mr ASL has agreed that he can live with the small amount of tufting on the back. I will be ordering it in gray. As Mr ASL put it, this sofa has a little bit of what he likes and a little bit of what I like....the perfect compromise!

Which sofa would you choose?

Update

2012-03-25T20:29:00.000-07:00

Wow I can't believe that it's been seven months since my last post, Christmas and New Year have been and gone without so much as a peep from me. My New Years resolution was to try and post at least 3 times a week but as you can see that hasn't happened.

For those of you who have visited before you will see that over that last couple of days I've been making some changes to the layout of A Second Look, I thought I'd give it a new look for a new year. I have added a page called Our Renovation and as I sort through the photos of the progress I will put together a post but also link it to the new page. That's the plan now I just have to get my brain to come up with some interesting things to blog about. I seem to get blogger block a lot lately thus the lack of posting if anyone has any suggestions on how to get the creativity flowing I would love to hear from you.

I hope everyone has has a glorious spring day as we have, it actually reached 15 degrees today but alas we are back to the rain tomorrow, but for now here are some beautiful images of spring.

Image Via

Kitchen Inspiration

2011-08-15T08:12:00.000-07:00

As the kitchen in the new house needs to be renovated here are a few images that I have been ~~drooling~~ ~~over~~ looking at. I am hoping to combine things I like from each of them into one beautiful kitchen.

White cabinets grey counters source unknown

This is love Source Alice Lane

Loving the white cabinets and dark floors source style at home

This is more the look I am going for source Decorpad

Source Unknown

Source Decorpad

I must apologise for not knowing all the sources for the images if anyone can help I will update.

Have a great day.

We Bought A House

2011-08-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

"Ever dream of buying a house gutting it and rebuilding so its perfectly you, well I'm doing just that! I bought a house, I'm renovating room by room making the most of every dollar".

Ok for those of you out there who are Sarah Richardson fans you will know I have just stolen her opening lines from Sarah's house but I thought it fitting.

Yep we bought a house!!!!!

We are gutting it room by room,

and hopefully it will be the home we want.

The only difference between Sarah's house and our house........ is the budget. We don't have over $100,000 to do the renovating, we have a mere $21,000.

So stick with me and I will share with you our renovation.

The House:

Not exactly my dream home but I have a vision, I just hope I can pull it all together on budget.

Bedroom Reveal

2011-08-05T07:03:00.000-07:00

Many, many months ago I posted a picture of my youngest daughters room in the before state and promised an after picture, well 8 months later here are the after shots. It didn't take me that long to complete the room just to get the pictures and write about it. What spurred me into action is the fact we are moving yet again and the room was being packed up, so it was now or never for the photos.

Just to refresh, the before pictures:

and here are the after pictures:

Pretty in White, Teal and a Hit of Pink

Bed Frame a Craigslist Find For Only $30

Feather Boa Wreath

Refinished Desk

Garage Sale Frames Painted Teal, Artwork Paper Napkins

Refinished Night Stands and Lamps

Linking To:

Cricut

2011-05-22T18:17:00.000-07:00

Hi all, I hope you are having a great weekend. Mine has been very busy as the girls have a four day break and we have been making the most of it. By this I mean we have been shopping, shopping and more shopping.... Friday was spent getting Taylor's graduation dress which looks absolutely gorgeous on her....Saturday was spent doing the rounds of Garage sales and thrift stores where I picked up some goodies that I will post about later, but as the title implies I'm now the proud owner of a Cricut Expression Machine.

I have been after one for ages and as a belated birthday and mothers day gift Mr ASL told me to go and buy one today. So I did and I can't wait to try her out.

Here she is:

Hopefully I will be posting some projects soon that's if I ever get through the instruction manual. Wish me luck and if anyone would like to recommend the best cartridges I would really appreciate it.

Finally Finished, Well Almost

2011-05-17T07:30:00.000-07:00

In my previous post I showed you the pics of my daughters room which was an absolute nightmare, it took me nearly a month to get the room to a state that I could actually put some paint on the walls. I ended up having to put a skim coat of plaster on every wall and then sand it all. It took two coats of primer and then two coats of paint and all of this work in a house I don't even own. I hope the owner will appreciate all the hard work.

I still have a few finishing touches to do but on the whole the room is finished. It took some work over the weekend to get it all done but my youngest daughter worked liked a Trojan helping me paint and sand the furniture to go in the room. You see Taylor went away for 4 days to visit her friend in Alberta and we thought it would be a nice surprise for her if the room was finished when she got home. She is 18 now and has been sharing a room with Cailin for the last 5 months so it was time to give her a space of her own. Our surprise worked wonderfully, when she saw the room she cried.....

Here are a few pictures so that you can see the transformation, I will be sharing the before and after projects over the next couple of days. Let me know what you think.

Still Looking for Artwork for this side of the room

Night Stand

Gallery Wall

Taylor's Photography

This is what it looked like before.

Sorry about the terrible pictures but Mr ASL had the good camera so I had to make do with my old one. I have added a picture of what the room looked like before for those of you who are viewing from a link.

Linking to:

Wallpaper

2011-01-29T08:40:00.000-08:00

I think my New Years resolution should have been to prioritize, I have a heap of projects on the go and not one of them is finished. I seem to jump from one thing to another and accomplish nothing. Ok to start you know that I have repainted my youngest daughters room and have been promising to show you the reveal but unfortunately it's still not finished. This is due to the fact that the furniture is half way painted and she does not want it all put together until she is not sharing the room with her sister. This meant I had to start on the other bedroom which I thought would be a bit of a challenge but not nearly as hard as it's been.

Two weeks I have been working on this room and it's a mess. Here is the before I started photo,

That's right blue walls and green polka dots, whoever lived in this house had absolutely no style. You may think this would be an easy fix but wait.... they painted this over wallpaper that was starting to peel, so I hired a wallpaper steamer thinking this would be a weekend job, the steamer didn't work at all because it could not penetrate the paint, so for the last two weeks I have been stripping a little section at a time with good old fabric softener and water. The room looks like a disaster and to make matters worse whoever applied the wallpaper did it to unsealed walls which means that the paper on the plasterboard is coming off with the wallpaper. At this point with the mess the walls are in I'm thinking that I may have to wallpaper the walls again, this is the room half way through.

Any suggestions!

Say A Prayer

2011-01-11T08:53:00.000-08:00

This is just a short post today to ask all of you out in blog land to say a prayer for the people in Queensland who have lost everything in devastating floods. I was talking to my Dad last night and he was telling how bad it is. I went here this morning and was shocked to see just how much damage they have sustained.

I think this photo sums up what Australians are all about

Image courtesy of The courier Mail

If you could also share a prayer for the people in Lake Clifton Western Australia as they are battling a bush fire that was started by an arsonist. I believe from the news reports that four homes have already been destroyed.

I find myself sitting here being very thankful that I am only facing a day of snow.

A New Year

2011-01-05T13:57:00.000-08:00

I know I have been missing in action since before Christmas but having the girls and Mr ASL home it was hard to get any time to myself. They respectively went back to school and work yesterday so having spent most of the day getting the house back into order I decided today was going to be for me.

So as I type this I'm still in my PJ's at 1.30pm, I have spent most of the morning figuring out my new sewing machine which was a Christmas present. I bought some cheap cotton last week so that I could practice as unfortunately I did not inherit my mum's gift of sewing. I have managed to complete my first cushion cover which will be going into Cailin's room once it is finished.

On that note, I know I promised "After" pics and will post them soon, I have collected most of the accessories but I just need to come up with something to cover up the ugly power panel. If anyone has suggestions please feel free to let me know. I was contemplating just putting up a big cork board but I'm not sure how it will look being that it's not centred to wall and very close to the window.

Maybe something like this one over at Made By Girl

Well I had better get my butt into gear as it's nearly 2pm and I have to get ready to pick the girls up from school.

Have a great day.

Sneak Peak

2010-12-24T01:00:00.000-08:00

Hi I just wanted to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year and to leave you with a little sneak peak at what I've been working on. For those of you that follow my blog you will remember that when we arrived at our new rental it was less than perfect (you can read about it here) we were suppose to move but at the last minute the landlord decided not to rent the property so we are still here. The property management company have been doing a few things to make the house better one of those being, allowing me to paint, so here is what I started with

Yep purple walls, pink carpet and red drapes!

The room is now painted and looks 300% better than it did but I will show you the finished product in the new year as I still have some finishing touches to do (wait for boxing day sale to buy new bedding etc).

Until then have a great holiday and I will catch you in the new year.

Christmas

2010-12-23T21:57:00.000-08:00

Hi I just wanted to say thank you to all the people that have stopped by to check out my Pottery Barn candles and the lovely comments.

I know it's a little late to be showing you some of our Christmas decorations but we have only just bought our tree. The ornaments are a mix of ones the kids have made and some we have collected over the years. This year I had my heart set on a silver and blue theme but finances did not allow, so I'm hoping that I can pick them up cheap after Christmas ready for next year.

Well I did have some more pics to show you but my camera died before I could download all the photos so I will have to try again later.

Have a great evening.

Pottery Barn Knockoff

2010-12-22T16:12:00.000-08:00

I know I have been a terrible blogger of late but with Christmas and life in general things around here have been pretty busy. The girls are finished school for a couple of weeks and are already bored so we decided to try our hand at the sheet music candles that are all over blog land and also Pottery Barn.

After much research I decided to combine the techniques that I found here and here. I used the second method to copy my sheet music onto white tissue paper but rather than gluing and heating with a heat gun we just used Mod Podge.

We still have to perfect the technique but I think they turned out pretty well for our first attempt.

Let me know what you think.

I'm linking to:

Ice and Snow

2010-11-25T09:22:00.000-08:00

In yesterday's post I mentioned that we had our first snowfall of the season and I was glad that it didn't stick around, well after having to drive to pick the girls up from school yesterday afternoon on roads covered in black ice I wish the snow had stuck. I am definitely not cut out for driving in those conditions, the only saving grace was that everybody else on the road was only doing between 30-40kmh just like me. We don't get snow where I'm from in Australia so even though I have been driving for more than 20 years my expertise does not extend to black ice, give me torrential rain, thunderstorms or 40 degree heat and I'm good but yesterday was certainly a first and not something I want to do again anytime soon.

Here are a few pictures of what we woke up to this morning.

Has anyone out there had fun driving in the snow?

Homesense

2010-11-24T12:41:00.000-08:00

Hi all I hope you are having a great week, we have had our first snowfall of the season and although it was nice to wake up to everything white yesterday morning I'm glad it didn't stick around. You see I need new tyres on my car and I can't get them put on until Friday as apparently my tire size is not one of the regular ones and the new tires had to be ordered in. Ok I know this post is suppose to be about Homesense not my new tires so here it goes, for those of you who follow my blog you know that I love Homesense it's my favourite store, I love going and wandering around checking out all of there beautiful stuff. Since we moved at the beginning of October I haven't been to Homesense as they do not have a store in town and the closest one is an hour and a half away, well at the weekend we made the trip. I was so excited, we walked in the door to be greeted with lots of things that sparkled and glittered I was in heaven. Mr ASL says I'm like a Magpie, drawn to anything shiny. My youngest daughter also has the Homesense bug and we wandered around oohing and arring, mean while eldest daughter and Mr ASL had wandered off. When I found him I dragged him back to show him all the things that I loved to be told "I don't like it, where are you going to put that and it's ok" My heart sank......

In the end this is what I walked out of the store with:

I have a thing for Owls at the moment

I love the detail on the handle

The Architectural Prints in the picture where a thrift store find at $1.49 for the set.

The moral of this story is, next time I go to Homesense I'll leave Mr ASL at home.

Have a great day.

Thrift Store Finds

2010-11-20T07:51:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't posted anything in a while but how many of you out there have all the ideas floating around in your head but you sit down to write about them ....nothing! I believe it's called writers block but I am by no means a writer so I am going to call it blogger block.

I thought I would share with you today one of my favourite thrift store finds. I've found this wonderful little second hand store that's a 30 minute driver from where we live. They are reasonably prices and have some unusual pieces. I went for a snoop last Friday and was overjoyed to find these:

As soon as I saw them I knew they where coming home with me, I picked up all three for $25. I am now on the hunt for nice new frames for them. Once finished they will be going in the office.

What is your favourite thrift store find?

Have a great weekend.

Ruby

2010-10-31T08:38:00.000-07:00

As promised yesterday here are some photo's of my gorgeous granddaughter Ruby and her mum and dad. I have never held or cuddled Ruby as she was born after we left Australia, we do talk to her all the time on skype but she probably thinks we are these strange people in the computer.

We all had a good laugh the other day because Natalie (Ruby's Mum) told us that Ruby probably thinks the computer is eating family members as Great Granddad (my dad) was now in the computer being that he was here with us. Ruby's Dad has also been eaten by the computer as he is working away on the mines so he can only talk to her via skype.

Anyway enough of my ramblings here are some cute baby pics.

My son Patrick and Ruby

Ruby after her 1st birthday

Patrick and Natalie (Ruby's Mum and Dad)

Can't you tell I'm the proud Nannie......:)

Good News and a Sad Day

2010-10-30T18:53:00.000-07:00

To start with the good news. As you are aware from my last post the house we have rented is terrible and we have been looking around for a new place to rent. The agent who rented us the house came out on Thursday to do the first inspection and was disgusted with what we showed her. They have managed to find us a new rental property that is absolutely gorgeous and we can move in next weekend.....yeah!!!!!!! No more spiders!!!!!

As you can tell I am really excited, I will post pics of the new house as soon as we have moved in. The sad part of our day was saying goodbye to my Dad today as he was flying home, I don't think my youngest has stopped crying yet....:( I tried my hardest not to cry but there we where all four of us just a blubbering at the airport. It has been great having Dad with us for the last month and I really would love for him to come live with us here but my sister and her kids are still in Australia as well as my son and his fiance and my granddaughter Ruby who I will post about later as she is just the cutest...

I thought I would share with you some of the pics from Dads holiday, hope you enjoy the beautiful scenery.

Dad and I

Dad and the Girls

Dad

Mr A Second Look and Dad

Sorry I know this post is picture heavy but I just wanted Dad to know how much we love him and will miss him.

Have a great weekend.

Help!!!!!!!

2010-10-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

Well we have been in our new rental for two weeks and I'm already looking for a new home. We rented the house from photo's provided to us by a real estate agent. I knew going in the colours where terrible but nothing a few coats of paint couldn't fix right! Oh how very wrong I was.

We arrived at our new home at 3am in the morning after a harrowing 2 day journey through the Rockies with a U Haul trailer that had no brakes. The agent had been kind enough to leave a key under the mat for us. I was the first one through the door and it was a good job because the smell hit you in the face as soon as you walked in, I knew from that point that it was not going to be good. The carpets throughout the house are stained and dirty the kitchen cupboards well I won't even put my dishes in them as they stink too, we have been over run with spiders and on further investigation trying to find the smell we have found that the crawl space under the house which also serves as the cold air return is being used as litter tray and is full of cat crap.

As you can imagine finding this at 3am after two days on the road the girls and I just cried...

We have contacted the agent to be told that the house was cleaned a week prior to our arrival and the capets where cleaned but the carpet cleaner could not get all the stains out. We have yet to tell her about the cat poo but we are desperately trying to find somewhere else to live, but because we have a dog it is proving to be impossible.

Here are the pics of the house

As you can see from the pics the house did not look too bad.

So if anyone out there can help on how you get the smell out of just about every cupboard in the house I would really appreciate the advice.

Thanks

Away for a while

2010-09-26T16:10:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to let you all know that I will be offline for a week or so as our journey across the Rockies is about to begin. I will be back online as soon as I can hopefully with some pictures of our journey.

Take care

White Ruched Quilt

2010-09-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

I have been searching for a new quilt cover for our bedroom and have fallen in love with the ruched look. I have been collecting pictures for inspiration but that is all they are as the price tag is quite hefty for one of these lovelies.

Source Bed Bath and Beyond

Source Potter Barn

Source West Elm

My Dad is flying over to take the journey with us through the Rockies so I thought I would check out the latest Target catalogue (oh how I miss Target) and look what I found.....!!!!!!

You can't believe how excited I am, you get the quilt cover two pillow shams and two euro shams all for $70! As soon as I saw it I called Dad to see if he could go to Target first thing in the morning to buy one for me. So keep your fingers crossed they still have one available. I will let you know how it all goes.

Have a great weekend everyone.