Inspiration Wednesday

Happy Wednesday!  Half way through the week, Yippee!

My inspiration image today comes from me doing research on redo'ing stairs.  Currently we have carpeted stairs - I hate it.  It is ugly cheap carpet that the builder put in and with 2 dogs and 2 kids they are dirty, stained and GROSS.

I want to redo them.  Tear the carpet up, and lay hardwood on the stairs.  I love the look of this, dark step (treads) and white backs (riser), white banister and dark railings.  Super classy looking, and we could always add a runner later if we felt it was super slippery.

Traditional Staircase by Saint Louis Architects & Designers Mitchell Wall Architecture & Design

I know I missed Friday Favourites this week.  It's been one of those weeks and I still haven't caught up to my queue of posts, so in the meantime I'll add a few favourites here too!

1. Similar style sold at Overstock.com and for a very reasonable price.  Check it out here

2.  A desk lamp like this one is incredible on way more then just a desk, a side table, next to your sofa or your bed are great options for this beauty.  And it's cheap!  Check it out at Ikea: you can find the Ranarp lamp, here

3. A fav online shop of mine is Joss & Main, although I have yet to order anything specifically from them I have MANY plans.  I love the products they offer and for a daily event website they have such great variety and offer some really great prices.  This beautiful chandelier is an offering they have right now.  I really love this chandelier and was thinking it might look amazing in our master bedroom.  I'm sure everyone is aware of the pricing of lighting...what makes it so expensive anyway?  But I find Joss & Main very reasonable in their discount pricing and they quite often have some sort of lighting event happening.  Please note that this event ends in two days and will no longer be available by Dec 14, 2013. 

4.  The Penny Paper Co. have such great paper products, personalized stationary, kids art collections and also a great assortment of personalized household stamp.  I LOVE this idea and think it would make an amazing gift for someone as well.

5.  Another light from Joss & Main.  You can find this chandelier here in there "All that Glitters" event that started today.  Please note that this event ends in two days and will no longer be available by Dec 14, 2013.

6.  I think I've mentioned on here already that we're going to start working on the living room eventually but first I need to decide what I'd like to put on the main wall.  I really want built ins and have seen a lot of Ikea hacks that include the BESTÅ system.  I love the functionality of this system, it's pretty and SO customizable.  Check it out online at Ikea

Inspiration Wednesdays

I'm at home today with two sick kiddos.  Inspiration Wednesday will be slightly delayed.  This is just a place holder and to let you know that it will be posted shortly.

Thanks,
-K

Alright, the kids are tucked in, in front of the television watching a Christmas movie and I have a few minutes to post my latest Inspiration Wednesday.  My plan is to have a queue of these ready to go each week but I'm a little behind working on some other things and just haven't yet.  So in the mean time, here goes.

Traditional Powder Room by Ottawa Design-Build Firms Design Cube Inc.

I am SO glad that I found this image on Houzz because it's pretty much exactly what I envisioned for our powder room makeover.  I love it! I love the tile border! I love the wainscotting, the simplicity, etc.  We don't have a very big powder room and it's just off of the kitchen so I really want to it flow with the rest of the house because the door is always open and pretty visible to the rest of the house (I promise, I'm working on a current house tour that should be posted soon).  Right now, the colour in the room is an ugly rust (I painted it, but it didn't turn out what I was hoping for) and it's never had a full design.

This might actually be the next fully designed room.  I was hoping the next room would be the living room but we also have to do the drop ceiling in the basement so that might not happen together.

Anyway, I LOVE this powder room and the simplicity of it.  I will definitely be using this image as my design inspiration!

I also wanted to post about a blog that I've really be enjoying.  Be sure to check out Rambling Renovators, fellow Canadians and design enthusiast.  I love her style and find I can spend a lot of hours just looking through her blog, reading and looking over the images she posts.  I really love the little getaway area she made for her daughter under the stairs.  Check it out here

Gift giving made easy with Etsy - For Him

Happy Tuesday!  Enjoy the last instalment of my 2013 Etsy gift guide here on P&B!  I hope you found a little inspiration for your holiday gift giving and maybe even introduced you to a few new Etsy shops!  I hope you enjoyed.  Have a super week!

Check out more of my ideas on my mens gift guide....

(Source: All found on Etsy.  soap gift set, scarf, cuff links, wallet, leather bracelet, messenger bag,Images used from each of the etsy listings)

Friday Favourites

1.  A super feminine, beautifully crafted fruit strainer from Jeanette Zeis of Vesselsandwares on Etsy.  Listing here
2.  With the holidays coming I thought this Noel sign from Pottery barn would look perfect on a mantel.  Here
3.  Native geometric tribal wool fabric pillow from RobinCottage on Etsy.  Listing here
4.  A fantastic orange, tan and cream chevron pillow cover made by skoopehome designs.  You can find the listing here
5. A beautiful sideboard sold on Bryght.com.  It's called Antonio and this is in the Espresso colour.  Check it out here
6. Another great etsy find but this time not for your home.  I love these monogram braclets, necklaces, etc. that are super popular right now.  These are really beautiful and are custom made.  You can find them on Etsy at Marinette Jewelry You can find the listing for this necklace here.

-K

Gift giving made easy with Etsy - For the Kids

Happy Thursday!  Todays guide guide is for the kiddos.  Enjoy!

Check out more of my gift guides for the kids....

(Source: All found on Etsy.  knit cowl, apron, slouchy beanie, finger puppets, camera, acorns, coat rack Images used from each of the etsy listings)

Inspiration Wednesday

I'm going to start of my first week of blogging with a weekly post collection I'm going to call Inspiration Wednesday.  I'm going to use this post each week to show what has inspired me, be it a blog post I've read, a image I've pinned or images I've seen on houzz, etc.  I'll chose a couple of things each week to talk about and think it'll be fun!  So here we go! :)

I've been working on getting a mood board up for my living room and of course a blog post to follow, so I've been doing a lot of living room inspiration searching.

Transitional Living Room by San Anselmo Kitchen & Bath Designers Ann Lowengart Interiors, LLC

I'm still trying to figure out my over all "style" but I do know that I love pops of colour.  I love simple, neutral colours on walls, and big furniture and than using pillows and accents to introduce pops of colour throughout.  I especially love the green-ish yellow colour (chartreuse maybe?) and then rug in the image above.

Contemporary Family Room by Burlingame Architects & Designers Scheinholtz Associates

I'm also trying to make a pretty big decision about a "built in".  We have a fairly big wall in our living room and I've always had the idea of making it a faux built in.  So I've been adding alot of images with built-ins, like the one above, to my houzz idea books.  I love that I can change the colours of the room by adding accent pieces to the shelves.  It's a great storage space (underneath) and it's classic.  I really love this look (and the great light hanging in the room too).

I'm also in the mood to organize, get rid of clutter, and junk that seems to be taking over our entire living space! And came across this great blog post, not to many days after telling my husband how annoying it is to always have big cans of paint in the garage or storage area in the basement.  Rachel tells us, and shows exactly how she uses cute little glass jars to hold spots of paint for touch ups throughout the house.  She labeled each of the jars with the room to which the paint matches.  Which is great when you have very similar colours throughout your house.  

Be sure to check out Pencil Shavings Studios, she's got some very colourful content (and I just noticed she has a similar banner-esque thing as the one I created for the top of my blog).  Cool! 

She also runs a super colourful Etsy store that sells, pillows, paper goods and more.  Be sure to check that out too.  I'm sure you'll find a few Christmas presents (and maybe a little something for yourself)!

-K

Gift giving made easy with Etsy - For Her

I love Etsy, but who doesn't!  It's an amazing place to shop for unique gift items for everyone on your gift giving list.  It's great that some shops even offer shipping directly to the recepiant and some places offer gift wrapping!  It's perfect and really make gift giving easy.  

For the next few of days I'm going to share with you a few of my own gift guides to help you with your gift purchases!

Gifts for her:

 Check out more of my gift guide suggestions for women

(Sorces: All found on Etsy. Gift set ,Infinity Scarf, Lingerie Set, Felted Slippers, Stud earrings, Triangle Rings, Herb garden labels.  Images used directly from the etsy listing)

Welcome to Pure & Beautiful Chaos

If you happen along this site by chance, you're probably very well wondering, what is this place?  What is it's purpose and does it really need to exist, don't we have enough of these "decorating" blogs.  The answer to the last one is yes, there are plenty of decorating blogs on the interwebs but that's not really my point either.

I started or am starting this because my husband and I love "renovating" (I use that term lightly because we haven't really actually done renovating - we just like the DIY network), we love DIY!

We've lived in our house for about 7 years now and we are finally coming around to putting (or at least thinking about putting) our own personality into it.  We had the house built for us from your run of the mill builders in the area.  We went in pick the model we liked, added a few things here and there (nothing that actually matters anymore) and thought we'd love our house forever.  When building from a standard model we learned very shortly after moving in that somethings just don't work for us.  But we still love it here and until we find a home we're ready to move into forever, we're here.

So that's where this blog comes into play.  I hope to use this place as inspiration, motivation and of course I hope that I too can inspire someone into DIY'ing too!

I can't wait to get started and hope that you'll enjoy the journey of turning our little bit of chaos into something pure and beautiful.

-K