The First Week of School - Menu Planning

I cannot believe that the first week of school is next week!  Where did the summer go! 

This year we have a lot of firsts happening.  It will be Juliet's first year of school and both Ainsley and Juliet's first year of full-day school.  This means, that I have to put together snacks and lunch for the girls everyday. 

I don't know about you, but I remember hating lunches at school.  They were always so boring.  There are only so many times that you can eat a sandwich before you never want to eat one again.  Also, here in Toronto, all our schools are peanut free so there goes the staple of peanut butter to mix things up.  I am determined to provide a variety of yummy and not monotonous lunches for the girls this year.  The first step: Menu Planning.

I have always been a menu planner.  Last year during the school year, I would plan loosely for breakfast and lunch and then I would always make a clear plan for dinner.  When I mean loosely, I would jot down lunches where we were going out and then make sure I had staples on hand such as mini pizzas, Kraft dinner, hot dogs and sandwich ingredients.  This year I am taking it to a new level.  I want to make sure that I am packing healthy and delicious lunches and snacks. 

I sat down on Thursday and created next week's plan.  I did all my shopping on Friday  so I was ready to go for this week.  I find that planning ahead makes things so much easier.  I have on hand all the healthy food I need and I don't have to think about what's for lunch this week (or dinner or snacks).

Here is the plan:






Glow Baby Organized Family Menu Planner

Glow Baby Organized Family Menu Planner

 

As you can see, all meals are planned and to the right is my shopping list.  This way I can make sure that I am mixing things up regularly and if I'm really stuck one week, I can go back to a previous week and pull from them. 

 

I hope everyone has a great first day of school.  At least I know my girls will like their lunches :).

 

 



 



Office Paint Colour

I have a vision for my office.  My inspiration is from houzz.  I LOVE the feel in this room.  It's serene and sparkly and would definitley help me stay creative.  The colour used on the walls is Zen by Behr which is no longer on their website or in their displays.  Just my luck!

Traditional Home Office design by Dallas Interior Designer JDS DESIGNS

So off I went again to Benjamin Moore and found four possible paint colours.  I couldn't decided if I wanted a darker or lighter colour or one that was more blue or green.

Here are the four I chose to sample:

Again, the lighting is not ideal but the options are:

2035 - Italien Ice Green

HC147 - Woodlawn Blue

HC144-Wythe Blue

2123- Ocean Air

The two Blues were too dark and the Italian ice green too minty.  I feel in love with Ocean Air.  It's a blue/green/grey that remind me of water.  It makes me feel calm, which is important in my office.

The sample below does not do it justice.

Master Bedroom Paint Colours

Today I went to our local Benjamin Moore store.  I love colour but it can be hard to find the perfect colour.  Especially if you have something in mind.  I am really into Grey right now.  There are so many options out there and I want to make sure I pick the right colour or else it will haunt me!

Today I chose three different greys to try out. 

2131 - Silver Gray
2126 - Gray Timber Wolf
2122 - Smoke

It's hard to tell as we still do not have lighting in the room but I am leaning towards 2131.  The Gray Timber Wolf is very grey and dark and the Smoke is a bit muddy. 

The swatch below is of Silver Gray. 

What are some of your favourite gray colours that I should check out?

Choosing Paint

There's a lot of activity going on in the new house.  Not a lot which is picture worthy at this point though.  The electrician is finishing his work including 60 potlights!  Exhale.  It's a lot of potlights.  We even scaled back.  Our plumber is finishing up his work on our new master ensuite.  So while the not-so-glamorous part of home renovation goes on, I am busy working on the visuals.

Right now I am trying to pick paint colours.  This is a big task especially when you are painting the whole house!  The girls room was easy.  We chose Behr- Frosted Lemon.  It's hard to see the brightness of this colour as we don't have power in most of our rooms let alone lights!  I will definitely post well-lighted pictures once we have light again.  Trust me though when I say that it is a nice fresh yellow.  I will also be free-handing butterflies on the walls above their beds.  Purple and Pink for Ainsley and Blue and Pink for Juliet.

For our guest room I went with a light blue/grey colour.  It is Behr - Cumberland Fog. 

It's a bit more blue than I had originally wanted.  However, as we do not know whether sharing a room will be a success with the girls, we will keep this colour for now.  Juliet's favourite colour is blue so if we have to move her in their, the colour is perfect!

That's what we've picked so far.  Off to start working on the Master Bedroom and Office paint choices.  Will post these soon,

Steel Vs. Fibreglass: The Great Door Debate

For our new home we need to replace most of our doors both inside and outside.  We've met with a number of different companies to look at the options available to us for our front door.  We decided right off the bat that wood was not going to happen.  Not only is is extremely expensive, but wood shrinks and swells according to the weather and we really wanted something that we didn't have to worry about.

The two options for us to choose between were steel and fibreglass.  I LOVE the look of fibreglass.

 You can get a number of wood grain finishes and stain it in a range of different colours.  These doors tend to be between $1000 to $2000 more in price than steel.  There are a lot of considerations when you are looking at fibreglass apart from the cost.  If you have a standard size door frame, this is a great option.  You also need to find out if the door company you are working with will stain this for you or if you or your contractor have to do this.

We have a unique opening for our front door.  It is oversize both in height and width.  The best solution for this space is to do a double door with two side lights (two windows, one on each side of the doors). If we were to go with fibreglass, we would loose some of the height we currently have as the door company would need to fill in to fit a standard size door.

We have been going back and forth over this for four weeks now and have finally decided to go with a double steel door for a number of reasons.

1.  Cost - because we are doing a double door, going with fibreglass would have added between $2000-$3000 more to our cost
2. Space - We really wanted to keep the height that a steel door would allow us to have.  The more light that comes in the better I always say.
3. Because we are going with a 3/4 panel glass door (see above) there would really not have much of the wood grain showing which really did not justify the huge increase in our costs
4.  The door cannot be seen clearly from the street due to a large tree in our front yard

So, after much debate we have decided to go with steel.  Our doors would have the executive panel as seen below but instead of the panel on the upper half, this would be clear glass.

Now we just have to figure out what colour to go with.

Master Bathroom - Vision

Brett and I have spent a lot of time thinking about the layout of our bathroom.  Now that we are in gut phase we have been able to plan out the space and we are pretty sure we have come up with a good layout.  We will have a 9X12 room and in it will be a stand alone shower, free standing bathtub vanity and toilet.  Since we now have the plan, it was time for me to go shopping!

I have been coveting this gorgeous vanity from Restoration Hardware in charcoal.  LOVE!!  I went and ordered it yesterday.  I ordered it without the marble top as the top they have is more grey than I want.  I think we will probably go quartz with a little bit of grey in it but I want a more crisp look.

I opted to go for the matching mirrors as well.

The tub we picked is free standing and curvy.  It's nice and big and I cannot wait to have a bath in it.  This tub is from www.tubs.com

We ended up choosing a stand alone faucet for the tub as well.  We debated getting a wall fixture but I loved the look of the stand alone next to the tubs.  The Faucet is also from www.tubs.com

We got our shower fixture from www.romanbathcentre.com.  I love the rectangular shower head.  And it's shiny.  I like shiny :)

For accessories, I bought a caddy and stool for our dressing room from www.restorationhardware.com.  Both are from the Newbury line.

And last but not least, I choose two sconces from www.restorationhardware.com.  I chose something a bit more modern as our shower fixtures and bath faucet are on the modern side.  We will be mounting them facing up, not down as in the picture.

Now we just need to pick sink faucets and tiles.  I have so many tiles that I love, this will be the challenging part.



The Demo Has Started

There's no going back now!  The demo of our new house officially started on Tuesday.  I didn't realize how much work we were doing on the house until I saw how many rooms were gutted.  Eeek!  So exciting! 

A few pics to show the progress:

The Family room had wood panelling on the walls which is now all gone.









The Kitchen will be a complete gut.  They are almost finished with that       room.  Apparently there were five layers of floor.  Good thing we didn't start that demo!



Our upstairs bathrooms are both gutted (forgot to take pics) along with our basement.  The gut work left to do includes our master bedroom closet and mudroom.  And we still have to get all the old wallpaper off the walls. 

I can't wait for the re-build process starts!