Published and made the cover!

Published and made the cover!

Published and made the cover of Ottawa at Home magazine Summer 2018

Such exciting news for my small business!

If you are in Ottawa you can pick it up at Farm Boy, Bridgehead Coffee, Tagalong Toys, Tamarack Model Homes, Chapters, etc… and also apparently it is in the Globe and Mail as an insert.

Click here to read it online.

I’ve also written a few posts with more detailed information on our renovation of the cottage. Click here to read about the living room transformation and here for the bathroom reno.

Exciting news

 

modern cottage kitchen

Photo credit: Melissa Kew Photography

This kitchen will soon be featured along with the rest of my log home cottage in a local magazine. I’m so excited. Once it’s published and available I’ll let you all know.

And did you know that it was an award winner? Click here or on the picture below to see the DDA video showcasing it.

2017 Silver award Kitchens DDA

Lisa

Catching up….

So how is everyone? I’m great. I’ve had a ridiculous crazy end of summer, early fall, but it’s all good. I thought it’d be a good time to catch up with everyone and share all my news.

So first up, my daughter got married a few weekends ago at our cottage. And for those of you that follow me, you may remember my son, also got married at the cottage, the same weekend, last year.  Crazy two home grown weddings in one year…and yes, I’m still recovering. So pretty much for the months of August and September, we were busy getting the place wedding ready, which entailed having the exterior window frames painted, the beach roto-tillered within an inch of it’s life, roof repairs and of course, the never ending job of keeping critters from ripping up our lawn, for the oh so tasty grubs (we kind of failed on this point, but I’ll get to that later). We also were having a new furnace and air exchanger (which also acts as an air conditioner) installed the week before the wedding. So needless to say, I was a little stressed out about it all, until it was finally installed and working the Tuesday before the wedding….phew!

My daughter and son-in-law had decided on late fall, so that it would be nice and cool for them….well, not exactly how it turned out. We had our heat wave in mid to late September this year, so our cool fall wedding turned into a blazing hot 40 celsius summer wedding. So obviously, we cancelled the propane tent heaters we had ordered.  But at least it wasn’t raining and the a/c was working!!!

Here’s a few candid shots from the day.

wedding ready beach

wedding flowers

Bride and groom

Wedding

It was a spectacularly great day and since one of my son-in-law’s groomsmen, is a master of fireworks, we had a spectacular show once it got dark. You can check my Instagram video to see them. And you can’t even see the totally ripped up grass, courtesy of the family of raccoons that were being well fed with grubs….sigh…. Oh well, nothing is perfect.

So obviously the wedding kept me busy and just a few days before the wedding, the cottage was photographed for a design magazine. This was sooooooo exciting for me, of course, but it’s an incredible amount of work to try and get everything ready and picture perfect. So all the things I had put off and hadn’t finished, now needed to be done yesterday.  So there was alot of measuring, sourcing, purchasing, picking up, transporting of items, and of course, cleaning, lots and lots of cleaning. Here’s a few shots I took of the cottage prior to the photographer arriving.

Beach chairs

Conversation area on the deck with propane fire pit and

cottage dining room

cottage floral arrangement

cottage front porch

I’ll be sure and let you know when the issue comes out, but don’t hold your breath, it’s going to be awhile, as that is just the way it is, in the design magazine industry.

In between these two things, I’ve been working on completing a cottage reno and starting two bathroom renos. One bath is in full mode now, hopefully done in a week or two, and the other should start in the next few weeks. Here’s a little sneak peek of where the first one is heading, design-wise.

Bathroom tile selection, white and bright

Just realized the adhesive is showing on the top tile…opps. And the little squares are paint options for the clients to view. Once I have proper photos, I’ll let you know which paint colour was chosen.

And just yesterday, I was absolutely stunned to find out that I was nominated as one of the top 100 influencers in Interior Design for 2018. So if you have a minute and feel that I’ve somehow influenced your design style, I’d love your vote. Just click here or on the picture below and you’ll go directly to my name on the list.  Voting is open until Oct 10 and you can vote daily.  And just for that, I’m sending you a big hug and thank you!

Design Hounds Top 100 Influencers Nominee

 

So that’s all my news, sorry for such a long post, but I had a lot to cover. Have a fabulous weekend and to all my fellow Canadians, Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy your turkey day!

Lisa

Quick cottage refresh and award winning kitchens

How is your Spring going? Lots and lots of rain here, really hoping that our late spring/summer improves soon. We’ve been busy recovering from the flood at our cottage and celebrating our daughter’s upcoming wedding by having her bridal shower this past weekend. It was a lot of fun and I’ll be sharing some pictures of that later this week or early next week.

fresh and bright country cottage shelf detail Photography credit: Melissa Kew Photography

 

Today, I actually have a few links to share. CDECA (The Canadian Decorators’ Association) just published their post on the 6 award winning kitchens for 2017. I’m happy to be included in this amazing group of designers/decorators. Click on the picture above to see all the winning kitchens.

And if you are looking for a few tips on how to do a quick cottage spring refresh, check out the article that I contributed to in the online magazine, More.

Happy Wednesday and here’s to some more sun!

Lisa

 

A bright and fresh country kitchen – CDECA Silver award winner

Not a very humble title but I’m a little stoked to have my bright and fresh country kitchen win the Silver award for CDECA’s Decorating and Design Awards.

I thought I’d share the Youtube video showcasing my cottage kitchen.

Very exciting for me! And I’d like to say a big congratulations to all the 2017 winners.

Lisa