A Trip to Tonic Living

I'm slowly starting to gather the pieces that will finish the living room. Armchairs, storage pieces, a rug and draperies are some of the things on my shopping list. Since the dining room and living room are open to each other, I've also got to be sure that the furnishings in both rooms work together too.

The most difficult element to tie in is the bold wallpaper in the dining room. When we picked the wallpaper four years ago, we chose it purely on looks. I loved the large floral pattern; it fit with the breezy feel I wanted and worked with the plantation shutters and white wainscotting. One thing I did not really give much thought to: how I would carry the colour palette into the adjoining living room. Now, the living room not only has to tie in the yellow and brown tones of the dining room, but also the grey from the hallway. How to do that? Fabric.

I made a trip out to one of my favourite sources for fabric, Tonic Living. You may know Tonic Living from their online store tonicliving.com but they've recently opened up a warehouse location that local folks can visit in person!! I've experienced great service from Tonic Living in the past (they did my fabulous custom draperies for my master bedroom) so was eager to see what I could use for this next project. Here's Janine, the lovely lady behind the brand:

And here's some fabric eye candy in her warehouse:

Oh, if only I had more rooms to decorate - there was so many great patterns I loved! But I was on a mission, looking for fabrics in colours of yellow, taupe, cream, and grey. Here's a few I took samples of:

You'll have to wait and see what I ended up using for the living room ;) In the meantime, you can visit the warehouse yourself:

Tonic Living

63 Mack Avenue, Unit 5

Toronto, ON

Open Monday to Friday, 9:30am-4:30pm

Or shop from home at tonicliving.com. And, Tonic Living has kindly extended a discount to my readers. Enjoy a 10% discount off any order (no minimum) by entering the coupon code RAMBLING. Happy shopping!

Colour Trendz

Have you seen Pantone's Colour of the Year 2011, Honeysuckle, and its choice for Spring 2011 fashion colours?


I'm not as far ahead of the trend like Nicole, but looks like I'm on the right track with the fabrics I've chosen for Chloe's big girl bedroom:

Cool! But chances are by the time the bedroom is actually done (its not even started yet!), these colours may be on their way out.

Big Girl Room: Picking Fabrics

When I design a room, the first thing I do is pick fabrics. Picking fabrics is one my most favourite things in the world. Ask HandyMan, he knows I can spend hours at Designer Fabrics browsing all the samples. I really think fabrics can make or break a room. They set the tone and feel of the space and often determine the colour palette. So when I'm trying to set a direction for a design, I look to my fabrics first.

To create a look for the big girl room, my first step was to order some samples from Tonic Living. They did such a fabulous job with my master bedroom curtains, I knew they would have some fun options to consider:


When I think of kids' rooms, I automatically think of polka dots and stripes so I ordered some samples of that. I really liked the large floral print at top and the cotton blossom print at the bottom too. Yet, although these samples were cute, nothing was really grabbing me yet.

So off I went to Designer Fabrics (which never ever disappoints) and I borrowed these lovely samples:


Delish! Now things were coming together. It took a really long time to whittle it down to these samples though... do you know how hard it is to pick a fabric when you have no clue what look you're going for?? At one point, I had about 20 samples piled on a table, everything from navy & white gingham and other preppy fabrics, to durable outdoor fabrics covered in a vibrant sea blue & orange koi pattern, to sweet delicate tiny florals. And they only let you borrow 8 samples at a time so it took me a very very long time to decide!

Doesn't the top left pastel floral fabric remind you of this pretty wallpaper in the Miette candy store?

Photos from Design*Sponge

I love love love this store and its one of my main inspirations for the big girl room. Its a little bit vintage, a little bit modern. So which fabrics did I end up choosing? You'll just have to wait and see!

Play Kitchen Progress

I've been working on the play kitchen when ever I can get a spare moment. Its been such a fun project. I'm getting more comfortable with the power tools but I still have to say my favourite part is the decorating and accessorizing. With the base cabinet for the sink built, I could finally get into the fun stuff - picking handles and knobs and fabric.


We found this faucet at the Habitat ReStore. It was the perfect teeny tiny size and only cost $15. Score! For the handles, we made a trip to my favourite source for cabinet hardware - Lee Valley Tools. Lee Valley is a DIY dream store. Its full of all sorts of tools and gadgets and gear for woodworking and gardening. Their online catalogues are worth a look and you can order many things online and they deliver internationally.


We ended up picking this handle. It'll be used for the play stove door and the fridge door. I really love the vintagey look of the hardware. The rivets on the handles give a utilitarian look I quite like. We got these knobs for the dials on the stove, and we picked up this long handle to act as a rod for a dish towel on the side of the play sink.


And here is the fabric I picked. Its so yummy I could eat it up!! The fabrics are from the Meadowsweet 2 collection by Sandi Handerson for Michael Miller fabrics. I purchased a bundle of five 1/2 yard pieces and an extra yard from etsy seller freshsqueezedfabrics. I hope to sew a cover for the opening under the play sink, make coordinating tea towels, and maybe an apron for Chloe too! Pretty ambitious considering I haven't sewed anything in 5 years... and I'm not even sure where the sewing machine is... and if I did find it, I don't know if I could remember how to thread it! I guess power tools aren't the only things I need to practice with.

Tonic Living Custom Drapery!

I've kept you waiting on progress on the master bedroom renovation, haven't I? I don't mean to, but we're still waiting on the swing arm lamps and deciding on some art and other small projects so I'd hate to reveal the room before its all done. But hopefully, this will tide you over for a bit...

The window coverings are up! And boy, do they add some personality and colour to the room. At first, I had wanted to have a single wooden blind across the three windows like I've seen in so many decorating photos but we went to RONA and the draperies lady highly recommended we don't go that route. She said that wood blinds will warp and distort over time because of sun exposure and moisture changes and given the large size we wanted, it would be very evident. Oh - and the custom size would cost us in the neighbourhood of $700!! Yeah, scratch that idea. We ended up getting three wood roman blind shades in a standard size for about $75!

And then there's the curtains... how I love them. I'd debated getting custom drapes or getting something off the shelf like this or this or this. But the colours and patterns were boring and I would have to get some of the drapes black-out lined as well. I decided to ask my seamstress who did the curtains and upholstery for the nursery and the deck but her quote was too much to swallow.

Then I remembered Tonic Living. I'd ordered fabric samples from them before and I remembered they also did custom work. So I asked for a quote:
- curtain panels for 11' wide window, 1.5x fullness
- top pinch pleat
- using their yummy Sweet William in Teal fabric
- blackout lined
- custom length of 90.5" (from the bottom of the curtain rings to just grazing the floor)

They came out perfectly.

And the quote? Less than $390 Canadian including tax and shipping :) I fell off my chair, I tell you! It would cost me much more to get an off the shelf product customized with blackout lining and shortened.

I can tell you I was a little nervous ordering something custom sight unseen (though I did order a fabric sample beforehand - only $1 per sample!) but I need not have worried. Tonic Living was an absolute pleasure to deal; their customer service is top notch and the quality of the end product is great. They're based out of Toronto so I was glad to patronize a local company to boot.

Since I was so happy with the product, I thought I'd do a little mention of Tonic Living here on the old blog. If you are in the market for fabric or custom sewing, definitely check them out!

And lucky you - Tonic Living is offering you a 10% discount off any order (no minimum)! To get the discount:
- enter the coupon code RAMBLING on the first page of the check out process in the coupon code box
- plus, Canadian customers with postal codes starting with L, M or N get free shipping on orders of $50 or more (pre-tax)

What are you waiting for? Get fabric shopping! And I'll get back to slowly putting my room together ;)

Mini Chair Makeover!

8 months, 148 nail tacks, 7 feet of flexible tacking strip, 1.5 yards of fabric, 1 quart of paint, and 2 bloody fingers to take this:

to this and finally this:





It's not perfect, but its done :) This is my first reupholstery job and I learned a few things like:
- flexible tacking strip is probably well suited for regular sized furniture but is a pain in the butt for a mini chair like this one
- flexible tacking strip needs lots of foam on top of it to prevent it from poking through the fabric
- for a first time reupholstery project, don't pick fabric with stripes or plaids (strike 1 and strike 2!)



So it took much more effort than I anticipated but I'm pretty happy with it. Now Chloe will have a chair to sit on when she blows the candle off of her 1st birthday cake!! Not that the kid likes to sit on the chair - yet. The chair isn't the only thing that's changed:




I'm linking this post up to some blog parties: Creative Cats; Saturday Nite Special; Frugal Friday; Show and Tell; Frugalicious Friday; Transformation Thursday

Master Bedroom: Fabric Hunt, Part I

Thank you all for your comments to my last post. And for those new commenters who came out of the woodwork, it was so nice to hear from you. I appreciate all the support from you my virtual friends.

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A cute picture...just because.
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Its easier to decorate a room when you have some inspiration, be it a piece of furniture, a paint colour, a swatch of fabric. With the master bedroom, I knew I wanted white walls and we already had the dark furniture to work with but beyond that I was stumped. That's the problem with a white room - you can go in any direction, decorating-wise!

To help narrow down the rest of the "look", I went in search of fabric. My first stop was my favourite haunt, Designer Fabrics. Let me tell you, when you don't know what you want, the fabric store is not the place you want to be. I ended up taking home 8 samples, each completely different. I ordered some samples from Tonic Living too and became even more confused. There was no rhyme or reason to the fabrics I chose. Have a look. I picked out patterns in all different sizes:

Some retro prints:

A few colourful trellis-y things:

A bit of glam and some stripes:

And some bold florals.


A schizophrenic fabric frenzy I tell you! But putting all the samples together, I was able to at least narrow down some sort of fabric direction for the room. I wanted a mix of tradition with a hint of modern. Something with a nice weight to it and not on a pure white background. I liked florals too, especially oversized ones. And colour! Ohh, I'm craving hits of colour in the bedroom.

So which fabrics made the cut????
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Well, here is my first draft of the bedroom fabric palette:


Not too bad... but I still wasn't entirely satisfied! So back to Designer Fabrics I went to pick even more fabric samples. The search continues...

Blinded

Soft and feminine. That’s the pattern of the roman blind we finally installed in the bathroom. We had a bit of a problem deciding what type of pattern to have on the blind. The room has a spa-like palette, all whites, soft greys, and watery blue-greens. We could have gone with a bold or modern pattern to punch things up but in the end chose this floral with a slight oriental feel.


The only question now is whether to keep the vinyl film we had installed temporarily on the window or remove it. What do you think? We have a big maple tree out front which is now full and leafy so we really don’t need the film for privacy.