Canada Day Mantel and Free Printables

July 1st, 2012 will be Canada’s 145th birthday. To celebrate my Canadian roots, I made my first ever Canada-themed mantel!

I dipped into my stash of red decor from my Valentine’s Day mantel, and then added some Canadian touches.

The license plate was something that Mr. Mechanic pulled out of our fireplace when he attempted to repair the masonry. The previous owners modified the size of the firebox and tried to fill the gap between the bricks by stuffing it full of random metal garbage. We found at least 6 plates, but this one was definitely in the best shape.

The Pop Shoppe bottle brings back memories of drinking Lime Rickey pop at my Grandparents’ house growing up. It was originally bottled very close to where I live. There was always a crate of these hiding in a closet somewhere. This is a fairly new bottle, but I have a crate full of these waiting for me up north in the shed at the cottage.

The globe was from Michaels and I bought it with a 50% off coupon so it only cost me $2.50. You will see it popping up in another vignette that I created with some fun garage sale finds.

The flag artwork is my first Canada Day printable created using the digital scrapbooking software My Memories Suite.

I created an 8 x 10 printable that has a background made up of all the names of Canada’s provinces and territories.

{Download your own copy here!}

I also created a second My Memories Suite printable that is not shown on the mantel.

The burlap paper effect that I chose for the background has a more rustic look to it that did not go as well with the white of my other mantel decor. It is on display in my Kitchen instead.

{Download your own copy here}

On the other side of the mantel, you will spy this little vignette.

Of course, I had to include some red paint chips in my Canada Day decor!

I lined a Gem mason jar (made in Canada) with a large paint chip and also used one as the background in my Michaels dollar bin frame. I happened to have a package of Canada-themed charms from a Walmart clearance jewelry purchase last year. My school hosted a Canadian citizenship ceremony so I wore a flag charm on my necklace to show some Canadian patriotism. I mounted the charm onto the paint chip with a foam dot.

The ombre artwork was created in Silhouette Studio using this tutorial and the Print and Cut feature. It was so easy! Even if you don’t have a Silhouette machine, the software is free to download and there is a free weekly shape released every Tuesday.

I also created my banner with my Silhouette and my favourite pennant shape.

I cut three red pennants, four white pennants and two maple leaves (divided in half). Then, I attached the maple leaves to the white pieces with spray adhesive.

Once the pieces were cut and assembled, I used a punch tool to add silver eyelets and then threaded all the pieces onto red and white Baker’s twine.

I knew that I wanted to use an odd number of pennants so it worked out perfectly that the center piece of red could tie together both flags.

That’s it!

I had so much fun putting together all the elements of my Canada Day mantel. I hope that if you’re a Canadian you might include one of my printables in your decor this July 1st!

Come back tomorrow for the giveaway details on how to win your own copy of My Memories Suite!

P.S. Check out my other seasonal mantels here, here and here!

P.P.S. The red bandana was just a Dollar Store purchase.

---

I link up at: Serenity Now, I {Heart} Naptime, Under The Table And Dreaming, NiftyThrifty Things, Simply Klassic Home, Home Stories A to Z, Craftomaniac, Skip To My Lou, Not JUST A Housewife, A Bowl Full Of Lemons, Alderberry Hill, I Should Be Mopping The Floor, A Diamond In The Stuff, Creatively Living, The Winthrop Chronicles, Clean & Scentsible, Oopsey Daisy, Lil’ Luna, Live.Laugh.Rowe, The 36th Avenue, aka design, House of Hepworths, 52 Mantels, Thrifty Decorating, Crafty Scrappy Happy, How To Nest For Less, Tatertots & Jello, The Grant Life, It’s Overflowing, Lolly Jane, Too Much Time, Six Sisters’ Stuff, Positively Splendid, My {Re}purposed Life, Just Us Four and The Crafted Sparrow

Thank you to all the hosts!

---

Back to Reality

I’m back after a very busy week!

It was crazy hot working away without air conditioning (during a heat wave) but the cottage looks completely different from when we arrived last Friday.

The water is not yet drinkable and the plumbing needed to be off for most of the week so we were very fortunate to be able to stay at the home of a family friend during our time up North. At one point there were 9 of us staying there!

Since there were at least 6 people vying for shower time each day, I always opted for a morning shower (one of the drawbacks of short hair – bedhead!). As a result, there were several mornings where I walked over to the cottage on my own after everyone had left (usually to make a Home Depot run).

The cottage is located on a long, winding road lined with pine trees.

Mr. Mechanic’s Grandfather planted these beautiful trees and this was once all his property.

Through the trees you can see a sliver of the bog or pond that sits at the edge of the cottage lot.

This is what is looks like when you stand on the beach of the cottage.

The cottage overlooks a small lake that is already really warm. No swimming for me this time, but definitely next time.

Turn around, and this is what you see.

I was in charge of mowing the lawn with the riding mower. I did pretty well aside from the time that I drove over a tree stump! Oops . . .

Even the weeds were pretty!

There was no shortage of nature while we were there.

Over the weekend we were greeted by this little dog – Maggie – jumping up at the screen door wanting to visit with my 18-month old niece, Arabella. She (Maggie)adored her! One day she even followed Mr. Mechanic’s Dad all the way into town when he went for a walk with Arabella in her stroller! 

Since it’s a small community someone recognized her and drove her back home.

Maggie was my Pumpkin substitute while we were away.

On our second to last day there I almost drove over a turtle that was searching for a place to lay its eggs.

It started out on the road but eventually made its way down the long driveway (much faster than I would expect a turtle to travel!) to a sandy spot by the front door of the cottage.

From the window we could see it rocking back and forth, digging a hole. It laid its eggs and then filled the hole again. If we hadn’t seen the hole you would never even know it was there.

Then, she (I’m assuming!) got the heck out of there! I could hear this rustling in the woods and discovered that it was the turtle off-roading to get back to the pond!

In 2 to 3 months there should be some baby turtles hatching provided the other wildlife up there doesn’t get to them first.

Just around the corner from where the turtle laid its eggs, there is a large patch of milkweed. On almost every plant you would find at least one caterpillar munching away. If I had a better camera I could have had some great shots!

I don’t have any photos of the inside of the cottage because when we left the painter’s tape was still up in all of the rooms.

Once Mr. Mechanic’s Dad forwards me his pictures I’ll be able to show you some great before and afters (for which I can take very little credit – Mr. Mechanic’s sisters and parents were painting machines!)

Since returning home, I have been busy putting together a Canada Day mantel featuring some free printables that I made with the My Memories Suite software that I will be giving away to one lucky reader soon. I hope you’ll come back to check it out!

One more day of supply teaching and then I have a feeling that will be it for this school year.

Happy Monday!

P.S. Check out my first free printable here.

A Bit of Pinspiration: Vintage Inspired Bathroom Artwork

This weekend I did a quick D.I.Y. project that was both fun and served a purpose.

For almost 4 years we have had a nail in the bathroom above the toilet from where something was hung by the previous owners.  I have mentioned before that we are terrible about hanging things up. Case in point.

My summer vacation officially started on Friday. That’s right, school only just finished this week in Ontario. I try to spend the first week of my summer restoring order to our house room-by-room.

Since Mr. Mechanic had to work on Saturday, I took this as an opportunity to tackle a much-needed bathroom deep clean. This seems to be the thing that I have to get out of the way when it comes to cleaning. Everything else is a much less involved process.

While cleaning, I smashed my wrist on the hand towel rail that is above the toilet. As I was standing there cursing, I once again noticed the lonely nail and thought “I really need to put something there!”

Our bathroom has a tricky colour scheme. So tricky that I bought the exact same shower curtain as what was there when we toured the house! The walls are a hideous cranberry colour and the accent colours (pulled from the curtain) are chocolate brown, yellow and a teal-ish green. Now you see why artwork was a challenge.

Last week I stumbled upon this lovely vintage-look First Aid sign when I was on Pinterest.

{Source: The Virginia House via Claire on Pinterest}

Living with a mechanic, I’m very familiar with all things first aid!

I could have painted a sign that said First Aid, but I decided to put my own twist on it.

A few months ago I found this vintage Elastoplast tin while going through a First Aid kit that I had in the trunk of my car.

With this in mind, I did a Google search for images of vintage Band-Aid tins (I’m a name brand girl – tissues will always be Kleenex and bandages are Band-Aids).

Which brought me to this lovely antique market find:

{Source: Sass and Peril via Claire on Pinterest}

Sorry.  Inspiration hit me so quickly that I didn’t even stop to take photos of the process!

Here’s the gist of what I did:

I used the trace function on my Silhouette to create a stencil from the photo and then cut the stencil from an old overhead. I used painter’s tape to hold the inside pieces of the letters in place when I lifted it off the mat.

I wanted it to have an aged look when it was distressed so I consulted some of Lake Girl Paints’ amazing posts on how to create painted pieces with a lot of dimension and then got painting. My wood was just a piece of pine left over from my faux metal airplane artwork.

After doing a base layer using dark brown, mustard yellow and some black, I left it to dry and then painted over it with an antique white colour.

I sprayed my stencil with repositionable spray adhesive and then transferred it to my piece of wood.

The cross was a mix of red, orange and black to make it a similar colour to my bathroom walls.

The lettering was painted black with a touch of blue. I think a really deep navy colour would have been perfect but I was working with the paint that I had on hand.

After this dried (courtesy of my hair dryer), I sanded it with my palm sander using 220 grit sandpaper. The layers of colour started to show underneath but it needed one more thing.

My original inspiration had a small frame around it and I remembered that Wendy had shared a trick for painting this in her Subway Art post. I didn’t have a ruler to sacrifice but I did have a piece of aluminum. I taped off a frame using Frog tape and then pressed the painted aluminum onto the wood. It worked, but since it was such a long piece of metal I switched to painting along the tape edge with a fine-tipped brush.

Then . . .

More distressing to age the freshly painted frame.

Paint the edges of the sign black.

And finally, ink the edges with Tim Holtz’ Distress Ink in Vintage Photo and smudge some of it onto the corners of the sign to age it further.

Voila!

It’s just what I wanted and it will be hanging in its new home tomorrow on July 8th (believe it or not, that’s a quick turnaround for me).

 

 

 

 

We had beautiful weather for Canada Day so I was able to do most of this outside on the patio. I was even able to write this post outside surrounded by the sound of fireworks.

One more day left of our long weekend – fingers crossed that we finish building a garden that has been in the works since Victoria Day!

Hope your first day of July was a good one!

P.S. Don’t forget to enter my giveaway for a chance to win a copy of My Memories Suite’s digital scrapbooking software!

P.P.S. Check out my other two ‘pinspired’ projects: Shanty 2 Chic's Mason Jar Planter Box and Sarah Ortega's Bird's Nest Pendants.

---

I link up at: Serenity Now, I {Heart} Naptime, Under The Table And Dreaming, Nifty Thrifty Things, Simply Klassic Home, Home Stories A to Z, Craftomaniac, Skip To My Lou, Not JUST A Housewife, A Bowl Full Of Lemons, Alderberry Hill, I Should Be Mopping The Floor, A Diamond In The Stuff, Creatively Living, The Winthrop Chronicles, Clean & Scentsible, Oopsey Daisy, Lil’ Luna, Someday Crafts, Live.Laugh.Rowe, The 36th Avenue, aka design,House of Hepworths, 52 Mantels, Thrifty Decorating, Crafty Scrappy Happy, How To Nest For Less, Tatertots & Jello, The Grant Life, It’s Overflowing, Lolly Jane, Too Much Time, Six Sisters’ Stuff, Positively Splendid, My {Re}purposed Life, 413 Sparrow Lane, Dragonfly Designs, Just Us Four, Liz Marie and The Crafted Sparrow 

  Thank you to all the hosts!

---

Our Lemonade Garden

Why is it a lemonade garden?

I’m sure one day I’ll sip some lemonade while sitting here enjoying the fruits of our labour (ha!), but that’s not why.

Keep reading and I’ll tell you!

For four years, we have attempted to grow grass under the enormous tree in our backyard.

The Timeline:

2008 – When we moved in we inherited a terrible lawn that was patchy and brown (BTW - that’s not our stuff on the lawn). This was the spot where their dog would pass the time.

2009 – The grass started off well but would die halfway through the summer no matter what kind of grass seed we bought.

2010 – Same story as 2009 (sorry, Mr. Mechanic was in the only photo of this spot that I could find).

2011 – More money than ever spent on different kinds of grass seed plus a lawn care package and still no success with growing grass under the tree!

So, at the end of last summer, we started talking about putting in a shade garden to eliminate the Grass Battle of 2012.

Then this happened:

During the very mild winter, our local hydro company did some line maintenance, trimming branches that were touching (or would soon touch) the power line that runs through our backyard.

By “trim” I mean absolutely butcher.

You would think that the new gaping hole in our tree would lead to more grass growth, but it didn’t. Time to build a garden!

We started out with a bench from Lowe’s under the tree. We bought it at the end of the summer when it was on clearance and I was the one who assembled it!

We wanted to create the garden on a bit of a budget and lucked out with some free hostas from our neighbour.

One day our next door neighbour mentioned that she would be digging up hostas at a property that was being torn down (with permission). We happily took her up on her offer to get us some, too. All it cost us was a bag full of plastic bags that I was going to recycle anyway.

To create the garden we planned a shape with our hose (thanks, Mom) and then Mr. Mechanic shaved the top layer off the grass with a shovel, raked the soil and dug holes for the hostas. We had to work around the roots of the tree which limited the placement of some of the plants.

We eventually added a few hostas that were already planted in other gardens as well as three ferns from Home Depot (a buy two get one free perennial deal).

Before we left for the cottage I picked up a flat of begonias to add some colour to the garden. They sat on my patio waiting to be planted and must have tripled in height!

Once Canada Day weekend arrived, I finally got planting!

We bought five stepping stones from Rona after searching for stones that looked like flagstone and had a variety of shapes/sizes. These are actually concrete but they look pretty convincing to me!

I suggested that we put small paver stones under the feet of the bench to keep it from sinking into the soil. Mr. M buried all of the stones just below the soil after levelling them.

The final step was mulch.

Mulch is so transformative!

With just one bag our garden stopped looking like an afterthought and started looking like a legitimate garden.

9 bags of mulch (and 4 years) later, our garden was finally finished!

Please focus your eyes on the garden and not the crispy grass!

The garden actually receives more sun than I thought (thanks to the gaping hole!) so I am hopeful that the begonias will continue to thrive.

So, why do I call it our lemonade garden?

Because, when the hydro company gave us “lemons,” we made lemonade!

Thanks for visiting and checking out my new favourite outdoor space!

P.S. Check out two more gardening posts here and here!

P.P.S. Look for another fun planter post later this week with something that I rescued from the cottage cleanout last year.

---

I link up at: Serenity Now, I {Heart} Naptime, Under The Table And Dreaming, Nifty Thrifty Things, Simply Klassic Home, Home Stories A to Z, Craftomaniac, Skip To My Lou, Not JUST A Housewife, A Bowl Full Of Lemons, Alderberry Hill, I Should Be Mopping The Floor, A Diamond In The Stuff, Creatively Living, The Winthrop Chronicles, Clean & Scentsible, Oopsey Daisy, Lil’ Luna, Someday Crafts, Live.Laugh.Rowe, The 36th Avenue, aka design, House of Hepworths, 52 Mantels, Thrifty Decorating, Crafty Scrappy Happy, How To Nest For Less, Tatertots & Jello, The Grant Life, It’s Overflowing, Lolly Jane, Too Much Time, Six Sisters’ Stuff, Positively Splendid, My {Re}purposed Life, 413 Sparrow Lane, Dragonfly Designs, Just Us Four and The Crafted Sparrow

Thank you to all the hosts!

---