Close to a year ago we moved our little family from the North end of town to the South side of the city. We have been spending the past year getting to know the ins and outs of our new space and assessing where best to invest our time and money. After all, our new digs are about 100 years old and in need of some major updating. Let me repeat, some MAY-JOR updating.

Giving our dining room a make over has been a huge undertaking. Bigger than I ever expected it to be! So much wallpaper! So much lace! The entire house was covered in a layer of plush white carpet. This is fine, but not for us. Aaron and a small army of friends spent many hours pulling up this carpet, it’s padding and all of the nails, staples and tacks holding it all down. Underneath we found some nice old hardwood. Much better! We’ll need to be refinishing these floors but all in due time.

Elsa celebrated her First Birthday at the new house. You may remember reading about her party here. Here’s the line up of all her B-Day cards as well as a close up of the old wall paper. Lucky for me this wallpaper came down fairly quick. I did buy myself a little steamer and that stuff came down like nobodies business!

Things are looking a little bit different now days. I can’t say I wasn’t inspired by the previous color palette. The former owners love of wallpaper was not lost on me either. I found this wallpaper designed by Basso & Brooke over at Graham & Brown and decided I had to have it. I really love the sophisticated illustration and how it grows into a modern version of a traditional damask-ish pattern when you view it from a distance. Almost like one of those crazy pictures you used to stare at as a kid in hopes to see the spaceship or the dolphin appear when you unfocused and crossed your eyes.

I’ve always wanted one but never had an appropriate place to hang one. Now I do. I like my new light. What an improvement!

I’m slowly collecting artwork for the walls. I found this sweet little print at the MCAD Art Sale this past year. Check out the Too Many Suitors website for a peek at more sweet little sweet things.

The last dramatic change to this room came by way of a gallon of citrus stripper and a whole lot of mess. I couldn’t quite figure out what the motivation behind painting the window trim white was. So I took the white paint off and did my best to find a stain to match the rest of the wood work.

There’s just a few more things to do in here like get some curtains made, refinish those floors and accessorise a bit. All in all this room is feeling more and more like us and I couldn’t be happier!