DecorAddict Holiday Gift Guide 2009 !!!!!

Welcome to the 1st annual DecorAddict Holiday Gift Guide! Beginning on December 1st, each day for the next 25 days, I will make a gift suggestion for almost every loved one in your lives. I will have the perfect suggestion for even the people you don’t even want to buy for like the boss you don’t like, or your sister’s boyfriend of the month.


Enjoy!

John & Carolyn Malone {via Design*Sponge}

You MUST check out this house tour over at Design*Sponge.

image via design*sponge

What do you think?

Do you like it? My new header that is. I thought I'd change it up a bit, just using text just wasn't cutting it anymore for me.

I HUGE thank you to Rita Vindedzis for the beautiful artwork in my header at the moment. You can read more about Rita from last year here. She is so talented, and lovely! I really must get off my butt and buy some of her work.

Rita can be found online at her website, blog, and Etsy Shop.

New Vintage Shop from Sadie Olive

Beautiful collection of books, baubles, and stuff over at Sadie Olive's new vintage shop. See the full collection here.

I wrote about Sadie Olive last March, you can read more about her here. Wow. Last March. Where has this year gone?

vintage french clock, $48

Amsterdam Sugar Warehouse

Delicious loft tour, from LoftLife magazine.

White on White

LOVING everything white at the moment, most especially in bathrooms. There is NOTHING like a fluffy white towel fresh out of the shower.

UPDATE: I just found this article on white bathrooms over an Canadian Home & Country magazine...yummy!

via Homebug

via Persian Tea

via Sophie Honeysuckle

via Colour Me Happy

via Door Sixteen

Good Morning.....

Happy Monday (ugh) everyone!





My everyday, well, weekday breakfast, cup of coffee, oatmeal, a little bit of reading, and playing around with Poladroid.

someone's anticipating the arrival of the 2010 Winter Olympics!

House & Home, online TV

Yay for online eps of Canadian House & Home's NEW online TV !!! There are already 2 episodes ready for viewing online, you can check them both out here.




UPDATE: DecorAddict is on THE List! Canadian House & Homes favorite design sites! You can see the full list here; not only are we a part of this amazing list, but there are TONS of other blogs and sites. A fantastic reference tool for everyone!!

Fey Handmade

Yummy shop to help you with your holiday shopping, Fey Handmade.

*about*, *shop*, *blog*

Upsidedive, a family affair

I have total respect for those that can work with family members. Upsidedive, a shop in my city of Toronto, is owned and run by 4 siblings. You heard me right. FOUR. I don't think I could honestly work with one. Not that I don't love my family, but you know what I mean.

I love what their "about me" states:

"Four siblings with various interests have combined their efforts as purveyors of previously loved goods. We believe in celebrating items throughout their life cycle, and highlighting the personalities of each item. We don’t think you need to sacrifice global consciousness at the expense of consumerism. We'd like to redefine consumerism. To do this, means that each of us bring our own input, and we ask for your input as well. Let’s look at connecting as a global community."




Such a great message, redefining consumerism. Makes you think twice about buying yet another Billy bookcase, eh?

Visit Upsidedive online, at their blog, or during your next visit to Toronto.


all images from Upsidedive

Tinsel vs. the Pink Elephant

I'll admit it, the Holiday season approaching has me in a new frame of mind this year. It's been so long since my family has had small children around over the holidays, this year is about to change thanks to the arrival of Adelaide.

No, I'm not going to go nuts with presents, after all, she'll barely be 6 months old during the holidays, and won't remember it; however, I do plan to decorate a little bit more that usual, and our 3 1/2 foot tree may be tossed and a 5-6 footer purchased.

I'm not one for the metallic ball look, or tinsel, I much prefer handmade ornaments. I have quite a large collection of ornaments over at my mom's house, which I just may have to pick through a little bit to bring home with me to start our own tree.

A very close family friend (Hi Connie!) gave me my very first Christmas ornament when I was only 4 months old, and yes, I still have it. Would you believe it's a pink elephant? Made out of Styrofoam, and pepto bismol pink paint. It's almost destroyed, but I don't care. It still goes on my mom's tree, year after year, in the most prominent spot. Smack in the middle, front and centre.

Christmas decorations should mean something, or tell a story, don't you think? As we have virtually NO decorations for our tree this year, I'm starting to shop around for some unique tree decorations. Here is a small collection of some I've already found online. I also hope to pick some up at the One of A Kind Craft show coming up in a few weeks, it's going to be a madhouse!



1. Beaver Ornament, $4.50, from Dancing Gnome
2. tiny felt stockings, set of 3, $18.50, from RikRak
3. modern christmas stocking, $18, from Prudence Octavia
4. Otis the Owl ornament, $10, from JennyJen



5. lace leaf ornament, set of 3, $40, from Megan Auman
6. felt star ornament, $16, from Erratic Needle
7. aqua blue plush ornament, $15, from My Paper Crane
8. Andy the red fox ornament, $10, from Red Marionette

April Tidey, designer, inside & out

Vancouver designer and landscape architect April Tidey has been beautifying homes since the early 90's. She has such an eclectic eye, and is so creative at what she does.

If I had 7 million dollars.......

.....and then some, i'd buy this house in Venice, CA.












all images Coldwell Banker

Max Attenborugh

Fall is in full force here in Ontario. Most of the trees have shed their leaves, and we're left with nothing but twigs. I'll admit, it's kinda depressing, this time between no leaves and the 1st snowfall.

Here are a few photos from interiors stylist Max Attenborugh to cheer you all up today. Bright and happy, reminiscent from a cool day, don't you think?



Ahhh. Only 5 more months until spring. *sigh*









all images by max attenborugh

Ho Ho Ho !!!!

You see those 3 spaces over to your right at the top of the page? DecorAddict has just awesome sponsor's, don't you think? Well, I have some amazing news! I'm opening up some more special holiday ad-space for all you independent artists, crafters, and designers out there.

image by June Bugs

Please shoot me an email, and I'll fill you in on all the juicy details!

Weekending, well, beginning actually

Happy Monday everyone!!! What did everyone do this weekend?

The hubby and I had our "date-night", out for dinner, a few pints at the pub, then would you believe we were home in bed asleep by 1030? I guess that is the one luxury of being new parents, and excuse to SLEEP as much as you possibly can!

We also hit an open house in the neighbourhood that we are considering buying a home in. The homeowner had passed away, and his children have spent the past few months renovating. It was a great house, but still a bit pricey for out budget.

On a totally unrelated note, I'm thinking of prettying up the blog this week, so if you are running into any issues with viewing DecorAddict, please be patient with me, as I'm going to be tweaking it a bit here and there. Do you guys have any suggestions for prettying things up? I'm open to everything right now. I just think it's looking a little bit stale for the most part, don't you think? My header desperately needs a facelift!

And on another totally unrelated note, I spotted this leather sofa over at a big box store. Totally generic looking, but SO affordable. What do you think?

image from Leons Canada

MjoLK {opening December 2009}

I'm so excited for this shop to open in my city. MjoLK, pure Scandinavian Design. So exciting.

image by KITKA

This shop is being opened by my fellow design bloggers over at KITKA Design Toronto.

battle of the one-armed bandit; Dwell magazine house tour; TGIF everyone!

Firstly, let me just apologize for being a bit M.I.A. this week. We are trying to wean Adelaide off of her swaddle blanket, therefore sleep has become a bit of a sacred thing around here. Unfortunately I caved at 3am last night, and put her back to bed with both arms swaddled, HUGE no-no since she's been sleeping with one arm out of her blanket all week, but dammit I wanted to sleep for longer than 90 minutes in a row for a change! I will try again tonight, and will keep trying until she gets the hang of it and doesn't claw the right side of her face a la Freddy Kruger. Man do her nails ever grow fast.

image by trina for decoraddict

Now as she is taking her morning nap, with one arm out of course, I can bloggy blog to my hearts content!


Ok, back to the reason and real purpose of this post....this super-fabulous-awesome-original house tour I spotted on the Dwell Magazine site this week. Oh my goodness oh my goodness, I just had to show all of you this place for those that don't frequent the Dwell site. It's absolutely A-M-A-Z-I-N-G !!! Makes me want to take a drive out to my local farm kick out the locals and convert baby, CONVERT!!!!

all images from Dwell

Dwell has the best house tours from an architecture perspective, at least in my own personal opinion. I visit them often to add to my dream of one day building my own home. That, along with the millions of house plan sites out there.

I can remember when I was a kid, waiting for the Saturday paper so I could grab the New In Homes section; they always features a new house that included a floor plan. I would always dream of how the house would look in real life, decorated an all! I think I still have a rendering I did of my bedroom when I was in the 8th grade. From what I can remember, my room was coral and turquoise. Eesh. How 1985 of me. Posters of Corey Haim and Ricky Schroeder included.


Peace out and TGIF everyone. WORD.