Pick Up Your Pen

when i was in elementary school i was in a girl's only church program called "calvinettes" with a few of my school friends.  one of the badges we could earn had something to do with having a penpal and through a christian kids magazine we used to get i picked a name off a "penpals" list and started writing letters to a girl named christie in michigan.  we wrote back and forth for years, stopped for awhile, and then started back up again in late highschool.  she was a nice girl with a really good attitude who went through some really hard times, and we lost touch.  i'd always wondered what had happened to her, and then one day i found her on facebook, and we became friends once again, and wrote each other long emails to find out what had happened in those missing years.  she's married with two little girls and lives in a gorgeous house, still in michigan.  her oldest daughter, anna, just turned 3, just a couple months after elliott did, so i thought it might be cute to start them as penpals.  we sent a little birthday card, a picture elliott coloured, and some stickers, and a few weeks later got back a christmas card and a really cute homemade christmas decoration from anna.  i'm really excited about elliott learning what it's like to be a penpal with a girl his age on the other side of the continent.

anna with the card elliott made for her

elliott with the decoration anna made for him

i've been having fun coming up with new things to send.  the latest is a survey for each kid to fill out to learn a little bit more about each other!  here's elliott's:

i'm sharing them here with you, if you want to print them out for your kids it's a fun way of taking note what kinds of things they liked when they were this age.  you can tuck it away somewhere and look back on it when they're older.  the first is a canadian one (with a "u" in favourite and a "u" in colour, and "province" rather than "state") and the second is american (because elliott's penpal is from the states).  click on it to open & print.

canadian version

american version

do you have a penpal?

Happy Love Day

A Girl With A Dream {Home}

i've been thinking a lot about kitchens.  does anyone else do this; obsess about home design and google kitchens, living rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms?  i sure do, i can't help it.  i've been trying to decide if i could choose my own kitchen finishes, what would i pick?  would i go with something light and bright, or something dark and trendy?

light, or...

...dark?

...maybe both?

...or neither??

i don't know which i prefer, i like them all, i can't decide.  i'm just so sick of pine, pine, pine, i can't even express how much!  and brown speckled countertops, yuck.  if we owned this basement suite we're in and were staying put here for awhile (which i don't think we are) we'd definitely put in some durable brown wood laminate flooring, paint out the cupboards (light, probably, to keep things bright since we have no sunlight) and change out the countertops (concrete would be a dream).

i've been trying to put a name to my design style, which is a little tricky because it seems to change every day depending on whose blog i've been reading or what design sites i've been perusing.  through my searches i think i've come up with it - "minimalist modern rustic".  if i could (and hopefully i will get a chance to someday) choose, from scratch, what my home would be like, i would aim for something like so: rustic beams, clean lines, huge windows, natural stone, and really comfy textured fabrics & cushy rugs.  i think it would feel relaxing and spa-like (maybe even when life is not).

here is my real dream house, the first house i've found that i like almost every single part of, right down to their furniture choices:

it may not be large, but it's clean.  i love it.  in fact, any and all of the modular homes at hive modular would be just fine with me.  i should work there, i'd be in heaven.  or at the very least get paid for advertising ;)  if we could afford one of these babies i'd be all over it!

thanks for humouring me and spending a minute inside my brain.  it's fun to dream, isn't it?