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Personalized art book, perfect gift for a toddler!

I don’t know about you, but I always seem to struggle to find a nice present for a kids first birthday. I don’t particularly like the bright plastic toys for these little ones and most other types of toys aren’t suitable for babies. Since most babies don’t talk by the time they turn one they can’t tell us what they really want for their birthday. Honestly, that first birthday is more the parents’ birthday than the kids… I want to give something that will last to those parents and help them retain their memories. What better way than to give the baby a personalized art book?

How to make the personalized art book

Buy any sketchbook with blank pages and look in your drawers for fabric, ribbons and other nice stuff to sew on. Cut the fabric at the size of the cover of your book. Then write the child’s name on a piece of paper making sure the letters all connect. Cut the paper, turn the name around and transfer to some nice fabric. Cut the name and sew it on your cover fabric.

Add any other things you like on the fabric. I used some ironing pieces I had laying around and flowers cut from fabric, but you can use anything you like. Once you’re happy with the results it’s time to put the fabric cover on the book. I used double sided tape that I stuck on my book. You could also use glue but I found the double sided tape a little less messy and easier to use with the fabric.

Once the cover is on, your present is ready! You might also like to add a ribbon or a button on the side of the book, whatever you like. 

I also had a brand name on the back of the book and I wanted to hide that. I cut a smaller flower from fabric and glued that on the back, using double sided tape.

I wanted something extra for this gift so I took some felt and sewed a little envelope to hold some pencils I bought. Looks cute right? The little girl that got this present was very happy with the small envelope, taking the pencils out and putting them back in was her favorite activityJ.

Do you have a great (DIY) gift idea for a toddler? I would love to hear about it!

A little about me and this blog

Hi and welcome to my blog!


I’m Lisette, a 36 year old stay at home mom. The summer of 2014 was all about change, change, change. We moved from Holland to Canada and are currently settling in in st Albert in Alberta. We have a strong minded 5 year old girl we are very proud of. I have always been creative but the last few years I discovered that living without creating makes me feel very low. I need to create! Writing, crafting, sewing, illustrating; I need it all! This blog was set up to do all of this and share it with the world as well. You will find DIY projects for the house, recipes or tips I have about lunch and dinner and sometimes I just blog about life. My life is far from perfect, I know by reading a lot of blogs, it always seems that other people have perfect lives. Well, mine just isn't, so I write about those days too. I will write about being lazy and my DIY project tend to be easy or cheap and preferably both :) 

I hope you’ll enjoy reading my blogs, I definitely would love to hear your thoughts and ideas, so please feel free to comment or share!

Ps. Be sure to check out my Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest!

Contact me

If you have any questions or comments, I'd love to hear them! Comment on my posts or we can connect through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Pinterest. You can always email me old school :)

If you are a company looking for a sponsored post, please feel free to email me. I'm always open to offers if your company and product seems appropriate to me.

lisettemaassen-at-gmail*com

How to make a feature wall for less than $15

As you might know, we currently live in a rental house. The house was built in the 1970’s and although it has been updated over the years, some spots still breathe those seventies… Especially in the basement this posed a slight problem for us. There is a wall in the main area that is somewhat outdated –yes, I am being very kind to that wall-. The main area is also the playroom for our daughter and that wall, it just seemed to suck all the fun out of that room. Okay, so maybe that’s a little much, but still it is one ugly wall. Painting was out of the question because of us renting and also because the panelling wasn’t real good quality. It wasn’t mounted very nice and was very loose at a lot of points. I was afraid wallpaper would never come off and putting new paneling in front of the wall would be a very big and expensive project. I was starting to believe we would be stuck with that ugly wall. Not anymore though! Because even though we can’t really change things permanently, I found a way to transform this ugly wall into a feature wall!

How to transform an ugly wall into a feature wall

Halfway through

When looking in despair at that ugly, faux wood wall, I thought about a previous project of mine. I started thinking that shelf lining would be a great solution! I tested a spot and stuck a piece of scrap lining I had left to see if it would stick and left it overnight. It stuck! And, more importantly; I was able to remove it afterwards without ruining the paneling behind it. So I went to Wallmart where they sell shelf lining at the best price. I had measured how much I would need and for this wall, I just needed two rolls. That means I made this feature wall for about $15! You can’t beat that price, right?

The project was relatively easy. Just measure how long the lining has to be, cut it and stick it on the wall. The tricky part was getting it on straight but luckily you can pull it back off and stick it back on again plenty of times.

I really love how this wall turned out! The pattern even brings out the best of those brown doors! My girl now has a pretty feature wall in her play room. Do you have any great tips on how to transform an ugly wall? Love to hear them!

Ps. A full blog on the whole playroom will follow. After redoing it, it is now jam-packed with cute play areas! I just need some more time to finish it.

DIY door make over that's cheap, easy and not permanent!

I’m very lucky because our new rental house has an extra room on the main floor. That means I get to have a craft room on the main floor! The house being a rental does mean I don’t have complete freedom to change the rooms as I please so I’m somewhat limited in what I can do to the spaces. I also don’t want to spend a ton of money on a place we’re not sure how long we’ll be living in, so sometimes we have to get creative.

In my craft room there were these, uhm…not so beautiful doors. They are kind of cheap looking doors and I really didn’t need any mirrors in a room I’m crafting in (or am I the only one with strange facial expressions while crafting?). I couldn’t remove the doors easily and I kind of liked the idea of a storage cupboard with doors (the more of my mess I can hide, the better). I decided to turn to my new best friend; shelf lining!

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It was a really easy DIY job and the result is really nice! First I measured my shelf lining (I bought mine at Walmart), making sure that the lining was a little wider than my mirrored doors. Trust me, you want to do that! Sticking the lining completely straight is impossible, leaving some overlap makes sure you have some margin to stick it not completely straight.

I then stuck the lining on the mirror. Just take a small portion of the backing of the lining and start sticking. Pull the backing as you gently push the lining on the mirror. Try to only push down the middle, take care of the edges later. It makes for less bubbles to push out afterwards.

After sticking the lining on and pushing the bubbles out I created a nice fold with my thumb on the sides of the mirror. Using a knife I cut the lining to size and I removed the excess lining.

And that’s it! The mirrors are now covered and if we move I can simply take the lining off. Everyone wins!

I’d love to hear how you solved an ugly door at your house!

Valentines school treat

Pretty soon we'll be celebrating Valentines. My girl obviously wanted to hand out a treat in class. And let’s be honest; I just love creating new stuff so figuring out a Valentines treat she can hand out in school is just fun for me. Luckily the shops started filling up their shelves with Valentines stuff right after new years’ so I had plenty of options to choose from. I didn’t want it to be expensive and I wanted to make it fun, so I started searching for stuff and inspiration.

How to make this cute Valentines school treat

I found really cute heart shaped boxes at Target (why oh why must they leave Canada???), they were just $1 for a bag of 6 boxes! There were bags with pink and red boxes and bags with multi colored boxes. I bought a combination of the two so the boys didn’t have to end up with pink boxes (because we know they really don’t want to). I bought heart shaped sweets at Dollarama and filled the boxes with a few sweets each.

     

I just love the idea of a bag with a personalized label, I can't help it, I just find it so darn cute. So I put the boxes in some bags I had laying around (I bought them a little while ago at Dollarama). I then made labels. Just measure how many labels will fit on one page and insert a table. You can then write whatever you want in the table. If you want double sided labels like I made them, be sure to use a text box for the upper line so you can easily rotate the text so that it’s upside down. Then just cut out the labels and attach those to the bags with the boxes.

Cute Valentines school treat, right?

My girl helped to fill the boxes and taste the sweets (which is a really important task obviously), she also made heart shaped name tags. She's really proud she can write so she wrote all the tags herself and decorated the tags.

Top lunch treat that is still healthy!

I don't know about you, but we can battle the lunches sometimes. My girl would prefer me to give her a bag filled with candy and/or fatty unhealthy lunches. I would love for her to leave the house everyday with a jam packed healthy lunch bag....

I get it though, lunch should be appetizing and fun for her. I should be able to compete with the other kids' lunches. So lately I've been experimenting with healthy lunches that are also delicious and fun for her! Today she wanted pancakes for dinner (I know, but please keep in mind; we are Dutch!) and I saw an opportunity.

I made some pancake mix and instead of using white flour, I used whole wheat flour. And she loved them! So I baked a whole bunch of pancakes and cut them with a cookie cutter. The flower shape I use looks good for her, but also makes sure the cut items fit in her thermos! win-win!

I packaged the flower pancakes per 5 (that seemed sufficient for her) in some aluminum foil. That way I can freeze them and the morning I need them I just take 1 package and heat it in the oven (no microwave here). I put the warm pancakes in a pre-heated thermos and she says the food stays perfectly warm until lunch.

You can obviously use any recipe you can find, I used these measurements:
500 ml Milk
250 grams Whole wheat flour
2 eggs
a little salt

What do you give your little ones to school? I would love to hear what you came up with!

A hard day

For the most part we are so happy to be in Canada. We love the way people are more relaxed, how everything is so much more family oriented, the outdoors you can enjoy whenever you want (because there is no rain!), wildlife all around…its endless and we enjoy every minute of it.

We have also been blessed with a little girl that is adventurous and who wants to explore new things and who was never scared of leaving Holland. It has made it so much easier for us to leave and we realize just how lucky we are. Because even though we did consider her a great deal before leaving, and even though we took every precaution to protect her and make the transition as easy as possible, we couldn’t have controlled how she really felt about leaving. We have told her how proud we are more times than we can count. Because we are so proud. She has done amazingly. She has adapted the Canadian lifestyle even before we could. She now loves bacon and corrects our English.

But still….there are those incidents that break your heart. Like a couple of days ago, when she was really tired and we watched a movie from Holland. She was suddenly overcome by this intense grief about everything and everyone she had left behind in Holland. Her age made it impossible to really explain what she felt but her tears said it all. There was nothing we could do but hold her and cuddle her. Simply because her grief is real. She did have to leave everyone behind and leave everything she knew, including her language. It felt like a betrayal to simply try and make her tears disappear because we sometimes miss things too. It broke our hearts. Seeing her pain and her tears made us realize once again just how big she is. Barely five years old and just adapting without any problems. She never complains or misbehaves (well, nearly never :) ). She is such a strong little girl with an amazing character.

We know in our hearts we made the best decision by moving her here, we know she will be Canadian and she won’t have any regrets, simply because we know this country just suits her. Luckily she knows it too. Because when she was in tears and we asked her if she maybe wanted to go back to Holland and live there, she looked at us in shock and exclaimed: “No!” She did want to go there for a day or two and then return home as she now calls Canada.

It’s just part of this move. It all has two sides. A beautiful one and a slightly darker one. If we had never left Holland we would have always wondered if it hadn’t been better to have left but we wouldn’t have had to miss anything. We now life a life that suits us but it does mean missing out on some things back in Holland. For us adults it’s a little easier because you have a clearer picture of what the future now looks like and how it probably would have been if we had stayed. For a five year old it’s sometimes a little harder. Although we can learn a thing or two from her too! Because I have to admit; she is a master in living in ‘the now’. She hardly ever looks back or forward and that makes it a lot easier to just enjoy the moment. It also means that even though my heart still aches from the tears she cried a few days ago, she has not looked back and isn’t sad at all anymore because right now she loves living in Canada!

Preparing for our things

We’ve been in Canada for four months now and we’re really settling in nicely. Our house is feeling more like a home but we are very keen on finally getting our stuff from Holland. It will be a couple of weeks –we hope-. Then we can finally put in those cupboards, have a desk and decorations! I’m so excited about that!

The prospect of our things arriving does scare me a little bit as well. After living in an empty house for four months, we’re a little scared that the house will feel cramped and full. With the little girls birthday being over I can concentrate on getting the house ready for the arrival of our goods. I have already cleaned out some kitchen cabinets and I organized the pantry so the kitchen tools will hopefully fit. But I find myself constantly looking for space to put the things that will be arriving. I keep trying to remember what on earth filled those 70 boxes and where to put it all! I do know that we will have some boxes coming that have to be stored and our storage room…well isn’t really ready for storing things as it is filled with junk!

There is a cupboard arriving that we’ve decided will be in the living room and that will make space for all the craft tools for our girl (yes, I am to blame for the huge amount of craft stuff she has. I take full responsibility). That will free up a drawer in the built in cabinet, so we can store some of her toys in there. On top of her craft cabinet I will be making our charging station. I will organize all the cords and make a nice looking station we can charge our phones and devices. That junk-cord drawer will be gone and believe me; I can’t wait!!! Man, is that drawer a pain! It will also mean that I won’t be tripping over cords and chargers everywhere in the house anymore. It will be a relieve.

I still have to figure out what I’m going to do about our family command center. I kind of want it in our kitchen since it’s a place we spend a lot of time in. But there really isn’t that much room and it makes for a cramped space. Cramped obviously meaning ‘messy and unorganized’. Whenever I go on Pinterest (which is *cough* hardly ever, of course *cough*) I see these beautiful white desks, all organized with nice note boards, creating beautiful spaces to sit, take a note, make a call, hang a note and just be beautifully organized. I drool a little. I have a desk like that coming! And I have a spot for it too! It’s just not in the kitchen and that scares me a little. Yesterday I saw this giant beautiful chalkboard at Homesense (One of my absolute favorite shops!), I nearly bought it and I can’t get it out of my mind. It would look gorgeous above my desk. Maybe that chalkboard will win me over and will make me move my command center to the hallway.

So, how's life in Canada?

People keep asking us how living in Canada is. It’s a logical question obviously, but kind of a hard one to answer. Because the truth is that Canada just suits us better than Holland ever did. All of us. Whenever we try to use this as an answer the follow up question then is: why? And that’s the hard part to answer. It is hard because on the one hand, we find Canada very similar to Holland and thus we kind of just fit in. On the other hand, Canada is so different from Holland. Every single thing, big or small, seems to be different.

We’ve been amazed by the kindness of people in Canada, that’s probably one of the biggest differences. A difference that involves every part of your life and that makes a real difference in how well you feel ‘at home’ in a country. Everywhere you are, people want to help you. They offer to help you or they just help you, no questions asked. For them it’s the logical thing to do. Once they find out you’ve just moved here they invite you in. Quite literally in their houses but in their lives as well. It’s a genuine effort to make a potential new friend and they have no expectations about anything in return. Canadians seem to be more about giving than about receiving. The joy they feel when they give is all the return they seem to want.

The kindness is related to their peace of mind, their relaxed way of living. They don’t seem to be as stressed as people in Holland currently are and they don’t seem to be in such a hurry. That means they will always have time for a chat, an invitation or some help. Traffic is a really good example of this. Canadians don’t feel the urge to sneak in front of you, cut that corner or maybe just pick that red light in order to save that all important second or two. Whenever they see a pedestrian wanting to cross a road, they stop. Really all of them do. REALLY, even when there’s no crossing! The pedestrian doesn’t expect them to do so and are really grateful that the car stopped and they smile at the driver, who in return, smiles back. It’s amazing, you should try this! Or wait, maybe you shouldn’t, because in Holland the driver behind you will probably think you’re an idiot for stopping when you didn’t have to and he will probably honk at you –or worse-.

It’s all about the space too, though. When there is plenty of room to park your car or entertain in you tend to give others some space as well. The big plus of all that space is that you also get an abundance of play space. Nature to walk or bike in, playgrounds you can go insane in and nice big lanes to live on. There are trees literally everywhere, so of course you get squirrels in your garden. Even though we live in a city we have seen more birds here than we have in a long time. It all just makes people happier I guess. And when you’re happy, you’re not going to be annoyed quite so quickly.

The space also facilitates the big stores. Because why should you build a tiny shop when you have all this land to build on? And once you have such a big store, why not fill it with loads of goods? Every shopping trip takes at least an hour simply because of all the choices you get here. It’s never a case of simply picking up a box of so or so. You always end up in a seemingly endless isle filled of sorts and types of whatever it is you needed. And every shopping trip you find at least one product you never knew you needed because you didn’t knew it existed. It’s an adventure. A great adventure.

So living in Canada is still great. A dream come true. A dream filled with space, nature, squirrels, big cars, the best shopping trips ever and the loveliest people you’ll ever meet.
So far, so good :)

First month

It has been well over a month since we left Holland and moved to Canada. With nothing more than what we could fit in our four suitcases we arrived. The first hotel was great. Luxurious and comfortable. We had a great nights sleep. The B&B we booked in our new hometown Edmonton wasn’t that great. Being four, our daughter was scared of the old building and was up almost all night. Luckily we had an appointment to look at a house the next day and fortunately the landlords wanted us to rent the house as much as we did. And so our adventure finally started!

The first month was weird most of all. Buying everything, literally everything, I know it sounds fun, but it really wasn’t. The pressure was on and we were blown away by the sheer magnitude of it all. From scissors to a couch, from a bed to a garbage bin. We all loaded it up and it kind of scared us. We had been so happy to part with so much stuff in Holland and now we were filling it all up again. It took us a few days to find out that it all came down to not feeling at home and desperately wanting to feel home. We had a good talk and found out what it was we really needed. When we bought those things, it started to feel a little better. Now that everyone has started their normal day ‘jobs’, it feels even better.

It creates time to reflect on the past weeks. There have been lows and I suddenly realized why those lows had been there. This move wasn’t just about moving, it was about starting all over. Somehow you just think everything will be different once you’ve arrived in your new country. Boy, was I wrong! Arriving here showed all our flaws even better than in our concealing, comfortable Dutch life. I realized that it was silly to think everything would magically change, after all we didn’t just bring those four suitcases, we moved our personal luggage as well. Our personalities weren’t left behind, nor was our joint past. It could have never been magically altered. Having said that, I did realize there were things that were easy enough to change and so I did. As I changed the small things I saw that it had never been about the big changes, but about a lot of small changes.

Honor the small is what I try to do this week. I try to think a lot about the things I want to change, the new life I want to live and I try to change it one tiny step at a time.

Preparing for the big flight

I must admit; I’m a little nervous about flying with our four year old this august. It will be her first flight and it will take us a whopping eight hours to get to Canada. Eight hours in a confined space with a four year old can be quite stressful in itself, but also feeling the desperate need to keep her calm and well behaved for those eight hours…well… add to the mix that the trip isn’t just a trip but that it is a move… I’m not too sure how that’s all going to work out for us.

Me being me, I’ve decided to prepare a toy suitcase for our girl. Her hand luggage will be a suitcase filled with toys for her to play with. I could have easily gone to the toy store and spend a small fortune to fill the suitcase but hey, that would have been a little too easy, right? So I’ve decided to make her lots of cute stuff to play with. It’s still work in progress so I’ll post a blog in a few weeks when everything is finished but I wanted to go ahead and share some ideas right now.

I’ll be making her a stewardess outfit. That way she can pretend to be a real stewardess and hopefully the other passengers will think that is cute so they won’t mind her coming up to them and talk to them (I just know her, that’s what she likes to do). It will make boarding a little easier I think, because people will probably comment on her outfit and that will keep her mind of nasty, scary things. I’m also making her a little stewardess bag with her very own pretend passport and pretend ticket. That way, we won’t have a fit when I refuse to give her a real passport and ticket. 

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Once we have set off and she’s bored with the plane and everything around her, I’ll introduce her to the suitcase. In the suitcase I’ll put a coloring sticker book, crayons, a pen etc. I’ve also seen a cute sketch book, shaped as a house. But boy, 20 pounds was a bit too dear for me! So, I’ve created a knock off! I just cut big pieces of paper in the shape of a house, illustrated the front and decorated with masking tape. I then sewed the papers together. I think it looks alright and it will keep her busy! All I need now are some stickers for decorating a house :)

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I also saw a cute pack with a small doll with a dog and some puppies. I could’ve tossed them in the suitcase but she’ll probably get bored with the quite quickly. So I bought a container with a lid and found some brick paper. The paper made for the walls and on the inside the little girl got flowery wallpaper. Some felt for a carpet and a small tin for the supplies. She now has a house to play with.

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I’m also making a small fabric suitcase with a small bunny doll (I bought that one). The bunny has clothing (some bought but mostly made). It’s going to be like a small dressing room for the bunny. Hopefully she’ll try on all the different outfits and that will keep her busy some more.

I’ve got my hopes up for this suitcase! Hopefully this will keep her preoccupied until she’ll fall to sleep (we will be flying three hours longer than her usual bedtime). It’s at least a way for me to stay a little sane while preparing and thinking about this trip. I’m guessing I’m more nervous than I should be (or I’m secretly hoping).

I’ll be posting some more results when I get them ready. In the meantime; please give me all the tips you can think of! I’ll be needing all the tips I can get! 

It's going to happen!

Ten months ago my husband and I were talking in front of our house in Holland. We were sitting in the sun and had it pretty much all very well. And still…we were a little afraid to admit to each other that we weren’t really happy. There was a sneaky uneasy feeling that we couldn’t quite find words for. The conversation evolved and in a few minutes we discovered what was wrong. Holland was wrong! Well, ok maybe the whole country wasn’t wrong, we really just discovered that our dreams couldn’t easily be accomplished in Holland. I think that at some level we had always known and that’s why the decision was made so easy and quickly. We were going to move abroad. After some careful consideration we had just one contender; Canada.

We researched, read and spoke to people and quickly found out that our only chance would be to find work in Canada in order to get a visa. But finding a job without a visa soon proved very difficult.  The more we spoke about our move, the more we talked about our dreams of a different lifestyle, the more willingness we found in others to help us. It felt quite magical actually. I know it sounds silly but we really felt as if there were doors opening all around us to help us find our way to Canada. So when my husband found a dream job we were almost afraid to say it out loud, but it felt like it was meant to be.  To be honest, we had some rough years and found ourselves in pretty deep lows at times and this seemed like a reward almost. The process was still difficult and a pretty bumpy road, but here we are; a job offer for one of the best jobs my husband could have wished for and waiting for our visa to come through!

We can finally say; it’s gonna happen! We’re moving to Canada!


This summer is our planned move and we are preparing like crazy. I’ve made checklists, to do lists, packing lists, well let’s just say I’ve got a list for everything. At least everything I could think of… :)  I’ll be posting about our preparations and everything I’m making for our four year old in order to make the transition as easy as possible for her.

Cheap DIY tulle lamp

The other day I was looking around my little girls’ room looking for ways to improve her room. Since we are renting we’re not allowed to paint or do anything major. That makes it a bit hard I find. My eyes kept being drawn to her hideous lamp on the ceiling. Well, to be fair, it’s not really hideous, but in the mind of a five year old, it’s not appealing at all. I didn’t want to replace the lamp, scared of what I would find underneath and scared that I would not be able to hang back the original lamp. So I started thinking about ways I could change the lamp without actually touching the lamp. Of course that same afternoon my girl gave me the idea I needed. As she was browsing a ‘Princess mimi’ sticker book she saw a lampshade she absolutely loved! I gave it one look and immediately thought; I can make that!

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Of course I browsed my beloved Pinterest and came upon a great blog that describes making a similar lampshade for the wall. I used her blog as inspiration and came upon my own version of this cool tulle pom pom lampshade! It does take quite some time but it’s really cheap and easy to do.

I went to Dollarama (love, love, love that store!) and bought a metal fruit basket. I was really lucky because it was just the right size for me (being slightly larger than the original lampshade). I chose the metal one because I didn’t want to use something flammable and I preferred something that would allow air to flow through. Simply because I am using the lampshade on a regular lamp as opposed to a string of battery operated lamps, I figured that the lamp could get hot and would need some ventilation (I use a energy efficient light bulb because they tend not to get as hot as a regular bulb, I would certainly recommend that!).

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I had some left over tulle (yes, that happens with having a five year old in your house), mine was sparkling which turned out great but was really messy when assembling. I cut my tulle in strips of about 5cm x 15cm, but you can see what size you like, the longer, the bigger your lampshade will be. After cutting hundreds of strips (I think it really were hundreds), I started tying the strips onto my fruit basket. I added some metal wires at places because the gaps were quite wide at some spots and I wanted the lamp to be really full. I started on top and worked my way down. It took a really long time but it’s a nice and calming job as well. 

After an emergency trip to Fabricland to buy some more tulle I was finally finished. I ended up using about 3 meters of tulle (yes, I know, that’s a lot!). My lamp ended up being really really full and I thing I would use slightly less tulle the next time as the lampshade turned out to be quite dark. I tied the lampshade to the existing lampshade with some metal wires. You can easily remove it and it won’t even leave a mark!


My girl loves her new lamp!
I hope you love it too and I would love to hear your ideas on how to turn an ugly lampshade into something cool for practically nothing! 

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CAUTION! Please make sure you stay safe! Make sure your existing lamp can support the extra weight and make sure your lamp won’t get too hot. Remember; you are using flammable material (tulle) next to a lamp that can potentially get really hot, so make sure your lamp won’t overheat! We have used the lamp for two months now and haven’t had any problems with it but make sure you know what you’re doing when trying this!

Window dressing -Dutch style-

We finally have our rental house. It’s really quite nice but it has to become more ‘us’ for sure. The big window in the living room was a bit of an eyesore. We do want as much light flowing in as possible but we also wanted some privacy.

I didn’t want to just stick some contact foil on the window and be done with it. Since our living room is still quite empty, I really wanted to add something. After some thinking, I came up with a design of a row of Amsterdam canal houses. I drew some houses.

Transferred them to contact foil (mat clear, Walmart, Target and The Home Depot have some). And cut the houses. Luckily for me canal houses aren’t all straight and neat, so I could just cut it with my scissors. 

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Then I just stuck the thing on the window. That was actually the most time consuming part. Getting it on straight and with as little bubbles as possible was quite the challenge. Just make sure you have plenty of time so you don’t have to rush and you’ll be fine! If you’re unsure, just try a small window first. The longer your design has to be, the more difficult the sticking is. My window was over 2 meters long and that was pretty hard.

As you might have noticed; the end result doesn’t have any windows and doors, but the design does. Well…. Ok it wasn’t all easy going… I did try a neat design with windows and doors cut out. It was very cool. But when it came to sticking it to the window… It was impossible to get on! Really, just believe me and don’t try it! Or maybe do and prove me wrong ;) 

This first DIY project was actually quite cheap and easy but I think the results are great! The little canal houses add character to the room and also provide excellent privacy without holding back any light. Give it a try and please let me know how it went!