An afternoon at Vanitea Rooms

Earlier this month my BFF Sinead traveled all the way from Ireland to visit us for a whirlwind of a week. One of the afternoons we were looking for somewhere special to have a light lunch when I remembered The Vanitea Room which wasn’t far from where we were at the time.

I can’t remember how I first heard about The Vanitea Room, but I’ve been following them ever since I found out about them. Robert and I have been hoping to treat ourselves to one of their afternoon teas for months, but since we don’t know any babysitters just yet since moving to Ottawa last September, we’re still waiting. So when Sinead and I stopped in for a quick afternoon retreat, I felt guilty. But then I saw they had unlimited bellinis on their menu and so I ordered the bottomless bellinis.

We arrived within an hour of closing, which gave us just enough time to order a late lunch. I went with the Benny and Lox and Sinead had their Stairway to Heaven and while mine was delicious, Sinead’s looked even more delicious. It was the perfect amount of food to fill us until dinner.

Since we were there until closing, I had a few minutes while no one else was there to take a few pictures. All of which were taken quickly on my phone [it was warm and sometimes when you’re warm and cranky you don’t want to carry your camera], but the pictures turned out not too bad! It’s a cozy restaurant with [give or take] seven seating areas. The Vanitea Room serves up delicious food and even more delicious design details. Robert and I will for sure be going some time soon just the two of us for one of their more extravagant afternoon teas. Hopefully that some time is before Cora goes to college.

The Interior DIYer now has shopable posts!

I’ve added a fun feature to my site from pipdig called Shopr!

I’ve been using pipdig’s Venture theme since I updated my blog at the beginning of this year. They occasionally send updates with interesting information to their users and recently they introduced their new Shopr plugin. I’ve been interested in adding a widget like this to my site for a long time now [because they look so fancy], but it was never really possible through Blogger and I was half always waiting until I had a more proper looking website. When pipdig emailed about their new plugin I couldn’t wait to try it out and LOOK AT HOW MUCH MORE I LOOK LIKE I HAVE MY SHIT TOGETHER …

Shop this look!

CIL Classic Burgundy
CIL Classic Burgundy
What We Do In The Shadows
What We Do In The Shadows
$10.99
IKEA Jubla Unscented Candles
IKEA Jubla Unscented Candles
$8.99
IKEA Begavning Glass Dome
IKEA Begavning Glass Dome
$14.99
Anthropologie Mimira Candle
Anthropologie Mimira Candle
$24
April & The Bear Letter Board
April & The Bear Letter Board
€60
CIL Classic Burgundy
CIL Classic Burgundy
What We Do In The Shadows
What We Do In The Shadows
$10.99
IKEA Jubla Unscented Candles
IKEA Jubla Unscented Candles
$8.99
IKEA Begavning Glass Dome
IKEA Begavning Glass Dome
$14.99
Anthropologie Mimira Candle
Anthropologie Mimira Candle
$24
April & The Bear Letter Board
April & The Bear Letter Board
€60
CIL Classic Burgundy
CIL Classic Burgundy
What We Do In The Shadows
What We Do In The Shadows
$10.99
IKEA Jubla Unscented Candles
IKEA Jubla Unscented Candles
$8.99
IKEA Begavning Glass Dome
IKEA Begavning Glass Dome
$14.99
Anthropologie Mimira Candle
Anthropologie Mimira Candle
$24
April & The Bear Letter Board
April & The Bear Letter Board
€60

Going forward, anything shopable can be found at the bottom of each blog post in a cute little carousel! As anyone who has jumped from Blogger to WordPress will know there are picture width issues, so I’m slowly making my way through my old blog posts anyways to resizing my photos, and in turn I’ll be adding some Shopr’s as I go.

Contact paper kitchen counters – test run!

I’d like to take 100% of the credit for this, but the first person I saw putting contact paper on kitchen counter tops was Linda of Make Do and DIY in her post the ultimate “new kitchen counter” cheat. It stuck with me in 2015 so well that when we moved into our Lower Town apartment, I knew I’d be adding some to our rental counters.

For me, buying enough contact paper for the kitchen was a mini investment. In my head it was a frivolous thing to want to buy. You have perfectly functioning countertops as is. Why would you want to cover them? But the reality is that our kitchen is a very dark room + the cupboards are really dark [not complaining], but also having dark countertops is just a bit too much dark. For a room that helps if you can see what you’re doing, I should say.

I did some work and once I saved up enough, I bought a few rolls for the kitchen. In the mean time, the One Room Challenge happened and I ended up using a few rolls to cover our dining room table, so this week I finally decided to test out some faux marble contact paper in our kitchen.

We have a single counter unit between the stove and the fridge in our kitchen so I thought this would be a perfect place to test the contact paper for a few weeks before committing to covering the entire kitchen [and hopefully ironing out any issues on a small scale vs. finding it doesn’t suit our kitchen after covering the whole thing].

This is the section of counter that gets the most use so if the contact paper can hold up here, it’ll have no problem working throughout the rest of the kitchen. I’ll use it as I normally would for a few weeks before making up my mind on covering the rest of the counter tops, but let’s face it, it already looks so much better so I’ve 85% already made my mind up! It’s beautiful! Cover ALL OF THE THINGS IN CONTACT PAPER! Now I’ve just got to convince the critical part of my brain that it’ll be practical.

I’ll blog an update in a few weeks regardless of whether I decided on covering the entire kitchen or not and will give honest feedback on it all. But for now, it’s already made this corner of our kitchen so much brighter! I’m crossing my fingers it works out.

If you’re curious to see how to apply contact paper like an expert, you can check out my four-step tutorial here!