happy (ukrainian) christmas

Today we took down the tree (surely one of the saddest household chores), marking the official end of our first Christmas at 760.

We were able to create a retrotastic tree with a few vintage ornaments. . .

. . .sourced from Antiques and Funk and Holland Home Hardware. Yes, the ornament on the bottom right is from a set my mom bought at her local hardware store. It was tucked away in the back, and was spotted by a friend of my mom who knows about our adventures in retro home ownership. I love small towns.

retrotastic

We knew that to buy a house in the neighbourhood we wanted, in our price range, we would have to find a bit of a fixer-upper - a house we could work on over time, and a  house the nobody else wanted.

When I first saw the real estate listing for our house, I had a good feeling about it for two reasons: the description included the words "long-time owners" and, unlike most listings, it didn't have any photos of the interior of the house. In our experience long-time owners + no photos = old carpet or pink bathrooms or wacky wallpaper.

Our house had all three.

It was completely retrotastic.

Luckily for us lots of people couldn't see past the carpet and the wallpaper and the outdated colour scheme. So on February 9, 2011, the Van Tates became the proud owners of a pink toilet (and the house that went with it).

The rest of the house was just as, um, colourful.

(to see even more "before" photos, click on our photo album below)