When Friendship Gets Down to Business
What do you get when you pair home owners who are in the construction business with a talented designer who just happen to be friends? An incredible home renovation, that is beautiful, functional, and filled with love. Paula Coffey, owner of The Plumber’s Wife in Arthur Ontario, is well known throughout the area for her design expertise, and appealing decorative style. Not to mention her beautiful retail storefront and showroom, with...
Iceland: A nation of extreme contrasts, moulded by fire and ice.
It’s no wonder Iceland’s unique otherworldly environment is used for filming fantasy movies. This isolated island, straddling the Arctic Circle has an allure of dramatic landscapes, abrupt headlands, massive glaciers and gigantic waterfalls that are humbling in size. The Icelandic peoples, originally Viking (since mid 9th c.) and northern Scandinavian descent, have been influenced by Denmark since the early 1400s....
A Home for a Lovely Family; Delivered by a Talented Family
You have plans to build your dream home. You want a home to share and entertain with family, friends, and loved ones, building memories, and enjoying life. You also need a home that requires some special attention to functionality, to meet the needs of everyone who lives and visits there. It requires an area dedicated to professional space that, while providing privacy, still flows with the entire design. To meet the demands of this...
Staycation! Why Leave Home?
A new term entered the English lexicon a decade or so ago and its most common use occurs in residential landscaping circles. The term is “staycation” and it mostly deals with homeowners’ desires to have the benefits of a vacation without leaving the house. To achieve this, they often have a backyard pool surrounded by exquisite rockeries, foliage arrangements and other accoutrements; a veritable oasis on their own property. The jaded...
Custom Build: A-Frame Design
I’ve said it before, but I truly believe we are very fortunate to live in the community and surrounding areas we do. All throughout Dufferin and Wellington County and beyond, we have beautiful scenery, storied history, and proud heritage, hard to find anywhere else. So when we received our project sheets for this edition’s feature home, we were thrilled to find out we would be experiencing a custom-build from Scott Hoegy and his team....
Let The Games Begin!
We live in an age where our social lives, recreational pursuits and base communications are crammed into cell phones and placed in our purses and pockets. It is, indeed, a convenient, virtual universe. Unfortunately, it also causes us to fold into ourselves and have less and less real-time social interaction. There is a time-proven axiom: “The family that plays together, stays together.” What better way to accommodate this truth, than...
The Art of Dry Stone Walling
Once again we’ve had the distinct pleasure of sitting down with award-winning landscape architect Paul Brydges, owner of Brydges Landscape Architecture Inc, on this occasion to discuss a very old and very timeless way of constructing beautiful stone creations that leave a lasting impression. So exactly what is “Dry Stone Walling” or “Dry Stacking”? Dry stone, sometimes called dry stacking or in Scotland, dry stane, is a building...
Featured Restaurant: Rays 3rd Generation Bistro Bakery
Walking through the doors of this lovely space that just happens to be situated across from a quiet, flowing river in Alton ON, you immediately feel comfortable and at ease. Is it the wonderful smell coming from the open kitchen? Is it the rustic “old world” charm the design and decor exude? Could it be the incredible staff whose level of excellent customer service is a rare find? Well frankly, it’s all of those things, and so much...
What’s New in Kitchen & Bathroom Design?
When it comes to redesigning, (and, in fact, redefining) a room, homeowners often need help envisioning the new setting. There are so many styles and ideas that could suit a client perfectly, but she/he may not have thought of them. In fact, there are existing renovation and design solutions that a client might not even be aware of. To overcome this, professionals in the field have found that a showroom is a great way to open people’s...
A Stunning Entertaining Space
In this digital age of marketing and advertising, a business can choose from many media vehicles to promote their company. But for Ryan VanGerven and his team at New Stone Landscaping, their best strategy to bring in new business is the one that has worked for them for years…word of mouth. When you see one of New Stone’s landscape transformations, it’s easy to see why so many of their projects come from clients who have experienced...
Summer Entertaining
We think it’s safe to say that the team here at LivingSpaces and LifeStyles Magazine enjoy many aspects of entertaining. There are just so many things to celebrate, and the upcoming summer season is no exception! The lazy days of summer should be just that; laid-back and stress-free. So, we’ve come up with a few ideas to make your summertime parties, simple, easy and fun. The great thing about backyard parties is that your natural...
