Cup of Jo Featured Our Small Apartment !!

All Photos by the amazing Brit Gill

Still can't believe our apartment was featured on Cup of Jo this week. I have read her blog since the beginning. Her blog has seen me through so many stages of life... climbing the corporate ladder, being a new mom, small living with kids in the city. When she messaged me about featuring our home I almost fell over! Then I immediately messaged multiple girlfriends who I know love her as much as I do. One of the best parts of this process has been hearing other people's stories of the time Joanna re-shared one of your photos, or left a cute comment on your Instagram, or recommended a restaurant to you! I can't imagine what it feels like to touch so many lives by just being honest, thoughtful and using your platform for good. Anyway, to Joanna and Stella and the COJ team thanks for making my week, (I mean month!) by including our little family in your beautiful, inspiring and inclusive space on the internet.

Click here to read the post if you haven't yet.

I was a bit overwhelmed by all the questions so I took a breath and thought I would try to answer as many as I can here.

SEAFINCH SAYS...
Beautiful place and wonderful family but I am totally perplexed, where are their clothes?

I think this question showed up a number of times. Our closets are quite boring and not photogenic and difficult to photograph (awkward angles). In the picture above you can see the kid's closet at the end of the dining table. It's actually designed to house a small home office but we have been using it for the kid's closet since Theo was born.  I'll try and do an update shortly. It is often messy but it does function for us. We try to keep kids clothes to a minimum but piles of clothes to give to friends when I see them next seems to make the closet messier than I'd like.

To the left in the photo you can see the corner of our master closet. It fills the entire west wall of the kid's room. The doors were removed by the previous owners and we put in floor to ceiling curtains. We also removed the bulkhead to get the most height our of our closet. The closet came with an organizer and we added an additional Ikea Pax wardrobe. The closet holds all of Trevor's and my clothes along with our two file boxes and some miscellaneous storage. The miscellanous storage includes one tote of kid's clothes I am saving from Theo or friend's hand-me-downs for Mae. One tote of shoes, beach towels and some artwork we can't seem to part with. Our closet is far from perfect and tends to become a dumping ground for things I need to deal with but haven't found the time yet. As our regular living space has become increasingly functional and organized I need to focus on our closets now to make sure they are using every inch effectively and not storing things we don't need! When I accomplish this I'll try and do a before and after for the blog!


DIRK SAYS...
I’m left wondering is what the neighbourhood is like, the exterior and the locale.

We live in Mount Pleasant, Vancouver and love it!. It's just south of downtown Vancouver. Here is a post I did recently about our favourite spots in our neighborhood. Come visit! Years ago we also lived in Kits (Kitsilano) and still love it there. We've also been keeping our eyes on the Hastings Sunrise neighborhood, and wish we lived on top of Le Marche St George.


MICHELLE SAYS...
They love to camp. WHERE DO THEY KEEP THEIR CAMPING EQUIPMENT. Inquiring minds want to know.

I answered this on my Instagram but figure I should address it here as well. We have our Westfalia that we park in our parkade at our building. We store our camping gear in there. It's a bit of a risk as parkades can get broken in to from time to time. But it's a risk we have to take as we have no space for our gear in our home! To see more of our camping adventures check out the category Ferdinand the Van.



KARIN SAYS...
My only question is doesn’t this setup cut into their sex life (even more than having 2 small children would normally do)?

Wow. Guys, I know I open myself up to this by sharing so much of our life on the internet. But the ins and outs of our sex life is not something I will be getting into unless you are coming over with a bottle of wine, ahaha.

NAT SAYS...
Love this! Especially the genius hook on the front door for the Bugaboo – where is that from?

That's our Stroller Buddy hook. It's really handy. I wrote about it here.
 

I'm going to save addressing the negativity surrounding Vancouver's housing market for another post as this post is just going to be about our home and what a thrill it was to be featured on my absolute favourite blog! Thanks for all the kind and supportive comments. And to anyone who said that Cup Of Jo and my blog are their favourites... I died!! I am not on her level by any means but so honoured to be included in the same sentence! When it comes down to it, I share about our life, living small in the city with kids, to show that it is possible and while, imperfect and chaotic and maddening at times, it's also wonderful!  

Also I need to shout out Trevor for putting up with my crazy, and friends Tina, Lori, Veronica, Erin (and more!) for listening to me talk about this house tour for weeks, helping me wrangle the kids in order to get photos of the space. Also know this is our home "photoshoot" clean and does not look like this all the time! Remember to not judge your own space based on Home Tours or Instagram Photos!!