chimes and gift card

When I finished my time at Siloam, I got a gift card for Michael's. What a perfect gift! I finally went an spent it! I had a blast shopping!

The spoils, great paper, stamps, paper flowers and punches!

We got these lovely chimes on our last truck trip together down in Florida. Sometime before Dan and Jenn moved away they fell down because the strings broke. The chimes came down and found their way into the land of 'things to fix' of which very few things ever seem to come out of around here.

Well, they finally got fixed! I love hearing them while we sit in the backyard on the deck. There not your average chimes, they don't sound tinkly, they sound like church bells.

kijiji you make me happy!

so, i've been watching for ikea stuff on kijiji. (dangerous, i know). when the most perfect piece popped up. in the color that matches all the rest of our lovely furniture, a wardrobe was posted. i looked at it, and thought, i bet you with those dimensions it would fit in the corner of the kitchen!

see, since we have tenants again, i have given up my crafting space. i have to say i've not been too happy about that. my mind was thinking of the possibilities. all my crafting goodies stores right next to the table where i do them. what a fabulous idea. so, i showed it to michael, he figured it would fit and thought it was a good idea (i think it's just because it meant he could reclaim a couple of closets in our house).

so, we looked at it, bought it and michael set it up!

tada!

i still have to move in and get organized, but for now i just shoved stuff in. for such relatively small dimension 24" x 21" it feels downright cavernous!

when i buy bins and get it sorted out, i'll post it again.

it's back to school time

We are once again sharing our house. We had two lovely young girls move in this past weekend. It means we've had to give up the shoe shelf that is normally for tenants, but I think I can handle it.

It's crazy how different it is to have girls living here compared to the guys from last semester.

This is another piece of art I bought with my money from Opa. If you can't remember what that's all about, you can check back on this post.

Michael also decided that it was time to stop putting off the issues we have with drainage in our backyard, so he ordered some crushed limestone and built a birm around the low spot where water creeps into the garage. It seems to have solved the problem beautifully, now we just have to work at making it look prettier.

A garden update. We have harvested a lot of beans, the peas are pretty much done and the weather has been so crummy the tomatoes won't ripen.

The dirt is spread out, because we are slowly working on filling in the low spot in the lawn, in case you are wondering.

may miscellany

I finished a lovely pair of socks in May. The best part: they are for me!


It's a cascade sock yarn, and forgive me but that's all I can remember. I love the colors and actually kinda enjoyed knitting a plain sock! Then again, it was one of Cat Bhordi's, so the construction was new for me.
  
While on our trip to the states the other weekend, I bought fabric. I had some time on my hands on a Friday night, so I decided to try this lovely little mail sorter project from my One Yard Wonders sewing book. It was great, easy and quick. I think it looks nice too. The following day I had a birthday party to go to and I realized that I somehow overlooked the whole gift part of attending a party, so I whipped up another one is just over an hour. Awesome! I could definitely get used to that! Knitting isn't quite that quick (although I can knit a baby hat in two hours).


We also had the honour and joy of having a sweet little baby girl named Phoebe come to visit us. Isn't she cute? It was so nice to have her and her parents over! Thanks K&P, we love you!

Doesn't a baby's life look blissful?

a piano!

Well, I can hardly believe it myself, but there's a piano in our house! I've been thinking and talking about this for at least 6 months. I was beginning to realize that music used to be really important to me, I loved it and it was a great emotional outlet. So, Michael and I talked about possibly getting a piano. A few months ago we almost thought we'd move my piano from BC out here because we were starting to look at houses and were watching one that would actually be big enough...but that all fell through. But left me wanting a piano even more. So, I started watching kijiji, and set myself a price limit and some stipulations like no repairs and it had to be apartment sized. I watched many ads come to my inbox, none of which met these rules.

Then, this one showed up in my email, on a day when Michael and I could actually go see it that same evening. So, that night we came home with a piano! It looks much nicer in the pictures than it is in person, so we're planning to paint it (we have a friend who did this, who gave us some advice). I've been playing through my old books...I'm surprised how familiar some of the songs I used to love are, and yet my fingers respond as though I'm wearing three layers of rubber gloves!

In the next couple of weeks we'll get it tuned. It is not terribly out of tune, but some keys are and I'm sure the pitch has slipped. It'll be even nicer when it's tuned and painted and I can get my fingers back into shape!

landscaping our yard

This was our summer to finally do something with our grass only yard. Michael and I took a long time to agree on where to put flower beds, but we finally did...Michael did all the hard work, including working for a dirt company for a day to earn the dirt we needed.

I am quite please with the result. The shopping for plants was fun, although a little overwhelming. Not everything worked out, but somethings really did.

Michael also decided that he wanted real garden space this year, so he built this gorgeous box in the backyard. That is the south side of the building so things grow there really well.

I really need to post some pictures of the the tomato plants as they grow, They have already grown so much.

I think the thing I am most proud of is these flower boxes. I had so much fun designing them, and I totally love the colours...

following in Mom's footsteps

My mom had this wonderful idea for a grad gift for me.  That I could put together some kind of flower arrangement for my house.  My mom has always been crafty and arranging flowers is something she's very good at and has done a lot.  I haven't got it to look quite like I had envision, but maybe next time she comes out she can help me.  Here's what I've got so far:

painting!

So, Michael and I decided that it was time to do something with our "office", aka the dumping ground for a lot of stuff in a room that already had two desks, a few other small cupboards, a bookshelf , two filing cabinets, and a desktop and a laptop computer in it. Seeing as how school was finished, we figured that the two desk thing was no longer necessary. I talked Michael into letting me paint the room, since we'd essentially be taking everything out anyway, and the lovely tan color on absolutely every wall in our house was driving me a little crazy (nice color, but it gets old, I lasted two whole years). I have never really painted before, except for the little bit I did in the bathroom downstairs and one wall in the basement when we moved here, and I had help for that, and since it was new, it didn't involve much taping off. So, I gave it a whirl! Michael ended up helping me with the actual painting that evening, but I did all the prep work during the day while he was at work.

Doing the prep work, a lot of taping, baseboards, window, door, closet, ceiling. Overall I did a pretty good job, it only bled through in a few places, the worst of which ended up covered by furniture!

The supplies. In total, it cost us $60 to paint this whole room, I felt pretty good about that.

Pulling off the tape...

Sorry for the blurry photo, but here's the end result. Pretty awesome color eh? We scored an old roll top desk from Kijiji and have put one of our black couches in this room. Hopefully we'll have it all finished soon and then I can post some pictures of the whole room!

project finally complete! (sort of)

Well, this has been one long project from start to finish! I got this little cabinet last winter, and this winter I finally took it to my in-laws and stained it and varnished it. I did it there so I could do it inside a heated shop, rather than freeze or wait until summer. Anyway, this is now where the phone and other miscellaneous items that used to live on the counter on the other side of this wall will no live. Yay for a clean counter, and more space when I'm baking! The thing is, nothing has really been organized inside. Michael took the liberty of shoving all our games behind those two doors and the phone books and pens and such are inside the flip down part. I still plan to actually make it functional (eliminate a few games that we don't use) and put some little baskets in so things don't get lost in the back.

Doesn't it look pretty? The flowers are from Valentine's, left over from the tables at the coffeehouse where we spent the evening. That photo, which we think looks pretty awesome is one we took in San Diego when we were stuck there for a couple of days with the truck.