The big reveal
11:13 pm | No Comments »So I thought I’d show what David and I have been up to. I’ll show pitures of the rooms that are finished and clean enough to put on the internet, or as my mother calls it, the world wide web.
Oh how I wish I would have taken before pictures but sadly I did not. Thankfully however, I’m always snapping shots and found some in my enormous library.
Here is the entry way on Colin’s first day of school, after Evan gave himself a haircut and we had to shave his head, just in time for school pictures. I’m a puddle on the floor. Where has the time gone!
Here is the completed entry way:
I love the colours. The white is Fuzzy Mitten and the oatmeal yellowy colour is Crown Point Sand.
Note to self: put on that light switch plate.
This is the boys playroom before, when me and my buds were playing Rock Star after a night of dinner and red wine:
And this is the after, we kept Rock Star!
I asked Colin what colour he’d like me to paint his play room and he said “Camouflage.” I feel this is a good compromise, don’t you?
That column was once a poll that we had covered because if looked a little too much like a stripper poll.
To my friends with daughters…you’re welcome.
And I have to show you this. It’s a weird awkward wall that I can’t hang anything on it because there is a chimney behind it and there aren’t studs. So I opted for this poster that I bought and had mounted at Lighthouse.
I didn’t buy this poster right away, even thou it was only $10. I just couldn’t stop thinking about it and went back to buy it later in the day. I just love it. I don’t know why. I’ve never been to Paris. But I think if I ever go, I’ll skip just like her.
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March 10, 2010
The Closet
8:52 pm | 3 Comments »Lately I’ve been nervous, thinking that a camera crew from A&E will show up at my doorstep to shoot for an episode of Hoarders.
This is one of my closets. I know, bad right? It’s a catch all and I’m embarrassed to open it. So why show it here? I spent about 20 minutes and $12, yes, at the dollar store on these plastic baskets, and we have ourselves a transformed closet, one that I am not embarrassed to open in front of strangers.
Each basket holds something different. One for craft supplies; one for tools; one for chords.
And I discovered that David has a crazy light bulb dependancy. All different shapes, sized and voltage. If you ever need a lightbulb, come and see us.
I too have a dependance to linen napkin.
So David… there is no judgement from me.
3 Comments »
March 8, 2010
My little Shakespeare.
12:22 pm | 2 Comments »Being a good letter writer is a good virtue, I believe.
During parent teacher, Evan’s teacher told me that Evan is a great writer. That came as no surprise to me. He’s always been able to articulate his thoughts well, and for much of his life written in a journal. I love that about him.
I was surprised to learn that he has two pen pals at school because of his letter writing ability. Then I read one of his letters and I thought it was wonderful.
He’s given me permission to publish it for you to read.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to sit down and put pen to paper and write a letter.
2 Comments »
March 5, 2010
Turning something old into something new.
12:16 pm | 1 Comment »After the plaster and sanding, I had to go through all my kitchen cupboards. My God, what a mess. The dust made my already disastrous cupboards much worse. While dusting them, I took everything out and evaluated whether or not I should keep it. I have lots of serving platter and vases that I haven’t used in years. I left them out and try to decide how I discard them.
But then I noticed the shape of all the odd glass vases that I have, and while I didn’t like them like this….
I knew that with a $7 can of semi-gloss black spray paint from Gow’s Home Hardware, I’d have an interesting and contemporary display…
Turning this…
Into this….
Every room, regardless of how small it is, needs some black, or at least that’s my philosophy. And while they’re not perfect, it’s not bad for $7 and 20 minutes.
1 Comment »
March 2, 2010
An inexpensive decorating idea
10:49 pm | 5 Comments »So by now you’re all aware that we did some reno’s that turned bad, right? Well they’re done, for the most part, with the exception of some painting, picture hanging, lots of dusting and even more family counseling.
I painted our tiny downstairs powder room a chocolate brown despite that fact that everyone says you can’t paint a small room a dark colour. I’m all…no colour will make it look big. It’s a small room. I’m ok with that. Once it was painted, Colin walked in and said it look like his poop. And now that he said it, it kind of did, and just the thought made you need to do a number two. Probably not a bad choice of colour for this house.
Anyway, with the new paint colour I really didn’t want to put up the same pictures as I had hung there previous. I wanted it to look like a new room. Of course, I had no money to go out and buy new pictures, remember, the reno’s turned bad. So that brings me to this post, because I know all of you appreciate my frugalness, I thought I’d share this with you.
First of all, have you heard of post secrets? They changed my life! I love reading other peoples secrets. We all have one… or 23. This is a website where people make post cards of their secret and send it in and this guy posts them. He tours the country telling peoples secrets and is now a published author.
I love post secrets, so I framed them.
This is the view from the seat. I love how now one has something to read while they’re on the John and something to do while they wash their hands.
These are some of my favourites. SOme secrets are hilarious, others are heart-breaking, and some are shocking. I tried to keep it tame for my bathroom.
The best part is that I can change them after I get tired of them, and put newer secrets in them.
No actually, that isn’t the best part. The best part is that these lovely shadow box type frames came from the Dollar store and were $1.25 each, which was great, because I broke one.
And I laughed.
If I spent $30 on each frame, I would not have laughed. In fact, this one little project would have cost…help me out now…$270. Instead, it cost $11.25, well $12.50 if you count the broken one that I will have to replace. Oh…and of course the $30 for the cost of the book, Post Secrets, because if I didn’t buy the book and just printed them off of the internet, that would be a copy write infringement, and I would never do that;)
Just wait until you see what I did above my sink for only $7! You’ll love it!
5 Comments »
March 1, 2010
4:15 pm | 2 Comments »
In the words of Bridget Jones, “We’re goin’ on a mini-break!”
That’s what I announced to my boys early Friday morning after I made plans with other hockey families. We were having a game in Spryfield anyway, the Mooseheads were playing in their final home game of the season versus the Wildcats, and we didn’t have a game on Sunday. It seemed as the stars aligned for us to have a nice family weekend. I didn’t tell the boys until the night before, because…well I’m not stupid. I’ve done that before and I can barely take the nagging. Plus, if it stormed and we ended up not going, I wouldn’t have disappointed boys.
I love the mini-break. We typically don’t take big trips, so having several, smaller, more local trips really appeals to me. Plus, I’m in love with our Province, and much of it I have yet to discover.
After our Novice game we went to the Mooseheads game, where I sat next to a season ticket holder and while I’m sure she was irritated at my constant chatter she was very gracious. She works for the Federal Government, she has two daughters in university, one at the Mount and one at Mount A, loves the Mooseheads, and do you think I was smart enough to get her name? Not so much.
Then we checked into the Westin, one of our favorite hotels in Halifax and despite the fact that our hotel room lacked a microwave, I’ll give them a pass.
Meet Katie. Katie was lovely.
It didn’t take us long to make the Westin our temporary home. The boys love sleeping in hotel beds. I gave them fruit punch…in these lovely crisp white sheets…something I would never do at home.
They swam with their buddies…
And the hot tub was a nice surprise. When I stay here it’s typically for a conference, where we don’t do much swimming.
Then the boys played mini sticks while I had beers with the other hockey parent’s and watched the men’s curling game on the flat screen.
The weather wasn’t great, so we opted to not go to the Waterfront Winter Fest as we had planned and we skipped our annual Beaver Tail and Freak Lunch Box stop with a promise that we’ll return for it one day soon.
For brunch we went to Your Fathers Moustache. Colin had berry crepes and Evan had steak and eggs. Pretty sophisticated eaters, but I assure you, they’d have Captain Crunch at home.
All in all, it was a great weekend! But the best part… what really made this trip special…Evan faced his fear after an elevator-ride-gone-bad at the Holiday Inn on Robie last year, and got up to the 10th floor. By the end of the weekend, he was a pro and I was so proud.
Here he’s shrugging and saying, “What’s the big deal, it’s just an elevator.”
*Excursions and Diversions is part of a series of posts promoting venues and attractions close to home, within an hours drive from Nova Scotia’s South Shore.
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February 25, 2010
Lights and cameras.
4:35 pm | 3 Comments »This was a pretty exciting week for me at Lighthouse. Remember that course I took a few years back? I was filmed for a video commercial to promote it. Apparently, I am an example. Clearly they have not read this blog.
It was nerve racking trying to sound all…educated-like. Chris Beck came to shot. Look at this lighting. He’s such a professional and he assured me that through careful editing, he’ll make me look good. He’s really got his work cut out for him! I’m sure he was thinking ‘lady, they don’t pay me enough!’
Here I am trying to appear sophisticated.
And here I am failing.
Here I am desperately trying to hide that third chin.
And there goes the hand!
And here a colleague moons the camera. Kidding of course, but I think he did something juvenile like stick his noes to the window.
We’re all business here at Lighthouse!
3 Comments »
February 23, 2010
We’re all good at something
9:55 pm | 4 Comments »Today, I turned 34. Turning 34 is no big deal to me, in fact, I had to use a calculator to determine my actual age; 2010-1976. I’m not one of those who hate getting older. I’m like a fine wine. Wah, I make your teeth red? No, I like to think I’ve gotten better with age. If you knew me back in the day you’d say, “She’s right, less fun, but better.”
And just like new years, I always decide that this is going to be the year. When I turned 19…”this is going to be the year that I take bigger risks.” When I turned 24…”this is going to be the year that grow a pair and stop letting people walk all over me”. When I turned 33…”this is going to be the year that I learn how to play the guitar”. And this year? This is the year that I learn and teach. This revelation came to me at my sisters house.
She had myself and a few of her girlfriends over for scrap booking. And no, no one except my sister is really good at scrap-booking (sorry girls) but that wasn’t the point. The point was, we tried something new, and the result were really terrific!
No one cared that we didn’t actually know what we were doing accept to copy what Deanna was doing.
Besides, it wasn’t about what we made, it was that we could bitch about our spouses and talk about children, and feel…normal.
I left with a cute little scrapbook trinket, a full belly from the food, sore cheeks from the laughter, and a promise to do this more often; learn things from people and hell, maybe teach them something too. I’m not sure I have anything to teach other than how to layer shooters like I did in University, but that is a skill!
So, you never know what kind of invitation might pop up here on this blog ladies. The question is…what are you good at and what do you want to learn?
4 Comments »
February 21, 2010
Welcome to my hell!
10:00 pm | 1 Comment »
There you have it. What I have been living in for almost 30 days. You know…the reno that was to take a week, 2 tops. Yeah, not so much. I’ll blog about the good, bad an the ugly when it’s done, and it will be lovely! The end is in sight.
It’s hard to cook without a stove. Even harder without a microwave. But the other night, my kids said, “Mamma please, no more pizza.” So among the dust and debris, I made their favourite meal; spaghetti and meatballs, and sure, the meatballs were packaged Superstore meatballs, the pasta sauce was homemade and it was a meal none-the-less. Let there be no excuse for a frozen meal if I can cook in these conditions.
I couldn’t even be bothered to remove all the tools and crap to take the picture, I mean really, there was nowhere to move it to.
On the upside, David and I are still married, thou we’re both threatened divorce twice, we decided neither of us was willing to go anywhere because we were both covered in paint, and if we were going to go anywhere, we were going upstairs for a nap.
The other night my girlfriends and I had plans for dinner which was initially suppose to be here, and then got switched to Jen’s, for obvious reasons. Nadia was coming down and was bringing Indian food form the city. I had to call and cancel. I was just so overwhelmed, the list of things to do, too enormous, I knew I’d be no fun. So I cancelled. Something that I hate doing and I felt like a heel. Of course my friends understood, as I knew they would, but it didn’t make it suck any less. The next morning I was painting when they arrived with coffee and a fabulous bag filled with my favourite red wine, bubble bath and a foot scrub, and I wept openly. They just knew.
I hope that each and everyone of you is as lucky to have girlfriends like mine.
I think I drank the wine for breakfast. I defy you to click here to hear what the bag does and not laugh! I’ve been opening it all day. It’s fabulous. I have a funny feeling you’ll be hearing a lot about this bag. I’ve got a plan!
1 Comment »
February 16, 2010
Let’s get ready to rumblllllleeeee!
3:55 pm | 3 Comments »There are go-and-do’ers and then there are sit-and-stew’ers. My Colin is a go-and-do’er.
Around Christmas I was in Atlantic Fabrics and I noticed material for WWE Wrestling. Colin loves WWE Wrestling. On the material there was a pattern for a belt and a vest. I thought it was a perfect little project for Colin and me to do because he’s really crafty. He’d ask me almost daily to help him make it. I always found other things to do. ”Maybe later Colin. How about this weekend? I need to get black thread. Don’t worry Colin, we’ll do it soon enough.” We never did.
Finally he got frustrated and took matters in his own hands.
“Mamma, whera da sizzahs at?”
“They should be in the craft bucket, Colin.”
“Day not.”
And that’s the last I heard of him for about an hour. I grew suspicious of the quiet, and went looking for him. I met him in the hallway. He had the wrestling belt that he made by himself, slung over his shoulder, wearing no shirt and a big grin. He cut out the material and secured it to the guitar strap of his dad’s guitar.
He was proud as punch.
So was I. Pretty creative little guy, isn’t he?
Then he said, “Mamma, you wanna wessle?”
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