Glazing

Our renovation is finally starting to look like it will soon be done. I really wanted to finish today, but I don't think that is going to happen. The toilet was leaking, so KD had to take that off and now we have fans running to dry the subfloor. With my success at spray-painting, I decided to try glazing. That non-$40 shelf was too bright white. I'm not going for icy-cold stark white, so I needed to tone it down. I mixed some "nutmeg" craft paint with water, brushed it on and wiped it off right away. I love how it turned out! But it was too nutmegy, so after it dried, I did the same thing with antique white craft paint. I'm getting excited about how this bathroom is going to look!

Consolation Prize

Look what my mom brought over yesterday! This adorable little table belonged to my Danish great grandparents. It has been sitting neglected in my grandparents' basement for the last 20 or 30 years. I think it even spent some time in Grandpa's garage/workshop. It's filthy, and desperately needs refinishing. But it's just so cute! I don't know yet what I want to do with it. Which is ok, because I have way to many painting projects right now. It will probably eventually be painted, because stripping stain is just too much work. Any ideas? My mom felt really bad that I didn't get the china cabinet, so she immediately claimed this little table for me. I love gate-leg-style tables. They are so conveniently sized. My mom used to have one that was eight feet long, but with the leaves and all put away it collapsed to two feet long.

No Longer a Spray Paint Virgin

I have a new love, and his name is Spray Paint. I finally got the courage to spray paint a few things, and I love how they turned out! I found these two metal things at Goodwill. Neither of them looked particularly stylish, but I had plans for them. The round one was $3.99 and the other one was $1.99. One can of spray primer and one can of white spray paint later: I had actually been wanting some sort of flat basket-thing to keep fruit in, and this seems perfect. It will help beautify the ugly corner of my kitchen:The other container will go in the newly-renovated bathroom. Here are some of the other things I spraypainted (because of course those two small things wouldn't use a whole can of paint: No, I did not spend $40.00 for a shelf. I wouldn't! I saw this shelf a few weeks ago in clearance at Rona for 50% off, and even $20 was too much for me. I bought it for $10.09, including tax. Patience has its reward, I guess! I have quite a long list of things left to do to get our house looking back to normal again. Today is tile day.Isn't my printing awful?

Nan's Hands

(photo removed due to being published elsewhere)

Painting day

I'm so sorry, but I don't have the brain power or the time to come up with a creative post today. So all you'll get is my rambling. I may post something better later today. Today I must prime and paint the half-bathroom. So KD has decreed. Don't worry, he's not really that bossy. We both want to get this bathroom done as soon as possible. Then KD's part in fixing up our house will be done for now, and it will be up to me to finish off the little things. Which would be much easier and faster if JK would play by herself more! She actually did really well over the weekend. I was amazed at how much I was able to do while she played in the barricaded living room. And on Thursday she's going to spend the afternoon with KD's family, so I hope I can get a lot done then. I think this renovation is really helping me feel at home here again. Since I am doing it the way I want it done, instead of for someone else. I did decide to paint the walls white. With the white trim and white fixtures, I hope it won't be too glaring. But it is proving to be a fun challenge to decorate with white walls. The last time we had white walls (in an apartment), I didn't do any real decorating because I didn't know anything and didn't have any money. Yesterday I tried spray paint for the first time. I used spray primer on the piano bench, but hand-painted the actual colour. I still need to do one more coat before I decide whether it was a success or not. I was busy with other things yesterday evening and never got outside to do my final coat. Then it started raining so I had to drag everything inside. My plastic tarp is still outside getting rained on. In other news, my younger sister is pregnant! Not this one. The little blonde one on the left in this picture from 1988: Of course she's not that little now. She already has two gorgeous little blonde girls. Her oldest looks exactly like her. I'm so excited to have a new little niece or nephew. But they are moving away soon. Finally, to leave you with something that made me laugh out loud, go read Dawn's post at Because I Said So. She's hilarious. And she has a book coming out in May.

Renovation Archeology

This weekend, we needed to work on the baseboards, so that we can return the borrowed tools to KD's brother. Well, of course we couldn't install the baseboards in the half-bath until we put in the new vinyl flooring. And we couldn't put in the flooring until we removed the toilet. KD wanted to replace the sink and faucet this weekend too. To make a long story short, we ended up ripping out not only the toilet and sink, but also the entire cabinet. KD suddenly decided that we needed to install a pedestal sink instead of just replacing the kind we had. Of course I have been telling him for the past 2.5 years that I wanted to put a pedestal sink in that bathroom, but that had nothing to do with his decision...of course. With no shutoff valve for that sink, we had to turn off the main water supply. All Day on Saturday. We went through a lot of baby wipes trying to stay relatively clean. We finally finished installing the sink at 11:00 PM on Saturday, and turned the water back on. It's amazing the difference it makes not having an ugly cabinet in that room. When we pulled off the ugly plastic baseboards, we discovered that some previous owner had decidedly questionable taste! As if the ugly blue/tan linoleum weren't enough, two walls were painted a dingy blue-grey, and the other two walls were wallpapered in this: It is textured metallic silver with two shades of strange blue tree-like things patterend all over it. And I thought the poorly-done faux parchment with stencilled ivy was bad! Whoever decorated this room definitely did not believe in "less is more". Anyway, we still have lots of work to do in this bathroom, and then I will show how it turned out.

Friday Foto Finish Fiesta!

I'm joining in again with Candid Carrie's Friday Foto Finish Fiesta, so here is one of my recent favourite photos: This picture was taken the day before KD's brother's wedding. JK is charicteristically trying to remove the pretty bow that M put in her hair. This isn't a technically terrific picture, but the reason I like it is because M is a beautiful, beautiful person. I had just met her the day before. She is the new wife of one of the groomsmen, and they live in Slovakia. They came to Canada for their honeymoon so they could be in the wedding. I had the opportunity to chat with M, even though we sometimes had trouble understanding each other. Her English is pretty good, but I wasn't very good at simplifying my vocabulary so that she could understand me. Despite the few communication troubles, I discovered that M is a warm, open, loving, beautiful woman. Talking to such a sweet person simply made my weekend. And she's an amazing dancer.

Hair, and a Rocking Chair

Last night, I finally spent the money to get a decent hair cut. Every time I do so, I resolve that I will get a professional hair cut more often. But then it takes a year or two to get up the courage to spend $70 on my hair again. So here's what I look like now: This kind of looks like a candid picture, but it's not. I was looking at the display screen of the camera through the mirror. I am terrible at self-portraits. This one is better, though I do look a bit like a deer in the headlights:

*****

When we were in Fairmont for the third part of our vacation, KD's mom and step-dad stayed at our house so that they could visit with Baby L and her parents for a few days without causing any extra work for them. When we got home, we found a rocking chair waiting in the living room! It was patterned after a chair that KD had when he was small. His was bright red. JK's new one perfectly matches the fireplace mantle in the living room! Of course I had to do some rearranging, and this is what I came up with: This wall needs something, but I'm not sure what. Any ideas? To see what this space looked like before, go to this post.

Bits and Pieces

This picture was taken at the almost-top of Knox Mountain. I like to try being creative like that. Isn't that a lovely sky? This is the pretty dress borrowed from baby L for the wedding in Nelson. JK looked so cute in it, though she pulled off her shoes on the drive to the wedding, and I didn't put them back on until evening when it started getting cold. I loved the decorations in the big tent. We have one of these lights in our living room (except it is the older ikea version that has parallel lines...I like these newer ones better)

*****

We have decided that we are not going to sell our townhouse yet. Our next door neighbours' place is for sale, and listed for $36,000 more than our realtor advised us to list ours for. So we are going to wait and see what it sells for before deciding what to do with ours. We will probably list ours next spring or summer. So in the meantime, I can enjoy my lovely yellow living room. Once the baseboards are on, the half-bath is fixed up, and all my little painting projects are done at least. But it's difficult to get back into thinking of this house as mine. I worked hard to get to a place where I could let it go, and I was starting to get excited about our next place, so now I have to somehow remind myself why I love our current home. It will be easier in the winter when I won't have to worry about the lack of privacy in the backyard...and the lack of grass for JK to crawl on. (call me crazy, but I can't wait until she can walk! Then I don't have to worry as much about her scraping her knees crawling on the brick patio).

*****

I have been getting up at 6:30 for the past three mornings, and I love it! It allows me to have a shower before JK wakes up instead of waiting until her first nap. It's amazing how much extra time there is in the day when that happens.

*****

I'm getting my hair cut this evening. I'm becoming a college student again this fall (one course). I want to take a dance-fitness class instead of the swimming class that KD suggested. Ok, I think that's everything I wanted to say today. Kind of disjointed and random, but you don't mind, right?

Playing with Macros

On our vacation, I had fun playing around with the macro setting on my camera. I really don't know what I'm doing, but I came up with some nice shots anyway. At KD's brother's wedding, the centrepieces were made of long wooden troughs filled with hydrangeas, oranges, and curly twigs. They were really pretty. I have a lot more macro pictures on the other camera, featuring cherries and grapes. I'll show you those when I get them. In the meantime, feel free to steal these pictures. The pictures in this post are free for the taking, to be used for whatever you wish, though it would be nice if you would link back to me...you know, free traffic and all that. All the other pictures on this blog are of course copyrighted unless otherwise stated.

Announcing the Winners

Ok, today is the day! Thanks to a random number generator, the winners of my little giveaway have been decided! I truly wish I could send something to all of you. Next time maybe. The winner of Giveaway #1 is Rue from Rue's Peanut Butter and Jelly Life. The winner of Giveaway #2 is Jill from Forever and Ever House. Congratulations to the two winners! I will send you both emails shortly requesting addresses so I can send your prizes! Thanks to everyone for participating, I've had a lot of fun collecting items for the two giveaways. Once they are received by the winners, I'll post pictures of each complete collection. Next time I have a giveaway, I promise I won't keep y'all in suspense for three weeks.

Family Vacation

Today I thought I would share with you some of my favourite family vacation pictures. But first I want to direct your attention to a fabulous party that is going on today: The Nester's Mistreatment Club Party! Since she graciously said that we can even link older posts for the party, I submitted this post about my bedroom curtain mistreatment. Now on to the pictures! They are not in order because it's just too much work to drag them all into the proper chronological place. Yes, KD put our baby on the ground to play with the pigeons. Eww!!! I was not there, or I would have stopped it. This is on the ferry between Balfour and nowhere in BC, across the north end of Kootenay lake. It's a really pointless ferry, since there are no major centres on either side. Probably why it's free. Hiking in Fairmont: JK and the chickens at an orchard in Kelowna. She wasn't so sure of them at first, but after a few minutes, I had to work to keep her hands out of reach of the chicken beaks. JK and the goats at the same place. Lots of driving: After a long day of setting up for Uncle B's wedding, JK was exhausted and did something she hadn't done since she was around 4 months old: Fell asleep in the car, and kept sleeping on Nana's shoulder. JK and Grand-Nan: At a park in Kelowna: Boat tour on Lake Okanagan: Ok, I think fifteen pictures is enough for one post. If you made it to the end here, you are probably related to me. I promise a more generally-interesting post tomorrow! I will also announce the winners of my giveaways tomorrow, so today is the last chance to enter!