I think it has potential

Well I was brave enough to take some photos of the basement in it's early days so we can have something to laugh about when we're done (done...I like that word).

Looking downstairs into my 'office'This will be a future storage room, just off from the officeThe laundry room (how depressing does that look?)The bathroom!Looking from the new spare bedroom/whatever room towards the bathroom

Whoops...Merry Christmas!

It was back to moving around the boxes o'crap last night, and I opened the closet door in the spare bedroom and guess what I found??? One of Trevor's Christmas presents from last year -- I forgot to wrap it and give it to him. Oops! It was a hand crank flashlight. I think it was a bigger hit this way for some reason, as this little flashlight will have a story to go along with it for a longgggg time.

Be afraid, be very afraid

Last night was the first weeknight push to get the crap out of the basement. Not sure if it really went well or not. I feel like all I've managed to accomplish is adding junk to more and more rooms in the house. I've started to clear out the spare bedroom to put things in it that we want to keep; the loft room will be for all of the boxes from the office that need to be moved in; and the downstairs living room will be the designated garage sale room (but is it big enough???). Scary. My house has been turned into a Public Storage warehouse.

At the office I managed to pack 5 boxes yesterday and set them close to the door so I just grab one as I leave at the end of the day and bring back to the house. Hopefully that will make a smaller job of it (spreading the pain out over multiple weeks).

Trevor needs credit

So apparently in my postings I tend to not glorify Trevor's construction skills (might give him a big head).
Let me redeem him here:

1. He has so many tools that if anything breaks/cracks/falls over it will be repaired. (But when? I ask.)
2. When he does build/fix things, they are done skillfully*.
3. He's great at planning things out.**


* And to extremes. Those skillfully crafted/repaired items can usually take the weight of a car.
** And planning. And planning. The man draws and writes on any blank sheet of paper he can find.

Can I get off now?

My weekend went a little something like that drawing (although most times you would find me on the picnic table below the ride looking pale and shaky). Up, up. up. Down, down, down. By Saturday morning I felt like I finally had come to terms with the whole home office deal now, I think it took Trevor a bit longer (he started his 12 steps of accepting a little later than me, although maybe his 'denial' stage just lasted longer, lol!). I'm now focussing on the positives of the situation rather than the negatives (but those negatives have a way of sneaking up on you). Maybe this is a big life test for me or something (that's the newest rationale I came up with last night in the shower). Maybe this is all meant to happen. Maybe if I keep on saying these things I'll eventually believe them.

I hit a big DOWN moment last night when we sat down after dinner and ran through a tentative schedule. It's looking like we're not going to hit the target of August 22, and instead, it looks like I'll be working downstairs (in the deep, dark, dank....wait! positives!...lovely, bright, cheery, new basement) around September 8th at the very earliest, and that's not even with everything completed. That's just having a floor and some walls. *sigh* That was pretty depressing.

Combined with all of the new stresses of figuring out where to put everything, permits, inspections, transferring addresses, phone lines, contacting clients...and MONEY. Money, money, money.

We sat down and had a good tete-to-tete last night and laid it all down between us. I wanted to make sure that before we start to get into all of this that both of us realize that at some point we will be ticked off at each other, stressed out and probably ready to rip the other person's head off. But we also agreed that we'd look at this HUGE project as small projects lumped together so we don't get to that point of laying it all down and having a smackdown with the two of us (I'd root for me!). Hopefully that will help with all of the overwhelming work and planning (and trips to Home Depot).

One thing is for sure, I've never felt so grateful for help. Cynthia told me that Mike volunteered to help with the electrical which made me (and still makes me) want to jump over the moon. I am so happy about that, SO HAPPY! Mike, you are the man! (And thank you for not letting Trevor do it, I don't want another light show in our house.) Now all we need are friends that are plumbers, drywallers, etc, etc! LOL! (We'll be investing in the Plumbing 1-2-3 book from Home Depot, for sure.)

So with all that going on, we finally started this weekend. It's a bit of a battle seeing as we have 80 other projects on the go, but I had time on Saturday (and some sunny weather) to go outside and finish laying bricks on the patio and clean up a bit. Trevor worked a bit more on the bedroom and did some moulding in the upstairs bathroom. Then on Sunday I began to tackle the basement. The scary, scary basement. We've planned for a garage sale on July 7th, and we plan on being ready to start the basement well before that (auuuuuughhhh!!!!). There is so much crap down there, after 3 hours I just walked in circles not knowing what to touch yet. 3 garbage bags later and some cardboard...well, it still doesn't look that much better. I figure I might have to start working 4 days (or less a week) to be able to keep this schedule alive and keep things on track. Makes me tired just thinking about it (but also makes me want to scream like Xena warrior princess and rip through the crap in the basement).

How plans change...

It's been a long week. And the news I got yesterday:

Yes, after months (actually, a year) of thinking that I would have an office in Chilliwack, it's all gone tits up. The rent on it is about 3 times as much as we pay now (for our lovely office that is noisy, dirty, has broken tiles, broken window, toilet that runs, cooks us in the summer and freezes us in the winter...the list goes on). So that just doesn't fit into the financial picture. Ask me how I feel about all of this and I'll sum it up like this:
So the only solution we're left with is having me work from home. Which poses a few problems, wait...let's call them 'interior issues'. These 'interior issues' result in having to FINISH OUR BASEMENT to fit the office into the house. Which means that, officially, even more of our house will be unlivable, and I have to plan the mother of all garage sales. Purge purge purge!

I think I'm slowly coming around to the idea of this.

But I'm not there yet.

1,375 days of...

being married. LOL!!! I went to a website on Cynthia's blog (www.thenest.com) and signed up so I could have access to some of their lists and templates, and BAM, there was the number. Made me laugh. Also made me yell over to Trevor to tell him we've had 1,375 days of bliss. LOL!

We have goals, I think...

We took a tally last night of things that we have on the go in (and out) of the house and came to the conclusion that NOT ONE SINGLE PART of our house is in a state of completion. But I think we're getting back on the motivation train. Slowly.

We'll have that back yard done by the Canada Day long weekend. Or so we say.
Glam shots should be coming soon!

Ummm?-brella

Yes, this makes me laugh too.

For some reason, things like this make me laugh REALLY hard:

Watermelon Salad

I made this over the weekend and it was reallllly good. Give it a try if you want something a little different and refreshing!

Serves 4
2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
Coarse salt and ground pepper
3 bunches arugula (about 12 ounces total), thick stems removed
1/4 medium red onion, thinly sliced
1 1/2-pound piece chilled seedless watermelon, rind removed, cut into small chunks (2 to 3 cups)
4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

DIRECTIONS
In a small bowl, whisk together vinegar and oil. Season with salt and pepper.
In a large bowl, combine arugula and onion; toss with dressing to taste. Gently toss with watermelon and feta, and serve.

The weekend, with a few small details...

On Friday night (after a FAB day of girl time and shopping and etc, etc, etc, with Cynthia) we went to Home Depot and picked up a few things (put off doing grocery shopping until Saturday morning). They had their jumbo pack of annuals on sale -- HALF PRICE! So I, of course, had to pick up a few petunias and other things. The rest of Friday evening was really nice, so I stayed out in the yard planting and weeding until it got dark. Good thing too, Saturday and Sunday were pretty miserable.

Saturday morning we headed out for groceries for the moveable feast that we were preparing for Father's Day (a tradition with Trevor's family -- he/we cook for Father's Day, his sister cooks for Mother's Day). The dinner was at the in-law's this year because his mom just got a puppy, and it needs to have it's routine (not to mention, not destroying my house/garden). We made some burgers, salad, corn on the cob, yam fries (which were hard to cook, took forever) and some easy parfaits from a Kraft recipe. I think we felt like caterers.

Sunday was pretty calm, we took a drive out to Chilliwack to see what the housing options are like out there. Well...not much. Boo to Chilliwack. I will not be living there anytime soon. We came back home after our drive and Trevor cleaned the carpet in the family room (YAY! We bought the lean mean carpet cleaning machine!). And WOW, does that thing ever work. It was pretty disgusting, grey/brown water and carpet that's now a different shade. I've also started to clean out the small pantry and implement the new Ikea storage container* system (note to self: need more, way more).

*Small note: Don't be retarded like me and put the container lids in the dishwasher with a bowl that has a small bit of leftover salsa in it. I now have orange lids. *sniff*

New office

So it looks like we're still on schedule to move the office out to Chilliwack in August sometime. It's really taking shape now, and we went for a walk around the site yesterday afternoon and I got to see my office for the first time. Let me tell you, it is BIG. Much bigger than I even expected it to be, and I've seen all of the plans. I suppose when you see something in person it gives you a better perspective of the space...I can now see where my desk is going. It will be really nice to not roast in the summer (like we do now in our crappy office), and not hear the noise coming from the shop guys doing their stuff.

It was also exciting to think of all the shopping I can do at Ikea for shelves, storage, production tables...etc, etc, and then some!

So here's where we're at now, insulation was going up yesterday:

Le Trip: A Summary

So we're back and we've managed to survive Spokane.

Day 1
We left around 10am and drove and drove and drove. The border guard asked, 'What's in Spokane that you can't get in Canada?'...ummmmm A LOT. There's a Macy's, a Nordstrom's, Williams Sonoma, etc, etc, etc. Geez! Our first stop was in Mt. Si for some lunch at a Blimpies (a pretty simple sandwich place, but it was clean and it passed the test). And back on the road again, not stopping until we made it to Spokane around 5-ish. It was interesting driving through Washington, I never thought it would have areas like this:

And there are a lot of farms once you get closer to Spokane. At one part they post the names of the crops growing for 14 miles, which was really neat to see. We drove by huge fields of peas, sweet corn, alfafa, wheat, potatoes and seed. Very cool!

Once we made it into Spokane we crashed in the hotel room for half an hour (me complaining of a slight funky smell, then trying to open the window and it being painted shut) -- not to mention a crappy view of an alley.

We left and walked across the river to have dinner at a place called Clinkerdagger's. One word for that restaurant: BUTTER. It was like a haunted mansion with old school heavy 70s food. Heavy sauces, bread slathered with heaps of butter and garlic, caesar salads with soggy dressing...the list goes on. We had the prime rib which wasn't too bad, but even the veggies were sauteed in butter. There was no escaping it! Our arteries were close to closing up by the time we left. At least we went for a walk around...more like rolling ourselves around!

Giant wagon
We came back to the room and found that the funky smell had become more funky (combination of fish and chlorine...blegh!) and the room also seemed more stuffy. So I called down to the front desk and we were upgraded to a king room (a HUGE king room!), and the funky smell was left behind. Our new room was great, with two windows and a view of the street. Much nicer!

Day 2
We got up fairly early so we didn't miss the breakfast down in the lobby/restaurant that ended at 9am. Then we were off to Silverwood, the northwest's largest theme park. It has 65 rides (3 of them rollercoasters). 2 of the rollercoasters are wooden ones, so you get the extra added freaky-ness of the clacking and the squeaks. One of them went 65mph and scared the crap out of me, it even had this sign to prove it:

We got most of the 'barfy' rides out of the way before lunch, which was a smart idea. One menu was just strange:Beefy? Hmmmm...

We also found a gigantic claw game! (No we did not play!)

We went on the antique cars (kind of like Autopia in Disneyland), Trevor drove. I passengered.

After the theme park we hit a Target store, yippee! This was the most interesting part of the day as there was a massive accident in the Target parking lot (say it's not so...the bargains make the peeps go crazy!). Some guy got his reverse and forward and his gas pedal all mixed up and he ended up taking out 6 cars! It was a huge mess, with windows blown out and big dents. No one was hurt though when we left there was still one car left...they were waiting for the person to return to their car...nice surprise there!

We did find one funny thing in the Target:
Corporate Kitty

We drove back to Spokane and had some dinner at a BBQ place that had really great reviews for it's BBQ and fried chicken. It was a very 'down south' sort of place, but sooooo gooooood. Best. Chicken. Ever.


Day 3
The next day we did some shopping around downtown and hit some neat stores (but there's really not all that much in the downtown, it's a bit small), then we had dinner at P.F. Chang's (SO GOOD). We shared garlic noodles (*drool*), beef and broccoli (*drool x 2*), and mu shu pork (so-so). They even gave us a choice of white or brown rice which was cool, brown rice all the way! We then caught Oceans 13 at the movie theatre and called it a night.

Ugly dolls at a neat store
Retro parkade!

Day 4
Back on the road again and back home!

And the mystery getaway is...

Spokane!

I haven't told Trevor yet (I will drag this out as long as I can...but might have to spill it to the border guard). What's in Spokane you ask? Well, it was the site for Expo '74 *insert ooh's and ahh's here*, and it has some neat little shopping places (okay, that one's for me). What sold it for me was the proximity of Spokane to the northwest's largest theme park, Silverwood. Yes, I've never heard of it either. That's in Idaho, about a 30 minute drive from Spokane. I think we'll be going there on Friday -- the weather looks the best for that day. So pretty much two full days of forgetting we have jobs and then driving back.

Let's hope we avoid speeding tickets and state troopers this time (those dudes are scary and those fines are steep). I still think we'll be hunted down if we ever cross the border into California again...LOL!

Chocolate cake!

Here is my attempt at a cake that FINALLY WORKED OUT! Hurrah for me! This was made from scratch (thanks to that Barefoot Contessa chick!) for Mike's birthday. Yes, I kept this piece until I finally remembered to bring the camera home from work to take a picture of it.

Suburban Farmer

Well, the yard isn't done yet but we're progressing nicely. We were quite a bit slower this weekend due to the STINKING heat. But, we did manage to get the gate frames up, and hit the Homo Delepot twice. I planted my pride and joy -- veggie boxes! I'm going all Jamie Oliver and going to be all natural (and talk with a slight lisp, and think that everything's easy peasy and lubly jubly). Three tomato plants (one called 'super fantastic' -- how could I not get that one???), some broccoli plants (which would be so rad if they actually work), zucchini (crossing fingers there), butter lettuce, parsley and basil. I will be in heaven if they all grow like mad. I can then fulfill my mental daydream of little house on the prairie/hot gardening chick in overalls with red gingham shirt harvesting luscious ripe veggies in a large wicker basket. HA HA!

Must remember to review this video for reference!

Teeny Little Super Guy - Eggbeater

Remember him?

Secret Trip

We're taking a few days off next week (Thursday, Friday) to do a little mini-roadtrip. I'm the planner behind it all (naturally) and Trevor...well he just gets to find out where we're going when we get in the car next Thursday.

I haven't given him too many clues (or any that he'll figure out), but this is what he knows so far:
- It's a place we've never been to before
- We're driving there, no ferries, no planes, no trains
- It's either in Canada or the US
- We're staying in a hotel

Very vague, I know. I even managed to pull a fast one on him last night while cruising around Costco -- I told him that we would have to be up and in the car by 5:30am and he crapped his pants. LOL! Well, it was good for me!