M Day will soon be upon us...

Well, I've finally been given a breadcrumb trail to figure out when the heck I'm supposed to move this office. FINALLY. I don't think I need to go into my displeasure at how annoying/frustrating/poke-your-eyes-out '----------' (add another negative comment here) this whole situation is. For weeks I've been trying to figure out when I'm being booted out, and as of today I have 17 days (YES, 17 days) to get my collective junk together and go cram a office the size of a small country into my house.

Frantic plans are now going into place, getting phones and contact info all ready to be hooked up and working for August 20th, changing over the name of Old Foundry to the new and fabulous name, getting the word out to everyone, packing boxes, and somehow managing to work and be productive through all of this. Not to mention dealing with space so tight in the house I think the walls might be shaking and heaving every time we bring something new into it.

Our nasty, NASTY dining room set is being given the boot and I get to set up shop in the dining room. I'll have a nice cozy space shared with giant long lengths of moulding jutting under my desk, boxes, bags and general crap. Oh I can't wait to post the photos...you will all get to bask in my disaster of a house.

Fart fans and other things I learned this weekend

The weekend came and went in a bit of a blur. Mike came over and spent most of his weekend slaving away in our basement (thanks again Mike!), with Trevor as his electrical monkey helper. I think. I know there was a lot of noise downstairs but I can't quite tell you what happened down there. There's a lot of wire, a lot of switches, banana boxes (like that name), and a super powered fart fan.

I was sent off to Home Depot 3 TIMES during the weekend, bringing the grand total of visits in 48 hours to 5 (4 too many if you ask me). In some strange way I'm proud to say that I know the Langley Home Depot like the back of my hand. Wiring? Aisle 2. Switches? Aisle 3. Fart fans? Aisle 5 just where the hot tub is mounted (towards the back of the store). Perhaps this is a skill I should put on my résumé? (ps - the ´'s there were just to satisfy Trevor, he hates when people just write 'resume'...like 'resoom')

Home Depot Disenchantment

You know when you get the to the point of exhaustion with something? You feel worn out, tired, fed up...and then you start to see things differently?

Well it happened to me. In the electrical aisle of at Home Depot. I was not alone...These little outlets started to look like faces, and while Trevor was humming and haa-ing over breakers and whatnot.

But on another subject, not related to electrical products, I HATE STUDS. It is official. I don't want to buy any more, move any more, touch any more or cut any more. And I especially don't want to measure any more. I met and exceeded my limit of tolerance with these things last night. No. More. Studs.

We had to buy 24 (well, Trevor picked up 28) more and do a double trip from Home Depot last night because the car couldn't take all the electrical stuff and the studs at once (well, I disagreed with that, pack more in! one trip! one trip!). Then we worked until close to 10:30pm cutting and nailing the extra studs in. Good news is that we're finally very, VERY close to finishing framing. And we also were approved for our permit this week, so the inspections can start next week on the framing.

I can't wait until we get to the point where the flooring can go down and the paint can be put up. Soon! Soooooooon!

Vanilla Cupcakes!

I haven't had a lot of time to do the domestic goddess thing lately with the basement and endless reno's, but I put that all aside Friday night and baked up some treats. Ohhh KitchenAid mixer, how I've missed you!

Here's the recipe:
Magnolia's Vanilla Cupcake
If you would like to make a layer cake instead of cupcakes, divide the batter between 2 (9-inch) round cake pans and bake the layers for 30 to 40 minutes.
Cupcakes:
1 1/2 cups self-rising flour
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Icing:
Vanilla Buttercream, recipe follows

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Line 2 (1/2 cup-12 capacity) muffin tins with cupcake papers.

In a small bowl, combine the flours. Set aside.
In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugar gradually and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the dry ingredients in 3 parts, alternating with the milk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated but do not over beat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about 3/4 full. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center of the cupcake comes out clean.
Cool the cupcakes in tins for 15 minutes. Remove from the tins and cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

Vanilla Buttercream:
The vanilla buttercream we use at the bakery is technically not a buttercream but actually an old-fashioned confectioners' sugar and butter frosting. Be sure to beat the icing for the amount of time called for in the recipe to achieve the desired creamy texture.
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
6 to 8 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Place the butter in a large mixing bowl. Add 4 cups of the sugar and then the milk and vanilla. On the medium speed of an electric mixer, beat until smooth and creamy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Gradually add the remaining sugar, 1 cup at a time, beating well after each addition (about 2 minutes), until the icing is thick enough to be of good spreading consistency. You may not need to add all of the sugar. If desired, add a few drops of food coloring and mix thoroughly. (Use and store the icing at room temperature because icing will set if chilled.) Icing can be stored in an airtight container for up to 3 days.

Yield: enough for 2 dozen cupcakes or 1 (9-inch) layer cake

So this is how the other half lives...

We went on a little spur of the moment trip to the Seattle Street of Dreams on Sunday. Nice break from the cave (basement). We got a few ideas on finishing and colours, but were mostly there to ignore the 'do not touch' and 'do not open' signs.
We got to ride on a school bus to the house site. That was fun. Please note the 'Body Fluids Clean-up Kit'.Nice planter! I'm getting ideas for next year already.Trevor on the security camera. When you live the 'life' you must monitor all who pass. lol*sigh* One day these will be my washer and dryer. One day...There was a big environmental theme, and they had these bee boxes set up to encourage the bees in your garden to move in. Those are probably the ritzy bee condos that most bees can't afford. Nice swoopy part of a back yard. Totally ugly. Uh-huh, would NEVER want something like that. And then we went for sushi. The end.

We watched PBS last night...

It was a slow TV night and the two of us were pooped, so at 9pm Trevor started watching some lame Jet Li movie (kung fu, bad guys, good guy wins, repeat) and I said, 'what else is on???'. Lo and behold, a show about people who own ferrets was on PBS. Interesting...we've come to the conclusion that most owners of ferrets are certifiable, but I did learn that these furry tube socks are really, really cute. And smart too! They run and play with balls and swiggle around making little grunting noises. Kind of like a limp and super stretched out cat crossed with a sea otter.

And I thought 'how cute!' up until they showed these crazy people taking their ferrets to a show, and one lady was bit in the FACE (well, nose) and had blood all over her. Her opinion of the situation was 'whoops! shouldn't have held the ferret up to my face! oh, do I need stitches?'. Yikes. Well, some of these critters do bite (mostly out of fear, which makes sense), but why then would you put them in a situation where they get scared? All for a little ribbon? *rolling eyes*

So I'll stick with my kitties for now. Less stitches, no shows, oh, and no tie dye t-shirts (which seemed to be the owner outfit of choice).

---
On another note, the week has been fairly uneventful, but had these highlights:

- Trevor catching a vase that was knocked over by Lulu with his FOOT. I'm signing him up for the Cirque du Soleil, STAT. Early retirement!

- We had Darcy, our drywall guy come over last night to take a look at the basement and measure it up for a quote. I think his exact words were: 'I've never seen anything like this' when talking about how we could manage to get sheets of drywall into the basement. The stairwell is too tight and the only other option (we thought) was to cut a hole in the floor in between the joists. But Darcy suggested using a window to the basement to get it in. So we'll have to pop the entire window out to get the drywall in, but at least it doesn't have to come through the house to get there.

- I've enacted a day to have all of the reno's done. Well, at least the ones that are on the go at the moment. November 30, 2007 (have to put the year in there or we might end up pushing it to 2008). I want a living room for living in again, a hallway for walking in back, a spare bedroom that someone could sleep in and a basement that doesn't need anything done to it. Any bets on if we'll make it? All signs point to... ?

Crappity crap crap with a side of crap!

My new office in the basement doesn't fit my existing furniture here. *big sigh* I spent an hour yesterday playing furniture Tetris and whining.

Maybe I should just rent one of these and solve all of my problems:

Good intentions

So the weekend didn't go exactly to plan. I think we kind of forgot that framing has a few stages...and one of them happens to be a little more, what's the word...exact? When the top and bottom plates are being put up you can't really rush it (unless you want wonky walls). So that took a little longer than expected. But, the front half of the basement is done and the hallway and bathroom are starting to come to life now. This is the view from the office-to-be. Why look, there's a storage room!

I've also started to map out how the office will function, and playing around with furniture placement and layouts. Not the easiest thing because I'm trying to take all of the existing furniture that was purchased for an entirely different space and try to modify it for the basement. I'm going to put that all into Illustrator today and play around with it a bit.

What else...we had a lovely dinner and play around at Cynthia and Mike's place on Saturday evening...BBQ chicken, fresh from the garden lettuce and carrots (mmmmm!), tasty! It was a nice break from the basement dungeon we're used to.

I spent a little bit of time in the garden watering and doing maintenance. I'd really like to get out there with the pruners sometime during the week. Some plants are just going a bit to crazy, time to tame! I even managed to put up some neat mini-lights with little lantern things around them under the patio umbrella. Too bad I didn't find an extension cord to light them up with (so they're just for show).

And I took a moment to bug Lulu with the camera. Cute, non? :)

Goals for the weekend.

We're still working away in the basement, but we could be coming up to a big milestone by the end of the weekend -- completing the framing!!! Trevor's told me that this is his goal, and I think it's quite doable. This would put us ahead of schedule on our timeline by a smidge. Then we can call up our drywall guy next week and have him come by to measure up and give us a price. And then it's onwards from there!

Hopefully by Monday I'll have some photos of the framing to put up and ohhh and ahhh at!

Best. Noozle. Ever.

My garden wand/water sprinkling thingie broke Monday night. It was a cheap-o one that Trevor got for me a year ago at Princess Auto (aka, Man Store). Well it snapped right where the head connects to the extender-thingie (wand), and I was left with a spray that resembled a gimpy sprinkler (all SPSHHHHHTTTTTT all over the place). This just would not do as the water now sprayed more of me than the plants. So off to Crappy Tire we went yesterday afternoon and stumbled upon the Gardena brand of watering utensils (? just guessing at the utensils part). WOW. WOW, wow, wow! I bought a new 'Comfort Multi-Function Spray Lance' and it is the last watering wand I will ever own. EVER. (Plus it has a lifetime warranty so I will use it forever - thank you German engineering!)

I know this is a boring post, but I just had to blah blah about my awesome new purchase.

We can all learn a thing or two from Mr. Safety (aka Trevor)

Yesterday was another evening o' construction, and I learned a few lessons. Earlier in the day I stumbled across a video on the internet of a guy who cut his thumb off with a TABLESAW. Disturbing, to say the least. Don't ask me how I managed to find this, because one minute I was watching a video of these guys who exploded a tin can of 30,000 match heads (don't try that at home), and the next I'm watching a guy who's set up a camera to film himself making a gift for his wife so he can prove to her that he made it. Well I thought it was a joke to begin with, because the guy clearly had his hand right in the way of the blade (one of those, 'how could he not see that coming???' sort of things), and zing! the thumb was gone and my thought was he had a fake thumb on just to freak his wife out in the video. Wow was I wrong. That was a really horrible accident and seeing how the guy freaked out kind of made me want to be sick. (Note to self: no more watching videos online.) At the same time, I thought this would be a good video to show kids who are taking shop in high school, because when I took that class we just had an old fart telling us to tie our hair back and telling horror stories like you would an old wives tale, and no one really listened. Imagine if we had watched that, safety would have been scared into us!

Well, it worked for me, last night while I was using the cutoff saw that's all I could think of -- keep fingers attached to body, don't rush and pay attention. Too bad it didn't work for my head. My poor, poor head.While I was measuring a stud, sorry, cripple, placement below the electrical panel (which you frame in just like a window, for all of you needing to know!), I went to stand up and BANG! noggin meet edge of electrical panel meet goose egg and birdies with stars. Wow, did that hurt. A LOT. No blood, but I felt like I reverted to back when I was a kid, and you really hurt yourself and have a good cry. Well mine was more like, 'OW, ow, OW, OW! I'm okay...I'm okay...it hurts...*lip twinge*...it really hurts...*chin wobble*', then Trevor, 'are you okay?' and then me, 'I think so...*twinge, wobble*...no...*blubber*, no...it HURTS!!! *blubber, blubber*'. And then it was pretty much a time out for me. Constructing was done for me for the night.

I think this is quite accurate...

See what it all means here, and test yourself!

My personalDNA Report

Make it right!

Well, this weekend was spent wheeling and dealing at our yard sale on Saturday morning and then constructing away the rest of the time. The yard sale was quite a success -- and I thought it was all going to go pear-shaped because I had missed the deadline for submitting an ad to the paper. Not so! I posted on a bunch of online classified sites and made a few signs and put them up on Thursday. Well, that did the trick. We started at 7am (people came at 6:30) and went until 1pm. I think the next time I would only have it go to 12pm, the last hour was a bit painful and slow. (Plus so much of our stuff had been purged, it looked quite sad on our lawn.) We packed everything else up and donated it to the Langley Hospice and took what they didn't want to the Salvation Army. (Oh! And we made $300!!!)

And it's official! We've started to put studs in the basement! Very exciting. And I am proud to say that I am actually HELPING. YES. Using power tools. I had a lesson on how to use a compound cut off saw yesterday and I've been compounding and cutting off ever since. In fact, I am the one cutting the studs (yes, imagine that!). The next lesson is going to be with a big framing nailer. We'll see how that goes, it's gigantic.

But we're on schedule pretty much with the timeline that we've set out for the basement. With some luck, the framing will be done next week, we'll have the drywall guy come by and measure and give us a quote and then it will be on to plumbing and electrical.

(And we bought our flooring this weekend as well! Homo Delepot was having a sale and we squeaked over their $1999 cut-off and got a $250 gift card. That will be handy for buying doors and the rest of the bathroom goodies.)

RaaaAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Yes, it is me, WWF champion and studly champion, or champion of moving studs! We had our homo delepot delivery come yesterday (of course, AM when we asked for PM, and 15 minutes to arrive instead of the 40 we were told). We had 210 studs delivered, 18 bags of R-12 insulation, 3 rollsof vapour barrier and a bathtub. Since I ran home from work (literally, I was driving up the street and saw the guy starting to move our stuff off the truck with a forklift, gunned it up the alley, parked on the street in front of the house and SPRINTED through the yard to beat the guy to the back - a la Ferris Bueler I might add), I figured I might as well stay and unload the delivery into the basement.

Which was just as much work as it looked. Moving 220 studs is not easy, especially by yourself. But I thought of this as a challenge, something along the lines of a character-building exercise (like folding 1000 paper cranes), a test of mental and physical agility if you will. Well, it was just WORK. Hot, sweaty, long (that's what she said - AHAHAHAHA!) work.

But I did it. I totally did it. Me and the studs rocked the house.Trevor did the insulation moving later on that evening. He got the easy part.

You know it's time to purge when...

I came across this box of Uncle Ben 'Classic Recipe' (so 'classic' it's 12 years old!!!). You know it's time to throw it away when it sports a Forrest Gump promo sticker. I think this was a hand-me-down pantry item from my mom (the queen of vintage pantry foods...love you mom!!!).

12 years ago I was in grade 10. I didn't eat it then and I'm not going to eat it now!

Maybe I should have put it up on eBay!

Busy bees

This weekend was all work and not too much fun (but there was a little). On Saturday we had a lot of zip and tackled the basement and the backyard (no dinner at Mike and Cynthia's due to a plague hitting their fam, boo!). I initially woke up at 5am and thought about getting up and getting a jump on things, then came to my senses a few minutes later and went back to sleep. I got up around 7:30 and was at the big 30% sale at Cedar Rim nursery by 8:30. That place is HUGE, and a lot of fun to walk around in (more like hike the place is so big). Picked up a nice big lavender plant, some tall flowery blue thing and some african daisies (so cool!). I did some more errands and was back home with lunch by 11am. The rest of the day was spent tidying up and organizing the basement crap. *whew* lots of work there. I'm proud to say that we actually accomplished a few things though -- the backyard is SO close to being finished, so I've decided to post the photos and high five myself *whoa-psht!*.

Before:After:Before: After:

I was also loving my lilies this weekend as well, they're huge!A little dianthus (aren't I fancy knowing the name of this!? LOL!)And a deformed strawberry. Not sure why it's all gremlin-like: