No resolutions here!

I'm not a huge fan of making New Year's resolutions, I think it's strange to pin so many personal hopes and motivations on a date change.  So tomorrow will be business as usual around here, taking down decorations, cleaning and getting the house back to normal.

Next year will be full of more changes for us, some made by chance and others made by decisions.  It should be interesting as we're going to finish up our house renovations and think about moving (if everything works out).  Work should start to get crazy again after the Christmas lull.  Trevor starts new hours at his work starting Monday too -- 7am to 330pm (give or take a half hour on either side).  

And as for today, we'll be spending New Year's Eve mono on mono (LOL) -- Trevor's working a half day from home (yay!), and we're going to hit up Ikea for some organizing boxes (for appliance manuals in the house), a jeweller to get Trevor's watch band adjusted, the store for groceries and we're going to head out for dinner a little early to avoid the crazy rushes so we can come back home and watch a movie (and attempt to dominate Guitar Hero for the fourth night in a row).

Happy New Year everyone! :) 

Almost done!

Just letting everyone know that my new 'getting Christmas on track sooner' idea is working well so far.  The tree is up (but not decorated yet -- and will not be lit up until Dec. 1), other decor is going up around the house (hiding lingering reno supplies, but I suppose they can be festive too!), I've started gathering supplies for crafty things and baking, and...AND...I'm *thisclose* to finishing my Christmas shopping.  

Fa la la la la...LA!

Long time no see

I've been a little erratic with the blog posting -- not that there's a lack of things to post about; I've just been busy with other things (a really good book, cleaning, painting, figuring out gifts for Christmas...).

Here's some more shots from our vacation (these are from Northern Ireland):

4L of milk and a Christmas attack to go, please

We went out and grabbed some much needed groceries last night (it was a drag...literally, both of us just wanted to sleep). Cruising through the aisles, we couldn't help but notice the explosion of Christmas everything all over the place. Even in the meat department there were trees and gigantic Santas all over the place. Add this to the overwhelming amount of Christmas ads on tv and the radio...we feel like we've come back to Christmas-mania! (The worst part for me is a weird underlying panic to start writing lists and think about shopping -- augh!)  

At least the main purpose of going grocery shopping was accomplished. (I think we're having some European withdrawal -- lots of fresh pasta, gnocchi, polenta, lemons, limes...no gelato though *boo*.)

Differences and other musings

We've been home for almost two days now, and I'm still adjusting to normal life around here.  It's amazing how being away for a while has changed my views on where we live -- here's some examples:

• The cars here are HUGE.  As are the roads.  Nice and wide and relatively straight!
  
• You won't be looked at as a target crossing the road.  And you don't feel like you're in a live-action frogger game when you do attempt to cross the street.
  
• There are no people here.  Seriously.  
  
• Small roundabouts = good.  Gianormous roundabouts with no rules = bad.
  
• It's CLEAN here.  And we recycle.
  
• It doesn't smell like a festering ashtray when you step outside.  You don't risk cigarette/cigar/pipe burns walking in public. 
  
• People are civilized, and for the most part, have manners and follow rules.
  
• Things are CHEAP here.
  
• Showers are big -- and my elbows are happy for that.
  

I have a whole new appreciation for home, but there are a few things I wish we had here:

• Awesome small cars that are zippy to drive.  (our Peugeot was really cool)
  
• Responsibly sourced food available in grocery stores and restaurants.
  
• Pride for local products and discouraging the purchases of 'exotica' (yup, that's what they call it!) from faraway countries.
  
• Big department stores that carry fab products (the Bay and Sears make me cringe now), and have food floors that blow your mind.

And just some general things I've noticed being back at home:

• The water here is great.  Soap lathers up really well!  
  
• The trees hardly dropped any leaves. (I think they're late this year...I had dreams of coming back to bags of raking to do.)
  
• The reno fairies didn't come and finish all of our projects while we were gone.
  
• You can't get wake-up calls or room service on our phones.  LOL
  

We're home!

We made it back to normal life again...barely.  Both of us have some crazy jet lag going on (we went to bed before 7pm yesterday).  Seeing as work is quiet (hurrah!) I'm going to attempt to tackle some laundry and unpacking.  Small goals today.

Wild Saturday nights

(The above title is a complete lie.)  I'm sitting in the office right now, loading my sparkly new macbook* with email account information and waiting for it to chug through it's 1's and 0's.  (Binary solo anyone? LOL)

It's been a busy day, lots of places to hit and I can't remember when we had so many errands to run in one day.  First we hit up Ben's birthday party around 9:30-ish (so many cute and funny things a 3 year old can say!) and then headed back across the river for eye appointments at 11:30am (which we were late for thanks to 3 ferry waits, but they squeezed us in...gritting their teeth I'm sure) -- oh! and eye appointments because we were due, and also thanks in part to Trevor's glasses breaking...AGAIN.  Stupid Flexon glasses with their stretchy metal bits -- what they don't tell you is they get to 2 years old and then snap at the corners...

Anywhoo, I digress.  Eye appointments were done (my eyes, perfecto except for a smidge of astigmatism, and Trevor's eyes improved for the second visit in a row, leaving the doctor almost speechless -- we made a joke that Trevor's been doing his own mock laser eye surgery with a flashlight and a magnifying glass...).  Next up was getting a pair of glasses that could be ready for Wednesday (as of Thursday we are out of here) and we headed to the Lenscrafters for that.  (Oh, and stopped by two banks...one to pick up some euros, hurrah!)

I can't remember the last time we went to the mall on a Saturday, but it was a zoo.  We spent a long time trying to find frames to fit Trevor's knobby head ('knobby' used with love there, LOL), placed our order and grabbed some lunch (I think it was 2:30pm by then).  After that it was over to get Trevor's hair cut -- which we had to come back after 4pm it was so busy -- so we went over to the Best Buy and bought the macbook (also, as a side note: they make you feel like you should have to pee in a cup just to buy a computer...questions and weird looks all because you know what you want...).  At that point the monsoonal rains came (it was crazy) and we ran to the car, drove back to the mall, ran into the mall (v. dramatic, with wind and rain lashing at us), picked up the glasses, ran back outside into the hurricane (again, drama!), drove back to the hair cutting place and I waited in the car while Trevor got all-man-groomed-up.

You'd think the day would be over at this point, oh no, we have more!  Since we're gone next week, we decided to vote in advance polls so we booted to a local high school and proceeded to have the most slow and PAINFUL voting process for me...not Trevor.  I'm never on the right list so I had to go through and get paperwork done, which wouldn't have been bad had it not been for some insanely slow man writing the form out (seriously...Trevor had been checked off the list, voted and come back and this guy had only managed to write my last name on the form).  It was crazy.  After about 15 minutes of slow form writing (which only needed my name, address and telephone number!!!) I voted and we got the hell out of there.  We grabbed a quick take-out pizza for dinner and came home and crashed around 5:40pm or so.  

Which brings us to the beginning of this post.  I'm now finished setting up email accounts, and my eyes feel like squares.  Time to go to bed.

(*I thought I could wait for either the new macbooks being released any day now, or better, no macbook at all, but this week has proved that I can't just get up and galavant away without having some connection to work, so guilt and fear took over.  Call it an expensive piece of mind.)

Have you registered your phone number?

Starting today, you can put yourself on the Do Not Call list and maybe get some peace from those telemarketers. Hurrah!
Click here to visit the site.

Just say no to Vegas

Guess who's not going to Vegas after all? Yup, Trevor stays, and mass panic has been averted (for now).

Busy days

Our countdown to vay-kay has begun (15 days, ACK!) and there's still a few kinks in the plan to get away. Number one kink for me would be the fact that a certain client's work has stalled (even though warnings of my departure have come since MAY), and the number two kink is Trevor going to Vegas next Sunday until next Wednesday (work stuff, no partying for him). And there's always the house reno's we can talk about (um, final inspection part deux anyone?), but I won't go there now.

But on the good side of things I just have to find another rental car for Belfast and some Med excursions and we should be set for the extended planning. Getting to the bank and ordering euros and pounds is another important item on the list. Maybe I should write all this down, lol!

Back to our regularly scheduled dose of mass panic...
postcards via tobyotter's flickr

The weekend

The weekend started off with picking a load of ripe tomatoes from the back yard and delivering them to a neighbour-friend on our street (she shares my bitterness for certain neighbours...LOL!). One plant has decided to make yellow tomatoes, while all the others are red. Makes for a nice photo!

We did more of the mega-house-reno's as well, and we were determined to get the kitchen/family room back up and functioning again so we can feel that one of the most-used parts of the house is NORMAL. We sanded and painted crown moulding (blegh...I really can't stand that job) and painted more of the kitchen cupboards. By Sunday evening we were able to load furniture in and clean the kitchen...I said to Trevor that I almost felt 'zen-like' at that point, lol. It was so nice to have a room almost done (I say 'almost' because we still have to replace the countertop in the kitchen and put in a tile backsplash, but that feels like little things at this point).
And at the end of the weekend we both realized that we only have two more weekends to go until we leave on our trip. That was scary...and makes it seem like these next two weeks will disappear like *that*. We still have to reserve car rentals for Toronto and Belfast and look at shore excursions in the Med. And then pack...I have a goal of getting the suitcases out this week and plopping them in the spare bedroom to gradually pack them (and avoid mass panic and forgetting things).

Mornings with Lulu

Every day this week, around 8:30am or so, I hear a muffled 'reooowww' upstairs that goes on and on, with the eventual appearance of Lulu...and her toy. Every. Day. This. Week. This morning I managed to grab my camera in time and capture some evidence:

Ahhhh...gardens

I wish I had more time to spend in mine lately. I was out watering things this morning and there's lots to weed, trim, mow and prune (and I have a small garden!). There's one lonely zucchini that survived the slug threat, but I don't think it will produce anything (keeps flowering then *ptht* done). I am, however, ecstatic about the honeysuckle this year -- for years I just swore at it because it was plagued by aphids, but it's had a banner year with tons of flowers and now *gasp* berries! (Lovely berries that are almost a candy shade of red, very beautiful to look at.) So I'm not writing off honeysuckle anymore.

Work has been busy this week too. Lots of tight deadlines (not my fault) and a nice 20-page brochure that's due tomorrow (I stayed up until 10pm last night working on it...phew). I'll be sending out emails soon to let all the clients know that I'm gone in October, and fingers crossed things won't get too hairy this month before we leave (although I know I can wish all I want, it seems like it always happens).

And reno's keep on going. I'll have pictures eventually, but we're still living with hardly any furniture in the room. Crown moulding goes up this weekend, and I have to put a coat of paint on the cupboards to freshen them up. (Oh, and have I mentioned that Trevor offered to have a BBQ at our place next weekend for some relatives visiting from LA? Yes, it's true...nothing like a deadline to get things done.)

photos via the very lovely Woodhams (which I might just pop into when we're in London!)

Highlights of the week so far

• The world returning to a normal schedule (muahahahaha...kids back to school!)
• Almost finishing the hardwood floor (sans transition strip and vent covers)
• Painting and cleaning the windows in the family room/kitchen to a point where you can't see the glass it's so darn clean (ahhhh!)
• Emailing/calling clients to update them on their project status and not having them get back to me for two days which means I can finally do my own thing (business cards, laundry, painting, mowing the lawn, cleaning the office) without feeling guilty
• Ripping open a bag of potatoes we planted to find that potatoes actually grew
• Picking ripe tomatoes from the garden
• Remembering to pick up my passport from the post office (and seeing that the picture is nowhere near as horrific as my driver's license...*eyes are burning*)
• Finding the photo of the orange telephone above

I think it might rain

We had a debate on the weekend on whether or not it was going to rain. We had just chucked three rolls of carpet out the door into the backyard and the sky looked like it had been divided in half -- sunny and blue skies on one side, looming dark grey clouds on the other. Trevor thought it was going to rain, I thought the blue sky would win out. Not wanting to buck three soggy carpet burritos into the car to the dump if it rained, we agreed to move it if it started to rain (which I said, 'no, no, it won't'). Well here's proof (and you can copy and paste this all you want Trevor!)...I WAS WRONG (...but not by much!). A few drops of rain and I was out moving the carpet into the garage. And that was it, just a few drops, not even enough to get the sidewalk wet. We did, however, have the longest-lasting rainbow(s) ever in the sky:

Updating on all the goods

I figure there should be a post on what's been happening around the house with the reno 'situation' as of late. Well, it's all going swimmingly so far; we're almost at the end of the basement (touchups, caulking, painting, some laundry room assembly to do) and now we're striding ahead to the main floor again.

In the last while I've painted the living room, dining room, entrance area, loft and stairwells (they all share the same colour as there's no doors to break them up). Just this week I've moved on to the kitchen and family room -- and that's close to being done as well, although the kitchen area is a bit more challenging with all of the things I have to move. Trevor's been spending the week installing pot lights in the kitchen (good bye ugly puffy ceiling light!!!) and figuring things out with his media center (I say 'his' because I haven't been given the tutorial on how to use it yet).

We had Home Depot come out and measure the countertop in the kitchen and they came back with a rotten price for doing it, so we're investigating other options and going to consider a solid surface option that might be economical (really I'm saying 'economical' with a cringe because I have no idea what that means anymore). We have also picked out a new hardwood floor for the kitchen/family room which is now sitting in our living room adjusting to the temperature of the house (yes, you have to do that).

And in the midst of all of this I have a full day photo shoot in Stanley Park to direct tomorrow (nice early start there *yawn*) and then I plan on taking most of Friday off to wipe off the doorstep for my sister and her hub who are coming to stay with us for the weekend (yay!).

So if the posts are spotty for the next few days, you'll know why!

Hiatus?

I haven't been around for a few days due to work at the moment. It's dictating my life at the moment and tells me when I get to blog, eat, clean, sleep, if I get a weekend or not (not, for the most part). It's wearing and tiring dealing with hairy deadlines, crazy amounts of revisions, and printers halfway around the world (at the moment I'm waiting on an email from Australia before I can go to bed). Yesterday I thought my mind couldn't take in anymore information, it was too full of other people's details to bother with things that I had to do. Brain saturation, that's what I'll call it.

At this point, I don't really know when things are going to let up. They seem to just stack and back up, and now I'm starting to worry about our big vacation in October where I get to jump ship for a month (or if the ship I'm on will sink before then...lol, ponder that thought!). Thinking a few months ahead at this point is just nerve-wracking, so I'm trying to gently poke people into action to get things done in a timely* manner.

*Client speak for a polite term to get their asses in gear.

Due to all of the above (and imminent meltdowns in my brain) posting to the blog may be spotty for a while. I will, however, leave you with a small shred of evidence that I do (with permission) occasionally have a life outside my office:

In a citrus-y sort of mood

Maybe it's the grey-blah sky and the never ending rain that's having me look to bright citrus fruits and smells for a lift. Too bad the screen isn't scratch-n-sniff!

I smell summer!

This weekend was a mish-mash of activities, everything from home reno's (of course), crafty things (finishing sewing my table covers in the office), a trip to the fabric store (inspiration for the main floor), and dinners galore (family dinner, dinner at the Merriman's). At one point, while waiting an insanely long time to cross the river to Maple Ridge by ferry, we had the windows open in the car and I watched the long grass sway in the wind with the sun twinkling through the leaves in the tall trees.

It did two things: 1) It made me want to move to a house that has a yard with big trees and lots of grass; and 2) Made me crave wearing flip flops. I saw the forecast for the end of the week, and now I'm just itching to get the sandals out in preparation for 28C weather. But in the meantime, I'll just ogle the ones I've found online:
Sammi Thong Sandal in Teal - Nordstrom
Roxy Bento Thong - Macy's
Xhilaration Greta Flip Flops in Brown - Target
Printed Sole Flip Flops - Old Navy
Le Petit Sperone in Aqua Turquoise - Piperlime

What's new around here?

Last night, Trevor mentioned to me that the blog used to be more fun to read -- there used to be more little stories and blips of things that we do together. So I'll try to bring a little more of that back again. Maybe we've been lacking in those 'blips' around here lately, we've been on a big house kick (I think the nicer weather has something to do with it) so there's more domestic things going on.

I've been working in the garden, prettying things up. I have a bit of a lawn obsession this year (either that or I've finally figured out how to care for it -- not difficult seeing as our lawn is about the size of a postage stamp) and I'm loving the wild-looking tulips that have come up in the yard. The lilacs are going to bloom next and are going to smell fantastic. And then the peonies will pop out in their white and deep fushia blooms. The best part is that this year I get to see it all happen (thanks to working at home), and on those warm summer days when most of my clients are on holiday I can take an afternoon here and there to putter around the yard (although I know my enthusiasm for watering things will wear out by about mid-July, lol!).I think this is a parrot tulip. I could be wrong, though!This is half of the tulip action in the front yard, with some really pretty pink and green star-shaped tulips.A box I had started over the winter with pansies and dianthus from the year before...crazy what some fertilizer can do!
And on the reno front, our renewed enthusiasm for finishing things around here has us (or Trevor I should say) almost finished the tub surround in the basement bathroom, and we're on to the floor tiles soon (which will then mean a disaster in the master bathroom as we're pillaging from there to supply the basement bathroom with a toilet and vanity so we can put the 'good stuff' in the master). It will make for a messy house, but it can't really get much worse than when we first started on things last summer (disaster!). There are many (MANY) things that we still need to do to the house: finishing the laundry room, laminate on the stairs to the basement, finishing strips, painting moulding and doors, installing moulding (crown and floor in the rest of the house), painting the main floor a different colour (with new drapes, yay!), cleaning gutters, cleaning vinyl siding, painting the exterior trim, replacing the outdoor carpet on the front steps, finishing electrical work on the garage, finishing the gate/back fence panel... Lots to do.

I'm sure there will be many interesting posts coming up this summer, so the entertainment value of this blog might go up a notch or two. I'll still be posting lots of things that inspire me (of course, as an artsy fartsy person I eat it up!). There should be a nice combination of artsy inspiration and dysfunction (reno meltdowns, losing our minds and just general chaos) to keep everyone going. ;)