Tasty Tuesday

Mornin!

It's the last day of school!! Everybody was up early today, so I have time to write this even before the kids leave.  I've already had my walk and am ready for the day.  ( I've been wondering how I can keep up my walking with the kids home, but I think now I'll just have to get up and do it early before HH leaves for work.)

My meal planning has gone out the window.  With shopping on Thursday last week and not really planning this week yet, I have to get back on track. Plus HH will not be home for dinner most nights this week, so that usually means I fix different stuff for dinners.  Also, we have company coming Friday and next Monday is Canada Day.

This week's meal plan:

• Mon- Leftover pizza, beet pasta, spinach (from FIL's garden)
• Tues-Peirogies
• Wed-Eggs
• Thurs-Mac & Cheese, Peas
• Fri-Slow Cooker Red Beans and Greens (125 Best Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes pg 128), Rice
• Sat- Homemade Pizza
• Sun- BBQ Burgers

Last year's meal plan:

• Mon- Trout, Potatoes, Crudites (from party)
• Tues-Mac and Cheese
• Wed- Snacks
• Thurs-Eggs
• Fri-Sliders, Fries, Garlic Fingers
• Sat-Pizza
• Sun-?

:-)

Girl's Room (mostly done!)

What a busy weekend! Lots of work going on, a dinner party and a birthday party!  The birthday party was lots of fun, 5 friends came over plus one friend of DD's. Here's a picture of the birthday boy:

 Here he is in the light blue shirt about to get pummeled by water balloons! 

Today I start work on DS's floor. I hope to have it done tomorrow for the last day of school!

Here is how DD's floor turned out:

(Remember, it used to look like this!) 

And back to the pretty pictures:

Here's her room with all her furniture:

 She is quick to remind me I still have to do the crown moulding,

 finish her closet nook,

 paint the door and add trim!

But that's all easy stuff that shouldn't take too long once my other more pressing projects are complete!

Another busy week- last day of school and trip to Halifax to pick up our first visitors of the summer!  Plus, HH has a week-long class in Charlottetown for his MBA this week, so he'll pretty much be out of the picture.

Have a great week! :-)

Flooring progress

Sorry I missed posting yesterday. It was a busy day- my errand running day!  Plus I finally got to start working on DD's floors!

Finally, the drywall was up, primed and painted and the floor was ready to go in!  It's nice and I'm about 1/3 done (then DS's room, so I guess really only about 1/6 done!)

I also got the hallway floor runner painted.  Today it's almost done. I think I need to touch up the ends to dark grey and maybe put a little more blue on  the center stripes. There are dark grey stripes with a blue glaze on top and blue stripes with a dark grey glaze on top, but you can't really tell the difference as much as I'd like.

This weekend is a busy weekend. DD should be moving into her room on Saturday so DS can move to the back room. And DS's birthday party is Sunday afternoon.

Have a great weekend! :-)

Tasty Tuesday

I'm not much inspired to cook this week. I'm not doing my shopping til Thursday, so we'll try to eat up some stuff we already have. :-)

Here's the menu:

• Mon- Red Beans (125 Best Vegetarian Slow Cooker Recipes pg 128), yellow grits from Bulk Barn (not like regular grits, but ok), carrots
• Tues-Trout Pancakes, Ramen, Salad
• Wed- Pasta with veggie meatballs meat sauce, green beans
• Thurs-BBQ Chicken
• Fri- Pizza Out to dinner
• Sat-Frittata Tortilla Pizzas
• Sun- Leftovers Pizza from Dillon's

Last year's menu:

• Mon- Frittata outside with toast
• Tues- Haystacks
• Wed- Spaghetti
• Thurs-Haddock
• Fri- Trout
• Sat- DS's party
• Sun- Tortilla Pizza

Off to work on DD's room! :-)

Father's Day Weekend Progress

Happy Belated Father's Day to all the dads!  We had a nice, busy weekend.  The inlaws came up for dinner last night. HH bbq'd steak, hamburgers, potatoes and salmon!  Great dinner!

So, what progress did we make on the weekend?

Well, DD's wall is in! 

My drywall cutting skills are improving. The first piece I cut was too big and I had to keep trimming and making a lot of dust. :-(  Now, I'm cutting 1/4 inch small so I've got room.  Now just to finish up the mud!  Then, painting, trim work and the floor! With DS's bday party this weekend, I hope to have DD in her room by Friday.  Fingers crossed!

Here's the wall from the hallway side. It still needs a few studs, but I was so eager to get the drywall up! You can see the kids were playing in the drywall mud and decorated the walls.

Ok, have a great week!  I'm off to get muddy!

:-)

Front rooms' Progress

Mornin!

So, we've made progress, but not enough for my liking. Why do these things always take longer than expected? ;-)

Here are some pics.

Here's the master bedroom way before when it was our living room.:

Here it is after we moved the door and started the transformation:

 Here it is with the new flooring:

And for the big reveal, here it is now:

We've got the closet wall blocked off by plastic and curtains temporarily.

 On the right side of that robe hanging  by the red tuck tape will be the entrance to the bathroom and the door to the hall.

So, still lots of work to do in there. It's a bit on hold as I am focusing on DD's room. Here's a nice before:

And one with the subfloor:

And now some drywall:

 And now look, the door is gone!

That's it for this week.  DD is at another birthday sleepover party tonight and DS will be at the inlaws.  Perhaps this means we can get some work done on DD's wall between her room and the hall.  We shall see...  

Have a great weekend! :-)

Side Table

I forgot to say Hello to all the new readers from the Nesting Place! So, Hello! Welcome, I'm glad you're here!  :-)

I have a nice before and after to share today.  I think it's one of my better buys.

I got this little table at the Restore (where else?) for $10.  Could this be the first furniture I bought to makeover?  (Except for the big coffee table we bought in NC and I painted yellow)  Here is the terrible before:

And here's the pretty after:

I primed with Zinseer 123 and did the bottom with some light blue, also from the Restore.  I couldn't decide what to do with the top. I thought maybe decoupage with some maps or maybe brown kraft paper, but in the end I decided on good old chalk board paint using a foam brush.  I sealed the bottom with old polycrylic that has since yellowed a bit.  I did 2 coats of chalk board paint on the top and made no notes about sealing it.

This table is temporarily in our bedroom but will eventually live in the back living room.

So, onto more current affairs- I finally bought some flooring for DS's room!

 He's had particle board on his floor since he moved in.  Won't the new floor look so much better?

That room used to be our bedroom and had carpet in it. When DD was coughing when she was just a baby, the dr recommended taking it out. So we did, but never got around to replacing it. And DD is almost 8!  I just couldn't decide what to do in there.  Since we're doing so much for DD's new room I thought this would be the time to do DS's room.  So, when DD moves into her room, DS will move his stuff to the back room. Then we'll do his floor and he can move back in.  (This way it will be Fair and everybody will have a chance to live in the back room.  I realize it isn't really necessary to move all DS's  things out since we could probably just move them over to the side, but he wanted to have a turn in the back room. And I would too, if it were me, so we're gonna do it! :-))

You can see that it kinda goes with our existing kitchen flooring (which desperately needs to be refinished or redone or something.)

 I got such a good deal on the flooring, we bought enough for DD's room too!  It should go in pretty fast and we won't have to wait for the paint to dry for so long!  (Although, I'm  a bit sad I won't get to use the flower stencil I made for her floor.)  

Anyway, the end of school is almost here, along with DS's birthday.  That would be a good deadline to get the kids settled.  Also, my youngest brother is coming for a visit with his girlfriend and son!  So, I really hope to have the back room as a living room when they get here! We'll see how it goes! Now off to look at the progress on the drywall and see if it's dry enought to recoat...

:-)

Tasty Tuesday

Whew, what a busy day! Running errands again!  I haven't even done my drywall work for today. I'll have to do it later...

Here is this week's menu:

• Mon- Bowtie Pasta, Tomato Sauce, Green Beans
• Tues- Homemade Chicken Nuggets, Potatoes baked in BBQ
• Wed- Frozen Spicy Punjabi Red Kidney Bean Stew (World Vegetarian pg 47) Enchiladas
• Thurs- Salmon BBQ Trout
• Fri- Tortilla Pizza Leftovers
• Sat- Leftovers Wendy's drive-thru
• Sun- Out?  Father's Day BBQ- Steak, burgers, potatoes, salmon

Last year's meal plan:

• Mon- Sushi
• Tues-Tacos
• Wed-Tortellini
• Thurs-Trout
• Fri- Lasagna
• Sat- Pizza
• Sun- ?

Last week's meals got a bit off track and I had to throw away some broccoli and a small watermelon that never got eaten and went bad :-(.  I'll have to try better this week to use up what we have.

:-)

No Accessories Party

My first linky party!  I'd been catching up on some blogs Friday and came across The Nester's post about ridding your house of accessories for the month of June.  I'm a week late, but decided to do it anyway.  I thought I'd gotten rid of most of my accessories as we are still in a state of renovation and I didn't want to have a bunch of stuff around.  However, upon closer inspection, I discovered I still have a lot of things.  Here are the main areas I decluttered.

Here are the shelves in the kitchen on the right-hand side of our window.  Not so bad...

But here's the after: (Yes, that's a tv antenna for the 2 channels we get! Oh and I must do something about all those black wires!)

Here is the breakfast nook on the lefthand side.  Lots of stuff, junk and tools!

 Here it is all cleaned up!

Here's HH's dresser:

 And after:

Here's my dresser:

 And here it is now:

Boy that looks much better!

Here is a pile of all the stuff I gathered. Plus I found a couple more things after I'd taken this stuff out to our storage room.

  In the process, though, I broke a see-thru glass plate and the green, bumpy stemmed glass you see above in the yellow cup. My mom had a set of 3 glasses that I'd always admired and finally she gave them to me when I moved up to Halifax when I first met HH.  Sometime along the way, the brown one broke (it was my least favorite anyway) and I had 2- one for me and one for HH.  We do use them sometimes, but not often, so I thought I should put them away.  The bottom broke off so I may try to glue it back together! :-)

I like this exercise in decluttering.  We got a lot of work done this weekend and are finally moved into the front bedroom!! Yay! (DD is temporarily set up in the back room.) Our dressers are still in the back room so I can easily finish the drywall in the bedroom, but the bed is in and we slept there last night! I'd like to keep the bedroom as clutter-free as possible! 

I have a lot of progress to share on the master bedroom and DD's bedroom but I've got to start cutting some drywall so I'll write more on all that later!

:-)

Friday-Front Room and Outside

I missed posting yesterday. HH was going to Charlottetown so I rode along with him. I went window shopping, of course to Cottage Industry. And I discovered another neat shop, Green Eye Designs.  I also went to a shop I'd been to before on University which I can't find the name of. I tried Googlemaps, but I guess it's a new shop. Anyway, they sell furniture, soap, pottery jewelry, etc.  Oh, I found it.  The owner said she had a shop in Victoria by the Sea so I looked it up there.  It's Emmett & Ellie's & The Soap Drawer. Fun day of looking at all the pretty things. Plus, I got to try out Young Folk and the Kettle Black for lunch and have a nice drive with HH!

We are still not in our bedroom yet. Now I'm  hoping for Sunday night.  DD is going to a sleepover tonight and then tomorrow DS will be gone at Cub Camp so I hope to get lots of work done.  Here's the progress:

Here are the new floor joists and the plywood temporarily sitting on top.

Here is looking thru to where DD's closet will be.  That 2X6 has to be removed.

Here, the closet space is all clear and the plywood fits right up to the new addition. :-)

 Here's a view looking toward DD's room.  The right side covered with plastic and a black sleeping bag goes into the kitchen.

 

 Here's the plywood notched out to fit in the doorway.  No more step down!!

And in case I haven't shared, here's part of our kitchen decor for the last year or so:

Lovely, isn't it!

I also want to show some pictures of the garden.  The lilacs are blooming!

Here's how it looked in April:

Here's the side 

 In April:

The side patio which will eventually be a garden.

 The courtyard, with our cat Lisa (Marie).  (So named because our previous cat was named  Elvis.  He had a sister named Bebe who ran away.  Lisa had a brother named Baba who also ran away. Bebe and Baba were both small darker cats.  Lisa and Elvis were bigger and lighter, very similar in coloring, almost calico.  We love Lisa!)

 Here's the courtyard in April:

Here's the right side of the courtyard

And again in April:

 Here's my temporary garden.  The big pink flowering bush on the left is a bleeding heart. I got it last fall from FIL.  It will look pretty in the side garden.

In April:

I really like the before and after pics of the garden. It shows lots of progress without a lot of work!

Here is the veggie garden I must plant today:

Ok, have a good weekend! :-)

(Update: I planted mung bean sprouts, scarlet runner beans, mesclun mix, pak choi, spinach and swiss chard. I realized we never got kale seeds, but I've run out of room in the little garden.  I moved a hosta in the front courtyard for DD to plant her mixed flowers. :-))