Welcome to our Hizzle

Even though it's still around 0 degrees Celsius, the sun is out for the next few days and it feels like Spring!

Somewhere online, I saw someone did a cross-stitch that said "Home Sweet Hizzle."  I see now there's a Pinterest page but I can't find the original cross-stitch I saw. Perhaps, I remembered it wrong. Anyway, I thought it was funny, so I thought I'd try my own.

When my mom had a little trailer in our backyard to stay in during the summers, she bought a cross-stitch that said "Welcome" at a garage sale.

(Oh, I've got to figure out how to flip my pictures.)  The cross-stitch had been in another frame that I painted cream for my gallery wall in the old living room.  The frame in the above picture used to be a green frame that I'd spray painted some silvery metallic finish. Evidently it didn't turn out all that well.

So, I took the cross-stitch and frame and re-did them.  I added "Hizzle" to the bottom in an almost matching blue thread.  Then to age it a bit and make the blue lettering match better, I rubbed diluted coffee on it with a paper towel and let it dry.

I repainted the frame with a home-made chalk paint - 1/2 c.plaster paris, 1/2 c. hot water, 1 1/2 c. white paint. I use an already mixed Plaster. I had to do 3 coats. Then to age the frame, I glazed it with old polyurethane stain by wiping it on and then off.  I cut a matte from fancy paper.  I put it up wondering if anyone would notice. DH did and said he laughed out loud!  It was up for a few hours and I decided "Welcome Hizzle" sounded funny (but not the way I wanted!) so the next day I added "to our"

Here it is on the wall by the side back door next to a mirror I got at a touristy shop by Cavendish for $1

I notice the framing around the door needs to be finizzled. Good project for next week! :-)

Through with Thursday-Back Room Floor

Ah, so many projects to pick from....

When I was going through our pictures in November to pick ones for a calendar, I wrote down a list of pictures of my different projects in my Notebook. Our old pictures are all in numbered (or dated) files in a Picture Folder. So, in order to see what the picture is, I still have to go the Pictures File, wait to look at the thumbnail, and choose that way. It takes a long time. We tried Picassa but it seemed to long to upload all the pictures. A while ago, I'd selected some pictures to put in my own folder, but somehow, we switched computers and I can't find the file. :-(

Now DH's phone will do Instant Upload, but my phone won't do it. My phone takes pretty good pictures and I can share my photos on Picassa (sometimes), or I can email them to myself and then share (sometimes-- there was a problem a couple days ago with sharing- maybe it's fixed now?).  Anyway, I guess when I get a new phone I'll be able to get my current pics more easily.

But what's the easiest way to view old photos? We have so many!

Now on to the project! I'll share the back room floor. I love painted floors! I plan to paint the floors in the master bedroom, DD's bedroom, the front entrance and the hall!

This was done in December 2011 and took 11 days, start to finish!  First, you can see the Good-one-side 3/4 inch plywood which I cleaned and filled all the cracks and seams with Wood Filler on Day 1.

 Oops, I don't know how to flip the picture. I thought I could do it here...

After 2 days of drying, on Day 3, I sanded with the hand sander, swept, vacuumed, damp mopped and put one coat of Beauti-tone Interior Exterior Latex Porch and Floor Paint tinted Morning Dew (Cream) from Home Hardware. It was diluted 10% with water and applied with the big roller attached to a broom handle.

 Day 4, I sanded again with hand sander and put another coat of  Morning Dew Floor Paint on with roller.

Day 5, I  used a Glaze- one part Silver/Grey Floor paint, one part Beauti-tone Liquid Latex Glaze. I had picked out a custom color, but it was so close to the already mixed Silver/Grey, the sales associate recommended I use that instead. I rubbed it on with damp rag and wiped off with dry rag. Then, I used one part Morning Dew, one part Glaze, rubbing on with damp rag and wiping off with a dry rag to blend.

Now the fun part! I measured a large square around the room. According to my calculations, the diamonds would be 20 inches tip to tip. So, ten inches from the corners I made a mark and then every 20 inches from that point, I marked all the way to the other corner . Then I used the chalk line to mark the diamonds, going from the first mark on one side to the first mark on the opposite corner on the parallel side. And then the same with the marks on the perpendicular sides. Then I taped around all the diamonds that I was going to paint using green painter's tape.

 

 Still Day 6, I painted Floor paint tinted Shale (Dark Grey) in the diamonds with a small foam roller.

 Day 7, I painted a second coat of Shale Floor Paint.

 Day 8, I dry brushed on Floor Paint tinted Blue Meadow (Dark Blue). At the same time I dry brushed on the Shale Floor Paint to blend. Then I brushed on the Blue Meadow paint diluted with water and blended with a cloth.

 Then we removed the tape! Here are DS and DD helping take the tape off. By the end, they had a big ball of tape to play ball with.  I guess I never got a picture of the finished floor before we moved back in finally on Day 11.

Now, it's over a year later, and the floor has held up pretty well.  I've noticed some of the seams need to be refilled and by the side back door it's getting quite scuffed up.  We've closed off our front door for the winter so have only been using the back door and it gets quite a lot of traffic. I had figured since it's diamonds and they are glazed and not solid colored, I could always touch up the individual squares as needed, but I haven't actually done that yet. Perhaps when we open the front part of the house back up!  :-)

Tasty Tuesday

Mornin!

So, I had another great idea last night before going to sleep. I'm going to start walking more. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, after the kids are on the bus and I've had my Green Smoothie, I'll walk down to the PO. Today, it took me 7 min to walk down and 8 min to walk up (The PO is downhill from our cottage, hence the time difference!).

Also, this will give me time to think of great things to write about.  For instance, I came up with the idea of "Tasty Tuesdays".  I love lists and organizing things so each day I'm writing I'll have a theme:  Monday Musings- a recap of the weekend or thoughts; Tasty Tuesdays-my meal plan for the week; Through with Thursdays- old projects I've done; and Friday Fruition- what I've worked on that week.  I figured all this out in bed last night, but couldn't think of a name for Tues. I thought "Meal plan Tuesday", "Tuesday Tasting(s)" and finally had a Eureka moment on my walk today. Doesn't "Tasty Tuesday" sound nice?

I've been meal planning for over a year now. I write my Meal Plans on one side of a sheet of paper and then I write my Grocery List on the other, checking out the flyers for sales.  This way, I have all the ingredients and can switch around if needed, but I never have to say, "What should I make for dinner?" It seems easier just to have it on a list and I can look and say, "Oh, this is what I'll make tonight."

Last year after March Break, I'd already done 8 weeks of lists! Now I'll post them here along with the current weeks meal plan. I think it will be fun to compare the two as it seems sometimes we don't have much variety in our meals. :-)

This Week's Meal Plan:

• Mon- Baked Pork chops (leftover chick peas for me), mashed cauliflower, red swiss chard,  green peas
• Tues- Chinese Vegetable Stir Fry, Rice, Egg Roll
• Wed- Shells and Cheese
• Thurs-Chipotle chicken with rice and beans
• Fri- Pizza (No School) Leftovers
• Sat-  Enchilada-Inspired Polenta Pie (Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker pg128) Pizza
• Sun- To In-laws- Ham, Scalloped potatoes, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, carrots (Easter)

Last Year's Meal Plan:

• Mon- Ramen/ Tomato Soup
• Tues- Panfried Haddock, potatoes (get home from trip)
• Wed- Hotdogs (I had meeting)
• Thurs- Gingery Lentils with spinach
• Fri- Tortilla pizzas
• Sat- Tacos
• Sun- Frozen meatless meatballs with noodles and sauce

I also loosely plan lunches. The kids are kinda picky about what they want to eat at school. They get to choose one day to eat a school lunch which is Chinese(for March), Hamburger/cheeseburger, Garlic Fingers, Sub, or Pizza. Neither kid likes sandwiches, so it's usually cereal; cheese and crackers; leftover pizza; homemade pizza subs. That's what they're having this week, but instead of leftover pizza, it's frozen mac and cheese.  It's nice it's a short week b/c on Friday I can serve tuna or salmon on crackers which they won't eat if sent to school.  Oh, kids!  :-)

Blog Ban

So, Google Reader is shutting down and I immediately started looking for alternatives. I decided to go with feedly which seems to be affiliated with Google as it was a pretty seamless transition. I culled a few sites to get rid of and added the ones that had been on my Google Home page. Now I have no reason to go to my iGoogle except to check my mail which I can check more frequently on my phone. When I want to send an email, I'd go to gmail because my phone is old and it's hard to type long messages.

We were away for a couple days in Charlottetown for March Break so I used the Nexus7 to read my blogs. It's a bit different than the computer, but fine.  When we got home Saturday night I had an idea...

I'm going to quit reading blogs!

For a year? Maybe too long. For a month? Maybe so! Instead I would concentrate on writing my own blog. I'd start a new routine. Get the kids off to school, have my coffee and write. Which is what I'm doing now.  I just finished "Enough" by Betty Jane Wylie and really enjoyed it. It's about simplifying (I also read (present/past) a few of blogs about simplifying). I realized sometimes I'm frantically reading, reading, reading and not doing. Like with Pinterest where you pin so many things you'd never have time to do them. I never joined pinterest but did the same with blogs.  So, No More!

I'll still use the computer, but only to look up things that I've thought of. Mostly I think I'll use it for recipes or to look up how to do something, but I won't be using it to get ideas or waste time.  Spring is "almost" here and I've got lots of projects to do! So, let's get working.... :-)

Drawers

(This post was written in December, but I'm just publishing it now...)

I read a good post yesterday on Decluttering before the holidays.

The Amazingly Awesome Pre-Holidays Declutter Guide

I've been trying to declutter the whole house since the summer.  But today, let's talk about kitchen drawers.I've done pretty good in the kitchen which is pretty small I guess, compared to other kitchens, but it seems to have all the space we need.

We have one "organized" junk drawer, which looks a lot better since I moved all our tools to another location.  (Since we are renovating/building we have a lot of tools, screws, nails etc. The indoor tools live in a plastic rolling cart drawer under our Breakfast Nook.)

The silverware drawer is fine.  It looks empty because I haven't unloaded the clean dishes from the dishwasher yet!  Somehow this summer we lost about 6 of our spoons. I have a double set of silverware which I really like for everyday use and I have some different extras to send in the kids' lunches so if they lose them I don't have to worry. But for some reason, my good spoons are missing. So, I brought out my 2 "good" silverware spoons to use.  (We got that silverware for our wedding from an old family friend of my husband. She had picked out the pattern "Belle Rose" which happened to be the name of the little plantation cottage we stayed in for our honeymoon! We're not really into "good" dishes or silverware, but we kept them anyway because of the nice coincidence.  Anyway, she gave us 2 settings.)  I also borrowed 2 spoons from my dad and step-mom who this summer bought a travel trailer to keep by our cottage.  To go in the trailer, they also bought spoons!

Next is the spice drawer. It seems we have a lot of spices, but I really use most of them!  I have gotten rid of a few jars so the remaining ones were sliding all around. I fixed this problem by putting in the little basket for garlic, the garlic press, salt and pepper. I was going to put in a couple baskets to group like-spices together, but I didn't have room so I only used the one.

The utensil drawer was also cleaned out this summer. I use all the things!  This is a drawer my husband built from the drawer that would've gone where our cooktop is. He had to narrow and lengthen it.  I'm noticing the bottom is a bit funny looking. Perhaps I should look for some drawer liners. Maybe I could use some wallpaper from the Restore...

So there you have it! A look into all my kitchen drawers!   :-)