Patio Plans

Hi!

So, Thursday, I was sick! I woke up at 3am feeling nauseous, and it lasted the whole day. I was a bit surprised as this is not something I usually feel (unless it's morning sickness-- which it's not!! ;-)).  I felt weak and just wanted to sleep, but I got the kids off to school and laid down pretty much the whole day.  I also had a slight fever.  DS came home from school and said he felt a bit woozy too.  He threw up and then felt better!  DD was a great help with helping HH fix dinner and then cleaning up the kitchen after all by herself!  Friday I was feeling better.

Last sunny Friday afternoon, sitting on the back patio with HH, I had a great idea to re-do the space. I've been thinking about it for a while, but wasn't sure what to do.

I definitely wanted to remove the cedar wall for the breezeway or perhaps just replace the top half of the wall with storm windows (which we already have).  Well, Wednesday I tore things up and got started on that project.


Then I discovered that instead of 4 storm windows, we only have 2 that aren't broken.  So, I've decided to use the windows we got from our inlaws and the window that used to be in our kitchen.  This involves a bit more framing, but I think will be quite nice.

Since there's now a big hole in the wall, a bird flew in! I tried to take a picture, but the bird is hard to see.  It's just behind the top left cross thing in the door.


So, I'd like to have the breezeway be more of a sitting area, sorta like this.

It used to look like this.


We have plans to put in a deck in the breezeway so you don't have to step down. Wouldn't it be fun to paint it like the back room floor?


Anyway, back to the patio plans...
 I want to have a picnic table that's movable. Perhaps we can build one like this from Pneumatic Addict Furniture, except bigger.

Kinda like one of these tables.

(I remembered that the old ReStore in Summerside sold kitchen tables for $10. I thought this might be a great solution to my picnic table problem.  However, when I went to the ReStore in C'town, their tables were $50!  So, a lot more than I thought-maybe I'm remembering prices from when the S'side store was closing, but I think they were always that price! Needless to say, I didn't buy one but will keep it in mind...)

 I can move my favorite stump that holds up the current table to the breezeway to use as a side table in the sitting area.

I was looking and I guess I never did a post on the Stump table!  I found this stump down the road where we go to put the canoe or sailboat in the water.  I tried and tried to get it in the car, but it was too heavy so HH went later to get it for me.  It stayed in the corner of the front garden for a while and then I decided to use it to make a picnic table. I took the old cover of the Canoe-zzi,

put some stain on it and made it the top of the table. We attached one end of the table to the breezeway wall and the other sits on the stump.

I also made the benches from some extra wood we had.  HH says they need a triangle cut out at the bottom so they're not so rocky, but I haven't done that yet!

Ok, focus! Back to my patio plans....

I want to bring over the cedar bench (that used to be in the old living room- Here it is covered with some fabric),

and make the other cedar swing  into a bench by adding legs (from wood we already have).

I can put a cushion (which we already have) on one of the benches and cover the other with a blanket (which we already have).  Then I'll move the fire pit over and make a living room-like arrangement around it with the cedar benches, black wrought iron chairs and the Adirondack chairs.  I can put cushions (which we already have from the old red couch)

 on 2 or 3 Adirondacks.  I can pretty up the sink with a skirt of fabric (which I already have).  I can basically do this whole thing without spending anything. Which is good!

This arrangement will be perfect for Spring because it's a sheltered spot on the southwest side of the house.  However, in the summer it gets too hot and mosquitoey.  Last year (and the year before) we had the screened room up. This pic is from June 2012!

Maybe we can rig up another screened room this year. They're great to have, but the wind ends up blowing them around and tearing them up.

So, lots of exciting projects to do...

Have a great weekend! :-)

Monday Musings

Mornin!

We had a nice weekend.  We had an early morning Saturday with HH & I going to the PEI Home and School Federation Annual General Meeting in Charlottetown.  It started at 8:45 am, so we had to get up early at 7:00 to leave here around 7:20.  We dropped the kids off at their grandparents' and on the way we discovered that the long-awaited opening of the new Giant Tiger store was happening.

And there were lotsa people!

The PEIHSF AGM was good and productive. They passed all their resolutions- a few with some friendly amendments.  The meeting also included a lunch (BBQ chicken).  

After that, HH dropped me off at Value Village.  He does not like to shop, so he went over to Seoul Korea across the street to get us dinner!

I found some pretty cloth napkins.  

I imagine they were in some old lady's collection for years and never used.  They are almost too pretty to use, but I'm going to!  They came in 2 bundles of 6, costing $3 each. Sometimes I think VV's prices are a bit high, but they do support the Canadian Diabetes Association so at least that's something good!

We held off on giving DD her antibiotics and she seems to be better now.  

The snow is melting.

I went for a walk on Friday, and could've gone today, but it's a bit rainy.  I guess I'll have to start tomorrow!

My phone storage space is running low, therefore my pictures don't upload. I'm trying to transfer my pics to our long-term storage, but it's slow.  I thought I was supposed to do it from the SD storage, but there seem to be no pics there, so I'm doing it from the USB storage. We'll see how this goes...

Have a good week. :-)

Last Post Blizzard Post (?)

Ok, we had another storm this weekend!  On Sunday it started snowing around 10:00am.  I was able to get to Summerside to pick up the kids from their grandparents' and take them to swimming.  Then we hurried home before the freezing rain which began that afternoon.  It continued thru the night.  We lost power Monday at 5:00am. There was no school for the kids. HH had to go to town for work for a few hours before it was cancelled.  He picked up some pizza for lunch!  We stayed warm in our coats, 

 playing Scrabble, Mexican Train and the computer.

 Finally, HH had to get the kerosene heater started. It heats the back room and kitchen nicely.

 Here's the ice on the trees and cars.

  

Notice the birch tree all the way to the ground!

  Here are the trees in the backyard.

  

HH and DS went to clear the driveway before the blizzard started Monday afternoon!

  

Another view out the kitchen window. We got our power back on around 10:00pm! 

  

These pics are from Tuesday after about 30 cm (1 foot) of snow! Still no school for kids or work for HH!

Ice on the Virginia Creeper.

A birch tree had fallen over the line to our house.  It broke our neutral wire, so when our fridge cut in, our lights dimmed.  The Electric Company fixed it last night.

A bunch of branches broken.

  

The snow bank is as tall as the cars.

  

Ice Covered branches.

  

The breezeway and HH's office are completely covered with snow!

   

A lovely view of the back.

I'm standing on a snow bank, looking down at the lounge chairs.

  

Funny how the snow drifted.  It just went in front of the back door.  To the left, the ground is almost bare.

  

A big drift in front of the trailer.  The treehouse is still there! 

  

Here's the snow plow Tuesday afternoon.

The sun kinda came out in the evening. Everything looked so pretty covered in ice and snow.

  

When you went outside, you could hear all the cracking and creaking of the ice!

The kids went back to school yesterday and I was finally able to go shopping.  There was supposed to be a Professional Development day for teaches on Friday with no school for kids, but they cancelled it.  This was the worst winter for snow in 42 years!  (We'd have to get another 100 cm to beat that year!)  It's definitely been wild!  Hopefully this is the end of it! :-)

Another Post-Blizzard Post

Hi! 

We had a doozy of a blizzard on Wednesday!  The kids were out of school for 3 days!  Plus HH's work and most other businesses were closed for 2 days.  At one point 16,000 were without power and RCMP were urging people to stay off the roads- on Wed. because of the poor visibility and on Thurs. so the plows could get the roads cleared.  On Friday, some secondary roads were still not cleared. We got around 60 cm (23 inches) of snow.  Here are lots of pics.

Here are the kids playing before the storm.  This is looking out our kitchen window toward the pond.

 Here's DD way our in the field. Notice how you can see way far away?

Here's the same view during the blizzard- very poor visibility!

Here's the day after with lots of snow on the ground and blowing snow.

 Here's the front of the house BB (Before Blizzard).  We still had a lot of snow to begin with!

  

Here's after.

Notice those 3 poles going up to the roof?  HH was concerned because the front shingles were flapping up. Here they are from our bedroom window during the storm.

HH went out in the storm to put these braces up to hold them down.

 Here is a Before view of the driveway and road from the front porch.

Here's the driveway and road (from slightly different angle actually on the driveway) after the storm and before they were cleared. It's hard to tell where the road even is!

  Here's the snow bank to the right of the driveway.  DS is laying on the snow with a red sled.

Here's another angle of how high that drift was after the storm.  Taller than DS!

 Here's the courtyard Before (Still a lot of snow for the end of March!) 

And here's the After.

 Here's DD in the back room showing how high the snow is against the back door. 

 Here's the view from outside, looking back.

Just to refresh your memory, here's how it looked in Sep.

 The breezeway.

 And the side of the house by the pond.

So, what did we do all day on Wednesday during the blizzard? Luckily we didn't lose our electricity.(Although we were all ready for that. We had extra water for drinking and water in the tub for washing and flushing; extra food, and we have an indoor kerosene heater that we haven't had to use in quite a few years.) So, we watched tv and a movie ("Journey 2: The Mysterious Island"- pretty good!) on Netflix; played on the computer, and the kids played Lego. This is their village from above.

DD with the house she built.

Inside the house.

Despite the blowing snow on Thursday, the kids were able to get outside for a bit.  They ended up digging some snow forts.  Here they are inside!

We also had this to deal with on Thursday.  Snow blew into the front room! :-(

  

And into the attic.  The air exchange duct had come unattached to the air exchange unit and blew this big pile of snow in through about 4 feet of duct. (You can see an extra piece of the air duct on the floor in the middle of the pic below.  It's black with white insulation inside.  To the left is the stink pipe and right beside the duct on the right is a lightbulb fixture!)  I put this crazy snow in a trashcan, then dumped it into the washing machine which is right under the attic access.

We are expecting 10-20 cm (4-8 inches) of snow plus freezing rain tomorrow!  I realized last year I had started walking to the PO 4x/week, but I can't do that yet!  Maybe in another week or so...

Have a great weekend! :-)