I Win

Warning! Do not allow, 6-15 year old, video-game-obsessed,  boys or girls look at this post (a few adult men and women might want to avoid it as well*).

*I am currently not accepting applications for new children and/or room mates (unless you cook, clean and pick up dog poo, then I might reconsider).... Decorating advice is always free.

We recently had our entire house painted (main living areas). The basement was in the worst shape. The previous owners did an amazing job when they finished the basement, but I suspect they used a paint/primer combination directly on the fresh, dry wall, because.... Oh Man, did that paint fleck the frack off!  The basement looked like it had reverse chicken-pox.

Here are a few before pictures. The colour of the walls was a dark, reddish brown (It's washed out in the pictures, but you can see the damage). Too dark for a basement.

Blurry picture of what it sort of looked like... from a couple of years ago.
Eli is playing full size "Angry Birds" that he constructed out of a tent making kit.

And NOW..... 

The right side of the room will have instruments set up.

A place to display lego & video game collectibles

Yes, those are Super Mario decals. They go around that side of the room

And, THAT is why I win....... Totally.

Dad got this for us and it's been in storage ever since.
It was too large to fit anywhere, but we finally decided to cut it down and install it.
It is 6ft tall and 7ft wide. We are lucky to have something so cool. 

I love it down there now. It's bright, cheery and fun! Too bad it smells like pre-adolescent boys........

Happy Hallowe'en!

It's fright night tonight and rather than a big, long, wordy, post, I thought I'd share our Hallowe'en decorations and let them speak for themselves.....

Silhouettes in the windows

If you can't have a "Lawnmover Man" because there is no lawn,
Make it a "Snowshovel Dude" (body parts optional)

Black Tunnel to the front door

Inside the tunnel during the day

Dropping Spider

This year's pumpkin crop

Inside the tunnel at night, with backlight.....
fog and lasers will be turned on this evening

Creepy, eh?

Pumpkin Carving! 

Must pretend to eat the guts

Who's that in the background???

Posed photo

What they're REALLY wanting to do...

Even Better.....

My craft/studio room continues to evolve. I have now completed the other half of the room.

It looked like this last week:

I wasn't super happy with this side of the room. The other side of the room is so far beyond Awesome, that Awesome needs binoculars and night-vision to see it, but this side was rather blah in comparison. I fixed it though... now Awesome won't know which way to look because both sides are equally beyond Awesome's ken.

This side has:

2 Ikea Expedit 2x2 shelves mounted on the wall. The 2x2s come with mounting instructions, but I decided to put a rail below them for extra support, mainly because they were being mounted to look good and not on studs and a few drywall anchors are not strong enough for my complete comfort. We attached the rail on the studs and then set the cabinets on top of the rail and anchored them. I think they'll be more than strong enough for my needs now.

1 Ikea Expedit 2x4 against with wall with a desk attachment. Apparently, I'm not the only one who doesn't want leave this room and, as I don't like to share, I thought the kids needed their own desk.... Plus it'll be great for my future Drum Carder.... and as a cutting table.... and... OK, it's really more space for me, but I won't tell the kids if you don't. I also purchased some doors, drawers and purple baskets for the cubby holes. These now hold the rest of my yarn, my fibre and a few other bits that I didn't have proper space for. The room is so organized that I almost don't want to use it.

3 picture rails above the bookcase (which I already had).

The only problem I had with this whole redecorating scheme was that my 30 year old Singer sewing machine died when I tried to make some cushions to sit on (for TV watching).... You can't have a sewing room without a sewing machine.

So I fixed that to.

And now that my house is back in order from THAT mini-reno... must be time to rip apart something else..... Next week, maybe; I have some sewing to do first.

I'm never coming downstairs again....

IT IS DONE!!

My craft studio is complete (mostly) and it is so awesome that I have no words. OK, I have a lot of words, but they are farther down, so they don't count.... much.

Here is where the magic happened. I LOVE this wall. Love it with a deep, abiding passion. Let's just say that if Justin Timberlake or Colin Firth or the Hot Scientist dude from Eureka (Ed Quinn) dropped by and asked me to run away with them, I'd have to think really hard about leaving this room behind......

The basic plan is (mostly from Ikea, because they make great, cheap storage furniture... and I had most of it already):

2 Pax wardrobes from Ikea (used to be in Chey's Room)

1 Trofast frame (the one that looks like stairs) 

1 Helmer Drawer unit (the only Ikea item I had to buy)

1 Lack coffee table, top removed

1 4x8 panel of slot wall, painted (and accessories). Next time I want to paint slot wall, someone shoot me, OK?

My original plan was to buy two of the Helmer drawer units (or something like them) and stick the Lack coffee table  (used to be used as a play surface for the kids) on top as a desk, but when I was thinking about what to do with the furniture in the room already, it occurred to me that the Trofast unit might make a good base for a desk. I couldn't believe it when the Helmer and the middle step of the Trofast were within 1/4" of each other! It was perfect. The casters of the Helmer have sunk into the carpet enough that I don't even have to shim the desk to make it level. It's perfect. I only used the top of the Lack coffee table, it was way too tall with the entire coffee table on the "base".

Once the room was painted I shoved everything where I wanted it and it looks like it was made for the space. There are no gaps anywhere. The items fit perfectly (I planned that, actually and again, the Trofast saved the day, by being the perfect size to eat up the bit of space betwixt desk and tower). 

See all of my wonderful storage? (I plan to replace the plastic bins on the slot wall shelves with something else: eventually. The ones inside the tower are fine).

Inside the right tower

Drawers of yarn

These drawers will contain my fabric. Still to be organized.

This still needs to be organized.

My grandmother made me this

Sock yarn/lace yarn remnants in glass.  The deer fabric is covering a paint can, filled with yarn. The Blue glass is from Egypt and has my signature needles and some hand carved crochet hooks.

some colourful fibre, beautiful lace yarn... this space is heaven

The real problem with the room was the floor. Sewing on carpet is not much fun. The sewing part is fine, it's the CLEANING that's not fun. We aren't quite ready to do a full scale floor replacement though, so after much thought and a thorough scouring of the Internet, I decided to paint a floor cloth. This was probably the most painful part of the job as I wanted a large floor cloth (almost completely covering the floor) and I didn't really have space big enough to paint it and then let it cure. I painted in the basement (it took a gallon of primer and 3/4 of a gallon of paint, but only a quart of varnish and 6 days, including dry time) , but pulled apart my guest room to let it cure for a few days before wrestling (there is no better word, I fought that sucker into place!) it down today. It's not perfectly flat (it was most difficult to get it to lay flat without pulling apart the entire room), but I think it turned out great! And it's sweep-able and damp wipe-able... perfect for a craft room, no?



 The cloth is painted Ombre (dark centre and faded out to either end). I decided not to go for crisp lines, but blended the lines together as I painted. It's subtle and I love it.

I still want more storage on this side of the room, but I need to let some ideas ferment for a bit before I tackle them.

Subtle Ombre stripes.

Need to think on a chair solution as well.
Perhaps an Ottoman might work??

One of the best parts of this room, is that it is STILL Chey's play room. Her toys are still in the Trofast bins under my desk, her Calico Critters sit atop a cedar chest filled with fibre AND she might actually use it now. At least, she will most likely use it while I sew and futz around. She didn't like playing in that room by herself. Now we can both play; she with her toys, I with mine.


Next job (after I clean up the mess from this one) -BASEMENT. That's just painting, though: maybe.

One project down.

As I've mentioned in several posts, Dale and I (mostly I, but he does help when he's not working) are slowly giving our house a teeny facelift. Mainly paint and decorating, but I'm hoping, that over the next year, we will have the house refreshed and better organized.

With that goal in mind, one of the problems/DIY project on our list,  has been to figure out garden storage. We have a small, lean-to, style shed against the side of the house that plays the part of "catch all" for our gardening detritus. Lawnmower, wheelbarrow, shovels, rakes, bags of soil, buckets, small garden tools, fertilizer, hose pieces, etc. are all piled in the little shed and most of it has to be removed each time the lawn needs to be mowed. I thought that a nice dresser or small hutch, painted as a part of the backyard decor, might be a partial solution. At least we would get the little bits out of the shed......

I trolled Kijiji for about a month, looking for something cheap (like under $50 cheap), but solid and didn't really find what I was looking for (it had to fit in a certain spot against the house). One day I drove past a garage sale and found the perfect dresser... for $20. The gentleman selling it, said it was solid wood and it was hard to tell because he had painted it with some kind of super thick plastic deck paint, but I thought we'd give it a go.

I forgot to take a good picture of the before, this will have to do.

It sat in the garage all summer, until it finally rose to the top of the "honey do" list and Dale started the stripping process. He found out pretty quickly that it was NOT solid, but some kind of laminate over pine. The laminate didn't make it through the stripping process (nor did the drawer bottoms or bottom of the cabinet, but I'll fix that in the spring) and it turned out to be a much larger, more expensive job than I had anticipated. I was finally able to start staining on the weekend. My plan was to stain the body of the dresser one colour and all of the drawer fronts and doors different colours. I think it turned out looking fabulous, but the cost and effort of the redo, relative to the  quality of the initial (and ending) piece of furniture was not worth it. I think we'll have paid over $200 in stripper, stain, varnish, new drawer bases and pulls which would have been worth it had the dresser been of better quality.  Something for me to think about in the future, that is for certain.

Here it is after being stripped. Again, I need to learn to take better pictures, but you can see the inside, bottom of the cabinet is trashed. All of the drawers are the same.


It does look pretty though. The cabinet itself is stained dark red, the largest door was stained purple, but it looks dark brown, which is unfortunate. I LOVE the teal/turquoise doors! In retrospect, I wish I had stained the entire cabinet with that stain..... I couldn't wait to show you, even though I have yet to put on handles and pulls and fix the drawers. I don't plan to do that until Spring though.

I can totally picture it with a flower pot on the top. What do you think?

The Return

After a brief hiatus, mainly due to the insanity of over scheduling myself, I am back. Maybe.

I've been a very busy MOM this month and have had very little time to be ME.... I am the volunteer coordinator for my daughter's school; which has involved, manually, inputting 500 students' parental information into an excel spreadsheet, organizing them by class, finding room parents and setting them up for the year. I am also on both schools' parent councils, a health action committee and I will be starting "Knit Club" at Eli's school, again,  next week. Plus, both kids celebrated their birthdays (Chey is now seven, Eli is eleven) this month and have, despite my best efforts to train them otherwise, still required feeding, cleaning and the occasional clean piece of laundry...... all of this has left me with too much to say and not one ounce of will to say it....

This is a N64 system given to him by his Aunty Theressa... BIGGEST.HIT.EVER!

I did get a few things for ME done.... sort of for me.... It does seem an awful lot like my ME time involves the kids and/or spouse, eh?

1) I finished Chey's BTSS (Back to School Sweater) for 2012, only a week late. Eli will not be getting a BTSS this year.... too many years of the sweater never being worn has finally taught me not to bother.... He will get socks instead.... eventually.



2) I have finished painting my Studio/Craft room and have big, BIG, plans in the decorating/organizing aspects. I don't want to share a peek... I think I'll wait until it's completely done... sorry. It will be worth it though, I promise.


3) We hiked up (well, part way up) the backside of Mt. Yamnuska (also known as Mt. Laurie)

4) We went to the Calgary Corn maze and I enjoyed a visit with one of my closest friends while the kids ran and played.

And the month is nearly over.... Wow.