November 6th

The lot beside our house is vacant and grassy.  It's also covered in yellow leaves.  The lady who owns it, in the next house over, has hired/found someone to use a leaf blower on it and clear all the leaves away.  He did this for over an hour this afternoon.  The sound, never ceasing, of a leaf blower is driving me crazy.

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Samuel skipped his nap.  I don't know why, but every few days he goes 'nap-less' and it worries me more with each passing time.  What if nap-less becomes the new normal?  I can't handle that yet.  I love my son, but I need that 1-2 hours of no Samuel time in the middle of the day.

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-Pork roast is in the slow cooker, doing it's thang. 

-About half of the quilts got aired on the line today - it would have been a shame to waste a windy, sunny November day!

-The bedding from our guests is washed and put away.  I feel so productive getting this done as quickly as I did.

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My mother thinks that the diaper rash that Samuel has is caused by uric acid.  She says it will burn the skin; I'm going to strip all of the cloth diapers and put him in disposables in the meantime.  A big of a drag, but if it clears up his bum I'll be happy.

I tried making a sauce for our pasta tonight that would only take the amount of time it takes to boil spaghettini.  I sauteed a mushroom, half a small onion, two cloves of garlic and a bit of oil together and then added about 1/2 cup of pureed veggies, diced tomatoes and some olives.  Then I stirred in a bit of sour cream.  Samuel had thirds, so he must have liked it.

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Moving related tasks accomplished today: washing all of the cleaning cloths leant to us by our landlady so that I could return them.  Emptying another box of books onto our bookshelf in our bedroom.  Breaking down the boxes and bagging the garbage related to the move and bringing them to the curb for garbage day. (This really helped empty the basement - getting rid of empty boxes.)

Cleaning Ideas

In honour of the cleaning and decluttering I’m doing around here this summer, here are a few ideas for keeping on top of stuff around the house:

1)      Pick one ‘Never Get Around To’ task, and one ‘Big Project’ task to do at a time.  The NGAT should be literally something annoying, small, fixable in minutes, but just…you know, never gotten around to.  For example, my thyme plant, which needed desperately to be trimmed of dead growth and that I had steadily ignored for weeks, but still allowed to get on my nerves every single time I looked at it.  In contrast, the BP is something that you are working on over the course of possibly several days.  Washing the walls in the house would be a BP.  This seems miniscule, but if you did 1 NGAT a day, you would complete 365 of them a year, and 1 BP a week would result in 52 of them in a year.  I can’t even think of 52 BPs in my house.

2)      If you aren’t working outside the home, plan to make housework something that takes 2 hours per day.  If you’re lucky enough to have helpers this, I’m sure, could be cut down substantially.  I’m saying 2 hours because I think you’ll need 1 hour of maintenance cleaning (your daily jobs, like tossing in a load of laundry, washing dishes, etc.) 15 minutes of daily decluttering, 15 minutes of work on your current big project, and 30 minutes of extra time.

3)      Don’t focus on one area at a time.  If Monday is ‘bedroom day’ make sure that you don’t spend your full cleaning time allotment there or else the rest of the house will fall apart over those 24 hours.  It’s much better to split your days into sections that pertain to multiple rooms.  Monday might be ‘window day’, where every window gets cleaned, Tuesday could be ‘carpet day’ and you vacuum all your rugs, etc.

4)      When you get to the end, stop.  Do your task and move on; don’t get sidetracked by other tasks.  If your BP for the next few days is to clean the fridge, for example, spend your 15 minutes on it and don’t decide that “hey, I should start a grocery list!” or “This pickle jar is almost empty; that reminds me that I wanted to rinse out the recycling”. 

5)      Declutter with a purpose.  If you give yourself 15 minutes, utilize a timer and bring a garbage bag.  Make quick decisions and finish your section, don’t try and do something that will take an hour.

The best cleaning blog posts I've read

I recently wrote a series of updates over the course of an hour on Facebook, just to track what I could accomplish with one solid, steady hour of cleaning. What I managed (while both children were asleep, mind you) was to give my kitchen a thorough clean. I did the dishes, cleaned the microwave, emptied the toaster crumbs and even filled the sugar bowl along with the usual dishes/stove/etc. sort of cleaning. I didn’t manage to wash the floor in my allotted time, (although I swept) nor did I do any ‘deep cleaning’ like defrosting the freezer, emptying cupboards and washing them, or cleaning the walls. What I proved to myself, though, was that 1 hour was all I needed to bring a dirty room up to ‘company’s coming’ standards.


I’m not a housekeeper who should be emulated by anyone who is looking to make this their ‘job’, but I do have a few tricks up my sleeve, and I thought it might be fun to share them here in this space. Fun for me, that is, I can’t imagine you’re going to derive much enjoyment from it.

I’m pretty obsessive about planning, organizing and knowing what exactly to do at each and every point along the way, and so you’ll find that my advice tends to be this way as well. And when I am unsure about something, or want to become better or more efficient at it, I tend to research the issue to death. With that in mind, to start off here are a few of my best reads on the net about where and how to start.

The Stressed Mom wrote this post to highlight 10 of her best tips for keeping the home running smoothly. Some of them are a little elementary, but there is one that saves me time and again. Do one complete load of laundry per day. That’s washing, drying, folding and putting away! Especially if you are using cloth diapers, running a load of those through a rinse and then continuing with your reg. laundry will save you.

A Slob Comes Clean is a great starter resource that I came across when I was starting our decluttering journey. She’s very real, very funny and even has her own Youtube channel. Also, her ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures actually look something like MY before and after pictures, which makes me feel better. You don’t see a lot of bedrooms online that have a pile of clothes on the floor. For the next little while she also has an e-book that teaches you how to teach your children to clean, and it is free.

Dwija at House Unseen, Life Unscripted wrote a guest post that I completely agree with on when tasks need to be done throughout the day. So many times you hear about how you should be able to just clean, regardless of where the kids are, what they’re doing, etc. And the fact is, that’s not true! Trust me, I have a two year old and a newborn and if I leave them alone they’re going to need me within five minutes. Dwija splits her housecleaning into really practical sections, and you should check it out.

Happy reading!

My job / His job - Part Two of What Does A Housewife Do All Day?

I always thought it was overly simplistic to say that David's 'job' was to go and make money for the family, and my 'job' was to stay home and make a comfortable living area for us.  I really feel as though that kind of mentality lessens what each of us does on a daily basis, because, yes, David makes money outside the home and I do not, and I keep house which he doesn't do, but those roles are not as hard and fast as society would like them to be.

In other words, I'm a housewife, but that's just a very small part of what I do and who I am.

There have been periods of time when I've taken paid work, sometimes more than one job at a time, and there have been weeks when my paycheck was more than David's, or my job more challenging than his in some way.  And equally there have been days, weeks even, when Daddy has been home and doing laundry, or cooking meals, or soothing cuts and scrapes and returning library books while I've been somewhere else.

I've never really felt awkward about being the primary parent at home because I feel called to it; I've never taken on this role because society expected me to but because I'm good at it, and I like it, and it seems to work for us.

And yes, I think that each of our 'jobs' qualifies as 'work'.  Just as David's parenting is no less than mine, my work is no less than his.  Different, yes, but then that's true of each individual.

Beyond the standard stuff that I try to accomplish on a daily basis, though, there is one way in which I interact with the family finances in a more in-depth way.  Several years ago I came across a stay-at-home mom who wrote that she viewed her job as helping to squeeze the most out of her husband's paycheck.  Whatever money came into the house, she wanted to get every last useful drop out of.  I liked that idea and it's always stuck with me.

It's become a bit of a challenge for me, which plays well into my naturally competitive side!  Sure, tomatoes are $1.00 a pound at Sobeys, but they're 98 cents a pound at Superstore, so let's go there!  And I take a great deal of pride (good pride, I think!) in seeing how I can turn random ingredients into delicious food; I'm a master at 'pantry cooking' after years of practice.

This past week I needed more cloth wipes for the baby, and made 18 new ones from an old, unworn shirt.  I bought limes from the discount produce rack and juiced them, freezing the juice in ice cubes trays for days when limes would be too pricey to buy.  I made our first loaf of bread in the bread machine, visited Costco to buy sausages and cat litter in bulk, and used up the leftovers in the fridge.

These little things are important to me while I'm at home; they keep me in a headspace that constantly reminds me that the money I spend and the lifestyle we live comes from David's 40 hour weeks on his feet, doing hard work.  And, yes, they keep me accountable; I think David appreciates that if he ever were to ask me how I managed our money this week, I could give him a list just like the one I just typed.  And lest the sexism bug rear it's ugly head, David is just as accountable to me for his actions regarding work; he would no more slack off at his job than I would at mine.

Tomorrow I'll be writing my Works For Me Wednesday post, and I'll share some specific things I've done recently, since coming back to the home for my maternity leave with our second child.  And I'd love your suggestions, as well!

Why I feel better when my fridge is empty

Here's my fridge, and it clearly isn't empty.  But, here's the thing - it's a lot emptier than it used to be, and the change has been a voluntary one.

I used to hoard food, thinking that somehow it made me thriftier, when in reality it made me crazier.  I was one of those women who debated saving the water their vegetables were steamed in to use later when making their own broth.  This saving food compulsion was born of a thrifty childhood, nurtured by some long, lean college years, and finally blossomed and bore a lot of fruit after David and I got married, had a child, and firmly slipped into a pretty low economic class.

Not only that, but our discovery of healthy eating (aka - skip the Ramen noodles every night and buy something labelled 'fruit' on occasion) led me to believe that I had to scrimp and save nutrients constantly.  Don't throw out bones, because bones have calcium and, um, 'good' stuff, whatever that means, and they should be boiled to extract it and the reduced liquid should be frozen...or something.  It was becoming an obsession.

I also noticed that the more I fell into this mentality, the more two things happened.  The first was that I was actually LESS likely to make and eat food.  Food had become a huge chore, requiring lengthly prep time and exhaustive research to be delicious.  I would make it, and then be loathe to toss a Tbsp of leftovers and instead let them molder away in the back of the fridge.  Half of the produce I bought, I tossed.  Half of the healthy stuff I made, required a ridiculous amount of time.  Not to mention space.  My fridge and freezer both were crammed with food.  Little labelled bags of stuff.  Can't throw out that half a calcified lemon, since it was organic and all, and cost the earth.

The second thing that happened is that we all lost out on the joy of eating, as well as the supposed financial benefits of doing so in a healthy way.  Who wanted to eat Mama's lentil casserole three days in a row?  No one, that's who, including Mama.  So the casserole sat there and Mama, exhausted from the two days of prep work it took to produce a healthy, entirely homemade lentil casserole, ordered a pizza.  A delicious melon, or some perfectly ripe apples, supposing I hadn't forgotten them and left them buried under mounds of food in the back of the fridge somewhere, got pushed aside again and again in favour of convenience and 'food planning'.  I couldn't give Sam an apple because those were the 'special' apples I was saving for a pie, which I couldn't make because we weren't buying piecrust anymore, just making it, and I was too tired to make piecrust.  So let the apples sit.

So what changed this?  To be honest, it's still changing, and the change is slow.  I still hoard food.  I still buy a bunch of 'excellent deals' at the grocery store and then throw them away.  I still save bits and pieces.  I have a peeled ginger root in my freezer as we speak.  Yesterday my husband threw out a pumpkin that I had been holding onto in cold storage since before Hallowe'en, and to be honest, if he hadn't thrown it out I wouldn't have.  I would have kept it.

But, I'm a lot better.  To start with, we've all noticed that if there is one food option, then when you're hungry that's what you'll eat.  If you look at that picture above, that big bowl on the second shelf is the roasted pepper soup I made yesterday - and we'll have it for lunch today.  Because that's what there is for lunch.  The top shelf holds some stuffed pasta shells, and David will take those to work for his supper today.  Because that's what there is for supper.  When I went to the store yesterday, I bought exactly what I needed for ONE intensive recipe - in my case, a roasted portabella mushroom soup.  I bought three onions and whipping cream - you can see my onions in one of the crisper drawers.  You know what else you can see in that drawer?  Nada.  There's nothing else there.  On purpose.

There's enough food in that fridge (and my freezer, and the fruit bowl on the counter, etc.) to feed us for a few days only.  Then I will have to go shopping again.  I have a loaf of bread on the counter, but only one, and then I will have to make more bread.  I have some homemade energy bars wrapped up, but only half a dozen, and then I will have to make more.  I have three apples, a kiwi, a banana and a cantaloup in my fruit bowl - this means that in about two days, I will need to buy more fruit.  These small, manageable amounts of food tend not to go to waste anymore.  If you only have three apples, and they're all visible, then you'll eat your three apples.  When they're done, you'll buy more apples.  Simple.

I've found myself not only saving on tossed food, and therefore money, but also on stress.  It's stressful to look in a fridge and have no idea what to prepare for a meal, and it's equally stressful, for me at least, to prepare this elaborate meal plan every week that I cannot hope to achieve.  I don't want to spend two hours every day in the kitchen, making food.  I like food, I want to eat food, I want to serve healthy and delicious food, but I don't want to use up my life preparing food.  I can tell you right now what we'll have in the next couple of days without a meal plan.  We'll have apple pancakes for a meal.  We'll have portabella mushroom soup.  We'll have a cheese souffle.  And then at some point in the next few days as I run low on fruit I will also pick up some vegetables and we'll do a stirfry, and then an omelette.  Then we'll be down on eggs and so...you get the idea.  I don't need a meal plan, I can look at the dozen items in my kitchen and tell you right now what you can expect to eat if you arrived for supper.

Free decor!

I'm becoming obsessed with Pinterest!  I think what I love the most about this website is that it caters to my three strongest decorating-oriented personality traits: I'm cheap, I can't throw things away, and I like to be creative.  Not always a successful trio of traits, but it keeps us on our toes around here.

And how much thriftier can you get than free?  Take a look at these crafts, all made with entirely free paint chips.

A simple paint chip mobile from http://www.sayyestohoboken.com/

Paint chips laminated together to make placemats from http://www.betterlivingthroughdesign.com/

Paint chip gift tags from http://www.ohandtheworldspinsmadlyon.blogspot.com/

A paint chip table top from http://www.atypicaltypea.com/

Odds and Ends

Decision:  We will be doing a homeschool 'preschool'.  It will start after our daughter is born, but probably not right after, because I'm not insane.

Decision:  There will be a birthday cake for Samuel's birthday.  There will be a present.  There will not be a swimming party.  Again, because I'm not insane.  I'll be eight months pregnant and in the thick of getting Easter service stuff done at work and he's turning two, for goodness sakes, and will be quite happy with a cake and a present.

Decision:  I'm paring down the girl's clothes.  It's getting ridiculous around here.  Bags and bags and BOXES of girl's clothes.

I took out my trusty Walmart giftcard and bought some more big, plastic storage containers last night and a lampshade for a lamp we've had since forever and just not bothered to use since it didn't have a shade.  Now it does.  I'm tickled pink.  Let there be light!

When I woke up Wednesday morning I was determined that I would get something small checked of my list of 'things to do before the baby comes'.  I decided I would tackle the squeaky rocking chair and all of the creaking doors with WD40, and lo and behold it worked.  Ten minutes of labour = a much more relaxed me.  Why did I put that task off for so long?

This morning I felt just as productive.  I remembered how wonderful the non-squeaky doors had felt to accomplish and with that in mind I tackled two more little jobs that had gotten swept under the carpet for too long.  We have a very nice maple dining room set but one of the chairs had a spindle between two legs that had fallen off and needed to be re-glued.  In the meantime we'd replaced that broken wooden chair with an old pink office chair.  The thing was, I never got around to gluing the wooden chair.  I had wood glue, I had time, I just never put the two together and chose to live with the ugly pink swivvle chair instead!  This morning I spent, oh, maybe a minute and glued the spindle back on.  Once that glue sets we will once again have a functional, and significantly more attractive, dining room set.

The second thing I did was fix the taps on the back of the washer.  Several months ago I had had to pull out the washer to attend to a leak and when I re-attached the two hoses to the hot and cold water taps I somehow mixed them up.  I realized it right away, but I just didn't fix it, figuring a few loads of hot wash wasn't going to harm anything and I would get it later in the week.  Except, of course, that I didn't get it until this morning, weeks and weeks later.  This means every single time I did a load of laundry in the past several weeks, I've washed and rinsed it in hot water - think of the energy I've wasted!  The switching of the hoses required maybe five minutes of fiddling with a wrench and it was done.

I felt a million times more productive with those two small tasks done this morning than I have with almost anything this past week!

Multiple children in small bedrooms - is it possible?

This is a very long post.  It's so long I should split it into sections, but I'm not going to.

I'm fascinated by the sleeping options there are now for children sharing a small room!  Take a look at these:

This is a trundle bed


Your general service trundle bed.  Buy it anywhere, in any colour.

You can buy it alone, for a few hundred dollars, and roll it under an existing twin bed to make room to sleep a second child.

But, I mean, why stop there?

Let's say you need to fit two children in one room but can't sacrifice the storage provided under the bed?  You can also get the trundle bed with drawers.

A twin bed with a trundle and three storage drawers.

Ok, but let's say you need to fit two children in the room but also have the room be a playroom or even a living space?  You can get a daybed with a trundle bed, to maximize the use of a room...

Or..

you can get a daybed with a trundle bed, and the storage drawers as well.  So, you get a sofa, two beds and a storage space!

Ok, so you like that, but the drawers make the trundle too high up for your little person?  No problem.  You can get a daybed, with a trundle bed BELOW the drawers.  And lest you think the drawers opening would be inconvenient and squeeze the mattress, you can have the drawers come out either side of the bed.  Now the mattress is low, the storage isn't sacrificed, you fit two children in the room and you have a sofa space.


Sleep two children, with three storage drawers and a sofa space for $500 new.

Or you could get a pop-up trundle bed that converts from a twin to a king size.


Alright, but what about when you don't need a trundle bed forever?  Your children aren't going to want to sleep in this configuration for good, so then what?  Well, you could get a twin bed, with a trundle bed that has three drawers...AND a separate unit to use once you no longer need the trundle bed.  Pop out the trundle with three drawers, and slide in the large, four drawer storage unit.  And the trundle and drawer unit can go fit under another bed.


Shown with the trundle/three drawer configuration but available as a four-drawer too.

Now, you've clearly fallen in love with the daybed/storage/trundle configuration, as I have, because you're no fool.  But the child on top - won't they fall on the child below?
Nope. 

 - You can get the twin bed with a safety rail and a trundle bed.
 - Or the daybed with the safety rail and a trundle bed.
 - Or a toddler bed, which has built in safety rails...and a trundle bed.

But you have MORE than two children to fit in this room, right?  You have a six year old, a four year old, and a two year old.  It's a little room and you've got a lot of children to squeeze in.  So you can use bunk beds with a trundle bed.

Ok, ok, let's just say it.  You hate bunk beds because of the ladder-is-dangerous bit.  No problem.  I present to you, bunk beds, with a trundle bed, with three large storage drawers, and stairs.


It solves practically every problem there is in the world.

If you can squeeze two people into a full-size bed, you can do the same configuration but a bit wider (with or without the ladder):


Four people can sleep here!

Or if space is very, very tight, you can use a bunk bed, with the bottom bunk made as a futon for your sofa option, but able to fold down to sleep two.  Add a trundle bed to that and you can sleep four people in a room.  When it's all folded up in the morning it won't take up much more floor space than a twin bed.

That's crazy compact. But not as crazy as this:

Yeah, that's a set of bunk-cribs.  Where are your children sleeping, the closet?

Now, all of these are cool, without a doubt.  But at some point you get into 'barracks' mode and you need to pull out the BIG GUNS.  Take a look at these inspirational spaces:

I imagine that four girls would adore such a grown-up looking room.  Though, do
those top bunks look ridiculously high to anyone else?



Perfect for a smaller space.  You could even make those under-the-bed areas built in drawers
for a more streamlined look.



A bit 'too' barracks?  Still, imagine how light and airy!

This looks incredibly treacherous to me, but whimsical, too.



I had my wedding reception in a smaller area than this, but it does show
you how lovely a few architectural details can make a room.

  

My goodness.



An excellent use of a long, narrow attic space.

 And if you start to think about space-saving, you really need to consider the usefulness of the space you do have.  The last picture up there illustrates a great use of a long, narrow space to fit four beds with under-bed storage.  Here are some other long, narrow space options:

Anyway, clearly space doesn't have to be an issue.  Anything, simply anything is possible.





I need to do another series...

on SOMETHING.  Suggestions?

Attacking the laundry at the source.

Have you read this post yet at Keeper Of The Home?  Well, if you haven't, I think you should, 'cause it pretty much snapped me out of my lethargy today!  I've been bemoaning the laundry issue for months around here.  Samuel has so many clothes that his closet is stuffed half full (the other half is MY clothes, which don't fit in my closet because that's where David has all of HIS clothes...just wait, we'll get to that bit in a minute) he also has a five drawer dresser full, plus the chair in his room is covered in folded clean clothes that have no where to go, and then there's whatever is in the laundry.  Oh, and that's just the stuff that's out in circulation.  He also has a steamer trunk full of 'too big' clothes and at least one huge tupperware container in storage of stuff he's grown out of and I haven't given away.

Then in this post a few months ago I tackled my closet, pairing down my clothes pretty substantially, but looking at them again I realize I need to pare down even more.  Like, a lot.

And David.  Ah, David.  He has, as we speak, a huge four drawer dresser STUFFED with clothes, including about 40 t-shirts, plus our large master bedroom closet all to himself.  And none of this is including outerware, which takes up part of our storage room and a whole set of hooks on the wall inside the door.  And shoes.  Lots of shoes.

I do laundry constantly.  I could literally do a full load of laundry every day, for two adults and a toddler.  How is this possible?  Even with cloth diapers, how is this happening?

So today, ruthless woman that I am, I'm tackling my clothes again, and then I'm dealing with Samuel's, too.

Stay tuned.

It's Wednesday and I'm not going to work.

6am might be early for me, but it's not early for everybody.

Another day, another ball of yarn...

Enjoying these last summer days

Here's what we've been doing this past week while we squeeze every last drop out of summer:


We've been keeping cool the old-fashioned way!



We've been stopping to smell the flowers, whether they're roses or not.

 

We've been cooking with all of the bounty of the season.


But Autumn has started to creep in around the edges of our days as well.  Earlier this week I made stew with pork, apples and corn simmered in rosemary, garlic and orange peel broth.  It made me think of cozying up to someone cuddly and feeling the cool breeze of fall.

Tonight I'm braising beef ribs and the feeling intensifies - Fall is just around the corner.

But I don't want to rush it, I've been feeling oh so anxious and stressed this summer, summer isn't a good time for me emotionally, and I need to slow down and enjoy these last few precious weeks before the leaves start to turn.

The in-laws are coming! The in-laws are coming!

There are little piles of unfolded laundry nesting around my house.  I don't know where they're coming from.  Seriously.  Small stacks of towels on the counter, folded dresses beside the bathtub, a whole bag of unmatched socks in the bag behind the stroller.  The strangeness is really only equalled by the fact that I am forever washing bottles and sippy cups and yet where are they?  I know I own them, I see him wander around with them, but are they in the cupboard?  No. Are they in the sink to be washed?  No.  Are they in his diaper bag, crib or carseat?  No.

And while we're on this topic why is it that we each wear one outfit per day and the laundry basket is always full?  What are these clothes I'm washing every day?  Why is it that we have two towels in the bathroom, and they always seem to be the same two towels, and there are other towels in the basket and I don't remember those towels?  No one used them, did they?  Has my husband begun sneaking out of bed in the middle of the night to secretly shower?  Is he also the one hiding the sheets?  I own matching queen sized sheets but when I go to make the bed I can only find either the top or the bottom sheet.  Where is that other sheet?  Where can it be going?

How is it that a pile, a pile no less, of newspapers has appeared on one of our dressers?  We don't subscribe to a newspaper.  No one gives us these that I'm aware of.  We just have them.  And if I throw them out more appear.  And yet, oddly enough, if I leave them alone the stack doesn't grow.  It's as though they just need to exist to a certain level.

Stacking plastic bath cups.  Does anyone else want to throw the person who invented stacking plastic bath cups into a cold lake?  Because stacking plastic bath cups do not stay in neat stacks beside the bath, oh no.  They are taken from the bathroom and scattered like a flower girl's rose petals across the entire house.  Flung!  With glee!  Be free, little stacking cups, be free.  Nestle up under the sofa and be quiet and I won't find you.

I remember the days when defrosting a chicken meant taking it out of the freezer and putting it in the sink until you got home from work.  Now apparently we have all grown too precious for that and need to coddle it into a feeling of warmth by acclimatizing it to it's heated demise in the refridgerator.  NEVER the counter, where salmonella waits to infect and kill your entire family.  No, now we need to plan our meals seven days in advance.  "Are we having pork at all two weeks from Thursday because I should take it out of the deep freeze and leave it in the fridge to thaw."  Leave it in the fridge to thaw.  Psshhaw.  Frozen food does not thaw in a cold fridge.  It just gets a bit less frozen and maybe after several days starts to crisp up from the air.

Things I miss about Ottawa

The real list is so big; I love my hometown and miss it terribly now that I live in small-town New Brunswick, but here are the top 10, in no particular order:

1.  Ethnic Food

Oh, how I miss ethnic food.  Vietnamese pho, especially, but also sushi and tacky/trendy bubble tea and samosas and real curry and anything Mexican.  I miss walking into a restaurant and not knowing what I'm ordering, or what something will taste like.  Everything here tastes exactly like what you would imagine it tastes like.  I miss The Works, as well, which has amazing burgers and portobello mushrooms and onion rings to die for.  I miss Italian ice cream and Greek food!  Greek food! Oh, I miss that so much.

2.  Museums

The museums in Ottawa are amazing.  The agricultural museum has live animals and you can watch them milk the cows, shear the sheep, even collect eggs.  And the Museum of Science and Technology has all of the fantastic stuff kids love, and grown-ups too.  The Aviation Museum, with it's hanging planes, the National Art Gallery; miles and miles of beauty, I could go on and on.

3.  Really Good Festivals and interesting things to do.

Like Bluesfest, Opera in the Park, Doors Open Ottawa, the Dragonboat Races, multiple amazing farmer's markets, hayrides, pumpkin patches and U-Pick farms, swans on the canal, Winterfest with its beavertails and ice sculptures, the fireworks on Parliament Hill on Canada Day,  the balloon festival in Gatineau park, the amazing inner-city hiking trails, Moody beach, an NHL hockey team...

4.  Opportunities for Learning.

Ottawa has two major Universities, Carleton and Ottawa U.  St. Paul's Catholic University is a subsidiary of Ottawa U., but is pretty much its own place.  Then there's Algonquin College, with two campuses in Ottawa and two more outside the city and numerous private colleges.  There are always tonnes of free lectures, or continuing education classes in any number of interesting subjects, like design, or dance, parenting or art, cooking, baking, cake decorating, sewing, extreme sports, Japanese, creative writing...whatever!  And there is a library system that has every book you can imagine in dozens of libraries across the city.

5.  Access to Resources.

City-run free lactation classes for mothers, indoor pools, classes for little people to take in any subject imaginable, a network of midwives (they are illegal in New Brunswick) and doulas to use, hospitals, (our town has a hospital but they won't deliver babies, for that you have to travel an hour to the city...in labour) health clinics open whenever you need them (here, if your doctor can't see you you have to wait for hours in emergency, regardless of how simple a thing you need) a BUS SYSTEM (what I wouldn't give for a bus system) affordable taxis, more than three grocery stores, a place to buy bulk foods, somewhere other than Walmart where you can buy shoes.

6.  IKEA

Enough said.

7.  Transportation links to other places.

A functioning train station.  An airport.  A bus station with buses that both leave and...shock, RETURN.  Here there is one bus stop outside of town where the schedule is such that you can leave, but not return on the same day.

8.  Our personal history.

Our parents, Samuel's one surviving great grandparent, all of our siblings and their significant others.  My friends from school, pretty much none of them left.  David's old room-mate.  The church I got saved in, our first place together, that cute little diner, you know the one, everyone has one, the church David's grandfather built and where he came to Christ, our schools and the memories that came with them, the Tulip Festival where we walked, the place where I found a little brown duck sitting on her eggs one day, that ridiculous Chinese restaurant where we had our first date.  The bookstore where we met.

9.  Movie Theatres.

It would be so nice to NOT rent a movie, but go and see one in a theatre, sitting on sticky seats, hands greasy with popcorn butter.  Samuel has never been to a theatre before. We haven't seen a movie in just over two years.

10.  Freedom.

Freedom to do things, to go places, to live life.  Freedom to take that little bit of extra money and do something neat with it, rather than go out for yet another A&W hamburger because that's all there is around here.  Freedom to hop on a bus and visit someone or something.  Not being stuck with television as your only source of entertainment.  Want to buy a book?  Go to the bookstore!  You don't have to order online and wait weeks.  Bored on a rainy day inside?  There are places you can go, even a mall, somewhere to walk indoors.

I just feel a bit homesick today.

An update on Samuel's Room!

I've been working hard on Samuel's room, and yesterday I did a heroic four hour push and got the last of the furniture moved.  Here are a few pictures:

I took these specifically of the bookshelf I picked up for $10 at a garage sale.  Samuel has a lot of books, so we knew we needed several shelves, and we also wanted the bottom shelf to hold baskets for his toys.  I think (I hope) that this will encourage him to help clean up.  The second to lowest shelf holds the books he reads now.  I wanted them to be within easy reach for two reasons: 1) So he would have the chance to take down and flip through books all on his own, if he wanted to and 2) So that he wouldn't over-reach to another, higher shelf, and possibly hurt himself.  The upper shelves are older books, the beginnings of my homeschool library (it can't hurt to plan, right?) and some special toys that aren't for playing with.  The top shelf, which you can't see in this picture, is holding toys for rotation.  I hope to move the larger toys in and out of rotation to keep things interesting and neat.

These pictures are taken from the doorway to the room.  His crib is all set up, the canvases I painted are on display, and you can see the valance as well.  I hung the canvases using the same tacks as I used to hang the valance, pinned with blue and white grosgrain ribbon.  You may have noticed the paint job?  Please, notice that paint job!  It took me weeks to do while he napped.

The dresser top is now cleared of clutter and holds his prefolds in one wicker basket and all of his shoes in another.  The rest of his diapers are in one of the drawers.

A Bookcase!

Samuel's room is looking better every day.  There is now a valance on the window.  I've purchased a lamp for the room, and as of today there is a bookcase!  It cost me $10 at a garage sale and looks like this:
Pretty nice for $10, eh?

How we handle the question of food!

I'm going to be doing a series of posts here in the next week with guest Mom bloggers discussing the ins and outs of trying to eat healthier, live better, enjoy food more and handle all of the multiple kitchen issues that come up in families young and old.  Make sure you check back to catch them all - I know you'll love these ladies as much as I do!

Free Art

Needing some art for Samuel's room.  Unable to find a single thing.  Resorted to *gasp* attempting to paint.  Enjoy.

3 canvases that have hung around, never finished, for years.



3 coats of primer.



strips of masking tape added.



two layers of bright yellow paint.



3 striped canvases ready to be hung.

 

A $4 Valance

You need: A piece of hemmed fabric twice as wide as the window.  I found this piece, clearly the hemmed top of a sheet, at a local thrift store for three dollars.

Samuel's window had a blue blind on it, but nothing else until the valance.

Carefully pin the end outside of the window frame using tacks.  Then simply pleat and pin every few inches, making the pleats roughly equal in size and ending with a pin outside of the frame on the other end.


I used coloured flat pushpins - a box for $1 at the Dollar Store.

A close-up of the coloured pins.