Stage Two of Nesting Complete - Paint!

As I mentioned on Monday, I have been in that particular stage of pregnancy insanity where you must throw your entire household into upheaval and get everything ready for the baby. I beleive with Emma we got new wardrobes and I sewed everything in sight - wipes, change pads, baskets, wall organizers, quilts . . . I was a mad sewing demon. This time it appears to be painting and re-organizing.

I think I might have mentioned that we are switching all the bedrooms around. Since we were moving all the furniture anyway, and two of the bedrooms did not get painted when we moved in, and the third has been liberally sprinkled with Aaron's idea of wall art, I decided that there was no time like the present to paint. My long suffering husband agreed to wash walls and move furniture and peel tape, and gave me free reign to choose colours and paint walls.

Since I finished these rooms it has been snowing, and there is only pale, filtered light to see the new colours in, but I had to show them off in any case because I love them. When we were in Saskatchewan, I was always trying to pick paint colours that would liven things up and make our space more stimulating. In Montreal, I find that I am chosing colours that feel calm and happy as a foil to all the chaos and crowding (not to mention all that red brick).

Our room, formerly the boys' room, is at the front of the house, facing the street. It is this lovely moss-y, pine-y green. Dave and I both love it, and it feels so soothing to be in this room now.

And look, I even sort of made the bed for you (the duvet cover is in the laundry right now, and what with all the painting, the laundry is sadly neglected, so pardon all that white. I think I'm going to finally pull out my Freshcut fabric and make a wall quilt and possibly a bed quilt with it. And the fact that it has been re-issued and I could get more of a few prints I was missing or had used for other things helps, too.

Emma's room (formerly our shared room) was a neutral-y white colour with lots of handprints and wall art fromt he previous owner's kids. Yuk. Frankly, it has been driving me crazy for the last year and a half, and I have been itching to paint it, so I was happy to finally get the chance.

This room has no windows, just a sliding door joining it to the boys' room and the main door leading to the living room. It is pretty dark, and when I started applying this yellow-green paint I discovered that part of the reason for its sad, cavern-like feeling was that the former owners had painted it a neutral with a purple undertone. I totally do not get why you would put a cool, dark undertone in the paint of a dark room. In any case, this meant I had to add a second coat of paint, since there was this strange pink glow emmanating through the seemingly flourecent yellow at the end of my first coat.

The end result is a pretty, soft green that will be great to match with pink for now, but will have staying power for when Emma moves on from the pink thing. There was nothing in this roome except a giant, ugly, cheap Ikea wardrobe when I went to take this picture, so I thought I would show off the baby bump. Because this room has so little natural light, it is hard to photograph. The colour of the back wall is pretty accurate, but it is a little more yellow in real life.

The boys have been moved into the former study at the back of our bedrooms. They seem to have really taken to this room, and play in it a lot more than they did their former room. I think they maybe feel more secure because they are in the middle of the house rather than slightly isolate at the front of the house. They are still on their futon mattress, although plans are brewing to build them loft beds in the spring or summer.

The boys initially really wanted a similar colour to their old room, and this is pretty close. It is a little bit lighter, because there is less natural light at the back of our house (thanks, hill covered in tri-plexes on the other side of our back yard). Aaron decided once we had already bought the paint that he wanted grey instead, and then of course Andrew decided he would like red. We compromised and told them they could each pick a colour for their bed when Dave builds them.

Now that the painting is complete, we have started sorting and moving. Hopefully I'll be able to show you that next week, along with my finished Fab Doll Quilt, which has to be mailed in a week or so.

Hope you have a lovely weekend, and if you are in our area, find a way to enjoy the snow!

Let the Switch Begin!

So, the "big switch" has started. Dave has reading week, and he spent a number of days of it moving things around. So far we've done some of the "easiest" moving first. The white storage thing that was in the hallway is now in our bathroom (making it look much tidier, I might add).

Next, the bookshelves from the entry way were moved into the place where the linen storage used to sit. This is nice, as these shelves are narrower than the storage unit was. The down side is that Emma is much more interested in the books now. I found her leafing through "Leisure: The Basis of Culture" the other day, which gave me a good laugh.

We moved those bookshelves, because Dave's bookshelves needed to be moved out of his former study. It is going to become the boys' room, so all the books had to move out to the living room. Now we look much cleverer, as we have the Ante-Nicene Fathers and assorted other theology and commentaries sitting out in our entry way.

Yes, I know the shelves are covering that door, but that is the door to the basement. As we have a basement suite, we don't ever use that door, so its all good.

Now we're on to the more complex changes - moving beds, toys, clothes, drawers while simultaneously painting rooms. All of our bedrooms are turned upside down and the boys' bed is a room with a stuff-covered office desk, while their toys and drawers are shoved into the center of their former bedroom while the walls are primed and painted.

I think we're all feeling a bit turned upside down too. Every day when Emma wakes up or comes home and something is different, she says, "Momma, come see! Come see!" and takes my hand and makes me come and check out the "new" thing she has discovered. Aaron asked this morning if the living room was still going to be the living room when we were all done. I am surprised every time I walk by a door and see a bed in the study. But, we think its better to do these changes now than when we are also adjusting to the new baby's arrival. So, hopefully we'll have a few weeks between the transition of our house and the transition to being a household of 6.

It A Beautiful Day . . . Don't Let It Get Away

Good day, friends! Spring has sprung in Montreal and after 7 months of looking and substituting and interviewing, I finally got a sick leave fill-in, teaching grade 9 and 10 English. This morning was a good day. The sun was shining, the temperatures were warm, and the kids were excited about the world. So excited that I had to send them out to play at about 7am to stop them from thumping back and forth on top of our basement tenant's head. Emma had to go out, too, although she mostly stayed on the deck:

She loves her yellow boots and her little baby right now. Lots of "Boos! Boos!" and "Bebe! Bebe!" (with proper French accents, I might add). The sun was so warm and beautiful.

The boys were busy hacking at the snow and swinging sticks around and jabbing at things.

Meanwhile, with the door open I got to stay inside to make pancakes

and drink tea from my favorite new cup. I really need a cool tea cozy for my teapot, don't I? I keep meaning to make one, but I can't decide what I want it to be like. Maybe I should just be like Jane Brockett and make about a dozen of them.

All this was possible because of this great door we have between the kitchen and the rest of the house. That way we could shut the door and keep all the cold and noise and sand in the kitchen (it was "warm" -- as in 5 degrees Celcius ). I love the stuff on the wall in that little corner, and shelf, but there's stacks of paper there right now, so I'll save it for another day.

This is the sweet beam of sunshine that visits our back deck in the early morning. I think this spot is going to need some chairs and a table for early morning tea / coffee sipping in the summer. Stay tuned for changes here eventually.

Well, I'm off to make seating plans and read the Quebec Sec 4 English Language Arts Curriculum. Is it weird that I get excited reading about learning goals, reader response and literary techniques? If there's such a thing as an English nerd, I am surely one.

Ha! The curtains have not defeated me.

Well, as in much of Central North America today and yesterday, it is snowing here. It started this morning, and it is supposed to snow all day and night, ending with about 15cm of snow. Its not a ton, but its enough to throw the city into chaos, because there are high winds, so visibility is not super good and it is slippery. One of the two main highways that cuts through Montreal (the 20) is closed down with a 5 car accident already, and its only 1:30 in the afternoon, so I can imagine things will only get worse by this evening.

This is the view out my front door (inspiring, I know -- all the geometrics on the buildings actually fascinate me). You can see that most people have already dug their cars out for the day, so it will be more of a mess tomorrow morning.
This is part of the view out the back -- I love these spiral staircases, they are everywhere in Montreal.

Oh, right, this post is about curtains, isn't it? In any case, I wasn't keen to drive out to the West Island to substitute teach today and get stuck for hours in traffic, so I'm having a snow day even though all the kids are hither and yon and Dave is at school. I spent the day to finally finish my curtains! (You can see my first attempt had a lot to be desired).

Yeah, so this is the tiny nook that we have our couch and shelves in. There is a chair across from it, tucked between the coat closet and the door to our room, and then my sewing desk - -thats our whole living room. We need smaller furniture in this space, I think, but in any case, I was telling you about the curtains, wasn't I?

Yes, so curtains. I dismantled my first curtains and bought new white fabric from Ikea, and more of the orange Joel Dewberry fabric. I stitched it all back together again, then pulled them apart and stitched it together again because all the seams were crooked or there wasn't enough orange at the top or it had too much white along the bottom . . . you get the idea. We also changed the curtain rod -- we were going to suspend them from a wire, but it wasn't working, so we got this thick rod instead. I like it better. I think the chocolate colour adds a bit of darkness and grounding to the space.

 The finished curtains just cover the windows, which makes them fit sleekly into this small space, and block the view of the side of our neighbour's house without blocking out all the sunlight. I will think of someway to open them later . . . for now I'm just happy to have something on the windows and not have to rip the curtains apart again. If you notice any errors, please don't tell me. 

A New Toy and Cake

I got a new toy this week that has helped me just about "finish" my little creative space in the living room. As you can see, I have my teeny tiny design wall and inspiration board hung up (two Ikea magnet boards, one covered with batting), a little clothes line for postcard and photos and such and the upper squares a little more sorted. But check out that sloppy ironing board! Since my original, blue ironing board cover got trashed (when I absent mindedly rotary cut a block on top of it and it became a victim of late night sewing mania), I have been trying to decide what to do with my ironing board. I had it wrapped up in this fabric with some batting underneath for a while, then I had it bare for a while, then I put a well folded old sheet under this fabric and wrapped it up again. The problem is that its not really portable this way. And since this fabric is the same stuff I used on Emma's nursing pillow, Emma got hungry and cranky every time I went to sew because it reminded her of lunch. I finally decided that action had to be taken.

One of the things I love about the city is the ability to just go out and get things. I know this sounds like a no brainer, but when you have lived in a town where you have to check the three local hard ware stores for everything, only to find that none of them stock the product you are looking for and that it will have to be added to the list of "Things for Dave to Get Next Time He's In the City ", it is very exciting. So, I packed the children up into the car, headed down to Reno Depot and found this little darling. Yes, a simple staple gun.

This staple gun has been a very satisfying purchase. For 15.00, I now have the technology. The ironing board is re-covered in this cute orange and yellow Joel Dewberry print that I like, but have never been able to figure out a use for. The orange will match my ridiculous sewing machine cover, should it ever be completed, as well as my soon to come curtains. Hooray.

In other news, I baked a really yummy cake. We were supposed to have guests over for dinner, so I made a nice meal. The guests forgot to show up, but the cake sure is tasty. I used coffee instead of milk in the icing. It kept the kids up late last night (oops) but it is really good. And with no one to share it with, we could have it for breakfast, too.

As you can see, I iced it with my usual style and attention to detail. I baked it too late, so it was still warm, and thus wobbled mid - icing. In other news, the mocha frosting matches my paint, which is definitely to be desired in cake, don't you think? I'll have to see if I can keep up a trend of stylish deserts in the future.

Okay, so the star quilt . ..

This quilt started last winter, when I joined the Threads Together Quilting Bee back in February. The month before I had picked up Kaffe's "Kaliedescope of Quilts" while on holidays, and was admiring his Ohio Star quilts. Then, American Patchwork and Quilting featured a quilt made with tiny Ohio Stars on its cover. Since I was quite enamored with the block, I decided to try making one for Jennicakes as one of her blocks -- I chose a medium size 8inch finished block. I wanted to do a test one before I messed around with her fabric, and so I made this block:

That solitary block sat around on my inspiration board for a while looking at me, saying, "I could be a quilt, you know . . I could be a quilt that used all your Pop Garden scraps, even . . . " And I realized that it was true. This size of star was just big enough to use up some of my favorite scraps, and could also include some wonderful fat quarters people had sent along with swap packages in the last while. So I pulled all the fabrics, cut them up and stitched the blocks together.

Next, I imitated one of my favorite quilters, Jaquie over at Tallgrass Prarie Studios, who made this star quilt , which I have admired for a long time. I almost chickened out on making the blocks slightly wonky, but Katy encouraged me.

I added the borders because I wanted it to be a bit bigger, and after a bit of hemming and hawing I took a deep breath and used the red peonies and blue daisies. I adore these fabrics, which was why I was being silly and hoarding them in a plastic bin in the basement. I decided I would much rather have them gracing my living room, so I went ahead and used them. I don't know if you can see in the photos, but I made the borders a little wonky, too. They are built around the quilt almost log cabin style. This meant set in seams, but I like the result despite the aggrivation in the moment.

The backing is made of all that cordoroy, with a row of scraps in the middle. It is really soft, but makes it quite a heavy quilt.

The one thing that I don't really like about this quilt is that I under quilted it. I was in a hurry to finish it before Emma got here, and between its size (60 X 74) and its weight, it was a wrestling match to run this baby through my machine. I settled for quilting about a quarter of an inch in from the stars and then quilting slightly crooked lines in between the blocks. If I'd had more time I would have done more lines and also quilted in the square frames, and maybe tried some free motion stuff around the borders. But I decided to just get it done instead of spending an extra week or two on it.

It is a really heavy quilt, and it drapes a little funny because it is under-quilted, but I'm sure that will wear away with washing, or maybe I'll go back and do some more quilting on it later (can you do that? I suppose I can always find out, can't I?)

In any case, it definitely cheers up my living room, and I love the way it glows in the cool, faint winter sunshine. And that is what matters, isn't it? I have lots of years to make beautiful, artistically perfect quilts. For now, most of my really great artistry seems to go into smaller quilts, that I can easily manage to run through my machine and that take a short time, while my bigger quilts tend to have more of a "just get it done so we can use it" quality about them. Which is okay. I am enjoying having more and more handmade things around our house, even if they are not perfect or show / selling quality. They brighten up our house and make it more of a home, and that is really the point.

Did I mention my kitchen is green now?

I've still got to put some stuff on this wall. I'm going to get a little white shelf and put my tea pot and bodum on it, since they are presently cluttering up my counter, and their cupboard space has been taken over by playdoh and paint. Plus some other things I haven't decided on yet.

I also decided it was time to take the garbage off the dishwasher. I think Aaron is old enough to stay away now.

It only took us 15 years to get around to buying one

That's right. We have been married 15 years in two months, and we have never owned a vacuum of our very own. When we were first married, and lived in a tiny, grungy apartment in B.C., we simply ignored the carpet. We were hardly ever home, we had no pets, we took our shoes off at the door and we never ate on it. Then we moved to a house in Langley and our border (one of those people who is thoroughly capable at all the practical things I am inept at -- we never could figure each other out) borrowed her parents'old one. Which still didn't stop us from ignoring the carpet most of the time. When we moved to Saskatchewan, there was a central vac system, so we used it. But about a year ago its suction started deteriorating until it got to the point where is basically just moved the dirt along. With two small boys and a cat, this has been a total disaster for the carpet.

So, as part of our push to get our house in a state where we can stay sane this winter, we bought a vacuum. And now I am spending about an hour a night scrubbing the carpet until the damn thing is at least uniformly discoloured.

This is the special attachment we received with it. I don't know if Dave bought it as extra or if it was a bonus. Its called the Power Paw. I don't know if you can read it, but it says its for picking up pet hair and doing stairs. Then in small print under the frightened looking cat is says : Do not use on animals.


It was good that they packed the vacuum in lots of styrofoam. That way, after Andrew was done constructing "stairs"(seriously), I could test it out on all the debris.


Also, why is it that when you look at photos of other people's children they are blissfully playing with their pretend food in their pretend kitchen, while my son


is making pancake and leftover salad stir fry. Um, in between taking bites out of the cold pancake. I guess its time for fridge locks.

Something on Andrew's Walls

My, I have a lot to say tonight. As my art teacher used to say about my answers to his introspective self-analysis questions (you asked, Dr G.), I do tend to be prolific.

In any case, now that Andrew's in playschool we are getting more and more crafts sent home with him. Not to mention the things we do around here. So I decided that it needed a home other than my refrigerator, where Aaron tears it down and drags it all over the house.



I got this idea from The Creative Family, written by Amanda Soule . She has a great blog -- lovely photos and inspiring writing. Its nothing fancy and cost about $5 -- some leftover hemp from my hemp jewlery making days, three nails and a few clothes pins.

It is hung ridiculously high up to be above toddler height for now.
I think we may do another one and hang pages from our favorite demolished children's books on it.