taking time to play

gets a little tough some days.


we had a lot of fun one day shopping at a nearby art store. the kids were THRILLED to get to play with rainbow pencils and colour a picture while i shopped.


mmmmm....MESSY!!!


both of the kids had a spot in their rooms that needed something. i could have picked up some cute artwork. OR they could create their own works of art.


i have made some bad choices with the kids during this selling process. stress tends to do that. we'll survive. but this choice was a WINNER!



we set up outside. because i wanted to have a special piece of work, i purchased some stretched canvas...saves money on the framing because this look is so trendy these days.

i got a kit that included watercolor pencils and acrylic paints....lots of colours!

i spent $10 on a decent quality set of paintbrushes.

pieces of styrofoam, aluminum foil, cardboard and hands added to the fun.



i wish we could do stuff like this EVERYDAY!

Aidan told me that it was the most fun he had painting.

i love that they have something special to enjoy in their rooms right now. so many of their belongings have been packed away and their comforts have been shaken.

the next day at playschool, Aidan painted a cool picture. he told me that it was "for the house".



what kinds of activities do your kids enjoy on busy days?

changes

today is another big day. our house gets professional photos done for the listing.

it was a late night. and it will be a busy day today.

would you believe that i washed windows in the dark last night? i was curious how they would look this morning...i am very impressed. they look amazing!

the living room and dining room is nearly ready. just a few little things need to be adjusted. the new paint colour doesn't appear too different from the old colour. but it is a few tones darker and looks fabulous. too bad we hadn't done that before.

i wanted to show off the new ceiling and our new light! we kept the same colour in the kitchen and only needed to paint a few walls to freshen them up.

our bedroom no longer has a shop-vac as part of our decor. we stepped up the bedroom style with new curtains and pillows. and i highly recommend not using your dresser as a coin collector...or lost item storage place! we'll see how long that lasts. up until recently our bedroom also became the zone for items that needed to be removed from young children.

the bathroom had a dramatic change with the tile and new colour on the walls.

our handy-dandy-super carpenter also added a frame around our large mirror. i love this mirror! we have a banjo style countertop in our little bathroom, and the mirror runs the entire length of it. amazing.

i want to share photos now that the decorating is nearly done. so much of our decor stuff got packed when Aidan started to walk. lots i had forgotten we had. but i also realize now how little we had added since we became parents. i think i may start to add more interesting items now that the kids are wiser not to touch everything. we'll see how they do in this next little bit.

our house will be officially listed for sale by the end of the week. most of the hard work is done. but we still have a teeny bit of work before it will be ready to show. i am nervous about getting the kids out of the house for those times and making sure nothing gets forgotten....like laundry left out or toys dropped behind a door....but i am more nervous about "strangers" walking through our house and peeking in my dishwasher or closets.

i am getting excited about moving on. and up. my tears for leaving this adorable little home are lessening. i'm sure our last day here will bring on a new round of tears...but some happiness that the next owners will surely enjoy this home as much as we have.

sentimental day.

fast forward

painting is nearly done.

we only have a few boxes left to pack this weekend.

the yard is nearly cleaned up. a flower bed and the garden patch remains. and all the toys...ugh! i took a look inside at the playhouse and there is some work to do inside as well. there has to be a better system for their outdoor toys to be organized.

cleaning and organizing is ongoing.

house inspection is done.

papers signed with our real estate agency. {we have the best realtors!!}

i was very, very tired this weekend. Kris had to work yesterday, so that was a major bummer.

i woke up with a migraine. sigh.



our tulips that have been here forever. they are definitely old. their blooms only last for a few days at the most. but i haven't had the heart to throw them out.

some daffodils. snowdrops? or something. i had forgotten that i had planted these! aren't they delicate?

our pear blossoms. they bloom in bunches like this. very pretty.

our yard is phenomenal in the spring. three fruit trees that blossom. tulips. bunches of iris blooms. daylilies. the climbing clematis that has spread over most of our back fence.

i have some frames hung that held photos of family and friends. but they can't be seen while we're selling the house. one of those "rules". i went back into my photo library and printed out photos of flowers from our yard and added those to the frames. we love how it turned out. they are all straight out of the camera. however, i think they would be totally fun to photoshop and adjust! it's on my list of fun things to do when i have the time and energy....

not too much planned for the day. maybe we'll finish up a few things around here. we're really missing family fun time. fun time that does not involve our house or other peoples' houses! right now the kids are enjoying playing together. i'm sure they're drumming up some kind of trouble. they have so few toys out to enjoy these days, so it is interesting to see what they do with their imagination. {some days mean interesting is 'oh! how cute is that?!'; while other days it is 'whatever where you thinking??!!? stop that at once!!'}

onward, ho!

i'll share our "after" photos some time this week. {i'm learning to not make promises these days.} i am taking photos, because it will be good to remember what "perfect" looks like! even if it only lasts 15 minutes...

house crisis

or crises?

we have been watching the house market for awhile. tracking our neighborhood. tracking neighborhoods that appeal to our needs.

unbelievable how much the internet has changed how you shop for homes!!

when we bought this house, we got printouts from our realtor. sometimes there was a photo of the front of the home. but it was mostly just type. neither of us remember photos from inside the house. i know they existed, but they were in the forms of brochures when you visited an open house. basically we learned what some of the terms meant....and could almost guess what kind of house we were going to see. such as newly renovated could have meant last year or 15 years ago. we still laugh over our 'tenant Bob' who even made the realtor sheet. but that is another story. good story. i'll share it one day. you'll be happy i did.

we spent so much time driving around communities that we started to get carsick from all the turning. and neither of us had ever experienced carsickness before!

the internet has been better for our use of time. and our stomachs!

but nothing can take the place of actually stepping inside a home and grasping the feel of it. or the smell.

yesterday we began our first round of in person visits. with our fun and efficient realtor. whom we have also dubbed our hero. read on.

our first house on our tour had incredible fancy schmancy draperies on every window. all identical. definitely not even close to our taste. and they come with the house. whoopee! this we knew from the pictures. and we could guess the smell. the smell of curry did make us a teeny bit hungry....but not something we wanted to live with 24/7.

next house.

not bad. did i mention we brought the kids with us? in car movie. popcorn. water. great until they had to pee. thank you for letting us use your toilet. it worked great! the layout did not.

moving along.

it was very nice to look at. i was getting excited. then, the smell of moth balls greeted us when we opened the door. do people really live like that? they also had a very interesting appliance in the kitchen...i have never seen anything like it before. i looked at our realtor and we decided to take a peek. we both got the whiff of the same horrid smell at the same time! note to self: do not open strange looking appliances or containers. but we did like this layout. and many of the interior choices caught our attention. backyard was quite nice. and the neighbors seemed normal and friendly. the kids had another tantrum and complained about being in the car. they also met the neighbors and then also had a few moments in the house, until they jumped on the sofa. can you sense our parental stress rising at this point? did i mention that we liked the neighbors? they had a child. we're already bonded with them.

last house. yeah we were breathing a sigh of relief at this point too. and not over house viewing, but rather over children watching. our movie and popcorn idea was not working out like we had hoped.

confession: back in early March we were driving around various communities, there was one house that was vacant. so i peeked in the windows. none of the neighbors came running to stop me and no men in blue showed up. believe it or not, that worried me a bit. that and the one home had a really noisy vacuum.

and this is the house we had next on our list. we got to see the inside. legally! because it was empty, we let the kids explore this one too. and then regretted it. they ran around the backyard. it backed on to a farm. and a slightly busy road. colours inside similar to ours. layout and elements not our style. at this point the kids were enjoying exploring the three levels of this home. since it was empty i wasn't concerned about them wrecking anything. but then it got very silent. i could hear Kris and our realtor chatting in the basement. i saw Kiara cruising down the steps to her Daddy. hmmm... Aidan's shoes are in the house, but he can't be seen or heard and he was not answering to his name. everything turned out well in the end. but a certain 4 1/2 year old boy went missing for an entire 10 minutes. in an empty and furniture-less house. Kris and i were distraught thinking that he had been kidnapped. relief and anger mingled together when our realtor discovered him crouched between the toilet and the half wall in the master en suite. behind the oddly placed bright red vacuum cleaner. where i thought i had looked carefully twice before.

lesson learned. no more children on house viewings!!!

as we discussed the homes later, many of our previous thoughts were forgotten when our emotions were tumbled over the near loss of our precious son. we did discuss with Aidan the dangers of hiding when no one else is playing the same game. he was quite baffled at our emotion. he was actually quite proud of finding the best hiding spot and couldn't understand why we were not feeling the same way.

one matter is settled. i'm not living anywhere that street. ever. that house plan is totally out of the running. and i never want to go back!

some time i should share some of my mother-stress dreams. aside from gripping me with terror in the middle of the night and not allowing me to sleep peacefully again, they are actually rather humorous. after the fact.

why is it that everything is funny after the fact?

one more week

i'll have a few more rooms to share the before-after photos of soon.

for now...here is our front step makeover.


this was one of those things that makes me say, "why didn't i do that before?" every time i walk up our front walk.

one trip to Wal-Mart. one trip to the dollar store. about $13 later...this is what i had.

well....those copper flower pots were filled with beautiful flowers last spring. of course they all froze over winter. but the copper pots still looked great! it's too early for live plants, so the plastic variety had to do this time.

another tip from our staging realtor.

have i mentioned that my dear husband loves his metals? yes. as soon as i saw those copper pots i knew he would love them. and i was right. sometimes i'm smart like that.

real life

take a deep breath.

breath out.

slow.

that is our motto these days!

how many of you can boast a box and coat covered bed AND a shop vac in your bedroom? i know. i'm making you jealous!!

not so many toys around. they are learning to play with certain toys in a new way. Aidan's little laptop also has a music option. they scroll through the music and dance to the different songs. and with all the furniture pushed out of the way and boxes stored away....they had a great dance floor last week. (and i got some really cute and fun photos) i'm sharing this one because it shows you what we got to look at since last Thursday until Wednesday. i will not miss the plaster patches!! i can promise you that. (unless it means we get another power vac to decorate our bedroom...)

this is what our living room has looked like since Monday night. except the walls were not finished.

at about 4 pm i swept, vacuumed, dusted and mopped. then i moved the furniture back. aside from a few extra boxes to sort and the pile of paint paraphernalia in the corner...it looks normal again! well...actually better than normal. i think i need to do a before-after of the living room.

it is so unfortunate that you can't see the amazing ceiling treatment in the photo. or get a feel for the difference the colour makes. i will just say for now that we would not have had THIS colour if i had not been a scrapbooker who keeps a messy desk with lots of unnecessary paper scraps! that is a story i think i need to share one day.

the challenge for me has been to "clean-up" the house each morning. and by "clean-up" i mean to make sure everything is picked up off the floor and furniture is moved back into the centre of the room again. the next challenge has been to get the kids out of the house and enjoying themselves. this morning we were at the library. but the afternoon was beautiful and the kids seemed more than happy to play together in the backyard. bliss to be at home and be out of the way of the painter.

Kiara spotted the bird. i LOVE this photo! {almost as much as i love my Nikon!!}

yay for bike riding!! Kiara has a way to go before she will actually enjoy herself. Aidan loves to "go fast", so i am sure it is just a matter of time before Kiara catches on. the plan is for them to ride down the sidewalk - avoiding people - from one landmark to another. all within sight for me. and they are thrilled. i get to sit down. or take photos of children who are happy to pose and show off. our little slice of heaven...

the colour of our bedroom walls are Marlboro Blue by Benjamin Moore. it feels so serene and peaceful. what's your favourite wall colour?

life is just like that

no photo updates.

but that doesn't mean i'm not taking pictures!!

i think i REALLY need to take a photography class. one to learn if i am really taking too many photos of each sitting. i don't think i am...but maybe i'm wrong? and i would love to work on photo storage. that is my dilemna. i am encouraged and thrilled that my dear husband thinks my photos warrant back up storage and extra hard drives. i'm sure it has nothing to do with documenting the lives of us and his children. oh no, that couldn't be it.

oh and the construction and packing drama continues.

our carpenter has now been given the grand title of "super dave". and he's rather shy, so i doubt we'll share his photo...but he has been working wonders with our little house.

and we really evaluated our talents and hired a painter this time around. it was another smart move for us right now! between the odds and ends jobs and packing and keeping the kids safe....i really doubt the paint would have appealed to any potential buyers.

this week has been another busy week. and we've had to stay away from the house as much as possible. i set up our portable DVD player and a new movie for the kids to watch. they have some fuzzy chairs given to them by their grandma...perfect theater set up for them. i was soooo tired, that i joined them on the floor after supper. and tried to sleep. you know you are tired when moving stuff off a bed or sofa is too strenuous! i must have done well, because i have a second wind just as it is truly time for me to go to bed for good.

being the skilled procrastinator that i am...i left it to the last minute to send in some entries for an online contest. we'll see how that works out for me. sigh. there are just too many balls to juggle. a month ago it was really important...but now, not so much. but i would have kicked myself if i let the opportunity go. never mind entering a month ago when my mind was in it....why so early?!

maybe tomorrow i can even share some photos. that would be a dream! i have some on my camera that can't be moved to the computer until i have space.

space. the ever expanding theme these days. there is never enough of it.

and i do wonder how clear my mind really is these days. thankfully my family and friends seem to understand.

i am thankful that the reason behind my cluttered brain is all good stuff. nothing to complain about whatsoever....as long as you can say losing your mind every once in a while is okay.

off to get some needed beauty sleep....

going with the flow...

this is how we are living these days.

can't sit on the couch yet.

we did manage to put away some things so that we could eat at the table.



there is lots of this around.

and there will be more in the next few days.


i should have taken photos of our bedrooms today! that would have been fun. in order to sleep tonight, i had to find new homes for the junk already. i have another day before the painter begins and the ceiling guy finishes. and for sure another day for our carpenter to work away. we are amazed at the amount of work he completes each day...as well as the methodical process. until Kris or i mention..."oh, yeah....did we mention this?" most often he is one step ahead of us as he completes something we simply never thought about!

today was the first day that he was working with myself and the kids also in the house. i was amazed at how well behaved the kids were. well...after i had to tell Aidan to let the poor man work without a shadow.


i'll keep you posted with more of our happenings. it's going to only get crazier for a little while. {yikes!}

as is

our return home will be a little dustier....for a bit longer!


renovations. you just never know how exactly long everything will last.


i am so glad that the messiest of the work is completed. tile is in. grouting is almost done.


painting is up next. lots of trim in this old house. lots of trim. lots.

here is the before photo of our bathroom. the goal was to change the floor and finish the walls more professionally. {neither Kristian nor i have ever liked this floor...but we lived with it for over ten years...}

the next step is the painting. i have a new colour picked out. i am anxious to see how it will look on the walls. funny story...i brought the kids in partway through the week so that they could see what it all looked like. at that point the toilet was sitting in the bathtub. this was a great concern to them that the "bathroom was broken". can you tell what feature is most important to children?! when we returned last night, Kris had to install it. our only other bathroom is getting a new ceiling....so there is no light....making it very dark. good planning for us!

next the kitchen. new floor. and the ceiling cracks patched.

the floor is not terrible. but when you compare it with our new maple hardwood...it is terrible!

this paint colour will not change. but it will get a paint job. and i think we'll install a new light.

and now to the entry. believe it or not...this is what it looks like clean. ugh!! you can't easily tell in the photo, but there is a horrid patch job below the electrical panel.

it just needs some grouting. and the paint colour will also stay the same. already it looks like a huge improvement already.

another big item on our list is getting a ceiling "knockdown" treatment. all of the ceilings have been patched professionally. and all the bedrooms have been completed now. next up are the living areas.

white is a tough thing to photograph! but you can see the crispness of the job.

here is a close-up:

it is amazing how modern our home is beginning to look.

all these renovations....in preparation for...selling!!

and that is a whole new post.

party's over

the kids have had a total blast living with their babysitter and her siblings. i am not completely sure they could say the same about my kids! they have discovered the strain of being treated like a celebrity. not always a joy when you have a couple of shadows following you everywhere.

i think it was day three and the teens were still sleeping. Aidan was still in his pajamas and reluctant to get dressed just in case he missed something {i think!?} he then told me that he was bored because he had no one to "play with". oh dear. life at home is going to be rough for this lil' guy.

anyways...our extended sleepover has been enjoyable. kind of like a vacation, but not! does that make sense? it has been nice to get away from our house for a little while...stare at other walls and floors...drive down different streets....shop at other grocery stores....listen to other noises...

my darlings have done quite well. no yogurt has been spilled anywhere besides the table!!! but, four more bodies---especially when two of them are the very little kind---add more debris. Aidan let his guard down last night at supper and left a gigantic mess of crumbs below his chair.

i have gone to "visit" our house a few times this week. it usually involved picking something up or dropping something off. it is messy!! i'll have a bit of work to do this weekend cleaning up. but the walls and ceilings are going to look amazing. well...the walls will look better once they are painted! the large cracks will be gone. we called them our "character cracks". much like the "character squeaks" we used to have in our floor before Kristian installed the new subfloor. yes, that little old house has A LOT of character in places!

i'll have to share photos of our mess....