So this past week we had some trees removed from our property.  One which was just dead and needed to go anyways (and was a relatively easy go)

Two which were a bit  more challenging as they hung over the house and were at the edge of the top of the bank behind our house (so no bucket truck would reach).  The one he’s up in and the whiteish one to the right of it.

So we’ve gone from this beside the house (the two in the top left corner) to this and this to this.

Ultimate change from when the house was first finished, May 1, ‘07

to now

The trees went through a further process of metamorphosis…

we had a local guy with a portable mill come out…

(that plus 9 garbage bags of powder-fine sawdust that we’ll use on the icy driveway this winter)

Ken and I spent several hours yesterday hand-trimming off the bark from the edges (bug control) and it’ll sit in the garage for the next year, calling to Ken, while it dries.  Red Maple, Red Oak and White Oak.   Gorgeous wood and so much of it!  Cheap, too.  $180 plus lunch and beer and more talking than working.   Gordon’s a great guy.

On another note, my rhubarb is doing great:

as are the raspberries

Ken also managed to fit in putting a new storm door on the front and I further strained my wrist that I wrenched (repeatedly) while we cut brush a few weeks ago.  I’m finally caving and wrapping it to let it rest some and maybe heal.  Tired, sore, but very happy.

I’ve been very tired of thinking, lately.  Tired enough to not have the energy to tell you the little things.  Little things like Ken’s inexplicable and new sensitivity to coffee.  Specifically coffee.  We’re mostly tea drinkers, here, at least during the week.  Coffee is for weekends and leisurely breakfasts.  However in the past few months, the moment Ken starts drinking just one cup of coffee he goes nuts.  He gets jittery, irritable, and starts rushing around cleaning/tidying/etc.  Not that I’d mind but it makes him snarly and my weekends lose all sense of relaxability since I’m pulled into the whirlwind of “dosomethingnowheythisneedscleaning!”

Too tired to tell you about the logger dudes that took out 3 of our massive trees the past few days and piled them neatly to be milled by a dude down the road.  I have pictures, but not of everything – stay tuned as I’ll take more tomorrow.

We’ve decided to put off til fall the mountain moving, which means seriously getting our act in gear to get my garden set up, but I lost my steam in starting seeds early so the flower seeds I was going to start last week haven’t been done.  I’ll get it back for the veg seeds – they’re fully planned, right down to the number of seeds to start.  I need to try and make newspaper pots to transplant some of the little seedlings soon, too.  We need more time to make things like my garden boxes and cleaning out the gutters (I know!) but the weather’s being all April-y and next weekend Ken will be helping a co-worker move and my deadline for the garden approaches and the weekends just slip away.
Maybe the tired stems from this new phase of naughty that Ethan’s entered, wherein he’s decided to be a little bad boy for a while.  Hate this phase.

And then there’s Victor, who I hate I can’t catalogue his life like I did Ethan’s.  I know I’m missing on things – things that I love but will forget.  Things like how he talks now – so much better!  And how he still says things like “grape-shoes” (grapefruit) and “soo-kini” (zucchini) but that he also says “Wiktor” now, instead of “Witor”.  I miss that a bit.  He’s getting so big again – he fits into 3T clothes already!

There’s so much going on (yay spring) and so little time/energy to think about it.  Hopefully there’ll be some rest, eventually.

We decided to wait on the digging and re-drivewaying.  It’s dirt, it can wait til fall.  Come fall we’ll have all our debt paid off (excluding the mortgage) and have money saved up to pay for the earth moving without having to borrow against it.  The economy isn’t good right now, everybody’s job is at risk, we don’t want to take unnecessary chances.  It’ll also give Ken all summer to cut down the trees that are in the way on the hillside and move the wood somewhere.  It’ll give me time to have my garden and harvest (hopefully) before the work is done.  Once the garden has given me all it’s going to I’ll pull up the sides and spread the dirt around with some seed, mayhap.  At least enough to  keep the soil from eroding.  I may try to move some of it out of the way so the truck and/or excavator won’t compact it.  It means that, next spring, I’ll have to do the garden all over again, but I’d be doing that anyways with the space made from the hillside.

On other notes, I did a tarot spread last night (several, in fact) and am scared for several reasons now.  Things do not look good; not good at all.  I hope I’m wrong.  I wonder, too, who that Queen of Swords will turn out to be.  Not me, definately, but I can’t think of who she may be and she represents a significant role in our future.

(frequent Noggin watcher inside joke, sorry) (Ken just insinuated that I’m lame.  WhatEVER!)
So anyways, we’d called the dudes who did our septic because their little card said they also do earth moving and we like them (super nice, reasonable rates), to come out and give a quote on doing the hillside for us (instead of us renting something and trying to do it ourselves).  Charlie (owner – met before, very nice) came out and it turns out they were the company that did the sitework for our house initially.  It’s nice that he’s familiar, then, with our land.  He gave a rough idea of how long and how much and when.  He also mentioned what he’d *wanted* to do for the driveway, initially, but was refused that by the building company because they said too much cost (very penny-pincher company and it shows all over the house).  Oh how we wish he’d been given the ok to do it because it’s *so* much better of a design for the drive than the current, super-steep drive that we have now.  So much, in fact, that I think we’re going to have him go ahead and do it.  He said they’d be able to have it done in a day because there wouldn’t likely even be trees in the way and it’d basically give us a switch-back to get up the hill.  (More plowing in the winter but much easier.)

As for the hillside he’s going to give us a final quote tomorrow but he said likely 2-3 days with a $100/day discount if we’re ready to go next week (it’s a slow time for him since the ground is too soft for bigger projects).  It’s a bit steep for us right now, though.  We’ll have to see about that quote as we can afford 2 days but 3 is really pushing it and with the extra day for the driveway… well… we’ll see what the quote says.  We may end up going to the bank for a small loan.  At least with the driveway done that won’t be a deterrant should we need to sell the house in the future – I’ve worried about that before, given how steep ours currently is.

The house is beautifully, breathably, quiet. (*cue Victor’s early wake up from nap in five…four…*)

There’s no body making noise but me and my typey-type fingers.  It’s.so.strange.  The past few weeks have been, as the Grinch said, “noise, Noise, NoisE, NOISE!”  Now that the holiday’s are over, though (and they were wonderful!), I’m being driven by instincts that are screaming at me to ACT.NOW.QUICKLY!  Like in August with my weird KNIT.NOW.OMG! urges, I’m being ordered to prepare to plant the garden!!!  I’ve been pouring over seed catalogues and books and trying to figure out what the plan of action will be.  I have loads more planning to do and WAY more work than you’d believe.  Ken got a chainsaw (and gear) for Christmas so we can now cut down trees.  We also found out that renting a backhoe/excavator won’t cost as much as we thought it would so this spring, as soon as the ground is less-frozen, we’re digging out the side hill.  I don’t know how much room I’ll need for the garden, but we also need to dig out space for the root cellar Ken’ll be building me (for the gads of veggies I’ll be storing up for next winter in my hugely successful garden). (What? It could happen!)

I’m also ordering a whole bunch of stuff from my favourite online yarn source because people LOVES ME and gifted me with certificates of joy (in large amounts, yay!).  I’ve got at least 2 projects to make in the next 4wks because in exactly 31 days from today we’re leaving the boys to their Grammy and flying south.  Not out of the country, but still travelling without boys.  It’s gonna be great!

I just hope we don’t get sick right before we leave.  We’ve been sick for the past forever and I’m getting a little tired of it, to be honest.

On Friday, Ken’s work was toying with us.  They gave him the option, let *him* choose, whether he wanted to go to HK on Sunday instead of Tuesday.  They’ve never let him choose before, and it threw us for a spin.  A few hours later, though, they discovered that a portion of Ken’s project – one that he didn’t do himself – had a problem.  A big problem.  Ken spent Saturday at work and they still hadn’t fixed it (he and several other people were working on it).  Today he goes into work, trying to fix it and we’ll find out whether he’s even going to HK on Tuesday or not.  If this problem isn’t fixed they can’t go into pre-production which is when he needs to be there.  If it’s not fixed the product gets pushed back (yet again) and Ken’s stressed that it won’t make the deadline of the client and then they can’t sell it and then what was the point of it.  He’s been enjoying working on it, proud of it, and these problems are sour lemons.  He’ll end up going to HK eventually, but if it’s not tomorrow then he won’t be back for Ethan’s birthday and our trip to Dorney will have to be post-poned.  Not a big deal to me, or Ethan I expect, but Ken’s quite determined to celebrate this birthday on the actual day.

All this stress on Ken worries me, but we’ve talked about it and even should the worst-case-stress-scenario happen we’ll work through it (nervouse breakdown).  We’ve talked about what we each can do to make it easier for him to deal, we’ve talked about stress-management techniques (were this not a G rated blog I’d mention an odd one he has – it’s not what you think), we’ve talked about talking and about making sure to keep the lines of communication open between us (not that that’s typically a problem).  We’ll be ok.

We’ve also set a put-house-on-market goal for next spring.  We love this house so so very much, but it’s not a good working environment for Ken and truthfully it’s not the right environment we’d wanted to raise our kids in.  We’re going to spend as much spare time as we can in finishing up the house.  Some paint (kitchen, one office wall, upstairs baths, 1/2 of Ethan’s room, ceiling touch-ups where we missed the walls), the bonus room finishing (wiring, insulation, drywall, flooring, paint), possibly a deck out back.  I’ll do my best to tidy up the landscaping (spring bulbs, flowery annuals, general tidy-up).  We’ll consult a realtor and see if there’s anything else we need to do.   We’ll hope like hell that the market picks up and we can sell this house.  We’ll hope like hell that Ken can get a good job somewhere we’ll be happy.  We’re looking pretty hard at my homeland, to be honest.  Both of us (not just wishful thinking on my part).  VT would be lovely too, but there’s just no jobs there for Ken.  New England, in general, is pretty high on our peferance list.

*le sigh*

I love change, I do, but I’m really at a point where I want to put down perennials and see them flourish over years of growth.  I want to settle in and make long-term house and gardening decisions.  Not ones to help us sell a house.  I know things should settle down soon.  That chances are better we’ll be able to stay in the next place.  Best case scenario is it’ll be somewhere that, should Ken not be able to stand his job or need another one he’ll be able to find one, and I will too should I need to.

I’m rambling.  I’m soul-tired.  At least I have my knitting and soapy distractions to keep me from dwelling too long.  The boys are pretty good at distracting me too, you could say.

As it was Canada a few days ago, I’m reminded of all the things I love about my country, and all the things I miss so much.  For an expat, the day of the year that your country celebrates itself is always super hard.  Worse when things in the country you live in are in a rough point.  Worse when you’ve already realized you (and your family) need to move already.

We love this house so very very much.  We love having so much land (though don’t love the slope of it or that there are so many trees to remove before we’d be able to properly use it the way we’d like).  We keep saying to each other that we just want to pick up the whole house and bring it with us.  It’s so “us”.  So perfect for our family.

At least I can take consolation for the fact that should we ever build a house again, this is likely going to be it.  We’ve got the blueprints and already know what minor changes we’d make (like a 2nd story window in the stairwell, somewhere we could put a woodstove, a window on the un-windowed office wall).  We already know we love the layout/flow of the house.  We know just where/how big a screened in porch should be.  We know where the deck will go.

But Ken’s job is quickly chipping away at us.  How much more time he spends working, how much more time he needs to destress.  How much strain it’s putting on all of us.  It can’t go on, and as much as we love this house it’s not enough.  So the job search begins.  It includes Canada now, without much limitation (not the Maritimes – as much as I love them, not Quebec – as much as I don’t, ideally not T.O. or Ottawa or the plains).  I hope we’ll be able to sell the house.  I hope we’ll be able to pull it together to really showcase it’s awesome features.  I hope people are still willing to move out of the city and into a ‘burb as far away as we are.

So many hopes…

Last night we stuck our paint brushes in buckets and transformed a section of our house (doesn’t that sound over-the-top?!). The foyer was our target and we paint paint painted it. It was our first time painting with this type of paint. Til now we’ve been using Home Despot’s homebrand Behr, and all our colours have been in the pastel pallet (if you look at the colour code it’ll have a tiny ‘u’ or ‘p’ in the corner for ‘ultrawhite’ and ‘pastel’). The difference was immediate in that the ultrawhite paint is thinner. The pastel we got away with only one coat and it goes on thickly enough that you don’t need more than that if you’re moderately generous. The ultrawhite needed a lot of touch-ups, which we’re not that fond of being as we’re so lazy.

The colour was also darker than we’d anticipated, but all said and done and dried it looks really nice. Very “clean” looking since it makes the white of the trim and the doors really pop and the two compliment each other well. It’s grey, but light and with blue hints in it – I’m interested to see how it looks in natural light (cloudy day today, so you get fake light).

Before

After

Before

After

Just in case you didn’t know. All those fixtures and angles and argh!

However. DONE. And lookin’ gooooood! Take a look…

Before

After

Before

After

The colour is a light salmon colour, and though the camera doesn’t do it justice it’s nice without at all being too pink or peach or coral or whatever. I’m glad we had the dark blue towels/toilet rug to contrast, though, since it looks nicer than the previous towel.

Tonight it’s the bathroom.  My job today is to tape the edges, which’ll suck since there’s just.so.many.  Painting bathrooms kinda sucks, but it’ll be worth it.  I’ll show a before/after once it’s done.

Get comfy, this one’s going to take a while. So long, in fact, that I’m going to categorize it.

Children
I’m so far behind in doing the boys letters that I’ve decided to skip them this month entirely. That’s not to say lots has happened – it’s always happening, but I just can’t keep up with all that’s going on as well as cataloging it right now. Ethan’s being a better boy but hates to eat. Victor’s talking more, understands basically everything we say and is starting into the “willful disobedience” and pushing his limits and whining. The last part is my favourite. They get along fairly well these days, too, which is nice.

Kate and Austin visited this past weekend and the boys slowed down (barely) enough for me to capture their images with other people… Soap
Things are going quite well in that everything is wrapped up and pretty looking and ready to go. I still haven’t got my website up yet (I KNOW! believe me, I do!) but I’m having things move ahead anyways. Kate bought some and took some samples up for her boss who runs, on the side, a cafe. Kate believes he may be interested in the soaps, specifically the coffee ones (naturally). I’ve already got formulas written up for a few new soaps to try next, but I want to wait and see what happens with other things, first. Ken made a good suggestion for the scrubby soap to be less lathery (to encourage more scrubbing) so I’m going to try and figure that into the next formula, as well as adding pumice since it’s a finer “grit”. I may, or may not, continue adding the coffee grounds.

Home Improvements
With spring upon us, Ken and I find ourselves turning into little bees and getting.things.done. Just today I spent hours in Home Despot buying paint and wood and cable and things. We’re going to be painting the foyer (light greyish-blueish), the downstairs bath (pinky-peachy), the boys bath (bluey-greeny) and the unpainted wall in the office (it will be shelves eventually, but until it is we’re painting it “shelf colour”). I’ll take some pictures tomorrow so I have “before” shots. The wood and cable are for Ken to build a shelf above the tele to move our electronic stuffs there since the tower unit we have isn’t working so well – the couch, being where it is, allows for easy access from little boys. While Kate and Austin were here last weekend, Ken and I went out shopping and bought decorative stuffs for those same little boys’ bathroom upstairs (which is why we’re ready to paint). We were in Tarjay and saw the most adorable penguin set we just had to have it. So we did:

Before:
After:
Before:
After:
I have to admit that I adore the little feet on that towel; Ethan does too (as well as the whole penguin theme). So we’re painting the walls, now that we have a colour palette to start with. I’ll keep you updated.

Furniture
‘But wait!’ you say, ‘You haven’t given those furniture pictures yet!’ True. I was making you wade through the other aspects of my life first (or at least skim the surface thanks to photos). So I’ll get straight to it…

Victor approves. We.love.this.furniture. The living room, cleared of all but stuff that we’ve bought ourselves, free of hand-me-downs, is now fully and completely OURS. The furniture is a bit on the big size, but we’re dealing admirably with that. The chair, my seat of joy, is huuuge – about the size the old loveseat was – and perfect to curl up in with a book (or, you know, a small child if I have to). The loveseat is Ethan’s favourite place to sit. The couch is too high for Victor to get up on his own (he uses the ottoman, an inch or two shorter than the chair, to get up on the chair), but that won’t last for too much longer we’re sure. It has, however, passed the greatest test for us for a couch – the double-snuggle test. Ken lies down, I lie down in front of him. As long as I don’t fall off it’s good, if there’s extra room so that I don’t *feel* like I’m on the precipice, it’s perfect. Our couch is perfect. The ottoman is the size of a crib mattress, and doubles as space for my legs when I curl up and sleep in the chair (like last night for a quickie nap). LOVE. The ottoman is on rollers, don’t love, but we’re slowly training the boys to not roll it around. The furniture came with an unseemly amount of pillows, so we’ve taken all but three out of the living room (to save them being destroyed by the boys) and they’re in the office on the futon and look great in there, too. I love the living room so much that I’m undertaking the ridiculously time-consuming task of making a matching afghan for the couch. I start it tonight.

Outdoors
We’ve been busy, as have our plants. Everything, even stuff I was sure wouldn’t survive, is thriving! We found one leaf of the rhubarb had been torn off, and then nothing else touched. Lets hope the deer remember that lesson! I’m always a late seed-planter so today I continued that trend and planted some starters for tomatoes, hostas and lemongrass. It’s looking like I won’t have my big garden this year – there’s too much ground work to do before we have beds ready – but I can at least have my beloved tomatoes and get the hosta bed and some lemongrass established before fall. My double-daffy’s have bloomed and look lovely, the lavender has been growing like mad, and I planted the dogwood shrub under the front window. I also bought some pretty’s (flowers) for the front step and planted some seeds for hanging baskets and flowers. Ken, however, has been a mad-man and decided to move the sorry looking, old rock wall we had along the roadside. He’s shifting it back about 8′ and making it straight and pretty and the ground in front of it level(ish) and nice looking too. He’s not nearly done, but even what’s moved already looks great! I’ll take some pics tomorrow, if the weather co-operates. I’m planning on planting a whole mess of daffodils or lilies down around the mailbox, once we’ve moved it. It’s going to look great!

I think that’s about it, for now. We’re silly busy but love this kind of stuff. I hope you, too, are happy with how things are for you right now. If not, go do something productive. It can’t but help.

86F and sunshine as far as the horizon.  IN APRIL!  WTF is the rain?!/Furniture store just called and they have our stuff *now* and are delivering on Tuesday.  1.5wks early makes Kelly a very happy girl!

*happy dancin’*

We finished the living room painting! In a big swoop of painting fervor we started on the hardest-to-do wall (tele wall) then it was done quickly enough we moved onto the next-hardest-to-do and it was done quickly enough and we had time so we just kept going and now it’s done. It.looks.great. It gives the room dimension which makes the room seem a bit smaller but in a good way. It helps define the area much more concisely. It goes really well with the dining room paint, too! Progression as follows:

This is the closest I can get to showing the true colours: A teeny bit darker than we’d planned, but not bad and it really makes the molding pop (which we love the molding). We’ve got extra too, for the inevitable scratch/car/marker/little boy marks that’ll happen.Now we just have the kitchen (low priority – what little wall space there is around the cabinets), foyer (high priority – likely a light tan), and bathroom (medium priority – peach) and we’ll have the main floor done. Upstairs is the play area (low priority – no idea), boys bathroom (low priority – no idea), our bathroom (medium priority – tan or grey), the other half of Ethan’s room (high priority – light yellow) and the bonus room (medium priority – once it’s done, no ideas there either). We should likely repaint the office a 2nd coat, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s so far down our list it’ll never get done. Darn.

As we’ve got visitors coming next weekend, we’re doing a lot of cleaning this weekend. As the weather is stupidly beautiful (partly cloudy, forecaster says high of 67 but our weather machine says it’s 72F right *now*) we’re doing a lot outside as well. We’ve raked some and cleared more dead wood and brush and chopped up fallen trees. I’ve started some seedling flowers and the rhubarb are doing incredibly well! Last weekend it was just the barest tip of green/red poking up, this weekend we have surprisingly large leaves unfurling (3-4 on each plant)! Amazing! We’ve done laundry and cleaned bathrooms and tidied the office (which is our new “spare” bedroom until the bonus room is finished); later we need to clean/rearrange the garage. Once I’ve posted this I’ll be going into the living room to tape off everywhere the boys can’t touch because last night I got paint. They couldn’t get the colour I wanted (we took in some of the extra Celery we had – 2 full gallons – to retint) so we’ve got something similar but less blue-y – should look really nice (smaller spot is the celery, larger is the sprucey).

Tomorrow we have hair to cut on every boy in the house and then vaccuming and mopping floors and more painting tomorrow night. If we’re lucky we’ll have the whole living room painted this weekend (though I have my doubts) – which is an exciting prospect!

I hope your weekend is as nice and productive as ours is being!

Muahahahaha!

(sorry ’bout that)

We finished it last night in another lengthy 45mins of painting. Seriously, this is the way to paint! No kids to worry about (not that we don’t love them but they get in the way of work), one of us doing the rollering, one doing the edges.

Next is the room beyond, in that photo, the Living Rm. We’ve decided on a colour called “Restful” (the dining rm and our bedroom is “Crisp Celery”, fyi – gorgeous colour!). I’m pretty excited about it. We’re going to take back the two, untouched gallons of Celery we have and see if they can retint it to the Restful colour. We’ll still have extra, but we’ll maybe do two coats since we spend so much more awake time in the living room.