Puppies

Well, we didn't get paint but we got paint chips. We know some of the colours that we want so we'll pick them up tomorrow. This brings me to the story of our colour scheme. Before we moved we were thinking about what colour we wanted in our living room (which I had never seen - yes, I trust my husband).

Now for some history, at the end of November a stray puppy followed our older daughter and older son home from school. We sent away the one that followed our son home but broke down and kept the one that followed our daughter home. We decided to keep the puppy instead of sending it to a puppy adoption program. Since it's dark brown/black we agreed that Cocoa would be a good name. Well, a couple of weeks later the other puppy returned. By this time she was showing definite signs of starvation, she was all skin and bones. By this time we also decided that an indoor dog and a baby learning to crawl don't mix very well so Cocoa became a mostly outdoor dog. Of course it was easy to see that she needed a doggy friend and so we kept the second puppy too. The second puppy is blonde so we figured that it would be very fitting to call her Marzipan. I love marzipan, especially chocolate-coated marzipan and those little marzipan fruits. I have the Burt's Bees almond hand cream and I could sniff it all day, mmm. I also love brown, it's so warm and cosy and I look great in brown. So as we were talking about colour schemes for our living room we thought we could do dark brown on the bottom and a lighter colour on top. Then we joked about how we could take inspiration from the dogs, Cocoa and Marzipan. It's funny how jokes sometimes come back to haunt you. Have I ever mentioned that when we were on our way to visit friends this summer I kind of joked about perhaps moving to Cardiff? I didn't really expect to be here less than 6 months later but I'm enjoying it. Anyway, we know the colour's we'll be using and really, anything will be an improvement over grey-blue with white patches. We still need to work out what we want as accent colours and what would work well for the other main rooms but I feel good.

On non-paint fronts, I enrolled my older daughter in skating yesterday and she had a great time. We moved from a town where the only activity was hockey which didn't interest my very girly girl at all. Now, it's all about deciding what to do from the many options available. We had debated several different activities for when we moved. We almost enrolled her in gymnastics but for now it will be skating. She can always do gymnastics after the ice comes out of the arena.

New Territory

Last night as I was snuggling with my older daughter we were talking about her feelings about going to a new school and making all new friends. I told her that she was doing something that I had never done. I had never moved until I went away to university. In grade 7 and in grade 9 I went to new schools but all of my classmates went with me. As it turns out, the first day seems to have gone fairly well. Apparently our daughter has some admirers already - I am so not ready for this. Our son (who struggles with school in general) had a mostly okay day which is great! Our younger daughter starts school tomorrow. In her old school she went every morning but now she goes Tuesdays, Thursdays and some Fridays. It will be interesting to see how things go for her.

Today was very productive. I was able to get the old hot water hose for the washing machine off and put the new one on. I figured that since we had a brand new one, I might as well use it. Then I did laundry - yay! DH spent the day putting up the dog run. I will say that 10' x 10' is smaller than I imagined, at least they get to go for walks regularly. I'm very glad that it solves the whole issue with broken ties. It also makes it so that the dogs can share the doghouse again which we really wanted for the winter. When they were tied up they kept getting tangled together - not fun for them or us.

Tomorrow we're taking advantage of having only one child at home (the one who can't run away while shopping yet) and we're going to make use of the sale on paint at Canadian Tire. We need paint for our living room, dining room and hallway. We have a pretty good idea of what we want but we've never been able to have a calm trip to the store together. Tomorrow is our chance.

Unloaded

Just a quick update. On Thursday we unloaded the truck. We now have boxes in the basement and a garage full of boxes. We could have fit everything in the garage except there's a bunch of wood in there that the previous owner was burning in the stove in the basement (which we are not using because it is not up to code). I'm slowly emptying boxes and getting things put away.

January 19 - Adding a few pictures in here.

Here I am in our partially-filled U-Haul truck. We had our belongings in a 10' by 20' storage unit. The truck we rented was 26' long. There was a little bit of concern about whether we could get it all in. We were fortunate that many of our boxes were one of 2 sizes. We'd stack them up and then put odd boxes and other items on top. Our friend who was helping us was very experienced in packing trucks for moving so things worked very well.

And here's the truck fully loaded. We're so pleased that everything fit. We saved the furniture and bulky items for the last part. The idea is that they help to hold all the boxes in place. It worked, everything was in the same place when we opened the back as it was when we closed it.

Here's our garage before. Notice the wood piled nicely? When we moved in all the wood was piled up almost against the big garage door. DH got the kids working one day piling the wood farther in the garage so that we could actually move our things into the garage.

And here it is after everything was unloaded. It's so nice having the garage to house things till we get some more stuff done in the house. We still want to paint the living room and that will be much easier without all of our belongings in the way. Now we can take things out as we have a place to put them.

These boxes are in the basement, not everything fit in the garage. It would have if we hadn't had the wood in there. Notice how the boxes are pretty much all the same size? These boxes were amazing for moving. I love how they have the punch-in handles. The handles make them very easy to carry (as long as they're not overloaded). I did make sure to put my books in smaller boxes so they wouldn't be to heavy.

As I've been unpacking I've noticed a dilemma. There are some things that I can't put away because I have no shelves to put them on. At the same time, I don't want to get a whole bunch of shelves for things and then decide that I don't want those things anymore or that I don't like the style of shelves. So, a lot of things are staying in boxes until I figure that stuff out. I'm quite pleased with myself that as I'm unpacking I'm also putting things in a box to take to donate. It will be nice to no longer have so much clutter.

As for accomplishments today, we re-assembled our digital piano. The piano takes up way less space when it's assembled than when it's in the box. Assembling the piano also meant that I needed to find a place for my baby wraps/carriers since they were helping to cushion the piano. I had the genious idea to hang them on hangers, they look so neat.

We were also able to get a washing machine from Kijiji for $60. I'm quite pleased to be able to wash clothes at home now. Our awesome friends down the street were letting us do laundry at their home (with their super-cool washer and dryer). It's so much easier to just do it at home though.

The other thing we got today was a dog run for the dogs - remember how both of their ties broke? We were debating about buying one off Kijiji or from a pet store. The Kijiji guy hadn't gotten back to me by the time DH had to go to the city so DH just picked up one at the pet store. We may return it, I'm not sure. To be honest, at this point, I just don't care. I'll help set it up if I need to but other than that, I don't want to think about it. I have too many other things to think about - like the lesson I agreed to give in church tomorrow.

All's Well That Ends Well - I Think

Well I had a topic that I was going to do for yesterdays blog post. Of course yesterday's post never happened because I got to go on a trip with the family. I was going to talk about our friend Dan and the wonderful furniture that he and his sister gave us. I'll have to save that topic for another day. Today I'll talk about how grateful we are for Dan's help in loading our moving truck.

So, DH booked a cube van for Tuesday from our local car rental place. It turns out that it wasn't a cube van, it's a cargo van - big difference. Since there's nowhere else to rent anything here, the next option is to load everyone in the van and drive about 4 hours to where our stuff is. The plan is to stay overnight in a motel (with a pool and hot tub so the kids can have some fun). Then first thing in the morning DH and our friend Dan will get the truck and the kids and I will head home to take care of the dogs.

Well, the place we were going to get the truck from needed to make some repairs so we went with U-Haul instead. Now, U-Haul can be pretty hit-and-miss but we got a great deal today. Basically, the dealer where we live really needs trucks so we got a big discount and a great big truck.

I helped pack a little bit but then needed to get on my way with the kids. I left the packing in the capable hands of my husband and our good friend Dan. Before starting to pack the truck DH was convinced that there was no way they could get the contents of a full 10x20 storage unit in a 26 foot U-Haul. Thanks to some awesome packing, he was pleasantly surprised.

I got home to find that the tie for both of our dogs had snapped. Our wonderful neighbour had taken care of one dog and the other dog must have just stayed in the dog house till she heard us at the house. At least we have a shed where they can be safe and contained. It's so not what I needed though. I guess we'll be looking for something stronger tomorrow.

Painting Begins

I found the memory card so the pictures are now on the computer. I took a bunch of random pictures around the house. Later DH took pictures in a more methodical process. The unfortunate part is that the battery died as he reached the last two rooms. Of course, those are the first two rooms that we painted. Perhaps he wasn't so well planned after all. We've just painted the walls and the closets so far. We haven't done any trim, partly because I'm not sure what colours I want yet, partly because we'll be replacing the windows this summer anyway and partly because I'm lazy and I can overlook the trim for a while as long as the walls look decent.

We'll have to settle for my 'before' pictures.

This is the girls' room. Yes, it was like that when we moved in. I guess someone tried to get rid of the blue but didn't have much success. No, I don't get the blue square around the light.

This is after. We haven't done the ceiling yet but we'll get to it. The walls are the sky and grassy hills. My 11 year old will be painting horses in the field at some point. We may also do a tree and some flowers. At least it looks much better than it did. It will be neat to see when it's all done.

The other room that has been painted is our bedroom. Our bedroom was probably the best looking but I'm so tired of having a white bedroom. I want it my colour.

Orange!!!! I LOVE orange! It's so bright and cheery.

So, I learned some things with this painting experience. The major lesson is that if you decide to use leftover paint from the previous owner be very careful to check the label . . . and then check it again. I was sure that the paint that I used in the girls' closet said latex. I was wondering why it smelled so bad while I was putting it on . . . and why it didn't seem to want to come off my hands with just soap and water. I looked at the label again and saw the dreaded word "alkyd". So they got to camp out in their brother's room for a couple more days. Thankfully it was fairly mild so I opened their window (of course I had just put the plastic insulation on so that had to come off a bit). I also found out about getting rid of the smell with sliced onions in a bowl of water. Then I learned that rotting onions in a bowl of water smell a lot like alkyd paint. Fun stuff! But the girls are in their own room now in their own bed (a bunk-bed generously given to us by my sister - who has been storing it in her basement for a year, waiting for us to move).

Tomorrow DH goes to get our belongings out of the storage unit.

The Irony

So, I wanted to post some pictures but I have no idea where my card-reader is in all the clutter right now. Here I'm having a blog about creating order and eliminating chaos and right now things are very chaotic. I guess it will just help to show the journey that I'm on.

Yesterday one of our friends delivered a whole bunch of furniture, most of which belonged to his grandmother. It's just beautiful. It has made me realize, though, that a space looks much bigger when there's nothing in it. Tomorrow K is going to pick up bunk beds for the girls' room - yay!

Early next week he'll be picking up our belonging from the storage unit. That is when the real fun will begin. We have an attached garage where much of our belongings can go while we're figuring out how to order everything. We're also not using the basement as living space right now. I'm somewhat dreading having all of our stuff come. I know that there are some things that I want. Over the past couple months while it's been in storage I've realized that I can live without so much of it. Fortunately, I know where there are some donation drop boxes and other places to donate things. I knew when we moved that much of it would be donated. One of the issues about where we were living is that there was no place to donate things and I didn't want to just send everything to the dump. It will be interesting to see just what makes the cut.

A New Beginning

It's been a very long time since I've visited this blog but the time has come to start again. We have recently bought our first home and we moved in a little over a week ago. A move right before Christmas wouldn't be too bad if it was a short distance or if the house was move-in ready. We had neither of those condition. However, things worked out well and we all had a great Christmas and we really didn't need all of the things that we used to 'need'.

With the festivities over (well, we still have New Years) we've been busy making the house into our own. Starting with the easy things, we've been painting - a lot. We have been taking before and after shots and the plan is to share them here.

Over time our plan is to paint everything, refinish the hardwood flooring, install a new furnace, install an airtight fireplace insert, move the kitchen, redo the bathroom, re-insulate the exterior walls, finish the basement. (Some work was already started but it looks like it was improperly done. We'll be removing what needs to be removed and starting over.) Of course, I'll be doing gardening too.

It's going to take some time as it will depend on finances and the time we have available to do the work. It will be exciting to see the transformation. I can tell you one thing, I'm so glad I got rid of a lot of my clutter last year. There's still a lot to get rid of but it could be worse.