Newfoundland Vacation (Photo Heavy!)

Emily and I have been away for the past 3 weeks - David sent us off to Newfoundland to visit my family. My dad calls his parents every evening, and since Emily was born my Grandmother instructs my dad to "give that little girl a kiss and a hug for me!"

It took us 3 days of driving to get there (with lots of breaks for Miss Emily), but she was such a good little traveller!

She got to meet most of the family, as everyone was there for my grandparents' 71st wedding anniversary.

We also helped celebrate my Aunt & Uncle's 50th wedding anniversary. I got screeched in at the party (but got to drink Purity Syrup rather than screech, as I'm nursing), and am now an "honourary" Newfie.

We had a great time at a Mussel boil on the beach...

Emily's First time on the Beach!

And Emily had a bath in her Great-Great-Grandmother's bowl (she was a midwife, and most of the children born in Bonne Bay were washed in that bowl, including Emily's Great-Grandmother and Grandmother). She had a great time, splashing water all over Grammy's floor!

We had a great time, and finally after 3 weeks it was time to say goodbye...

Rocky Harbour, Newfoundland

... and head home.

Unexpected Project

A few nights ago, David and I were talking about our office, and what we could do to freshen it up. Our first thought, naturally, was paint. We contemplated many different colours, but couldn't settle on any one colour. Until David asked if we had paint in the basement. When I painted the craft/guest room when we first moved it, I bought a gallon of green paint as well as a gallon of blue paint (even though it turned out I only needed a quart of the blue). So, at 11pm we emptied out the office, I patched all the nail holes in the walls left by the previous owner, and then started cutting in. By the time I was finished it was 2am! Emily woke up at 5:30 for her feeding, and when she went back to sleep, I found myself wide awake. I tossed and turned for a little while before giving up. I figured, if I'm awake, I may as well get busy. By 11am, the main painting was done. We had to run out for some paint for the trim, and by supper time all the painting was finished.

We looked through office furniture at Ikea and finally settled on some pieces that will (eventually) work well in the room. Although, we can't afford to pick them up now, over the next few months our tiny office will have a new, organized look!

Before - the yellow was really intense...

After - A nice, cool, relaxing blue

The office furniture on our "to buy" list

Summer Projects...

As usual, I have a long list of projects for this summer. First and foremost is to repair and repaint my old bedroom furniture from my childhood for Emily. When I was 16 I bought myself a new bedroom set, and gave my old set to my youngest cousin. She used it for many years, until she got a new set. It then went to live in my aunt and uncle's barn for the next 7 years. Just before Emily was born, my uncle called and asked if I wanted the furniture back, warning me that it was in pretty rough shape. I said we'd take a look at it and see if it was worth restoring.

On first inspection, it looked pretty bad. The once white paint had a greyish speckling to it, there were some chips in the pain and in the wood, mice had made one drawer their home, and some of the drawers themselves will need a little work. Although David thought they were a lost cause, I was (and still am) pretty optimistic.

I went out to our shed a couple days ago to have another look and to start cleaning with a bleach solution. I wanted to know how bad the damage was to the paint. As it turns out, the grey speckling that I thought might have been mildew damage was only dirt! So, with a little love and care the furniture will look as good, if not better, than it ever has!

Bureau

Bureau with hutch (will be delivered later)

The mouse-home drawer

Vanity/Desk

You can see the clean spot in the middle of this drawer...

We're still waiting for the hutch to go on one of the bureaus, as well as a corner unit. I can't wait to get started on these!

Finished Basement!

Our basement is finally done! We chose a red oak laminate floor, and it's amazing how much bigger the living room looks!

Now it's just a matter of unpacking all of those boxes and getting everything back into order!

Basement Update

Once the crew ripped up the sub-floor that they had exposed, they found that the water had stayed to one half of the basement. They set up a couple of fans and a de-humidifier (which means we now watch TV with the volume really high!) and let them run for a few days to get rid of the moisture. On Saturday, the supervisor came by to see how everything was drying out, check if the water had run any further into the basement, and to get us to choose our flooring.

The damage so far...

A sample of our new flooring!

 It turns out that the water went further than they originally thought, and the whole floor, including the craft/guest room, has to come up (squee!). They're going to start building everything back on the side they tore up this week (including laying the new laminate flooring), move everything to the finished side, then rip up the other half of the basement. So, we should have a "new" basement in a couple of weeks!

Happy Mother's Day!

Another year, another basement...

Wow, this whole trying to keep up a blog and raise a baby at the same time is proving very difficult!

Emily is doing great! She's sleeping her nights (from about 9pm to 5am!), although she hasn't been doing so well with daytime naps any more. Usually she'll only sleep for about 20 - 30 minutes at a time (45 if I'm really lucky!). That means that once she goes down for the night, I'm pretty much sleepwalking and vegging out in front of the TV. We've also been driving David into work each day and hanging out at my parent's place. That wasn't in our initial plans, but it turned out to be the wiser financial decision. We're counting down the weeks until David is off for the summer (only a week and a half left!).

Emily rocking her jeans at 2 months old

We had a super moon on Saturday, May 5th. We completely forgot about it until 11:30 that night, so we didn't get photos of it rising. I did manage to get a few interesting photos on the manual setting of my camera though, by playing around with the settings.

Now I'm sure you're curious as to the meaning of the title. On Monday night, David went down into our closet under the stairs to clean the litter box we have in there, and discovered water on the floor. Praying that it wasn't a sump pump failure again, he went into the utility room to investigate. Fortunately the sump pump was working, however the hot water tank had sprung a leak. There was a considerable amount of water on the floor, but it was no where near as bad as 2 years ago.

Yesterday morning the insurance company was called, the claims manager came by to check out the damage, and then the post-disaster contractor came by with his crew (the same guys from last time). After a day of hard work, we now have a new (and bigger) hot water tank, and half of our carpet has been taken up. Although many people may find this devastating, you have to understand that we regretted our decision to put down carpet. The cats thought the basement was their personal scratching post, and set about destroying the new carpet immediately after the crew finished the job in 2010. So, while it sucks that we are once again living through yet another unplanned renovation, looking on the bright side: we can now (possibly) get the engineered hardwood floor we should have agreed to when the contractor suggested it last time!

The Before...

The Reno: From the stairs to the utility room...

The rest of the basement

So, on the agenda today is to take up the sub-floor to see how far the water went and what the extent of the damage is. We're keeping our fingers crossed that the entire floor has to come up, just to make it worth the cost of our deductible!