Tales From a “GREEN” Minivan

Remembrance Day has evolved into much more than wearing poppies and a moment of silence in my house, it’s become a day to remember family members who are no longer with us and cherish those who still are.
This family tradition started long before I met my husband Andrew and his family. Andrew’s maternal grandfather Charles, who served nine years as a trooper in WWII with the Princess Louise Dragoon Guard, had passed away on October 30th, 1988. Every year he had marched with the veterans in our local Remembrance Day ceremony. It was decided that since he was no longer able to be there physically, the family would all attend the ceremony and get together afterwards to visit his grave and have some soup. Twenty-one years later, this tradition still continues.

I first experienced the Annual McCormick Remembrance Day festivities in November 2003. (Although I had been in the family since 2002, our son Liam was born on November 9, 2002 and we weren’t released from the hospital in time to make it.) It has since become one of my favourite family traditions. A way to remember fallen heroes, lost loved ones and appreciate the extended family that you may not get to see as often as you’d like in these busy times.

Andrew’s uncle Ralph McCormick usually says a few words and then we all recite the poem, In Flanders Fields in English (and occasionally my daughter Mackenzie will say it in French). We then all attend the local Remembrance Day ceremony and meet up at a central spot to travel together by car (there’s normally six to seven car loads). Along the route we make stops for family members to pay respects to loved ones at different graveyards. Our last stop is at Andrew’s grandparents’ where we remove our poppies and place them on the memorial wreath.

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow   
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

— Lt.-Col. John McCrae (1872 - 1918)

After being outdoors in the chill of November we all return to Andrew’s aunt and uncle’s home (Judy and Gary Lockhart) for hot soup compliments of all of the family matriarchs, although the past few years I have been bringing my Buttercup Squash Soup by request! It’s such an honour to be included in this family event, one that I hope will continue on for many years to come!

Be sure to visit The Memory Project- Stories of the Second World War  where you’ll find the incredible stories of service and sacrifice which are currently being collected and archived by The Memory Project.

This evening as we were clearing the table after dinner it was so nice to see that the kids get it. Finn our 2.5 year old was trying to race his big brothers to the small green compost bin we keep for table scraps and other compostables to toss the few things left on his plate.  It’s funny if he has something to throw away he always asks first where it should go.  If it’s that easy for a 2 year old I don’t understand why more people can’t do it as well?

Recently I read a local discussion where a woman was using her big outdoor compost cart to put recyclables in.  She asked the city’s waste management if she could get another one as it’s too full with all of these cardboard boxes and newspapers!  When told that the compost carts are only for food scraps and other compostables she got upset and demanded to know where she was going to put her recyclable now?

Our city does not have curbside pick-up and this woman is definitely not an isolated case. In order to be a good “green citizen” in Saint John, NB you need to transport your recyclables to one of the Depots in the city that have giant sorting bins.  There things are separated by 5 different categories:

1. Newsprint, paper & box board

2. Plastic Bags

3. Hard Plastic (milk jugs, detergent containers etc.)

4. Aluminum Cans

5. Corrugated Cardboard

If you don’t have access to a car or are elderly and can’t get out often where do you think these things end up?  Well the answer to the woman’s plight above was, “If they won’t take these things curbside they’re going to end up my regular garbage!”

It’s time to wake up City of Saint John, people have been composting for over 8 years now, but are they really using their bins properly?  How much money would the city save in tipping fees at the landfill if people recycled curbside?  I’m sure the number would be hefty enough to sustain the extra trucks…wait a minute what about all of those Blue Trucks that pick up the contents of the bins at the Depots, could they not do the same thing but on a household route?

Excess garbage is a huge peeve of mine and it’s time that this city started charging those that waste in excess instead of having “green families” like ourselves pay the price.

From the time my daughter was little she’s always been so different from myself. A friend of mine whose daughter is a few months older always used to joke we got the wrong kids! Her daughter was always so rough and tumble and Mackenzie was always super careful didn’t really enjoy sports and was a real girlie girl unlike my Tom Boyish ways growing up. Over the years I’ve always heard how much my own mother and I were alike so I just assumed that Kenz would eventually gain some similar traits.  Can you believe that it’s taken me 13 years to finally realize that that’s not going to happen.

I think many parents have so many expectations for their kids, but so often their expectations are too high and just not realistic.  I was the social butterfly, always around a group of friends, talking on the phone, having sleepovers etc. Mackenzie is just as content to be with a bound sketchbook and pen or a good novel  off in the corner by herself.  Is she lonely? Perhaps.  Do I worry about her? On a daily basis.  The thing is I need to accept her for who she is for her to grow as an individual. I can encourage her strengths like art and protect her from the things that cause anxiety.  These things are the very things I thrived off of when I was her age, organized group activities.  We’ve tried to encourage her to join Cadets and that was a bust, sports are not her thing, so our next step is finding something that she loves and that is art.

From the time she was very young I knew she had a talent. This is one of her drawings that she drew for me at age three.  Most kids at three years of age are still content to scribble on blank pages, but not Mackenzie she wanted to create art. Over the years she has continued and amazes us daily with her creations.  She’s always very modest and self critical, I think this may be the sign of a true artist?

She’s now branching out to different forms of drawing she has a computerized drawing Tablet and uses photo shop to colourize black and white sketches.  It truly amazes me on a daily basis.  Here’s a few recent things that I grabbed to scan when she wasn’t looking. She hates praise and I’m not sure if she realizes just how talented she is.

I know I’ve mentioned the new Laundry room a few times now, but I decided it’s important enough in my life to warrant an entire entry of it’s own. First off a huge thank you to my nextdoor neighbour Greg who is a plumber and could make all of this magic happen!  Here’s the old kitchen “laundry closet” soon to be my “utimate pantry” (this will be an upcoming post as I need your best ideas!

For the past 7 years I had been doing laundry in my kitchen, which I know is not that bad as I didn’t have to lug everything down to the basement, but to me a kitchen is for food, appliances and eating, not buzzers, mismatched socks and dryer lint!  The old laundry team- my trusty Maytags that I bought from a friend have been great machines for the past 12 years. When we decided to move things upstairs we realized that they were not going to fit in the 4×7 room, so a stacked front loading set was the answer.  I decided to look up that friend that I bought the Maytags  from all those years ago, and noticed her current machines from some Facebook photos were much older.  I decided to pay it forward and offer the machines back to her.  She was delighted!

The new Silver Blue Kenmore set has been here for about 6 weeks, but it wasn’t until about 3 weeks ago that we got everything installed.  I am in laundry bliss!  It’s amazing this new technology. Wow did I ever sound like my grandmother there, but it’s so true! Now wash cycles do seem to take longer, but the dryer totally makes up for that.  Most loads are completely dry in about 25 minutes! I think it would take me longer to walk downstairs and hang out my clothes on the clothesline than to wait for them in the dryer!

I still need to set up some sort of shelving unit on the right hand wall.  Ideally I’d like to have an area for detergent, a place to hang things to dry and a place to store empty laundry baskets. Yes they’re empty, before they always had either dirty items, or stuff that had not yet been folded or folded but not yet put away. So send me your ideas!

I’m looking forward to getting everyone back into a scheduled routine this week including my night owl husband!  We’ve had a pretty laid back summer and did fairly well getting out the door on time but there was a few days of sleeping in that can’t happen once school starts.

My plan this week is to make a few meals in the slow cooker and also have a Friday Family Fun Night with a themed meal. . Ironically on my way home from Toronto one of my husbands friends who works for Jarden in Florida (the maker of Crockpots) asked me to check out their new Crockpot iPhone App, it’s still in the soft-launch process, but I’ll be sure to report back on my findings after playing with it for a few weeks.

This weeks menu:

Slow Cooker Lasagna- this was a big hit with the Slow Cooker Club and I actually didn’t end up testing this one out yet. I made a couple of substitutions as I was too cheap to by ricotta, so I went for Cottage Cheese instead.  Can’t wait to try it!

Slow Cooked Prime Rib Soup- This is a specialty of mine.  I don’t really have a recipe, I just whip it together and it’s always delicious.  I use the leftover meat and bones from a Prime Rib Roast as the base, but first I sauté the veggies (potatoes, turnip carrots, onions and celery if I have it) in some butter and salt and pepper then I add the Prime Rib and bones and let it slow cook all day with a little thyme for seasoning.

Home Made Pizzas- I’ve posted my Pizza Dough Recipe before a couple of years ago, it’s super easy to make and is so tasty. I think I’ll also make some mini pizzas for the boys lunches as well, now that they’ll be coming home for lunch (this should be interesting)! Mackenzie really likes Donair Pizza, so I’ll do one of those, mini-pepperoni for the boys and BBQ Chicken for Andrew and I.

Seafood Chowder- This is my Christmas Eve staple, but I generally make it every couple of months.  I noticed Fresh Haddock was on sale this week, and I have some frozen lobster already to add to it.  I really like the Sobeys Chowder Mix as they don’t add Salmon to it, I’m not a big fan of Salmon.  Perhaps I’ll make some fresh bread to go with it, Helen has been experimenting with some breads on her blog so I should go check it out!

I’m going to do a separate entry for my Friday Family Fun Night, can’t wait!

I have been extremely neglectful of my blog this summer so I though I’d recap in one post quickly what we’ve been up to over the past few weeks!

You may remember my rant about our “Green” van well  we finally got a “new to us” Toyota Sienna.  A friend of mine works at Toyota and I had him on the lookout for one and he delivered. We’ve been happy with it, and got it just in time for our road trip to New Hampshire. The cargo space is amazing and it only had 33,000 kms on it!

Just before leaving for New Hampshire I got a call from the Roofing Company I contracted to replace our roof and they had an opening!  So the roof was completely replaced and now we have one less house worry!  The crew from Dowd Roofing was great, they made certain that my yard as well as my neighbour’s yards were cleaner than when they arrived! I even made sure to compliment them with I went in to pay the invoice at the office.  I would highly recommend them!

Since we were putting hardwood floors into the second story of the house that meant we had to remove EVERYTHING from these rooms, which happen to be 3 bedrooms and a storage room.  While clearing out the storage room we realized that the majority of the stuff we had been holding onto we really did not use or need so I listed the stuff we didn’t need anymore on Kijiji and it sold immediately. We decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to move our laundry room upstairs!   Our nextdoor neighbour is a plumber and he did all of the work and installed ceramic floors in the new laundry room and also in the bathroom!  This now means I will get a proper pantry in my kitchen as this is where the laundry currently is.  I’m SOOOO excited, hopefully the work will be complete this week.  Here’s my new set of Front loaders arriving (yes they’re blue) and a shot of the boys room completed!

Liam and Ciaran’s new room together!

New Hampshire was a great escape of the CHAOS in the house. Our condo was fabulous as usual thanks to SkyAuction!  We had 3 levels, 2 bedrooms, and if you can believe it two sets of washer and dryers! The unfortunate part of the trip was our bout with the Flu.  We’re almost 90% sure it was the H1N1, but didn’t have a chance to confirm it.  We all got over it in about 3 days and tried to enjoy the time away even though the weather did not really cooperate.  On my Birthday we took the kids to Santa’s Village, in Jefferson, NH.  This is a great little park for younger kids (although I’m pretty certain Mackenzie really enjoyed her day there as well).  Finn was able to go on almost every ride with the exception of the rollercoaster and Kenz didn’t find things too “Babyish” !  It was a great way to spend my Birthday, I have some fond memories going as a child as well. Here’s some shots from this year and some from 1975 when I was 2 years old!

Front Entrance

Front Entrance in 1975

Andrew and the kids on the Bunny

My mom and I on the Bunny in 1975

After getting home the kids have been going to some day camps and spending some time at what we like to call Sarah’s Backyard Waterpark.  She made her own slip’n’slide that beats any store bought one and even did a Tutorial on her blog! I’ve also been working some early mornings to take the afternoons off to go to the beach or take the kids out to have a little fun. A new indoor play facility opened up and the boys just love it! They’ve also been playing some Summer Bingo to try and keep chores and learning fun this summer. The weather in July has been pitiful here in Saint John, it was the Wettest July on Record with nearly twice the normal rainfall and when it wasn’t raining the fog was as thick as pea soup.

The drive to Take Mackenzie to Camp

We’ve also been lucky enough to get out a little bit lately too.  We spent an evening at our friends place and got to listen to some great live music compliments of SJ’s Brent Mason.  He even made up some impromptu songs about the kids from tales we told earlier in the evening.  I recall one about Finn’s shenanigans getting into some drywall compound! It was really funny!  I tried out the new Moosehead Light Lime and I was surprisingly impressed, not only with the fact it matched my shirt that evening, but it tasted pretty good as well!

Brent doing his “thing”!

The next celebration I got to attend was my Dad’s Retirement Party!  After 37 years with Irving Pulp & Paper he has officially retired. My dad is an extremely hardworker and a bit of a perfectionist that has always taken pride in his work.  I’m extremely proud of him and very happy for him to be entering this new chapter of his life with his new wife Linda. Oh and Dad if you’re reading I promise to not keep you too busy with little projects around my house..lol

My Dad with my 3 “little” brothers and me!

The following weekend I got to catch up with my oldest friend of 31 years, Andrea!  She was home from Ontario and with the convenience of Facebook I was able to track her down and we went down to my old watering hole O’Leary’s Pub.  I was so great catching up with her and I hope to get together again while I’m in Toronto later in the month for work.

One thing that we hadn’t got to do was any camping!  I have had everything already to go, but every weekend it was raining!  Finally this past Saturday we did our first little camping trip to Sussex, NB.  We stayed at Town & Country Campground, and got to take the kids to the Drive-In Theatre to see Aliens in the Attic.  It was a lot of fun and now I can’t wait to do some more!  I took all of the camping gear out of the new van and put it in the green van, so that way the next time we got it was be so easy to get everything loaded and on the road.

I promise to be not so long winded in future entries and update a lot more often! Thanks for reading!

It feels like I’ve been burning the candle at both ends this past week, but things are almost prepped before we head on vacation for a week. It’s pretty bad when you’re drinking cans of Coke at midnight!

I have almost completed last weeks list and actually added one more project! We got an estimate to have our roof done in April, but the waiting list was going to be late June early July before the work could be done.  Just after the dumpster arrived last week, the roofing company rep paid me a visit late last week and told me as soon as that dumpster is gone, they’ll bring theirs in and do the roof!

Everything had been lining up nicely, the students I hired in the Spring arrived last Friday and painted the stairway halls (I didn’t want to attempt these 20ft walls) and Ciaran’s room upstairs.  We wanted to do this before putting down the new hardwood floors.

The biggest prep work was removing the carpets, I’m happy to say as of 2am last night we are carpet free and rid of the very dusty rose!  We’ve been having to wait until the kids are in bed to do most of the work and last night Finn just would not settle!  It was about 11pm when he finally reluctantly drifted off with Andrew singing to him. Ciaran has been displaced to our room and actually slept through all of the work we did last night.

Our bedroom and walk-in closet was the last of the carpets and baseboard.  If you ever have to do this here’s two tools that I recommend you having:

A Stanley Wonderbar and I’m not sure of the other tools name, but I have been calling him the Staple Chomper, or Chompie for short!  The Wonderbar is awesome for removing baseboards and also the slats of carpet tacks attached to wood around the perimeter of the room.

We were making so much noise I can’t believe he didn’t stir at all!  So now I’m waiting for the dumpster to be hauled away.  We cleared some things from my inlaws basement as well, and actually used up quite a bit of room in the dumpster!

Tonight’s task is fixing the squeaks in the floors by adding some more floor screws into the joists.  Wish me luck I’ll be loose with a drill!

Oh and I forgot to mention we bought a new van,  a Salsa Red Toyota Sienna!  I’ll write more about him next week! Two more sleeps until vacation and we’re out of this DUST!

This morning I met with Professional Organizer, Elaine Shannon from Organizing Plus! for my first consultation.  The morning went great, she left me some DVD’s to watch (they can also be seen on her website http://organizingconnection.com/ ) and we toured my house room by room and devised a plan to work for our family’s lifestyle.

This meeting could not have come at a better time as we’ve been thinking about selling our house.  Last week I met with a real estate agent and I actually pulled and all-nighter and stayed up cleaning and partially decluttering.  I tweeted on Twitter periodically throughout the night whilst my followers overseas were just getting started with their work days. Then at 6:42am I received a new email that I had a new follower.  It’s always exciting when someone new follows you and immediately I checked out her Bio in her Twitter profile.  It was like Elaine was sent to me from a higher power.  I’ve been struggling for too long and was she the sign I needed.

I direct messaged her and said that her “Follow” could not have come at a better time.  She was a little confused by this and I explained that I was meeting with a real estate agent later in the day and that I would most likely be needing her services in the near future.  We messaged back and forth and then I finally called her a few days later, and she “got me” right away over the phone and we set up a time to meet!

After my meeting with the real estate agent (we’re still undecided about moving) we decided that a huge priority and something that we will greatly benefit from whether we stay or go will be replacing the dreaded dusty rose wall to wall carpets in the second story of our house with hardwood floors. Within days I had someone at the house measuring and we had a contract signed and the floors will be installed in 2 weeks!

Obviously this doesn’t give me a lot of time, but honestly I work so much better under pressure, especially if I have to have it done for someone else.  This is why I decided that hiring a professional organizer gives me that accountability and forces me to complete the tasks to report back to someone else.  I also secretly like the praise as well!

Here’s what I need to get completed before we go away late next week (yes I planned it this way, so we could be away while the floors are being installed).

1. Sign for Dumpster

2. Drop off unwanted items at the Boys & Girls Club (Elaine suggested them)

3. Remove all furniture from the second story and store in living room (except beds)

4. Remove all Carpets, underlay and staples/tacks

5.  Paint Ciaran’s room

6. Have stairs painted and stairway walls painted (already contracted some students to do this)

7. Remove all moldings,  chart and number them so it will be easier to reinstall them after the floors are in

8.  Lastly dismantle the beds and bring downstairs. Our last night before vacation we’ll camp out.

I also have 3 meetings and 2 school field trips that I’m supposed to attend next week!

Yikes! When you put it all in list form it seems like a lot. Luckily I have us 90% packed for our trip, but I do have some work deadlines that need to be completed prior to going away, so I think I’m going to have some late nights! I’ll post some photos soon!

It looks as though I haven’t forgotten! One thing I had forgotten was just how much I love to bike ride! Earlier this week I mentioned I’d like to get the boys one of those Tag-Along bikes that attaches to the back of an adult bike. The next thing I know I get an email from Sarah that someone is selling one locally!

Here’s what they look like:

The Trail-a-Bike is made by Adams and meant for 3-6 year olds. They were introduced in 1986, so parents could have a safe way to enjoy longer bike rides without their child trying to keep up on their own bikes or for those still learning.  They also help in introducing “traffic safety”concerns as well.  Seeing that my boys are very small for their age, I know we’ll get lots of use out of it!  We already had a bike seat for Finn, so the plan is to get Liam confident with peddling  using the Tag-along and then move him to his own bike.

This afternoon Liam and I biked approx 2 kms!  I’m so proud of him and he did really great!  This is a boy that’s never even used a bike with training wheels before!

Here’s  a shot I took of us of our reflection in one of the windows of Saint John’s new Cruise Ship terminal on Water Street.

Over the past few years we’ve been fortunate enough to have a fantastic new trail system evolving right along the harbour front dubbed the Cranberry Trail due to it’s red asphalt, but it’s official name is Harbour Passage.  It welcomes biking, walking, running and also my favourite- inline skating. I started inline skating about 17 years ago when I lived in Florida, but did not really have a great place to skate here at home until Harbour Passage came along, nor did many others in the area skate.  Now at any given time you’ll pass by someone inline skating on the “Passage”.  I’ve decided that I’d like to get out at least 3 times a week and either bike or skate during the fair weather season, wish me luck!

Mom, if you’re reading this click your back button, I don’t want you to spoil your surprise!

There, now that I have that out of the way, I’m going to show you what I made on the weekend.  In March I took a class at our local Family Resource Centre that I really enjoyed and didn’t want to end!  I met Tina Weller (aka- The Serene Stamper) who is a consultant with Stampin’ Up!  She is a super exuberant gal with a passion for craft, and just what this gal with self-proclaimed “scrappers block” needed!

After the 4 weeks of  classes ended, some of the girls decided to start a “Stampin’ Club” and get together once a month to papercraft.  We made a commitment of 6 months to buy $35 each and each one of us will host a night and get some free products.

Last weekend’s project was a card and matching candle. I know I was a little curious as to how we could stamp onto a candle, but it was much easier than I thought and the result is just stunning!

We actually did not stamp onto the candle at all, instead, we stamped our designs onto some white tissue paper, the kind you use in gift bags. We stamped onto the shiny side of the tissue then used some chalks and blending pens on the opposite side.  We then cut each design out, Tina recommended wetting just around the perimeter to tear it away.

Next we positioned each stamped design  onto the candle and placed some wax paper and wrapped the entire candle we made sure to have some excess to use to hold onto from the back. The next step was using a heat gun, a paper crafting tool like a mini-hair dryer and in circular motions over each of the designs you will soon see the tissue disappear into the candle.  Once you see the edges of the tissue dissolve into the candle, roll the candle with the wax paper still attached several times on a hard surface.  Then carefully peel the wax paper away.

Here’s my completed project!

and the matching card!