Michele’s Musings

It’s Christmas Eve and we are relaxing after a big lasagna dinner.  It was a bit late (8 pm) as I cooked it from frozen, apparently homemade frozen lasagna takes as long as a small turkey to bake!  I will remember next time to put it in right after lunch if I want to serve supper at a decent hour lol

Tonight we are home with the kids, we will open one present each then kick them (opps that should say send them hehe)  into bed.   After they go to bed we will hide the Christmas Pickle, the finder of which will receive a copy of the new Glow in the Dark Guiness Book of World Records.   James and I will relax in our jammies with a rye and ginger waiting for the wee folk to go to sleep so Santa can visit the younger two. 

It’s a sad day in Crockerville…….  our oldest no longer believes so Santa won’t be visiting him.   Mom and dad will fill his stocking, and the younger two have been made aware of the situation……   Arran says the only thing he wants from Santa (who he no longer believes in) is a 2nd Terry’s Chocolate orange in his stocking… hmm was he supposed to get one to begin with?  “YES!!!” says the boy…. “oh no…..” says the mother…. “this is our first year filling your stocking and we forgot you liked them, maybe by next year we’ll get the hang of it.”   *snicker*  We actually DID forget to by one, but we did buy a package of the small Terry’s Orange pieces so they wil have to do

I got quoted in a magazine this month.  If you see the holiday edition of What’s Up Kids Magazine in the newstand check out page 24!  There is an article about celebrating December Birthday’s and Christmas, since I have two of them with December birthday’s I got quoted a lot

I finally found a copy of it while I was out shopping at Wal-Mart tonight.  James and I started out at TRU, found nothing for the kids….. Keely wants a Nintendo Ds with Brain Age from Santa, they don’t have one, Zellers doesn’t have one….. so we head up to the Wal-Mart Supercenter in St Albert, but as we pull into the parking lot we notice there is an EB Games there so we decided to check them out.  I have to say what AWESOME customer service!  Yes they have many in stock, pick your colour!  (we chose the gold with Zelda game for an extra $10) They sell a one year warranty for $25 for full replacement if it gets broken, and suggested a $5 screen protector since it will be a child using it, I was all over that!  It was relaxed, no line up, friendly service, it was like shopping bliss!  Then we had to head into Wal-Mart…….

I was really expecting it to be a lot worse one week before Christmas, but this location wasn’t that busy, no carts packing the isles, only a few people in the line ahead of us.  They didn’t have a great selection of toys…. but we did manage to get a lot of shoping done for our teenager, lots of sweaters (since he’s raiding James’ closet) and an electric shaver….. yes… my 13 y/o shaves regularly  we figure he should stop using his father’s, not a very hygenic practice…. also picked up clothes for Rowan and our 2 y/o great nephew who wears size 4!  We bought a couple of matching outfits for the two of them, our 7 y/o is only in size 6 lol 

Also picked up a new electric razor for James, and an ottoman cude full of games, that will be for me from the kids!  We will pretend I don’t know what it is lol

Tomorrow is off to work early *sigh* I get to play commercial teller for a couple of days, something new for me, I hope it’s not too busy! 

The Reading Log…

This week I finished Exit Strategy by Kelley Armstrong, it was “ok” but it’s not a Women of the Otherworld book and I found it hard to stay focused on. Its about a hitwoman working with some other hitmen/women to solve a serial killing.  After that I read I Wear the Maternity Pants in This Family by Susan Konig which I discussed in the breastfeeding forum in the thread Feeling Kinda Let Down.  It’s a book of humour along the lines of Erma Bombeck, I finished the book enjoying it, it was very funny.  Right now I’m reading the newest Dark Hunter book by Sherrilyn Kenyon called Devil May Cry, but only 4-5 chapters in so no real critique yet lol

I have never been doing my major Christmas shopping this late in the season!  Usually by this time of year I’m just getting stocking stuffers *sigh*  It’s the reno, I’ll just blame it on that lol Although we have had a couple of non reno related busy weekends lately where we meant to go shopping but it just didn’t work out.  Like this past weekend. 

Saturday we decided to forgo soccer games so we “could get stuff done”  umhmm….  we got cleaning done, then we gave blood…. then we had to get ready for company.  We had our friends Stacey and Sheldon over with their girls for the night.  We had Chinese food, then played Sequence, then went to another friends Christmas party for an hour (leaving the kids home with Arran to babysit) then back home to play more Sequence until the wee hours of the morning.   They slept over, James apparently drank a bit more than he should have considering he gave blood so the next day he did a lot of sleeping…. then we had Keely’s belated birthday celebration.  We took her and a friend to see The Golden Compass Sunday (aweome movie, and NO religious theme IMO) then off to dinner at East Side Mario’s, very yummy!  But that took up our whole day!  No shopping done at all!

Monday I didn’t stop till 11 pm.  I went to the kids school with Stacey first thing to sort through the food donations for our school food hampers, then off to work.  Then straight from work I went shopping with her and her mom to top off the donations, we were given about $500 to spend, 3 shopping carts later….. we went back to the school to divvy it up amongst the 5 families we are helping this year, two of them are single parents of 5, can you imagine?  That must be so hard at this time of year!  Then home to discover James hadn’t made a real supper (pancakes, blech) to I went out shopping at Zellers and London Drugs, got home after 10 and then wrapped till after 11 *sigh* no wonder I didn’t want to get up this morning!  I contemplated going back to Zellers this morning to do a return… I really should….. I also need to hit TRU or Wal-mart at some point but I’m cringing at the thought.  I am off to school again this morning at 10 to help Rowan’s class, then off to work at 11:30…..  I still have at least one if not two Santa gifts to get, and more for James.
 

****AAAAAKKKKKK*****

I don’t think I’m going to be done in time!  I don’t want to spend every evening shopping late, but I also don’t want to leave it till the weekend either…..  *ugh*

Next year I am SO planning further ahead!  Have I mentioned we have another birthday to celebrate on the 27th????  Arran will be 14 …

I posted the link below for the Facebook album but since some people can’t see it at work here they are!

look! all done!!!!!! Sat., Dec 8th, 10 pm and we are done! Then I had to wash the floors…. vacuum the couch and all the cushions…. furniture placement is not set in stone yet, that’s why the picture is off center of the couch, it used to be further down the wall. This is the back right hand corner of the livingroom.

Front of the livingroom. That is the corner where we are putting the Christmas tree tomorrow. That is our old kitchen table that James was using as a workbench to store tools. Now we have to find a spot for it in the basement. those are also our old, old curtains from years ago. They are all stretched out of shape. I threw out the garnet ones we were using just prior to the renos as they were sunbleached, now I have to buy new ones. Any ideas as to colour or style????? I need help!

Back left corner of the livingroom. Ignore the spots and reflections, I think the camera lens is dusty lol That’s Keely’s cat Sassy glaring back at us from atop the filing cabinet, have to find a place to put that now too…. the brown chair and ottoman will move over there to make room for the Christmas tree, that’s where the chair was originally anyway.

Other front corner of livingroom, you can see the kitchen from there. I need to clear the crap off the shelves to put my gazillion books away! I’ll take more pictures once the Christmas tree and decorations are up. We still have to install new baseboards, but James is waiting till we are done all the flooring as he is getting a deal to buy enough baseboards for the entire house from his guy at the home improvement store.

with all the rearranging of furniture, we left a table a little too close to the entertainment unit and I couldn’t figure out why Sassy kept wanting to jump up on top….. oh yeah….. I put the Betta fish tank up on the shelf, looks like she’s trying to catch herself another, it was only a month or so ago she dumped over the other one and killed it

Here is the link to my Facebook album, now off to rest!

 Renos Part 3

I can’t believe she’s 10 already!?!?!?!  Where did the years go?  She was such a sweet baby, I miss those early years *sigh* 

We are ordering pizza for supper (her choice) and I am buying a small cake for just the familiy.  This weekend she is taking her friend to dinner and a movie.  I haven’t even bought her a present yet!  BAD MOM!  I might stop by London Drugs after work lol

Now that we set aside the too wide boards and James is using his level to make sure each board is straight, everything is going smoothly!  What a waste of time!  I hope we don’t end up with too many boxes of waste  

Last night we finished the main hallway, decided to leave the back hall till the end as I want the livingroom done!  We got about 4′ into the livingroom started, but had to stop as it quickly became 11 pm and we didn’t want to piss off the neighbours too much (our goal is just alittle bit, as they did renos this summer and we had to listen to all their banging and sawing.) 

Here is our hallway looking from the front door,  the picture is kind of dark in the background…. and yes I’m trying to get loads of laundry done while we do this.  We bought that little bench at Ikea for the front hall.  It’s supposd to be for a kids room, but it matches our kitchen quite well and is not too deep so it doesn’t take up too much room, just the right size to sit on as you are putting on shoes, and there is storage in the seat, so that’s where all the hats and mitts go!  Oh and that’s my Norwex mop in the foreground, sweeps the laminate really well! 

Here is the livingroom looking from the kitchen.  And that’s wee Sugar who is now back to normal, hoping this weeks work doesn’t stress her out again and make her pee all over the place!

Check out what we found UNDER the carpet and underlay?!?!?!?!? 

7″ square wood “look” lino tiles.  Can you imagine living with that?????  Match it up with the same tiles in speckled dark green that were in the kitchen and hallway (and we know are up the stairs) and you have one purty townhouse   It’s also really HARD!  It’s hard lino right on top of subfloor, no cushion to it at all.  Here’s a close up……

The tiles are popping up on their own, with no effort from us!  Here is Master Rowan getting to work pulling staples out of the floor.

So we have a routine set for the livingroom, roll up carpet, rip out underlay, lift up tiles, pull up staples, hammer in nail heads, sweep, vacuum, install new underlay, install laminate, sweep laminate (with my handy dandy Norwex microfiber mop) move furniture onto installed laminate…… start all over….. keep going til the room is done.  My goal is to be done by Thursday night as I have a lady coming Friday morning to do a market evaluation of the condo LOL

Tonight is almost a write off.  I have my work’s Christmas party, turkey dinner *yum* and present exchange   James has a council meeting, so neither of us will be home until at least 8, we are hoping to get some work done afterwards….   Tomorrow is Keely’s birthday!!!!  She’s going to be 10 *yikes*  Can’t believe it!   So we will have what she wants for dinner…. perhaps I’ll have time to bake a cake?  We will celebrate this weekend, she wants to take a friend to dinner and a movie, The Golden Compass, well as long as her friend’s mom is ok with it, since there is so much controversy over it  Personally I don’t think any kids reading the book or watching the movie will read into all the religious undertones that the adults claim are there, but whatever… Otherwise we’ll see Enchanted if its out.

So this is where we left off. Wish us luck!

We spent all weekend trying to get the laminate installed in our hallway, what a PIA!  We had the laminate installed in the kitchen as far as the main hallway, but we have another hallway that goes behind our kitchen (the wall the fridge is on) to the powder room, so Saturday James got the flooring installed there working towards the main hallway so we could continue it.  I got the livingroom prepped in anticipation of being able to do it today (big square room it will go fast when we finally get to it!) I took everything off my bookshelves and entertainent unit, what a CHORE!  I have way too many books    But James started getting frustrated doing the main hallway last night so we stopped, we have learned that is a good idea when we are feeling flusterd, have a drink and get a good night’s sleep!  So today we started off optimistic…. we spent a big chunk of the day cutting out part of the hallway wall for a cold air return, then got to work on the flooring…. just as we were getting the last few pieces installed we realized we had a problem, something was out of whack somewhere, causing the boards to not align properly.  We tapped, we whacked, we wrecked some boards….. we took boards apart……  James finally decided to take the back hallway apart and then reinstall it backwards to see if it was maybe just not meeting up right….  But after all that, he discovered that some of the boards we were installing in the hallway were slightly wider than others  hmmmm James says he noticed a problem when he was doing the kitchen with one box of boards being slightly thicker than the rest, so they set it aside to use it for the stairs….  so we are back to almost where we started.   I really want to get the first floor DONE this week so we can decorate for Christmas!  I’m a stressin’ out!  Tues night James has a council meeting and I have my work Christmas party, Wed is Keely’s 10th birthday….   I tried to push James to continue getting more done tonight but his knees couldn’t hack it anymore, all that up and down and kneeling, and my sciatica is yelping at me.

Well something funny happened this weekend, we pulled up some of the livingroom carpet thinking there would just be underlay on top of subfloor…. nope!  There is REALLY UGLY brown “wood look” lino tiles under the underlay.  Hard to believe when this place was first built that those tiles were the livingroom floor and the hallway and kitchen was a nasty dark green lino tile  did people actually think that look GOOD?   Good news is they are popping off the floor really easy LOL

Wish me luck the rest of the week, I am going to need it!