P52uesday WEEK 5

5 weeks of P52uesday all in January? It's a long month!

Welcome back. Here we go with week 5:

Still trying to cancel our home phone (with a certain Canadian telecommunications monopoly king) - 5 months after moving.

Juno's here for moral support and to lend her enviable telephone manner. She keeps it real, people. "Bark bark, bbaarrkk". Roughly translated, she means, "Stop charging my Mom and Dad for services they stopped using when we moved...which was like 35 dog months ago."

Is anyone else excited for the GLEE MJ tribute tonight? Hold onto your sparkle glove, ladies and gentlemen, it's gonna' be big!

Happy 2uesday!

Updates and Happy Friday

The recalled dishwasher is no more! She cleans again! So. much. better.

Off on a day of errands and house clean up before our visitors arrive later today.

Still loving Walk Off the Earth's cover of Gotye's "Somebody That I Used To Know". Have you seen it yet? 39 million views and counting! I suggest you watch it.

Happy Friday everyone!

Be Our Guest

We'll have our first out-of-town guests staying with us this weekend, so getting a liveable guest room up to standards has been a priority this week!

We spent last night putting up drapes. The room looks out over a park, so privacy is an issue. We snuck out to pick up a solid rod and then used the drapes the previous owners had hanging in the dining room. They work great in this room - perfect width and height.

The bed, bedside table, and small bench are inherited family pieces, and the bedding, lamp, and mirror we received as wedding gifts.

We hung a print of the city in summer on one wall, and will be hanging the mirror on the wall just above where it is now. I may also pick up a little wastebasket and a small clock for by the bed.

As for the bathroom, hopefully a new shower liner and tub mat make up for the fact that it's the ugliest bathroom in the house?? It's on the 'eventual project list'.

The oversized basket we're using for garbage is an old plant basket. Oddly enormous for that room.

We'd also like to get a window covering, but haven't made any decisions yet. For guest purposes - at least for this weekend - that window does look onto a windowless wall of the neighbours' house and it's frosted. Phew.

What makes you feel most at home when you're visiting from out-of-town? What are your 'must-haves'? And 'nice-to-haves'?

P52uesday WEEK 4

A month of 2uesdays already!

Welcome back, and here we go with week 4:

Juno, do you know anything about this?

Sure do, Mom! Did it all by myself. Tasted like bacon.

It's a good thing she's cute.

Happy 2uesday!

P52uesday WEEK 3

Welcome back for more P52uesday!

It's all explained here.

Here we go, WEEK 3:

"When the bold branches
Bid farewell to rainbow leaves -
Welcome wool sweaters." - B. Cybrill

Happy 2uesday!

Linking Up - Word of the Year

We're linking up with The Lettered Cottage's "Word of the Year" link party today. Our word for 2012 is 'PURSUIT'. Read more about our choice here and then link up to share yours at Layla and Kevin's link party below.

Happy Monday everyone!

Tweet Nothings

We're now on Twitter!

We'd love it if you'd follow along!

Oh, and writing this post totally made me think of this...

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful

Have your windows ever looked like this?

Freezing rain!

Hope you're all staying cozy in this winter weather!

I'm thinking it's an inside day.

P52uesday WEEK 2

Welcome back for more P52uesday!

I explain it all here.

Here we go, WEEK 2:

Dusting the coffee table meant putting the bowl of clementines on Juno's the couch. "For me, Mom?" No, Juno, not for you. Sleeping puppies and clementines - for me, quintessential January.

Happy 2uesday!

Around the World in 48 Minutes

We put up the first of our dining room art!

We bought a map as a poster at Zellers a few years ago, and had it custom framed at Michaels (courtesy of a half off coupon!). It hung in our basement in the old house - oddly enough, the previous owners had hung something with the exact dimensions there as well, so it was an effortless install in the old house.

This time it took us a ridiculous 48 minutes. Ha! In the end, we gave up on taking and marking equal measurements from all four sides, and down from the ceiling, up from the floor, and in from the cabinet and electrical plugs, and just eyeballed the centred-ness of the frame.

We then measured down from the top of the frame to the tops of both mounting hooks - drilled one hole, held up the frame to make sure the second hole even remotely had a chance of being in line (it did!), and voila...around the world in 48 minutes.

We think we left our triceps in San Francisco.

Anyway, it really widens out the room. We're happy with it.

Hope you had a great weekend too!

Moving Ahead

Thought I'd update on some exciting progress on the book front...

We're meeting with a potential illustrator tonight and with a multimedia expert over the weekend!

via

These could lead someplace interesting!

"Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today." - Mark Twain

Furnace - Installed!

What a glamourous way to spend a few thousand dollars!

Regardless, we're safe and sound with a brand new high efficiency furnace. Installation went off without a hitch yesterday - even in the -28C weather!  The technicians were inside and outside, upstairs and downstairs, and at one point dropping pipes down from the roof. These guys were serious troopers.

We kept warm inside with hot soup, hot chocolate, and rooms full of candles. It got mighty chilly in here after 6 hours of installation time. And Juno was exhausted from all the coming and going of 4 workmen in the house.

One thing we didn't realize until late last night was that the hot water tank never got turned back on after the furnace installation. So we read ourselves through those instructions this morning, and are back in business.

The new furnace is so much quieter and heated the house back up pretty darn quickly after the technicians left and everything was installed and turned back on. We're happy everything worked out so smoothly. That never seemed to happen at the old house - we were always dealing with the 'unique' challenges of making modern equipment fit with the infrastructure of a 1930s build.

So, picture us doing a happy dance in our furnace room last night!

Now to pay it off...ouch.

One Word

We've learned to keep it real when it comes to New Year's resolutions.

As much as we'd like to rhyme off a whole bunch of specific goals that we'd like to achieve in the coming year, we think we're better off picking a word - and moving our growth, goals, and challenges in that one direction.

So this year's word - PURSUIT. A nice big word that, to us, is a big ol' call to action...a fire to be lit. We can apply its intention to our marriage and family, our relationships, our careers, our health, our finances, and our involvement in the greater community.

So we whipped up a quick wordle, printed it out, and put our word in a frame we had lying around (from the dollar store). Now tucked into a high-traffic corner of our kitchen, our word is there for us to see pretty darn often.

We'll see how we do...!

How about you? Do you prefer the big resolution list or do you have better success picking a goal for the whole year? Has the 'one word for the year' trick ever worked for you? Any which way, let us know in the comments.

Off to pursue-it!

We linked up to the Lettered Cottage's "Word of the Year" link party. See more 'words' over there!

A Launch

So I mentioned back in August, that I'd be launching a photography series here on the blog come the new year.

It's the new year! So, here goes, folks...welcome to our first P52uesday:

It's one photo a week for a year (less cumbersome and dutiful than P365). And at the end of the year, we'll have a nice collage-y peek at 2012. I'm excited. Who's with me?

P52uesday WEEK 1

Our foyer (still!) decorated for the holidays. We can't bring ourselves to put the holiday decor away just yet!

Happy 2uesday!

Making Lists

Adam and I are listmakers.

We enjoy the brainstorming, categorizing, prioritizing - all the 'ings' and 'izings' that go into making lists.

And we try to at least make them 'look' nice - using a decent piece of paper or a colourful post-it note, so they're something we don't mind seeing around, or referring back to.

But the lists multiply, so then we consolidate our lists. And then for some reason, we don't refer back to any of them very often at all!

But you know what?

The stuff gets done.

And isn't that really the best part?

Happy New Year!

via

"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: I'm with you kid, let's go." - Maya Angelou

Happy New Year!