Oh who can resist...a few more shots of the Sprout

Once back I spent the weekend at the South Shore Waldorf School

I slept here in the kindergarten

This is what I woke to in the morning...

The pheasants woke me up and I watched the mist rise on a grey cold day...

But I can't imagine a warmer environment to have been in.

Pictures from the drive back

Nothing says "buy honey here!" like a creepy mannequin on the shop porch!

Giant carved husky...

Awesome skies all the way (this is for Darkmiror)...

patchwork quilt fields through the St Lawrence seaway.

Sprouts favorite chore was watering Roatboat Flo's garden

we tried to do a fashion shoot at Oma's

Sprout was to model Oma's awesome woolen baby hats. He was out the door and up the steps in a flash.

I only managed a few shots of the hats.

Most shots are of this - him running away at breakneck speed!

Even though I had the camera set on "sports event" most pictures were a blur.

These four kids are the world's greatest long car trip travellers EVER!

Sleepy Darkmirror

Sprout's happy cause I'm sitting beside him.

Wild Thing loves getting toys in the car!

Nature Girl who NEVER asks "Are we there yet?" but the much more sensible questions "What province are we in now?" and "How far have we come?"

We're home from Quebec and Chiron East!

So glad the starter waited til Papa Pan was getting ready to pick me from Chiron to die officially.

I went to the South Shore Waldorf School right after we arrived home to do a 3 day conference on waldorf education.

I slept in the kindergarten the first night, and then at my friend Rebecca's the second. I visited the Pollination Project (it's a biodynamic farm that has just started opening up for workshops - Susun Weed will be there in July - for a movie and discussion on Saturday and ate sushi, sang songs, and marvelled at their beautiful strawbale houses and renovated barn.

I'll post about Chiron in more depth on the homeschool blog once I decompress a bit.

I got home to lots of email including a bunch of requests for Nature Girl and Wild Thing to go on playdates with friends from all over the place. I let them all know she'd be back in August and we'd have lots of time for beachcombing, and dressing up, and rolling through fields then.

Pictures in the next post!

Care for a play by play of my life?

As we were sitting down writing up an offer on the character stripped house we got a call regarding the house deal we lost. The buyer's financing fell through. Our original deal is back on!

I'm looking at calmer, more muted colour schemes now.

Good think I daydream instead of shop huh?

How do you deal with anxiety?

I go looking for colours and plan colour schemes.

This picture?

I'm matching colours from this painting for a whole interior home colour scheme.

My absolutely favourite wall colour is yellow but I can go overboard with it. I never get tired of it, but I live with 5 other people so I thought I'd attempt to find other colours that went well with yellow. That bright glowing yellow dead centre? Yum. I really like the golden greens in this too and well, the whole palatte, though I'd dull the reds for wall colours. The washed denim colour made me think that maybe denim is a good choice for covering my kitchen chairs - which are...disgusting now... and I need a cheap fix. I was looking at oil cloth but 35.00 a metre is way out of my price range and frankly, I hate sitting on vinyl covered chairs. Ick. I have this crazy idea that denim seat covers would look good splattered with tomato sauce and crayon ...well they'd look like the kids and me so at least they'd fit in!

What does this colour scheme say to you?

I'm a little afraid it says "forced and fake happiness" as that's where my anxiety rests ...the kids go to Ottawa for 6 weeks starting friday...if the garage figures out why our starter is on the fritz and can fix it by then. It also begs the question "Where on earth did Papa Pan leave the cellphone??? And " How is Dark Mirror doing on his exzam this morning?" and "Why on earth is Nature Girl's upper lip swelling up again?" and "I wonder if Wild Thing will have a dry night regression in Ottawa and will he be okay there for 6 weeks?"

Before...

After...

I kinda regret already "knowing" this house before it was "renovated" and put on the market.

Whats worse is that yesterday I visited my favorite historical buff/antique shop and he showed me all the stuff that came out of the house...that we could buy back for a few thousand dollars.

I left with 4 windsor chairs for 35.00 instead.

We lost the house we were going to buy...

So now we've been madly scrambling to find another place we can afford.

A preview of our next option....

Character

Character

How to totally strip the character from a century old home: throw out the clawfoot tub (300.oo to have resurfaced) and replace it with a fiberglass surround tub, .99 cent tiles to cover the wideplank pine floor and the cheapest fiberglass vanity sink you can find to replace the old enamel one!


Then cover the rest of the softwood flooring upstairs with engineered flooring, a different colour in every room (hey it was on sale!)
Oh, and instead of reusing the beautiful wooden mouldings the house came with (see above), replace all of them with MDF fiberboard cause it's fast and easy to work with.

Throw out those 1920's kitchen cabinets - who wants an unfitted kitchen??? Replace them with the cheapest kitchen in a box cabinets you can get at canadian tire.

Oh we have extra tiles left over, netter not waste them, cover up some original oak flooring for good measure.

To finish of your destruction of vintage character rip off all the cedar shake and replace it with beige plastic siding.

VOILA!

BUT....location location location, and it could be returned to its original cute gothic cottage feel. And it has a massive barn with 100 amp service and an insulated woodworking shop already in place.

I love this age...I hate this age...

This small person is running me ragged. He's talking, he's into everything, he runs everywhere, and he is a delightful ball of PURE LOVE ENERGY!!!!

Did I mention he's CLIMBING...and can open the front and back door all by himself now?????

He's planning a road trip I think...outsmarting him is a full time job.

Nature Girl got presents in the mail!

She climbed up to the top of the slide with her stack of envelopes and pieced her gift from Oma together!

HANDKNIT SOCKS and a secret message!

A card from Red Fraggle's parents and money for BOOKS!!!

Nana and Puppa sent lovely clothes and a BEAUTIFUL necklace, for which a fashion shoot is necessary.

Wild Thing is a big ol' DANDY LION in this Nova Scotia Wind!

Some favorites from this week