End of Summer Blues

 

I absolutely love summer and the sunshine. I’d be perfectly happy in a warm climate all year round, but alas I live in Canada a country with four distinct seasons. When mid to late August rolls around every year I get anxious and antsy knowing that if there are things I wanted to do or accomplish in the warmer months it’ll now have to wait until next year.

Some things I really wanted to accomplish this summer that will now have to wait:

1. Teaching Mr. L. how to ride his bike without training wheels.

- The odds were really stacked against us with this. Firstly Liam’s bike (that was given to us by a kind CPO’er) was stolen in broad daylight right from our driveway. Fortunately we did have  a replacement bike but he found it really hard to pedal. In the spring I had envisioned us hanging out at Harbour Passage taking family bike rides all summer, but this was also thwarted by overhead construction on the City’s Harbour Bridge closing down the Cranberry Trail for the entire summer and next summer too. Boo!

2.  Getting to PEI for Camping

-Although we did get to do two weekends of camping I would have really liked to camp over on PEI again. The last time we were over was the summer of 2008 for just 2 nights, it would have been great to spend an entire week at Twin Shores Campground, but vacation time did not permit this summer. Instead we were able to take a few long weekends camping in Sussex and at my mothers summer place in Wickham on the St John River. (see photo at the top of this post)

3. Magic Mountain in Moncton 

-Magic Mountain is Atlantic Canada’s largest waterpark and since the kids really enjoyed Calypso Park outside of Ottawa I thought it would be great to finally be able to take them to Moncton’s smaller scale version. I’m still a little optimistic that we may still be able to fit it in, as I just received some free passes from a friend and they expire on Aug 31. I won’t completely rule it out yet.

4. Having friends and their families over 

-Each summer I say we’re going to have more get-togethers with friends, but we never seem to make it a priority. Although this year these efforts may have been discouraged by number 5 and not wanting to have to crisis clean everytime we wanted to have anyone over.

5. Getting the house organized and decluttered 

-Last summer you may remember I hired a professional organizer to help me with some hotspots in the house, specifically the basement/family room area. I’m happy to say that this area, is still “relatively” decluttered. I can’t say the same for the rest of the house, especially the kitchen and my new pantry. As well since Costco opened in town, my fridge and deep-freeze could use a good once over.

6. Teaching the boys to swim independently

-I had high hopes that the two bigger boys would be swimming independently this summer, but we just didn’t get out to my dad’s pool enough. Sadly we only got one swim day in at dad’s all summer and Ciaran missed it as he had pneumonia. I had thought about enrolling the boys in outdoor lessons, but was worried that the weather may not cooperate and with my skinny little microboys they’d be freezing and not want to go on foggy or overcast days. This turned out to be a mistake as this has to have been the best summer we have had in 20 years in the city!

I know there’s lots of other things that I’m missing, but these are the things that have been weighing on me the most as summer winds down. I know we’ve been extremely fortunate this summer to be able to do a fair amount of travelling. We’ve been able to take advantage of some great travel deals and even got to take my mother-in-law on one trip with us to Sebago Lake in Maine while Kenz was away at summer camp. I just can’t get that nagging feeling that I didn’t get everything accomplished and it makes me just a wee bit sad.

-So long Summer Twenty Ten, you will be missed!

Your friend,

Cara

Summer Meal Planning…HELP!

Last night as I was slaving over a hot steamy stove and oven making spaghetti and garlic cheese bread, I got thinking that I need to plan my meals according to the weather. So how do you meal plan in summer? Do you sit with the weather forecast in one hand, the sales flyers in another while juggling your kids’ evening sports schedule? Or do you have a better system for the dog days of summer?

Another challenge is the location of my eat-in kitchen/dining room. Around dinner time, my kitchen is like a sauna as this is the time of day that this side of the house gets the most sunlight and this side of the house has the most windows- a large 3 pane bay window, a window in the backdoor and another window over the kitchen sink. So on a warm day combined with all of these factors it can make dinnertime a challenge.

I know using my slow cooker would solve a lot of my woes and I tend to try and fit in at least one or more slow cooker recipes into my plan, but sometimes by the time dinner rolls around no one ‘feels like’ having what was prepared due to the weather or the kitchen temperature or because we need to rush to get out the door to baseball.

So my question is to all of you great meal planning parents out there- How do you tweak your meal plan for busy summers?

Help Wanted! Need Storage Solutions

It’s that time of year again that I have a love/hate relationship with… the Winter-to-Spring switch over! I love the warmer temperatures, getting outside more but I hate the switch over in the house from Winter to Spring.  This year is particularly challenging as we re-purposed our storage space as a second story laundry room to make room for a new pantry in the kitchen that formerly housed the washer and dryer.

I love my new laundry room and my new washer and dryer. Laundry is not as unpleasant as it used to be, and I know this may sound a bit weird, but I actually enjoy doing laundry. I love the satisfaction of nicely folded clothing all in it’s proper drawers. So as you can see losing the storage room was worth it, but is going to be a challenge when the time comes to put away all of the winter gear.

What are your best tips  for winter clothing storage?  Do you use boxes, plastic storage bins, or do you have a closet you keep things hung in? Do you sort by family member, or do you keep like items all together?

Storing the summer clothing wasn’t really a problem as it doesn’t take up as much room as winter stuff. Right now I have an area in the top of my walk-in closet that can hold  five 68 litre storage bins and 2 smaller bins. My goal is to weed out the extra winter gear that isn’t used and try and limit what I hold onto for next winter.  Is this reasonable for a family of 6?  What is your system for storing kids outerwear.  I’ve been lucky that I’ve been able to hold onto the boys’ clothing to pass it down the line and right now I have almost 5 boxes of things that Finn (my youngest) has outgrown to be passed to a young mom in the area. How often do you purge?

Sorry for so many questions, I just can’t stand looking at these bins and boxes any longer, I think we have way too many clothes and my personal mission to to not buy any new clothing this year. If something is absolutely needed we can go to second hand stores like Value Village or Frenchy’s and it’s a very Green thing to do as well.  The new rule is, if something new to us comes in, something old must leave!

My Laundry Room Makeover

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!

Mid Summer Recap

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!

Fate Found Me on Twitter

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!

T-Shirt Hell

When I told my husband I was going to be writing about his t-shirts he was less than enthused.  I then reminded him that I wrote about my underwear not that long ago and he relented a little.

I spent the day doing some crisis cleaning.  I invited Peter Walsh and his Clutter Bugs over, but they were no-shows. I girl can dream right? I find the only way I get stuff accomplished around the house lately is if I’m under pressure.  Tomorrow we have an energy advisor coming in to do  an assessment of our house to find out how we can make improvements to make our home more energy efficient.

Andrew took the boys out for the afternoon so I could work distraction free.  I am happy to say for the first time in about 4 years, my laundry is completely caught up!  In completing this milestone I also discovered that perhaps we have too many clothes.  It was tough to close the boys’ dresser drawers.  Mackenzie ran out of hangers and was complaining and when I walked into our closet I was faced with this:

One of my favourite features in our house is the walk-in closet and built-ins in it. One thing I don’t like is not being able to find a sweater or shirt when you’re looking for it, so I decided to take out the shirts and organize them.  It was a fairly easy job, I purged some things of mine I hadn’t worn for quite some time.  Then it came time to organize Andrews T-SHIRTS. I re-folded most of them and put them back neatly on the shelves.

In the end I counted up Andrew’s t-shirts and I counted 88 (EIGHTY-EIGHT!!!)  Please tell me this is not the norm?!  You see Andrew has collected these up over the years, some have come from concerts, conventions, places he’s visited and even some from his days spent in the Navy.  I will admit on occasion I’ve gone a little “Kate Gosselin” on him and ordered him to change into something a little more appropriate or into something that still fits. Here’s a few of the more unique ones I came across:

Obviously from his Bachelor Days, I don’t think this one would go over well at Parent Teacher.

From the “Star Trek”Convention he attended many years ago. Yes he’s an eternal geek.

This one fit much better in his “University/Navy Days“

So I’m wondering do your significant others have “collections“  or “memorabilia“?  How do you handle them if the get out of control, yet not seem overbearing when it’s time to purge a little?

It's Spring! Home Reno Time

Well the time has come to start doing some renovations on our 19 year old house.  We moved into our little uptown house in September of 2002 and it was completely move-in ready.  There was a few things that I wanted to change right away, but 3 little boys kind of got in the way of that.   It’s seems so long ago when Andrew, Mackenzie and I decorated her adorable little ladybug room while I was expecting Liam.

So almost 7 years have passed and one of the things that I wanted to replace right away is still lingering…the dreaded dusty rose wall to wall carpets on the second story of the house.  They are just horrible, and why anyone would choose that colour is beyond me.  The plan is to replace them with bamboo hardwood floors. Bamboo is a great eco-friendly choice as it’s considered a renewable resource as bamboo plants take only 5 – 6 years to reach maturity.  It’s also very durable and can be refinished up to 3 times.

The next project and it’s a major one is our roof. I lucked out the other day, as our nextdoor neighbours who happen to be very involved in home renos were having their roof done as well. I yelled up to their roof and they came over later to give me a quote. I’ve already called a couple of companies to get some quotes, but feel much more comfortable using this company as I know my neighbours do their homework when it comes to contractors. My neighbour is a carpenter by trade as well.

Project 3 is replacing windows.  Our house has a LOT of windows!  I love all of the natural light that we get, from our 23 windows and huge skylight, but it’s going to cost a bundle to replace all of them!  I think we may do the front of the house first, then perhaps next year start replacing some more. They are all wood-framed windows, which in our climate here of constant summer fog is not a good choice for longevity.  We will definitely be going with a vinyl framed windows.  When the contractor arrived he also filled us in on a grant we may be able to take advantage of the ecoEnergy Retrofit Program if our house qualifies.  We should know in a couple of weeks and we also taking advantage of  Efficiency NB’s -Existing Homes Energy Efficiency Upgrades Program They will subsidize the cost of an Energy Audit of your home and from the results of the Audit you may be able to take advantage of grants offered as well as interest free loans to complete the recommendations within 18 months.  This coupled with the Canadian Government’s HRTC (Home Renovation Tax Credit) it seems like 2009 is the right time to be renovating!

Here’s a shot of our place in the fall, I’m not going to risk my life trying to get a new shot from the snowbanks across the street. Yes we still have a ton of snow!  Oh and if time and money permit, we may also paint the exterior as well.  I’d like to do a totally different colour.  Many of our neighbours have chosen bright vivid colours in recent years, and I’d like to follow suite. We’re looking for colour suggestions!

How does a woman end up with….

 

                                 SIXTY SEVEN PAIR of underwear!  shhhh!  Yes I’m embarrassed to say this is me!  I have been doing so well with keeping up with the laundry lately, that I was beginning to notice, everyone’s dresser drawers were overflowing!

I decided it was time to start getting rid of the clothing that we’ve accumulated over the years and keep the stuff that the kids actually are wearing.  There’s no sense holding onto something “just in case” .  Your dresser is prime real estate in your home and if your undies drawer is overflowing with uncomfortable unmentionables it’s time to clean up that hot property!  So clean up and out I did!

First I emptied the entire drawer and divided into stuff I like and wear often and  stuff that only gets worn when the laundry gets low.  The pile started to grow and grow.  I honestly have no idea how it all fit in there or how I ever found anything in the morning.  In the end, I counted 67 pair of panties!  I held onto 20 of my most comfortable pairs of knickers.

Next was the bras… THIRTY TWO! Again I’m embarrased to say that more than half of them were nursing bras, and some of them were over 12 years old, as I know I bought them when I was nursing Mackenzie!

Ladies do yourself a favour, ditch the ill fitting ginch!

So now that I have all of these drawers out of my dresser drawers what can I do with them? I’m not going to donate them, yuck!  So any ideas for them, or should I accept defeat and let them live their resting days at the landfill?  Does anyone really want to see me wiping down my walls with my Joe Boxers?

I've become a Gadget Mom!

Unknowingly it seems I just bought the “Gadget of the Year” according to UK’s Stuff Magazine.  I must say it’s pretty cool and I’m hoping it will keep my life a little more organized with all of the changes this fall.

So I’m sure you’re wondering what this little gadget is?  Well it’s an iPhone 3G!

I must say thus far, this thing is great!  It’s so much more than a phone.  I am amazed at all of the things it can do.  Andrew has had an iPod Touch for almost a year now, so I’ve been getting the feel for some of the features of the iPhone/Touch.  The big difference between the two, is that obviously the iPhone has an onboard phone (the Touch doesn’t) and the iPhone has web browsing capability via a data package or through Wi-Fi (touch only has Wi-Fi browsing).

The thing though that’s got me hooked is all of the great applications!  The Apps Store on iTunes lists them all there.  Most have a minimal fee of .99 cents some are a little more pricy, but MANY of them are FREE!   I’m too frugal to spend money on them , but I’ve downloaded a few of the free ones and they are a lot of fun.  Since we’ve been spending a lot of time in the van and sometimes getting to the school early, I added a few fun Apps for Ciaran to play.  One that he really likes a lot is called  Jirbo Match.  It’s a cute Memory Matching game with bright kid friendly charaters.  He started playing right away and got really excited when ever he made a match when the colouful star circles lit up the screen!

I must admit I liked playing it too!   Another App that Mackenzie and I like trying out was one called “Midomi Mobile“

So this App is great for when you got this tune stuck in your head, but you just can’t remember the lyrics or the name of the song.  or when perhaps when you’re in your car and a song comes on that you like but you’re unsure of the name or artist.  What the App will do is record a snippet of either you singing or humming the song, or record the song that’s playing on the radio and search  a database of tens of thousands of songs to find a match.  At first it didn’t really match anything that we knew, but as soon as we started singing ABBA it was bang on!

So that’s about all that’s new here.  I’ll update soon with pics from Andrew’s sister’s wedding  last weekend.  Sorry moms…I’ve been busy with my new toy, I mean Gadget!