Painted... er... painting

Happy Second Birthday dear sweet, crazy, assertive, adorable, smiley, joyful Corrina! We love you!





Wow, I hate painting prep! Dave and I had a full day to spend time painting, but we hardly got any paint to board at all.. one coat on the cabinets.. that was it! Luckily a friend babysat (thanks bre) so we were able to get back to the house and do the second coat, plus a little of the walls.

Look how different the place looks, ya know, besides the lack of cabinet doors and the blue tape!


The color we choose in the end is called Cup of Cocoa, but Behr paint, and the cabinets are Swiss Coffee...both very kitcheney names! So far it seems that the color will work well with this odd tile!
This is all we have done so far, with so much more to go. I don't think we will get anything more than the kitchen done before we move in, but at least that will be out of the way!
I'm off to get some school stuff out of the way so I can party with a two year old! Yippy!

New House overload

We move so very soon, which tickles me pink, and orange, and green too! I truly am excited now that we have passed the "make a million phone calls a day" stage, and the "you want how much money by when?" phase. Everything is in order, except the colors that our new house will be.
I am lost in a mad world of inspiration! We went to a Color your World store today and found some colors we like for the kitchen, but then I came home and saw another color I liked. What is a girl to do! I find it hard to pull it all together, and very hard to find the links for the colors I wish I could show you.

I also spotted Dave looking at this website, which then got my mind going even more... How would these look in the hallway, or the bedroom, or the kitchen?
Or maybe this one... I think this one is truly my favorite.

I am trying to decide what I want my house to feel like. I have loved having a green living room, because it feels fresh all year long, coordinates with spring, fall, and especially Christmas without really feeling specific to any season. But then something comes over me and I start thinking I want an uber neutral house... but then I think I might regret not having green... oh dear me.
I want our house to feel warm, and cozy, to feel homey and trendy, and unique and beautiful. Maybe I am asking too much of a paint color, what do you think?

S' about time

that we show off a few photos of our new house! It is a 3 bedroom, about 100 years old but completely redone, in a good location! It hardly needs any work at all, which we like because we don't have the time right now! The back yard is a good sized, plus the basement is clean, dry and drywalled, so we will do what we can with it!

Front, with little fenced area. The front window is the living room of course. The kitchen is an extension, the full width of the house on the back!

Back... sides are fenced, but we will need to add the back fence. The window and door go into the large kitchen!

Kitchen... the neat part is that this is only one side of the kitchen because it is eat in... however, there is also a dinning area, so I am going to make a great computer/home organization/mudroom area on the other side. We are going to paint out the cabinets and go for a bright, modern country style kitchen. We bought our appliances and the place will look homey once we are all moved in! I love the two windows, and the double sink.. not that we will need it since we bought a dishwasher (whoo hoo... i can't imagine how many hours that will add onto my day.. not to mention my afternoon dishwashing session is history!)

Living room and entry way, a view from standing in the dinning area. The space is a lot bigger than this photo shows it to be!

And this picture is a view of the dinning space, taken from the living room. You can see through to the kitchen and the back door of the house as well! The stairs to the basement are to the far left, behind the wall, good layout!
And this last photo is Corrina at her second implant activation, a few weeks ago. We were on the news (did you see us?), and Corrina did great. She was a little scared by the new ear becuse the first side has such refined hearing now that what she was getting in the second ear didn't sound like what she was used to. It looks like she is sleeping, but she is just going into a little shell, with her eyes closed, and rocking. She was the one who was actualy doing all the rocking, propelling me back and forth for about 45 mins. We coaxed her out of her shell with fun toys once we thought she could handle it. She did fine, and within 2 days had adjusted to having two ears. She is coming along great, localizing sound (that is, turning to us when we call her name, instead of scanning the room to find the source of sound) and she is able to hear sounds at a farther distance!

Corrina loves this elephant towel and spends a lot of afterbath time running around being an elephant (which she also has an action and sound for!)

Choral Chaos!

It's time once again for our annual Toy Show! I count about 60! How many can you name?

First 'winter' post

Guess what I'm not doing right now (besides that fact that I just realized i need to take cookies out of the oven this second.. .why am I still typing and not taking things out.. brb) I'M NOT STUDYING! I am done school school school... just finished today today today! I feel good. I feel good to have worked hard and accomplished great grades, I feel good to have applied myself and truly learned very important skills and techniques. I just need practice now... anyone want to volunteer themselves and their problems to my listening ear for an hour?
Here is Corrina, making some toast!


I couldn't believe the state of our house this past week, with very busy Church activities, studying and bad colds we really let things get messy! But, with a small amount of time the house is back in place, the tree is glowing and the candles on my pretend mantle are flickering brightly. My oven is fulfilling it's destiny to be hot, my flour, sugar, and butter are being scorched until lightly browned, and my camera is loading photos beside me, all in an effort to bring you this wintry post!

We thought Corrina might be interested in helping with tree set up.. she had her times I guess, but mostly just wanted to play with her toys, without a tree obstructing them (sorry that I take such idiotic videos and talk the whole time.. note that Corrina is copying dave very specifically, can you see it?):


This second video is ridiculous and has some Corrina bum in it, but you can hear her making a few sounds! Don't feel bad if you laugh at how dumb this video is:


My pseudo-mantle is warming our living room and waiting for presents! I just added the buttons a few days ago, because what is any decoration without buttons!


We love our tree. We decided that when we went on holidays we would pick up ornaments to remind us of the place we have been. Here is Arizona


And Here is Newfoundland (colorful row houses.. they're famous for them.. we bought three ornaments so we could hang them in a row!)


Here is the whole deal:


I love the colors of Christmas time, or the colors I choose to love and decorate with at Christmas time: red and white. What better way to enjoy them than in my tummy. For a few years I have made this recipe, but found this recipe on another blog I read (thanks K)! It was the oatmeal that attracted me to it, and lack of nuts, so I changed recipes (if you know me, you know that I am not one for tradition and I seek change in life like a Santa seeks milk and cookies... no wait.. not just once a year.. that's a bad metaphor), uhm, like toddlers seek chocking hazards.. all the time! Don't those colors make you happy?

We also made some 'window pane' sugar cookies a week ago. Yummy and pretty!


In other words, Gilmore Girls seven is on it's way home from the store with Dave... I can't wait! What a perfect way to celebrate being all done classes for a few weeks!

General update

In 13 days Corrina will have her second implant activated. The surgery went great and we were at our host home in Newfoundland by that afternoon. We were all pretty tired, but not getting enough night time sleep, so Corrina was taking incredible naps, like 4 hours, and still getting to bed at 8pm. Worse than the surgery was the flu that we all caught, one after another, so we at least could help to take care of each other. Dave was sick the day after surgery, corrina was sick the night after day was sick all day. Poor guy just wanted to sleep but I needed him to help me with the messy mouth baby. She was dunked in the tub (at someone else's house none the less) 3 times that night, screaming each time. When Corrina is fluish sick she throws up and then just wants to play. She really didn't see the need to have a bath! So we played a little to be sure she wasn't going to be sick again, which she was, 3 more times.... Sunday we were all feeling better, but I became sick on Monday night, the short short night before our flight. Dave and I slept TWO hours that night. The plane ride back home was difficult, to say the least. Boy were we happy to land! How wonderful!
Here is a picture of Corrina and I at the harbour on a typical cloudy day. I had just bought the toque and mitts, which I LOVE. They are warm and beautiful. Sadly, I have lost the toque already, and I can't find the same one online. I am so disappointed in myself... the first matching set I have had in years and years and I lose the hat. Anyway...


Since we have been back I have mainly been working on finishing off my last major paper for the semester. I just turned it in two days ago, with a whooping 30 page finish! Eeeeekkkk.
This our Church puts on a Christmas pageant... the same one for about 25 years. Last year Corrina was baby Jesus, when she wasn't crying! This year we are going on as Citizen's, or crowd as I like to think of the role! We are on stage 3 times and between our acts Corrina crys at the stage door to go on again. She loves the lights, and copies the gestures of the other people on stage. At the rehearsal, when we weren't on stage Corrina was standing at the stage door crying and crying to go back on! I think she will be enrolled in some Drama classes in the near future! We there are a total of 4 shows to do this weekend so Corrina will get her share of being in the spotlight. Hope she doesn't upstage Jesus!
The pageant itself consists more of story telling and pantomime to a beautiful choir. We do not have any lines to memorize, just some basic acting and gesturing. The cast are all from the Church and many of them have done it for years! Actualy, one of the guys in our small group, 20 something, was Jesus when he was first born! The girls all look forward to playing Mary when they are teenagers from the time they are like 5 and playing little angels! It's all about hierarchy! Somehow, between all this pageant stuff, I have to find time to study for two exams and hit a few parties. BUSY!
Off to the books I got, but not before a few more photos...

To back track, this is dave and I with our Masks at the masquerade ball! And then one without! I really like wearing this dress... I just need more places to wear it.. and the necklace too. Someone invite me to something fancy!

I have some Christmas-y photos to post, but I figured I had better spread things out a little.

Dare to compare

 don't have oodles of time to post about Newfoundland right now, but I will later this week.  But I do have something fun and assuming to post about, quickly.  Last night Dave and I went to my school's Christmas banquet and ball.  It was alot of fun actually, and we won a $100 gift card to the Keg!  Definitely worth the ticket price (which was cheap!).  I just upload the photos so I could put one on facebook for another class mate, and I came across our very first Christmas banquet photo together.  I think we had been dating for about 1.5 months, and this was the first formal event we attended together.  So, here we have it, our first banquet and our most recent banquet... dare to compare:

Sharing my travels

I have never been to Europe, but I do travel around the blog world alot! I know, that sentence was rather cheesy, but you won't care once you start visiting these sites I have found:

A new sewing project for every day in November, what better way to get ready for Christmas: Sew Mama, Sew

Do you know about Etsy? All handmade products! Like ebay, but craftier and better. Often you can find blog through Etsy as well!

This place may be even better than Ikea! Can you imagine??

Are you into green living? Danny Seo's blog features a delectable assortment of green home projects. He also has many books you can find at your public library (or at least at the winnipeg ones!), like Green Giving.
Actualy, there is a great post here about the book, with some pictures!

Last, but not least, low and behold, Martha Stewart has a blog

That is all I have time for now. I am not adding any of these links to the sidebar, so take time to look and bookmark them yourselves! I am really enjoying the first one right now!

There is no title

The camera is home, I CAN POST!

I don't like writing photoless posts, so if I don't have any good photos I stay away. In this case Dave took the camera to work on sunday, and left it there until yesterday. I have some 'business' photos to get out of the way, and then a few from the last 2 weeks! I didn't realize it had been such a length of time since posting. Eeeck, bare with me, and thanks for checking to read us!

While the family was out the girls painted pottery. I mailed it just the other day, but here is a sneak peak before it arrives on your door step:




Corrina carved her first pumpkin with Daddy (post Halloween). She was good at scraping the inards out of the pumpkin, and was pretty good at putting them into the pot and not on the floor. Needless to say dave still had lots of afterward clean-up! I wasn't there, but that's probably a good thing because of the mess.

Corrina LOVES to read books now. She grabs her favorites (anything with flaps!) and brings them over to the couch for story time. She is doing great at recognizing sounds because of our reading; I can put the books in front of her and ask her to show me "BaaaBaaa" and she can find the books with sheep in them!Dave has a beard now, that he grew for a bet from me, and he also has funny squishy balls that we all love!

Next week Corrina will have her second implant surgery. The surgery date is November 23rd. Keep us in your prayers.
One last funny thing: we live in Central Canada, it is Nov 14, and there is no snow on the ground. The temperature is barely below zero, and while yes, i am enjoying this, the smart part of me realizes that this is probably a large part of global warming: world is slowly dying, and we are killing it. What are you doing now, today, to stop that?
Here's some inspiration: A handmade Christmas (Pledge)
I have not commited yet, but I think this will be a large part of our Christmas, if I can get Dave to stop buying himself his own Christmas presents and sticking them in the closet (comics and muppets!)

In my family Halloween received almost more attention that Christmas! My mom loved to help us put together costumes, always homemade, we carved lots of big pumpkins, roasted the seeds (which I never ate) and ran around our neighborhood mingling, scaring and collecting candy. Now that I have a child I found I was almost as excited as my mother used to be. This year though, because of demanding school assignments, Dave was in charge of putting Corrina's costume together. He was inspired by the flashy light on the side of her head and decided to go with a Borg (star trek) themed costume. She ended up looking more like a generic robot, but, she was among the few children we saw who actually had homemade costumes plus she sported real working lights!
Dare to Compare!


We took Corrina to one of the large city malls where they were hosting a trick or treat event. Basically the kids went up to stores that were handing out candy and were given treats! It was warm, safe, quick and fun! Corrina did not understand why people were giving her candy, and would look at people with a "are you sure you were suppose to do that" sorta face when something was plopped into her bag. She would stop in the middle of the mall halls and start sifting through her back trying to figure out what was in there. She didn't know that she was carry around every child's dream, she thought they were little toys! That is, until mommy unwrapped a lollipop and enlightened her!

Now, although the mall was alot of fun, I just can't pass up going door to door because I think it is such a community bonding event. I think it is a neat time to meet new adults and kids and really feel a sense of living together. Yes, I know it revolves around death and candy, but I always find that people are excited to see their neighborhood kids out doing something safe with their time. I think it is a shame that people get down on teenagers for trick or treating because the things some teens end up doing on that night are less than safe and really don't build community. (of course, I do expect teens to dress up if they are going out and about!).

Anyway, enough with my rant, let me tell you about Dave's rant: "janie, i think most of these costumes were bought at Walmart, that sucks" Dave could not stand all the mass produced factory costumes. He was really upset that people don't make costumes anymore, but we can understand why: life is busy and people don't necessarily learn certain skills anymore because they have become obsolete. Dave took the challenge though and learned a few sewing skills to put this costume together. I am proud of him. I felt his rant too, in a different way. Now there are certain stores that we don't shop at because I don't believe it is right to dress my child in clothes made by exploited children in other countries. Children making clothes for children is not my idea of Christian living. I kinda felt this way about halloween this year too. I doubt that the majority of these store bought costumes were ethically produced by fairly paid workers. I feel this way when Christmas rolls around too. It would be impossible and expensive to everything ethically produced, but I challenge you to consider the harm our holidays and celebrations do to our fellow humans around the globe (as I write this I am realizing that the little lights on Corrina's costume were probably not made in decent working conditions. Does anyone know where you can buy Christmas lights that are made ethically?). We may be having fun but at what cost? In the spirit of halloween, I guess that's my scary message.