Music Camp

Kenna had the chance to attend a music day camp last week. Brooks didn't want to, and Grey wasn't allowed to because he swallowed a coin and it still hasn't made it's appearance, so I couldn't send him and risk "not seeing" it. KIDS! Anyway, Mon - Fri, 9 to noon for $40!! (And, a $100 family cap off, so affordable!!)

The camp is put on by Academie de Ballet, and they are run by a Christian family. The boys did choir and tumbling, the girls, choir and dance. They held a recital for all the parents on Friday, and honestly I was amazed at what they were able to accomplish with these kids in a week! After seeing the recital, Brooks thought he'd give it a try next year too:-)
  

Recitals

Brooks had his very first recital this past weekend. He's only been taking lessons officially for 6 weeks or so. All the teachers had no more room for students! Anyway, he's been loving learning!

Here's the first song, "A Song About Cats"...so fitting, haha. Then the next one is called "I Like", and then after that, a small portion of his teacher Rebekah playing for us. She is a girl in our youth group, and quite talented!



Kenna's recital was a few weeks ago, and she'll be moving on next year to Brooks' teacher, because her current teacher is off to college and is moving away this summer.

She played There is A Redeemer, and she only started learning the piece a couple weeks before the recital, so she tried really hard to get it perfectly recital ready! And then she played a duet with her teacher Katrina, Praise the Name of Jesus
 

Reno - Video

A video to capture the "befores" of our Willow house project!
 

TV Cabinet Rehab

Tv cabinet back in Hugo house in 2010

Well, we needed a new tv cabinet. Like need not "need". It was purchased in 2007, from Walmart for about $100. This tells you about its quality, and also, that it really lasted longer than it should have! Moving it to the Willow house was not kind to it, and it was just so wobbly and unstable. Falling apart really. Knowing that it would have to move across the room in the Willow House, we knew it wouldn't be able to make. Moving it at all again would have it crumble. We needed to replace it, but decided we wanted real wood, nothing cheapo, but a quality piece of furniture. Which is pricey! Like, pretty much definitely over $500 for anything similar to what we'd want.

So, I came up with a diy plan: I have a friend who frequents thrift stores, (and you have to be a frequent shopper to find the best deals), and so I had her looking out for me. She sent me a few pics on her trips, but nothing grabbed me. Until she sent me this one:

It was exactly what I wanted! - Although, not just exactly like this of course. But I could see the potential. It spoke to me, as it were, and I could envision the perfection it would become.

I had my awesomely compliant husband oblige my demands with minimal sarcasm. We threw away 5 drawers ("I don't know why your mom buys something to throw half of it away" haha), and I had him cut away the bars between the drawers, so it was all an open space.

 I used Annie Sloan's Chalk Paint in Duck Egg Blue to paint it. This paint is a DREAM to work with, and goes over any surface with no sanding or scuffing needed.

 The paint is sealed with a soft wax, and then antiqued with a dark wax. This was very easy to do, and made it all look just perfect

The drawer at the top as been sealed with clear wax, and then antiqued with dark wax, and the drawer on the bottom has only been painted. See how the wax deepens the colour and the dark wax brings out texture? I sooo love it!

We made a shelf for the open are

We drilled holes in the back so cords can fit through

It's so gorgeous! I kept the existing hardware, and just painted over it. Brian was skeptical at my decision, but I am so glad I did this. I adore the way it turned out. I aged it also with the dark wax.

Our poor old tv cabinet on it's very last day in this world

In order to take down the walls in here, we have to change a few things around - so it's time to move the tv! First, we had to remove this ugly paneling.

It took a whole evening, but we moved everything across the room, and got it all working again. Not an easy task:-)

One of my favourite things: Our charging station. We drilled a hole though the back of a drawer, and through the back of the cabinet, and so now, all our charging items are hidden! No more phones, tabbies, etc all over the place out of every outlet in the room charging away.

A lot of charging going on!

 We decided to place the tv here, because once all the walls are down, it will seem more centered to the room, if centered on the wall, it will be too "in the corner" once the whole big room is exposed.

So for now, it's kind of blocking the door way, but it won't be, once there is no doorway!

So now, here's the other side of the room, where the tv used to be. Gotta say, loving this new arrangement!

In the daylight. I am so in love with this cabinet, it's not even funny. It turned out exactly the way I wanted it to, and what can be better than that?

The Orange Room

The play room/school room/extra room in this house is affectionately called The Orange Room because of the orange-y peach paint that is on the walls, and was there when we moved in. Well, I'd had it up to here with the orange room! It's super nice to have such extra space, but from when we moved in, I just felt we put things in there, and somehow it just wasn't laid out well.

My goal was to change that! I had a few ideas for cube storage and such to deal with our school stuff - but I really don't have a lot of money to dedicate to this little rehab right now, since we are doing some major renos to the house on the whole. But I just needed it fixed now, or at least improved for my own peace of mind!

We don't keep any toys in the bedrooms (or any other room) outside of a Playmobil table in Kenna's room, and our spare tv, crafts, books, school stuff - all of these need to be smushed into the only spare bedroom we have.

Here are some very real pics of the orange room right before the revamp.Very real.

View from the door. Lego all over the floor - and !!! I just figured why clean it up as I was about to destroy it, in order to put it all back together again.
Tv cabinet is to the left, toy bins to the right.

Tv cabinet and game storage. It never fit well in this spot and always blocked half of the closet door

The weird corner. An old desk, printer underneath, and an open styled filing cabinet I use for school

Sorry the lighting from the window made this pic very dark and I tried to lighten it. Maybe that's ok though:-) It's a messy corner with a little desk and plastic totes - and school books everywhere (new stuff for next year has arrived and no where to put it...)

The toy bins

Okay, well, it was almost like - where do I start?! I was able to transform this room for a grand total of $10!!

Here are pics of the "new" orange room. Unfortunately still orange...lol:-) Paint is coming later, but that's out of my domain right now. Everything is a process!

View from the door. There are two stains on the carpet that was a from a marker or something that got caught under the edge of the couch in it's old position without a lid on - I thought about trying to get it out - but I'm not going to bother since it's all getting replaced soon enough:-) (The white stripes on the couch is so that the cats don't scratch the leather)

Opposite wall from the couch. TV cabinet & kids games storage, toy bin, and a school shelf

The closet, which contains my crafting supplies, and some school binders, books, "extras" etc

This has a few toys on the top rack bins, but it's mostly school supplies. A bin for dry erase stuff, pens & pencils, pencil crayons, flashcards etc. I really love having them in bins like this!

I got all the old books put away, all the summer stuff in their school boxes, and next years stuff sorted well! 

I threw out the desk that had been in there, holding basically just the printer, and then "stuff" - it was just unnecessary. The tv cabinet now holds the printer, and everything was able to be sorted and put away in a proper place. I moved the childrens desk up stairs to the boys room. A place to do quiet work when the distractions of the dining room table are too much for a trying-to-concentrate child.

The plastic totes that had been stacked 4 high in the corner - I swapped them out with the black totes in Brooks closet - there is only 1 dresser in their room (Grey's clothes), and Brooks uses totes on the floor of the closet for pants, shirts, pj's, socks & undies. It works pretty well! Anyway, I wanted a less busy look in the orange room, so using all black totes works well. Now Brooks has a colourful closet:-)

We do our school at the dining room table, mostly, which means lots of carrying books back and forth. My initial idea with the plastic totes is that each kid has their own tote for their books. I used this idea even back at our old house. But it's never worked out because the totes are too heavy and large for the kids to carry. The idea is a good one though! So here is where my $10 cost came in. I'd love to someday invest in a "cube storage" bookcase idea, with the removable baskets. I decided to make it work with what I already have.

I used the black plastic totes, and inside them placed smaller cloth totes that I already owned! They fit plenty of books perfectly, and I think it will really be a good solution. And if it's working, someday, I can buy the real deal.

These are the totes that I placed inside the plastic bins - the bins aren't super deep, so these fit well "sideways" as you can see in the pics above. They are from Thirty-One, and I had been using them in the front hall closet for hats, mitts, sports clothing (when it's baseball season, I keep all the socks, shirts, pants and hats together so I'm not tracking them down in each kids drawers each week).

So the $10 comes in because I needed new totes for that shelf, since taking the other ones away for school books:-) So, real pic of my closet! One tote (they are larger than the Thirty-One ones) for sports stuff and hats, and one for winter stuff. The gap in the middle is currently filled with things I need to return to friends - they've left things here accidentally:-) 

I bought these totes at Walmart for $5 each.

Jumping Board

May's first jump into the pool I caught on my phone. After some convincing and a few "psych out's" she was ready to try. She screams out "Cannonball" and throws herself off the edge in a huge bellyflop! We tried and tried and tried to get her to jump straight down, but everything was pretty much a bellyflop:-)

She calls it the jumping board, and says it's super fun!

Ella is the kids best friend, and she lives off and on with her Grandma - they are our "across the yard" neigbours. And lucky for us, we have an open invitation to swim in their awesome pool, anytime we want!

Naturally, we take them up on this offer...often:-)
 
I was able to catch a little more action on the real camera

My Gil

I recently purchased a childhood favourite to introduce my kids too – Anne of Green Gables. It's probably been 13 years since I'd seen it, maybe longer. It was so much fun to watch it again, and I realized something I'd forgotten. I want to marry Gilbert Blythe.

 And I realized something else I'd not remembered – the story of Anne and Gilbert is hauntingly familiar and personal to me. For those of you that don't know about our troubled beginnings, lets just say you can picture Anne, nose in the air, ignoring Gil's very existence. That would be me. And you can picture Gilbert, always stealing a glance at her, always amused by her, always trying to be helpful, and with a knack for showing up at the least desirable/most necessary moment. That would be Brian.

I realized something really incredible when I watched the movies last week. I married Gilbert Blythe.

I don't know how many people get to say – after treating someone unkindly, intentionally, for years – that this person ends up being the love of their life. I can imagine it's not very many people. “We quarreled and I wouldn't forgive him when he asked me to. I wanted to after a while, but I was stubborn and I wanted to punish him first. He never came back. I always felt rather sorry. I sort of wished that I'd forgiven him when I had the chance” - Marilla Cuthbert
Most people decide that they are too important to be treated badly, or that the future is bleak and there is no point in perseverance, and move on.

There are a select few, like Gil, who see beyond the troubled circumstances and petty quarrels to beautiful beginnings and happily ever afters. They are the fortunate ones. And there are those, like Anne, who believe in no other version of the story's ending but the one she's determined in her own mind. There is but one path to happiness, is there not? And I've decided that it certainly could never be you! These end up being the most unhappy of us all, unless they can be persuaded to change their perspective.

I have never been deserving of the time, attention, and pursuit that has been given to me. I will always be grateful that God allowed my heart to see what I had standing in front of me. A loyal, faithful friend, determined in his own way to write the story that he saw, with all it's marvelous possibilities. He is the hero of our story, steadfast, honest, and charming – and I'm just the lucky girl that he loves.

As for life? “We couldn't enjoy it's loveliness any more if we had millions of dollars and ropes of diamonds” - Anne Shirley