Pink Palace

A long time ago I promised pictures of the pink palace...where we haven't lived for almost two months now! So, here they are...and hopefully soon I'll get some pictures of the Lyons' Den posted.

Pink Palace entrance way

Pink Palace kitchen

Pink Palace teeny-tiny bathroom

Pink Palace living room/dining room from the kitchen

Pink Palace living room/dining room the other way

Pink Palace bedroom

Pink Palace guest bedroom (which did eventually get unpacked, just to get packed up again soon after!)

Pink Palace kitchen from living room/dining room

Is this goodbye?

Wow dear readers, I'm amazed to see you're still around to check this out...there's been a distinct lack of activity for a prolonged period of time! A long, long time ago I mentioned that I didn't think my blogging would last, but no, no I don't think this is goodbye...I think this is just crazy busy and I'll be back.

I have a few things I have been meaning to post for a while...like...well...hmm

• the long ago promised pictures of the pink palace. Which I managed to take before we started packing, but never actually posted
• pictures of the new place (Lyons' den? still thinking on that one)
• the "we wish Kelsey was here" picture from the bbq in the Ross backyard in July
• random, usual blogginess

So for now, I'm still around. There's still just two of us living in the new place...ahem...the Lyons' den. I'm still working. My belly is still growing.

Maybe when the mat leave starts in just over a week I'll get to that list...providing we're unpacked by then!!

Because it's fun...

or something like that...no, not really, it's not fun, but this time it is very exciting.

What is? oh right, I guess I didn't mention it, did I? We're moving. In a few weeks. When I'm 36 weeks pregnant. Because moving once in this pregnancy just wasn't enough excitement for us! But this is exciting because this will be OUR place. And this time, well, I'm taking those lists I made the last time into account so hopefully this move will be much, much smoother.

From list #1: "Do this again"

• thoroughly clean and disinfect the new place...this will happen the day we move. No doubt about it. Because not only will Alex and I be there to do this, but my Mom and Dad will be too and anyone who has ever moved with my Mom knows, the disinfection will happen!
  
• borrow bankers boxes from work for books, dishes and other breakables...these are still in hiding at the pink palace because we anticipated another move in the near future
• use lots and lots of tissue paper...still got this too
  
• hire movers...yup, to be booked on Monday
  
• set up the bedroom and bathroom ASAP before unpacking anything else. Then when bath time, naptime or bedtime comes, well, you can get clean and have a comfortable place to sleep, now, not after you unpack and assemble stuff...this will most definitely be happening. Naps are essential these days!
  
• have company come a week or two after the movers move everything...motivation to get unpacked...um, well, does a new baby count as company? Or what about my parents who have graciously offered to spend an extra long weekend with us helping to move and unpack?
  
• make sure horrible old furniture stays away from the new house...motivation to replace it. If the nasty stuff moves in, well, it's never going to leave...we don't have any horrible furniture right now (well, at least not any we need desperately to get rid of), but we do have a Queen sized bed and frame if anyone wants it (if not, it's going on craigslist) so we can replace it with a CRIB! a crib!
  
• give any and all things that are not important, useful, or needed to charity...we haven't accumulated too much in the last few months, but we do keep coming across stuff that we wonder why we bothered to bring it with us the last time!
  
• use original packing boxes whenever possible...yup, still got some of that too
  
• forward mail...of course
  

From list #2: "Don't do this again"

• move on someone else's terms (okay, sometimes there's no controlling this)...but this time it's all about us! Yay...
  
• prolong the move over a three week period...nope, one day. That's it.
  
• be a presenter at a conference the weekend of the move...good, none planned and I've been practicing my NO skills just in case, not that I'll need them. It's summer.
  
• move while recovering from the nasty winter cold...it's supposed to be summer then, but who knows, what with the weird weather we've been having lately...fingers crossed!
  
• move while suffering from morning sickness...morning sickness is gone, but the baby is huge now....we'll see how that goes!
  

From list #3: "Do this next time"

• move somewhere that has parking, preferably assigned...DONE!
• move somewhere that has storage...Christmas decorations and spare tires need to live somewhere else for most of the year...DONE!
• move in one day...prolonging the inevitable is stressful and makes everyone sad (especially when no one wanted to move in the first place)...DONE!

We're hoping this move is much smoother than the last one, but we're pretty sure it will be...we're happy to move this time, unlike last time when we were both very very sad to leave our house.

Pictures will come (I realize I still haven't really posted many of the pink ghetto palace and some of you have asked, so I'll try to get some up before the packing starts).

PS....I like lists!

Changing up the meal plan

Alex and I have started making a meal plan. Which means we plan out our menu for a couple of weeks. We have a handy calendar that we've put up inside one of the kitchen cupboards (thank you cellular telephone provider for thinking we need multiple calendars in our household) and we write down lunches and dinners. We don't stick to it exactly because sometimes recipes make more or less than we thought they would or we decide to eat out (which happens way less now that we have a "plan"), but it's a good guide and makes grocery shopping much easier.

But we were getting bored. We were eating essentially the same things on about a three week rotation...blah...so we decided to make each week a cookbook week. We got three or four yummy cookbooks as wedding gifts and I have another four or so that are great, but we rarely use them. Rarely as in I have made maybe four recipes out of each cookbook and maybe one or two of those I make regularly.

Our first week was supposed to be Rebar week, but it's been a tad busy around the pink palace what with some major editing I've been ignoring, the hunt, and life in general. I made two recipes from the Rebar cookbook though - the Bombay Roll-ups and the Chocolate Chip Cookies. I know cookies don't count as a meal, but boy are these ones yummy. We decided (well, me since I do the cooking) that while many of the Rebar recipes look yummy, a lot of them are just a bit too time consuming or have too many strange ingredients to make on a "school night." We also love the spring pasta (I don't know if that's what it's called - the one with asparagus, spinach and vodka) and the green rice. LOVE GREEN RICE.

So we supplemented this week with the Moosewood cookbook and Alex happily ate spinach and rice casserole. Rice seems to be a theme in our lives right now...

Anyway, next week will be another cookbook - maybe something that is a bit more "school night" friendly...

But those Rebar cookies, they really are spectacular. You know.

That's all.

Stupid squirrels

So this morning, I got up and started my morning routine. I was in the kitchen when I heard some very strange noises coming from the bedroom. Now, Alex was in there, sleeping, I thought. The window was open, so I thought maybe it was the wind, pulling the metal blinds against the window, but the living room window was also open and it's relatively still. So, I went to see what Alex was doing. As expected, he was sleeping, but there was a horrible racket coming from our window.

And when I opened the blinds, well, there was a squirrel hanging off the open part of the window. The noise startled it and it jumped back to the roof next to us.


Then Alex pointed out that all of the neighbours windows were also closed...so there's a chance the little pain in the butt had been tormenting them too. The building is stucco and I've seen squirrel scramble along flat walls to windows, so it wouldn't be unheard of.


I wish I had a trap like my parents and a forest up the road to dump the silly thing in...The last thing we want is a squirrel loose in the house, so who knows when we'll be able to open that window again.

Vermin funeral

The vermin is gone. Yes, that says is, as in one vermin not multiple vermin.

The poor people across the hall had a bad smell in their apartment for a few weeks.

Yesterday the building manager went in to help them find the source of the bad smell. And it was a dead rodent.

We're pretty sure there was only ever one, so hopefully this is the end of the uninvited visitor saga!

Back in the slow lane

I've been saying for a while that I'd head back to the pool, but when the morning sickness hit there was no way I could even think about the pool, all that water swishing around made me queasy! Then I felt better but the pool was closed for its annual maintenance and there is no way you'll catch me swimming in the outdoor pool. NO WAY!

But today I went swimming with a coworker. I'm slow, although not 600m/hour slow, but that is to be expected since I haven't been in the pool for way too long and I'm just a little bit pregnant.

As always there was one person who drove me nuts in my lane (well, two actually). There was the lady who should have been in the middle lane because she was swimming as fast or faster than most of the middle lane people and running over the slow lane people and there was the sloooooooooow girl. She was there to flirt with a boy...they had a splashing fight, she whined about not getting her hair wet (Hello, why are you in a pool and without a swim cap if you don't want to get your hair WET?!?!). She also should have been swimming in the non lane next to the slow lane. She was using a a kick board (no problem there, I'm a huge kick board fan myself) and instead of swimming she was pulling herself along the lane rope and about four metres from the wall, she'd stop and turn around and start floating back the WRONG WAY.

Ahhhhh...the joys of a communal pool. Maybe in my next life I'll have my own personal lap pool at my house and I won't have to share. Cause there are some things I'm just not so good at sharing!

Oh, and the cub. The cub likes swimming. It kicked up a fuss when I first got in, but I think that was probably because of the cool temperature (or maybe it could feel the difference between water and air?). I hate the bath tub at the pink palace, so the cub has never had a bath, just a shower. But as soon as I started swimming it stopped karate chopping and it stayed still for almost two hours after the swim. If only I had that lap pool and could swim a few laps before bed!

Unwelcome, uninvited visitors

You know the kind, like the fabled Great-Aunt Gertrude or whatever old great-aunt lives in your family's closet. The lady who has to be three hundred years old, smells like powder, wet cabbage and stinky cats who arrived unannounced on your doorstep with her carpet bag. She hogs the best bed in the house, she complains about everyone, she insults the kids, the food is too rich, not rich enough, too salty, not salty enough, there's too much of it or not enough of it...you get my drift. And she overstays her welcome. Whether she stays for one hour or one month, it's far too long!

Yeah, so our unwelcome, uninvited visitor reappeared twice last night. I kind of scared it when I yelled really loud the second time I saw it...I was kind of hoping it was a figment of my tired imagination when I saw it the first time. I hope when we move, it doesn't move with us.

Sigh.

Earth Hour in the pink palace

Alex and I turned the lights out for Earth House last night and settled in for some board game playing...gotta make use of all those games hanging out in the guest room soon to be nursery closet.

candle light

game plan

Alex and the Scrabble board

words

concentration

making a move

flickering light

Want us to like you?

Or at least not curse you silently under our breath as we walk past your door or shake our fists at you through our bathroom wall or get aggravated whenever we look out (or get near to) our bedroom window? Then read this carefully...please.

Dear Next Door Neighbours,

We chose our new apartment carefully and had some general criteria, most of which are not relevant to you, but one of which was a non-smoking building. STOP SMOKING OUT YOUR WINDOW! Your window is at a 90 degree angle to ours and the smoke blows right into our bedroom...all day and night. I was not impressed to be woken up last week at 4:30 in the morning because of the smoke wafting in our window.

We don't like mice. They're dirty, disease carrying vermin. They will not go away while you keep your apartment the way it is. Move your rice and noodles from the cupboard under the sink. Get some traps. They won't go away since they know they have a nice source of food and shelter and those ultrasonic rodent repellers will NOT work on mice who have established a hold on their space. We have a clean kitchen and no food out for them to nibble on, but they won't stop visiting us, just to see if there's maybe something there, until you clean up your act.

I get that you keep strange hours. Not a problem. Alex does too. But you don't need to use your playground voices to talk to each other at 3:00 in the morning. Your apartment is only about 500 square feet. There isn't another wing. It's not windy. You're standing in the SAME ROOM!

Thanks Next Door Neighbours,
The people who live next to you and are the unwilling recipients of your smoke, rodents and noise

Saying Adieu

It was harder than I thought.

A lot harder.

Alex and I met at the house last night to do one final sweep through - we made sure everything was gone, vacuumed one last time, mopped the floors and cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom.

And it was hard to leave. Like saying good bye to a family member or friend who you know you won't see for a very long time, or possibly ever.

But the sun came out today, so that must mean that this is a good new beginning.

So goodbye Blue House and your ghosts...like those far away friends, we have happy memories of the Blue House...thank goodness for that!

The logistics of moving

or how it will be different the next time.

Because no matter how much I stamp my feet and make noise about never moving again, well, since I'm not currently housed in a pine box or a house with yard and some trees and some storage space, it's inevitable that sometime in the not too distant future (which at this point in my life could be a few months or a few years) I will have to move again. And as a reminder to that future self, this is what worked, didn't work, and must be done differently the next time:

Do this again

• thoroughly clean and disinfect the new place
• borrow bankers boxes from work for books, dishes and other breakables
• use lots and lots of tissue paper
• hire movers
• set up the bedroom and bathroom ASAP before unpacking anything else. Then when bath time, naptime or bedtime comes, well, you can get clean and have a comfortable place to sleep, now, not after you unpack and assemble stuff!
• have company come a week or two after the movers move everything...motivation to get unpacked!
• make sure horrible old furniture stays away from the new house...motivation to replace it. If the nasty stuff moves in, well, it's never going to leave
• give any and all things that are not important, useful, or needed to charity
• use original packing boxes whenever possible
• forward mail

Don't do this again

• move on someone else's terms (okay, sometimes there's no controlling this)
• prolong the move over a three week period
• be a presenter at a conference the weekend of the move
• move while recovering from the nasty winter cold
• edit March 2008: move while suffering from morning sickness

Do this next time

• move somewhere that has parking, preferably assigned.
• move somewhere that has storage...Christmas decorations and spare tires need to live somewhere else for most of the year
• move in one day...prolonging the inevitable is stressful and makes everyone sad (especially when no one wanted to move in the first place)

I don't remember the last move being so stressful and horrible and unpleasant, but that might be because I was moving from the Hobbit Hole to the Blue House (i.e. from about 550 square feet, half a closet and no storage to 1300 square feet plus a deck and storage) and this time the move was from the Blue House to the Pink Palace (latter place to less than 700 square feet, no storage). Hmmmm....yeah....

MIA due to move

So, posting, yeah, it's not happening. Mostly because we're in the midst of the chaos of moving...moving that's taking weeks to accomplish...many loads of belongings have made their way to the Pink Palace and there are still a few more to come, but the Blue House, well, it doesn't feel so friendly anymore. I don't like going there. The Pink Palace doesn't feel like home yet...there are boxes and piles everywhere, but I think hope that it will feel happy once we get everything unpacked and pictures on the wall and things organized.

Until then, well, posting will be sporadic. Like the last time I moved, the computer got to live where there was no internet connection for quite a while...oh, and it's still living there...sigh

Hope to be back soon....

Games, games, and more games

So...yesterday before our crazy hanging out with friends, looking for a couch, hanging out with more friends day, we took another load over to the new house.

Because there's no furniture, we're a bit limited on what we can actually unpack right now, but we thought we'd put the games in the guest room closet. We know we have a lot of games, but in the blue house they lived in the wardrobe which has dark shelves and is deceptively deep or they lived under the guest room bed.

With the exception of the table hockey game, all of them are now in the closet. And they take up more space than we thought.


So, after we move, you're all invited to come over and play games...seriously, if we have them, we better well use them!

Aren't we lucky!

So, when we discovered we had to leave our beloved Blue House, Alex and I had some decisions to make about where we were going and what we wanted/needed in an apartment.

We decided

• we could move down to one bedroom if we had to if there was some storage
• staying close to our current neighbourhood was a necessity because of Alex's job and hours
• we could give up a deck/balcony if necessary because we live in a great city and there are lots of parks in the neighbourhood
• we should try to be far away from a White Spot because far too often we cop out on making dinner
• we would be looking at a fair chunk of change more for a two bedroom than we're currently paying, and if we were lucky only a few hundred less for a one bedroom

Well what do you know, we scoured craigslist for anything and everything. Made a few contacts, saw some pictures and decided EWWWWWWWWW and then found the Pink Palace. And we took it right away.

Because

• it had two bedrooms and three closets even if there was no storage in the building
• it was only eight blocks from the Blue House which means a five minute each direction increase in commute time for me and at least a 25 minute reduction for Alex (that's bus versus foot travel)
• while it had no balcony, there is school right behind it and really, it's only about ten blocks from the beach
• there is no White Spot nearby, but we did discover when we actually took the time to look that there is a pub a block away, an Earls, a Moxies and they all have patios so it's okay, because it makes up for the missing deck...yeah, that's it!
• it's only a bit more than what we're paying now, even when utilities and laundry are factored in (and the storage unit we're going to have to get), but it still has two bedrooms

We sort of seconded guessed ourselves and could both be heard wondering out loud if it was the right decision...to take the first place we saw...I mean, it was completely redone inside, it's close to everything, the only real downside besides the storage issue is there is no reserved parking, but well, it's okay.

I'M SO GLAD WE TOOK IT!

I was looking at what's available this month, and well, it's not pretty. Thank goodness we went with instinct. We would be able to find somewhere, it just would not have been an easy thing to do and we probably would not have been too happy. Thank goodness we started looking early.

Now on to the packing (and major decluttering!)

Finally...it's been christened

Alex and I just got back from not-the-blue-house. We started our afternoon checking out new couches along Granville Street and then stopped at not-the-blue-house to plot our move. Before we left the blue house this afternoon, we had measured our furniture to see what we would have to get rid of as not-the-blue-house is quite a bit smaller than the blue house.

Oh, and before I continue, not-the-blue-house has been christened. After a number of hours within it's empty room, painted somewhat pinkish-peach, not-the-blue-house will be henceforth known as The Pink Palace. Hopefully once we get our furniture in and our walls decorated, the overwhelming sense of pink won't be so, well, overwhelming.

Upon arrival we noticed that our landlord has yet to hang our new blinds or fix any of the stuff he was supposed to fix before we moved in and we've been paying rent for two weeks. Whatever, we ignored that and set to work with our masking tape. No, that's not where furniture died, that's where furniture is going and we figured this was the easiest way to try our stuff without necessarily moving things in that we don't want to bring with us.

This is our bedroom...which, after much deliberation, will house the queen-sized bed and our double bed will be banished (quite possibly temporarily until the Aerobed arrives) to the guest room.

Happy Shannon would like to point our that while it's not the biggest room in the world, it will accommodate, not one, not two, not three, but FOUR bookcases...something very exciting seeing as we were I was concerned about housing our books since the blue house is full of built-in shelving.


Alex shows that the living room is an okay size (we do need at least one more pair of eyes to help us decide what size new couch to buy).


This is the other end of the living room/dining room where we will have our dining room table...good thing we ended up with only one set in the end!



And finally, our guest room. We will still have a guest room and will still welcome you to the blue house pink palace, it might just be a bit cozier.

So that's the pink palace without furniture. If you're in the neighbourhood in the next few days and would like to offer your opinion on couch size and placement, please do let us know.

That's all.