Lisa Stokes

Thursday January 1 – New Year’s Day

We had lots of help cleaning up the party last night including help from 11 year old Ariel and 9 year old Olivia who were having so much fun being up late that they preferred to help clean rather than go to bed. The food was put away, the dishes cleared and washed and the floors vacuumed by 1:30 am. I went to bed, but left Michael, Megan, Kevin and Victoria in front of the TV where they watched a movie before sleeping.

I woke up at 6am with a headache even though I drank nothing last night. It’s not fair. I took some Tylenol with caffeine and slept until 9am. Thankfully the headache was gone when I re-awoke.

For years the Williams’ family has been staying with us when they come to the Toronto area and Michael usually cooks everyone a Big Breakfast. Shawna, who normally eats almost nothing, always asks for Big Breakfast when she comes. Since the other adults stayed up hours longer than I did I got up and cooked.

After that we had a relatively lazy day. The house is comfortably full when the Williams’ visit with the four adults and eight children aged from four to seventeen. My children usually help to look after the younger Williams’ children.

The guys hung out in the family room having a Star Wars movie marathon with some of the children and Victoria and I hung out in the kitchen playing Banagrams and Monopoly with the other children.

We ate leftover New Year’s Eve food all day long. It was a satisfying way to start 2015.

Wednesday December 31 – New Year’s Eve

Our overnight guests arrived last night and were very helpful in preparing for our annual New Year’s Eve party. They brought Trystan with them. He had been staying in St. Thomas with them since Boxing Day.

Here’s a picture of Trystan and me.

We have been having a New Year’s Eve party since 1999 when we moved into our current house. We decided to start it at 6pm way back then since we, and most of the guests, had small children. It was several years before the party lasted until midnight. In fact, one year I remember waking my sister, who was asleep on the couch at 10pm, and telling her to go home. That year Michael and I cleaned up and were in bed before 11pm.

This year the guests did not begin arriving until 7:30. The youngest child is four years old and was an overnight guest at our house so could go to bed when he got tired. Everyone stayed until after midnight. I think we will start the party at 8pm next year.

We had our first fire in years. The new damper worked perfectly.

It was great spending New Year’s Eve with friends and family. We’ve been doing it so many years that everyone is comfortable with each other. We had expected a neighbourhood couple, Carolyn and Doug, whom we had not invited in the past, but unfortunately they caught the cold that is going around and had to cancel. Patti and Ivan were also too ill to join us.

Newman, Mary and Jennifer, Marjam, Amir and Mona, our neighbours, were with us as usual. My sister and her family, my father and Kevin, Victoria and their children are also regulars. My father brought his girlfriend, Doreen, for the first time. Megan’s friend Jeremy joined us for the first time and Trystan’s friend Zack and his mother, Melony joined us for the second year. My friend Gail has been a regular attendee for several years now. It was a great start to the new year.

Monday December 29 – Room Three Completed

We had hoped to be done the three room renovations by Christmas but lost a few weeks when Michael had to travel to the UK unexpectedly. Trystan and Owen were able to move into Trystan’s new room on Christmas Eve. We took Christmas Day off and got right back at it on Boxing Day as we were hoping to host overnight guests in Owen’s completed room on December 30. Given how long the previous rooms took we weren’t sure that we could finish but figured it was worth trying. Here’s the room before we began.

Owen came down with quite a bad cold right after school ended on the Friday before Christmas. By Boxing Day he had passed it on to Michael and Megan. However, Michael worked on getting Owen’s room done anyway. That might be why when I asked if he had sanded the room he answered, “yes”.

We spend a lot of time preparing to paint. We remove all the face places, we fill holes and sand them. We give the whole surface a light sanding and then wipe it down with a damp cloth to remove the dust. With the walls prepared this way they usually take paint quite well. Here is what the room like just before we began putting on the primer which was necessary because we were painting yellow over a dark blue.

When I started to cut in I thought that the brush seemed to be slipping across the wall, however, I ignored the thought and carried on. After the first two walls were cut in I started rolling while Michael continued cutting in on the third. I rolled the first wall and half the second. It looked terrible. At that point I asked Michael again if he had sanded the walls. This time he answered, “No”. It transpires that he thought I was asking about sanding the patches the first time I asked and he had completely forgotten the step of sanding the walls. We decided to carry on, let it dry, sand and prime again later in the day.

As you can see the blue is still showing through quite a bit. Here it is after a second coat of primer. Much better.

The following day we put on a third coat of primer. It was quite easy doing this room. It is a lot smaller and less complicated than Trystan’s and each coat went on quite quickly. We also put on both coats of paint on Saturday. Here it is after the first coat of paint.

Here it is all finished with the tape, tools and drop cloths removed.

Sunday Morning I headed to IKEA to buy the bed while Michael painted the door trim and baseboards. By Sunday his cold was much worse. He was coughing and could not speak above a whisper. Consequently, the doors have yet to be painted as he didn’t feel well enough and we needed to move on.

My friend Gail who was on her way home from spending Christmas in Barrie was kind enough to meet me at IKEA to help load up the new bed. The frame came in three boxes which totaled 240 pounds in weight. The largest of the three must have been about 140 pounds. We got it on the cart with great difficulty and not before I dropped it on one of my fingers! The finger was bruised and swollen the next day. Once we loaded up the frame and mattresses I paid and we put them into the car. Then we went back in and shopped for the bedding. After a well deserved lunch at Panera Breads we parted and I head home.

I decided we would not be able to get the biggest box up the stairs so I carried the smallest one up by myself and enlisted Alun’s aid in carry the medium size box. It was very awkward and Alun is often deliberately difficult when asked to help, and did not deviate from that behavior in this instance, so it was quite a challenge getting it upstairs. We should have opened it in the van and carried it up piece by piece as we did for the largest of the three boxes.

We have quite a bit of IKEA furniture. Michael usually takes the lead building it with me as assistant, although I have built a few utility shelves by myself with the children’s help over the past couple of years.

I had read that it takes two people about four hours to build the Hemnes Daybed. Aside from at a few points where it is absolutely necessary to have two people, I built it by myself. All those years building Lego models with the children were good training. It was useful to have a completely empty room to build in.

It took me six hours to build it. I laid the mattresses out in Trystan’s room to expand. They are sold vacuum packed in a roll and take 72 hours to puff up.

Monday morning the old futon, which I have always detested and am so pleased to get rid of, sits on the curb.

When Owen woke on Monday we put the mattresses on the bed and made it up with the new sheets. He was thrilled to jump in and try it out.

He was able to sleep in it one night before moving back to Trystan’s room to accommodate our overnight guests for two nights.

After our guests left, we moved the rest of the furniture into the room. Owen wants to keep it as a king sized bed for now.

I will probably make a new curtain that blends in better, but we will be getting new windows this year, so I will wait until after that happens. It is very satisfying to be done and it only took a few days longer than planned. Perhaps we will do the upstairs bathrooms next.

A final note: the wall colour hasn’t photographed consistently in all the images, however, it looks most accurate in the final two images where the room is furnished.

Thursday December 25 – Christmas Day

Each year as the children age we start Christmas Day later. Compromises are still made – ten year old Owen would prefer 7am and seventeen year old Megan would prefer noon. This year we settled on 9am.

For the first time we didn’t leave out a snack for Santa. Here is the tree just before Michael and I went to bed.

We met in the family room where another first happened: there were no gifts from Santa. Owen tells me he knew there was no Santa last year, but didn’t want us to know he knew. I took the traditional pre-present-opening picture on the couch and then we began opening gifts. Stockings are opened concurrently by all. Gifts, we open one at a time, starting with the youngest opening one gift, then the next oldest person opening one gift until each person has opened one gift then back to the youngest for their second gift and so on until everything is open.

Megan and Alun would have preferred to still be in bed.

Then we tidy up and have breakfast – the more sensible among us eat breakfast foods, the others begin on the Christmas chocolate.

Michael enjoys spending the day cooking and has it down to an art. This year he began two days before Christmas by brining the turkey.

My sister and her family and my father and his girlfriend arrived about 1:30. We snacked and visited and then began round two of present opening. It doesn’t take nearly as long as it used to since Grandpa doesn’t like shopping and the children are happy to have money and to spend it themselves.

We served dinner only half an hour after the planned time of 4pm. It was probably the best we’ve had with turkey, bread stuffing, sausage stuffing, gravy, mashed and roast potatoes, carrots, Brussels sprouts and parsnips.

After cleaning up from dinner and giving our tummies a rest, we cut up fruit and melted chocolate for a fondue. Delicious.

Sunday December 21 – Takes a Licking and Keeps on Ticking

Yesterday morning Patti and I met for our usual run in the Etobicoke Creek valley followed by refreshments at Second Cup. We usually run for some number of minutes (up to ten), walk for a minute and then repeat until we have gone about 6.5 kilometres. One of us wears a watch and keeps track. I was wearing my watch yesterday. When it is cold and I am wearing long sleeves I wear the watch over the sleeve. In order to take off my jacket at Second Cup I take off the watch and put it in a pocket.

Today, between coats of paint in Trystan’s room, we went to Williams Coffee Pub for a cappuccino. Megan accompanied us, Michael drove. When we returned home I got out of the van on the driveway and Megan got out in the garage. She came into the house and handed me the pieces of my watch, which must have fallen out of my pocket yesterday as I got out of the car after returning home from running. Michael drove over it.

The casing is smashed, but it still works, and I have been carrying the working part in my hand when I go for a run since then because I haven’t got around to shopping for a new one yet.

Timex: it really does “take a licking and keep on ticking”.

Finished Room Two of Three

We have finished turning my old sewing room into Trystan’s room. Most of the furniture from Trystan’s and Owen’s old room has been moved to Trystan’s room. Only one dresser and night table will move back. When we have company Owen will temporarily move into Trystan’s room into the second bed and his room will be used as a guest room. They are currently sharing while we work on his room.

Here is a view of the room set up as my sewing room.

Here it is all done and ready for Trystan to move in:

Here is the same view now.

This is what it looked like in the other room.

Here are the other views in Trystan’s room:

Here’s Owen’s room ready for sanding, washing, priming and painting.

I spent a few hours cutting and sewing in my new sewing room today. My inaugural project was to make pillow covers out of two molas that my parents brought back from one of their cruises. Dad has been doing some renovating of his own and thought these molas would look good as pillows on his new couch. He probably won’t see the blog before I give them to him for Christmas tomorrow, but even if he does it won’t ruin a surprise. He knows he’s getting them.

Merry Christmas. Time to wrap presents and fill stockings.

Like Mother Like Daughter

My mom was a Home Economics teacher until I was born at which point she became a stay-at-home mom. She sewed many of my clothes when I was growing up including my high school prom dress in 1984, which was probably the last item of clothing that she sewed for me. I still have the dress and fit into it. I will never wear it again, but still feel the need to keep it.

When I was looking for the picture with the prom dress I found this one from 1982 with me wearing a homemade blouse. Check out the phone! Check out the wallpaper! My parents moved house five years after this picture was taken and took the phone with them. It’s still in use in Dad’s kitchen today.

One of the bedrooms in our house was Mom’s sewing room/guest room. I have always had a sewing room/guest room as well. Recently my dad brought me the multi-drawer storage unit in which Mom kept all her sewing bits and bobs. My mom was very fashionable and liked the house to be well coordinated, so she covered the storage unit with the wallpaper used in the sewing room so that it matched. More great 70s wallpaper!

It still had all the drawers, which I sorted through, keeping some things and throwing out others. It still has the labels which slot into the front of the drawers (and were never used) and little dividers to make three sections in the small drawers. I was concerned that the unit would be rusty under the wallpaper because of the stain along the front edge.

Here I am part way through sorting my small sewing stuff which was previously stored in a bewildering array of boxes and drawers.

It only took about 20 minutes to strip and clean up the glue. It is in great shape underneath with no rust.

Best of all it fits perfectly in front of my Quilting Arts magazines in the cubbies in my new sewing room.

I was thinking of spray painting it to match the wall colour, but for now, I think it works well just as it is. Finally, it is interesting to see that it is branded TECOMaster, which I have learned was the T. Eaton Company hardware house brand. It was made in Denmark. I am sure you wouldn’t find something like this today made anywhere other than in China.

Moving On to Room Two of Three

We are in the process of renovating three rooms in our home. The children’s old playroom on the main floor has become my new sewing room. I spent last week moving all the furniture and contents from the old sewing room, which will become Trystan’s bedroom, to the new sewing room. I tried to organize it as I moved it and purge a few books, magazines and fabric that I no longer want. I still have a lot of work to do. I am going to make a top for the old diaper changing table to make an ironing table with storage underneath. I want to purchase fabric to make skirts for the cutting table, ironing table and sewing table to hide that the pieces are mismatched and not very appealing underneath. I also need to make and mount a design wall, mount my quilt hanging line and hang my quilts, make window coverings and figure out a more attractive way to store things on top of the cubbies. However, all that is on hold until the new year. In the meanwhile we are moving on to renovating the bedrooms for Trystan and Owen.

So here is a peek at what I have done so far in my new sewing room, but as noted above it is far from finished.

Here is what my old sewing room looked like. I will be putting up the Ikea Diginet Curtain wire to hang my quilts in the new sewing room. The futon will be going in the garbage once we purchase a new bed for Owen. The new bed will be used when we have guests while Owen temporarily goes into his old twin bed which will be in Trystan’s new room. I HATE futons, but Michael loves them. Ten years ago when our friends moved to Barrie, they decided to get rid of their futon. Unfortunately for me, when Jennifer called to find out if we would like it, I was not home and Michael took the call. He gladly accepted. I started out this renovation by getting Michael’s agreement that the futon would go and a new bed would be purchased.

The white desk and hutch was my desk when I was growing up. It is staying in the room and will be Trystan’s desk. The new sewing room has almost the same dimensions as the old, but doesn’t have the dormers, which neatly held the computer desk and sewing desk, which has made it challenging to get everything into the new sewing room.

The brown bookshelf was going to stay in the room, but Trystan wants to have one bed in each dormer. The only place in the room where the bookshelf can go is where it is in the picture since all the other walls have sloping ceilings, windows or are too narrow.

Michael keeps complaining that I am constantly adding to the project. He’s not wrong, but some things just don’t become obvious until you are in the middle of things. When I realized that the bookshelf couldn’t stay I had to figure out what to do. For years we had two small bookcases for children’s book on the landing at the top of the stairs. Last spring we donated half of the books to the school library and liberated one of the bookcases for our room for Michael’s books. We also have a bookcase in the family room in which we keep DVDs and videos. That bookcase matches our bedroom furniture. You can probably figure out where I am going with this.

I spent Thursday afternoon emptying bookcases. The family room bookcase went to our bedroom. The small bookcase is sitting temporarily outside Trystan and Owen’s room until Trystan’s new room is ready. At that point both the empty one and the one with children’s books that you see in the picture below will go into his room. The bookshelf from the sewing room has gone to the family room and actually looks quite good there holding our media. Better than the one that was there before.

Here are the rest of the pictures showing the sewing room as it was before.

Here it is completely empty. I decided to spend Friday shampooing the carpets. Yes, I know, adding items to the project plan again. It came up quite nicely.

The patches you see on the end wall were made by the previous owners who then didn’t get around to painting. Neither did we until now. This room has never been painted since the house was built. The walls are a mess.

Here is with drop sheets ready for the work to start.

Here it is this evening. We spent the day removing hardware and plates, repairing, sanding, washing, cutting in and rolling primer. The walls were extremely dry and took about one and half cans of primer. We will view in the daylight tomorrow, but are pretty sure that we will do another coat of primer before moving on to the tinted paint.

It’s hard to determine from the photos how much the walls have improved with all the work we did today, but take my word for it, they look so much better than before. Trystan picked his paint colour today – Costa Rica Blue.

Thursday December 11 – Carabram Park Community Ice Rink

One day in January 2013 I noticed a new sign entitled “Community Rink” on the fence of the baseball diamond in the park near my home.

There didn’t appear to be a rink, just a snowy ball diamond. So I called the number on the sign to inquire about the rink. I was told that there was a volunteer in the community that would be building the rink. I asked for contact information, but was unable to acquire it due to Ontario’s new privacy legislation which seems not to actually protect anyone’s privacy when it really matters, but only to hamper the exchange of information when it would actually be useful and of no harm to anyone. I asked the City employee if they would pass along my name and number to the volunteer and have them let me know how I could help.

A number of weeks passed, with no one calling me and no ice rink appearing. I called back and was told that the volunteer had been out of the country, but was now back and would be building the rink. By this time it was nearing the end of January. Ice rink building is a rather time limited activity. More time passed with no rink; the rink was never built.

Fast forward to December of 2013. I called the number again. I explained what had happened earlier and said I wanted to be the volunteer to build the rink. Turns out the previous volunteer had moved away and, in addition to never building the rink, didn’t even return the equipment.

I was required to fill out paperwork for myself as the Rink Coordinator and get five other adults from the neighbourbood to agree to form a committee. Once that was completed, I learned what was involved – wait for snow, shovel snow to create barriers, spray repeatedly until 4-6 inches of ice has built up.

The weather was ideal last winter for ice rink building. A large group of friends and neighbours came out to build the banks on December 15 and it didn’t take long at all. I provided hot chocolate and Timbits.

The City employee met with me on December 18 to deliver the equipment, two 25 foot two inch fire hoses, a nozzle and a key for the standpipe, and to show me how to use it. I strapped a moving box onto an old toboggan to get the equipment back and forth from my house to the rink.

We flooded several times daily between the 18th and the 20th. Then on the 21st we had the ice storm. It was too slippery and there was too much work cleaning up our property to do anything for several days. The ice storm made the banks brittle and leaky, so once we started flooding again we lost a lot of water under the banks. This picture was taken on the 28th. The ice surface was still too thin and uneven.

Here’s Newman spraying on the 29th. You can see how lumpy the ice is and how leaky the banks are.

We finally opened the rink for skating on the 30th. Here is Owen skating on it for the first time.

This year I planned to volunteer much sooner and got the paperwork done in November, but the weather hasn’t been cooperative. We finally got a big snowstorm on Thursday and even though the weather is forecast to be well above freezing for four or five days, I decided to clear a space and create the banks when we had snow in the hope that the banked snow would not melt.

We have created a bigger area this year but, unfortunately, had fewer volunteers out helping since it was a weekday. Thanks to Trystan, Edmund, Owen, Anthony, Phil and Luca. It was a hard 90 minutes of shoveling. The snow was about 10 inches deep and we cleared a space about 50×100 feet.

Bryan, Dinah and their three little girls joined us when we were flagging when we were about two thirds done. Thanks guys. I don’t think we would have finished without you.

I was supposed to go to spin class at 5:30, but I was tired and the roads were too bad for me to be able to get there on time so I skipped it. My neck and shoulders were sore from the shoveling. It was dark by the time we finished.

Here is the cleared area on Friday.

Here are the signs I put up. We had a lot of problems with inconsiderate people interfering with the rink as we were trying to build it last year. I hope it will be better this year.

Tuesday December 11 – Mike the Chimney Guy

On Sunday we learned that our damper could not be repaired, but needed to be replaced. Mike the Chimney Guy told us he would order the part and come back in a week to ten days. I told him someone is usually home, so to call if he found time sooner. Today, just as I was heading out to run errands, he called to see if he could come by between 11 and 12. I told him, “yes”.

Here is the new damper. It sits on top of the chimney.

First they removed the animal proofing we had installed a few years ago to keep out racoons and squirrels (neither actually made it into the house through the chimney, but we had several incursions into the attic and when animal proofing our eaves and dormers, did the chimney as well. Here they have already moved the old animal proofing.

They then installed the damper with a new animal proof cage on top.

They dropped a steel bar and chain down the chimney and installed a fixture to hold it on the left side of the firebox. It’s much easier to open the damper now. I can’t wait to have our first fire.