Inadequate Materials

About the best thing that's happened this year so far is that my brilliant husband figured out how to turn off the comment section on cbc.ca. So now I can keep abreast of what's going on in my country (What? There's an election?!) without having to see other people's crazy opinions on the stories. It's almost like reading the newspaper! Checking the daily headlines used to be so stressful. All those twits spewing their right, left, or squarely-in-the-middle political opinions in the dumbest, angriest way possible drove me nuts. Sometimes someone would say something so stupidly provocative that I would then join them in spewing my own insane rhetoric. But those days are over. Now I can use all that extra time to check out the latest news on Charlie Sheen. The world is returned to order! It's spring break here and the temperatures are finally hitting just above the freezing point. My driveway is a slushy mess and my dogs are leaving their muddy paw prints all over...

I apologize for what you're about to see. If my double life as a rabid thrifter doesn't leave you on the edge of your seat, wondering daily what exciting new finds I've come across in the back corner of some grimy second-hand store, you have my blessing to stop reading right now and move onto worthier pursuits. And I promise my next post will make no mention of thrifting. The Captain is home, and we haven't killed each other yet! For those of you not familiar with my take on the military reunion, this is excellent news. The movies will have you believe that reuniting with your personal GI Joe after a long separation is all kisses and romance and bliss. That's just a big fat lie. He spent the last ten weeks living a structured, regimented army existence with no family distractions. We spent the last ten weeks developing less-than-structured routines that don't involve having a man about the house. Then suddenly, we were all thrown together again to reorganize our...

As far as I know, I do not even have 1% Irish in me. The last time I looked into it, I found that I was 99.9% English with, I think, a tiny smidge of Scottish if you go back far enough. This, however, does not stop me from going hog wild on St Patrick's Day. I already have the beef marinating for my Steak and Guinness Pie tomorrow. This year, it seems I've cashed in all those lucky four-leafed clovers I found out back as a kid. In just over a year, I have won no less than FOUR blog giveaways! Blogging is turning out to be better than the lottery! Two of those giveaways I won this month within a week of each other. A big thanks to Nezzy for the fantastic $40 gift code at CSN Stores , which I gave to my overworked mom who has been playing nursemaid to my dad after his knee replacement surgery. At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, anyone with a man around the house knows what it's like to look after them when they're under the weather. Am I right?! My mom dese...

Today I have a Before and After of a completely different nature. About a month ago, I took a treacherous drive down the highway in a snow storm to pick up my mail and stop in my teeny town's little thrift store. Unfortunately, I had my kids there to distract me from rummaging, so the whole thing was a bit of a non-event. Except for one thing. Sticking out of a rack, in the middle of the aisle was a wool coat in the colour all my daytime TV shows/magazines/style blogs have been raving about: camel. Well, more of a light beige really. But close enough. The sign on the wall said that all coats were $5, but when I got to the counter, the lady (who knows me well by now) told me that winter coats were on for half price. I paid $2.50. SCORE! I could see when I bought the coat that it was going to need a little work. And in my haste at getting the ball rolling, I forgot to take a proper before picture, so I'm going to have to describe things to you as best I can. This coat had clear...

I've been neglecting my all-encompassing blog duties in order to work on a long-overdue home improvement job. Over the last few weeks I've been putting my kids to bed and then spending an hour or two every evening working on my dining room. The most important lesson I've learned in all this is that in my next life, I need to come back as a rich person. That way, I can sip margaritas on a beach in the Caribbean while someone else does all the hard work back at the mansion. After stripping off about 4 layers of painted-over wallpaper, some of it with raised black velvet swirly patterns on it, this is what we had to work with: And the after pics: It became apparent pretty quickly that I am no drywaller. My seam work was atrocious, so I believed the folks at Home Depot when they claimed I could hide all manner of ugly with some popcorn texture paint and a special roller. I have never made such a mess in all my life. But believe it or not, this disaster actually looks better tha...

Happy Anniversary, Mum and Dad! Photo courtesy of my Uncle Dave. It's March 3rd and I'm already behind! First, a quick resolution check-in. For the first half of February, my New Year's Resolution to keep it simple went right off the rails. Unless you think sitting around whining about how much I need a tropical vacation counts as keeping it simple. Because that's all I did. That, and eat junk. Mid-month I gave myself a mental slap in the face and decided to get my you-know-what together. That doesn't mean I've stopped telling anyone who will listen that I need a week in the southern U.S. to get me through the rest of this rotten winter. Frankly, I think the dogs are sick of hearing it. But I did save more money this month by not shopping at any mega-super-colossal-centres, and I got back to my plan to do just a little work every night on the dining room. As of last night, the ceiling is finished (though I'm thinking of adding a coat of textured paint to hi...