No Exit: Dingley Dell, the gateway to Hell

This sign has always tickled my fancy. I walked past it quite a few times a few weeks ago when I went to visit my Mom and sisters. If I had a hankering to write a fiction story, it just might include this gateway to Hell. Yes, people have been disappearing into Dingley Dell for years (cue Twilight Zone music).

So, yes, I have been carrying on with the painting and decorating but managed to squeeze in a visit to my Mom, three sisters, and one brother, all who live on the Island (Vancouver Island for those of you who aren’t from the area). That was a real treat. I do love living here in Alberta but miss my family something fierce.

While in Victoria had the pleasure of meeting up with and spending the day with my two childhood friends Barb and Barbara. I’ve kept in touch with both of them but didn’t realize they hadn’t seen each other since the 80’s. Here we are in my sister’s yard. Nice weather!

Meanwhile, we had a serious attack of giant Moles at Chez Moi!

Ha, ha just kidding! Ron rented a trenching machine so we could install power to the beautiful gate

he built then kind of expanded the project. Well, he basically went crazy. Right off the deep end. He decided to put in a trench to bury a power cable to the back garage, and to to bury a water line to the garden and even to put power to the shed that doesn’t exist by the playground there! I’m married to a maniac. Gotta love that guy.

So how is Becky Homecky doing?

Well, making pinch pleated, lined curtains was harder than I thought. In fact, it was a complete pain in the butt. However, I did learn a lot. Here, my dear daughter has captured mommy dearest in a candid annoyed moment as she works on making pleats.

The curtains are finished (here they are before hemming):

We decided to forgo the burgundy coloured border because it looked like it would be too much like wallpapering (which I have no desire to do) so I decided there had to be something to make the curtains stand out from the wall a bit. As you can see, the newly painted wall is pretty close in colour to the curtains.

So anyway, using the leftover fabric and a homemade paper pattern I had the brilliant idea to make a valance with a fringe. Here are the bits:

And here it is “in progress”

Next week, after Ron hangs the various boards I need to mount the curtains on, I’ll take a picture of the finished product. Then we have to talk about stencilling.

Myopic moose!

Oh dear, this young bull moose was apparently quite hot to trot but couldn’t determine if that was a live female let alone if it was the same species or not! (For those who never watched a wild west film, that’s a statue of a Bison!)

Becky Homecky

“Becky Homecky”. The first time I heard that name it elicited a snicker. While out walking our dogs, my girlfriend Nancy had just been describing how she had spent her day doing baking. As neither one of us is particularly domesticated or talented in the domestic arts, we both thought this was hilarious.

Sure, I took Home Ec in high school. Learned how to burn a few things in the kitchen and make a simple garment. That’s about it. I am saddled with my Mother’s ‘kitchen antipathy’ gene so the cooking never appealed to me but I do recall the real pleasure I took in sewing up a simple shift.

Becky Homecky comes to mind when I contemplate what the heck to talk about on my blog. I know, I know, I haven’t even gotten around to describing all the fun and interesting things I did this past summer but that will have to wait.

No, I haven’t suddenly taken up an interest in cooking but I have been inspired to redecorate our somewhat shabby and undecorated house! Shabby is not really the right word because it really is a nice house, a simple bungalow, built 14 years ago by my husband and his father. The interior was painted off-white, throughout and in 14 years it has never been painted again. Needless to say, its looking a bit wan and pockmarked. When we were both working full time, it was impossible to get around to this type of project and we didn’t feel the urgency when there were little kids running around banging toys in to the walls (to say nothing of trying to run off with or ingest whatever tools and equipment you had with you!)

I recently painted the hallway and the main bathroom. The painting of each was only a one day job. Preparing the walls was a big, big job. I don’t know if you can see it on this picture of the corner in the hallway, but I used about a gallon of polyfilla and sanded and buffed that thing about 10 times. The gouges and dings in this wall were major. Days worth of repairs.

Anyway, here is how it looks after. I haven’t done the trim yet.

So, last week I painted Grant’s bedroom, it was pretty bad before too. The drywall screws on the window wall all seemed to pop out and needed to be fixed. Also, there was a lot of damage to the drywall when we removed some stickers that were way too sticky!!

I forgot to take a ‘before’ picture of his room but here it after I’ve fixed the drywall and started cutting in. The colour looks really dark compared to the off-white but now that its done, it doesn’t seem so dark.

So Grant’s room is light green with dark green trim and a selection of Transformer art which hasn’t been put up yet.

I haven’t got his room back together yet but will soon. I ran into a snag putting up the curtains and need to do some fiddling with that.

Nicole loved his room colour so much that she convinced me to do hers the same. My decorating challenge is to get a completely different look with the same colour of walls.

I picked up fabric yesterday and she is absolutely determined (she got he mulish gene from me) to have this cream and burgundy wall border that she loves. Should be fun. I’ll let you know how I do.

Fabric and a roll of black-out lining for Nicole’s curtains.

What do you see?

 

This was a really interesting cloud above our house earlier this summer. Danged if we didn’t spend at least 20 minutes discussing it. You know….what does it look like to you. I was stuck on the vision of intestines. The kids had all sorts of creative animal ideas. Mushrooms was a choice we could all get behind.

 

Anyway, I’m cleaning Grants carpet today. Chocolate milk and vomit make a hell of a stain. Welcome back to school. Welcome back to fluville!!

Some summer fun…

Since school ended for the summer I’ve been off traveling and camping quite a bit. I won’t tell you the stories right now but I have a bunch of pictures to post! More later.

Back Home in B.C.

Visiting big brother

Going for a “drive” and the road runs out

keep walking

The view from way up the Idaho peak road!

A few questions if I may?

So, how do you really feel about fishing?

Do you get why fishermen like a photo with their catch?

and you….you’re not forcing that smile are you?

So honestly, would you rather hold the fish you caught or the bread you made?

Please bear with me

I was talking to my girlfriend Barbara last night and she said she liked the new template on my blog but ‘uh, did you know that some of the stuff is in Spanish?’ heh heh.

Well, she just happened to be commenting when I put this other template in place that is partially english and partially spanish. I really like the way the posts and comments are formatted and I want to use the template, its very tidy. I want to have the dark red and black header with the swirl that I had yesterday. Its not so straightforward as I had hoped so bear with me! I’m on another learning curve here

La Belle et la Bête

May was a busy month with helping the grade 2 class do final preparations for their production of Beauty and the Beast. They put the production on 3 times at the Dow Centennial Center,

for hundreds of school kids and hundreds of proud parents and grandparents. Not that most of us understood it since it was all in French!

I helped make costumes (with my new found sewing talent-yikes) and spent a weekend with some other parents making sets. Its amazing what you can come up with some untalented but motivated parents and a fridge full of beer
We made each piece so it could be part of the village scenery on one side and part of the castle on the other. In the pictures below, the village house on the left, when spun around, becomes the ballroom in the castle (the picture below it.)

 

 

 

 

The kids did a great job. Most learned two roles and they switched around for each production. Nicole was a wolf and a dentist in all three shows. She loved having a part but not having to say any lines.

I Broke my blog :-(

upgraded the other day to wordpress 2.2 and everything went down the tubes.  I’ll fix it.   *sigh* 

Perception

There are so many things I thought about posting since my last one but never seem to be sitting in this chair long enough. I have, however, been sitting in some other chairs and had strange insight into perception after doing it.

A few weeks ago I was cutting the grass at our place. I know, I know, it doesn’t seem that long ago I was griping about the endless snow. Well, in typical Alberta fashion we skipped spring altogether and just moved on to summer so the lawn has been growing fast and furious.

Anyway, we have a pretty big lawn, about 2 acres. Some time ago we bought ourselves a big lawn tractor because it used to take 6 hours on the little John Deere. With the Kubota it takes about 1 and a half. A big improvement. One thing I hadn’t perceived by looking at the lawn was what a mess the big trucks made last fall when they filled in the hole. I just about jiggled right out of the seat going over all the ruts. Anyway, I just finished cutting the grass with the big tractor and hopped on the little one do around the trees. I though, ‘Oh my god, the steering is broken on this thing’ . I could hardly turn the wheel. Then I remembered that the Kubota has power assisted steering and the John Deere just has ‘arm strong’ steering. After finishing the lawn I went to town to pick up the kids and was driving down the road thinking there must be something wrong with my car. It felt so smooth, I thought there had to be something wrong. Then I realized that I was just noticing the difference between a vehicle with a decent suspension riding down an asphalt road compared to riding a tractor on grass.

I kinda sound like I’m turing into a country bumpkin don’t I?   Ha, well, the real kyahgirl begins to surface