Snow Like My Childhood

Sunday night brought a blizzard to Toronto and with it 36cm of snow by Monday afternoon. Jason spent the day shovelling, heading out multiple times to work through it all. The photo on the right is taken through our back door, the snow piling up in the backyard and back porch.

Heading out for a walk today, the neighbourhood felt like what winters were when I was growing up in Paris. I don't know what it is about nostalgia, but the memories I have from childhood include mammoth snowbanks and huge piles after shovelling. Also I remember there being so much snow that it was shovelled with this strange big metal scoop thing that my dad would push and then tip (I saw someone down the street using a similar thing today, so they are still around.)

A Space Of One's Own

It has been hard to blog recently because it hasn't been easy to get onto my computer. (And blogging from the tablet is super annoying.) When we started to redo 'the office' to make a nursery it meant getting rid of the spot that I would use my laptop. Jason's work station was moved into the spare room/laundry room and there wasn't space for my chair and little table. For a while I used my laptop on the coffee table downstairs (as I am doing at the moment) or sometimes in bed. However, it was a strange phenomenon where it was either in the way or too out of the way. If it was in the way then it would get moved and tucked away somewhere and that made it harder to pull it out again later to use.

This has meant no blogging, but also my emails are piling up and I haven't done my banking. I have stopped playing WoW, which I have pretty consistently been involved with since Fall 2019. There is also jobs to apply for and more cafe stuff to finish up. Basically I need it to be easy, and comfortable, to work on my laptop. Didn't know this was an issue since I haven't really had or used a desk in a while, but I guess I did always have some type of set up that made it convenient. 

We do have plans to rearrange the living room soon, for baby proofing now that Cigi is becoming more mobile, and that will have some ripple effects for the dining room. I think I will try to set up in there. So fingers crossed you will start to see more posts soon!

No Resolution

Last year's New Year's resolution was so good that I am just going to keep with that. I can't imagine what I would come up with after the past year we have had. 2020 was just such a crazy time - a global pandemic, unemployment, pregnancy, lockdowns. I just want to see it all fall behind us and have 2021 bring health and hope to everyone again. (I also want to go out and get a job as soon as this baby is born.)

My mom suggested that we open our front and back door to 'blow 2020 out of the house' which I thought was a cool idea and possible New Years Day tradition that we could start at Casa Verde.

Painting Refresh

I had always meant to paint the garage door a darkish grey, it has been white and slowly fading since we moved in. I had envisioned faking a row of windows near the top, with paint (taping out squares, maybe even some light shading to give them depth.) Then I saw that you can get decorative garage door hardware, which would look fancier than windows and be easy. (They also have them in magnetic form to stick them on metal garage doors too, but I got the screw on ones since ours is wood.)

When I mentioned it to Jason though, he wanted it painted black. (Which reminds me of the song when I was younger, that I gather is actually a cover of The Rolling Stones. But isn't a cover when it is done exactly the same? There is a difference, it is a bit like a remix or something. I like the Gob version better and, upon looking it up, found out they are Canadian. It is a little more metal than The Stones rock version.) 

Paining it black then meant that I had to spray paint the decorative hardware a different colour to get it to show up - I went with 'stainless steel.' It didn't really made it look like stainless steel so wouldn't recommend it for that purpose, but it worked to make it a greyish colour that would show up against the black. Jason helped me attach the hardware.

Happy with how it turned out! Even more so now that I see what it looked like before!

Couch Reno

It might have been Two, however I think it was more likely Binx, but at some point one of the corners of the couch got torn up. This couch has been around forever, I think it was at Rrunuv Bayit for most of the time and has been at Casa Verde since we moved in. My parents got it for our family room in Paris when I was a teenager, maybe even a pre-teen. The issue with the torn up corner is that it is right as you enter the room! It is the main corner, very visible. 

I figured you could get patches but I wanted stick on ones, not iron on ones, and they needed to be large enough, strong enough to work with a couch. I eventually came across some faux leather ones that you heat up with a hair dryer before sticking on. There were tons of colours so I was able to get a beige that coordinated with the blue and cream couch stripes. I cut a custom shape that so it would tuck under the first fold of the arm and then wrap around the corner with the the other three corners rounded (recommended in the instructions, also looks nicer.)

So that it didn't look as much like a patch and more like a purposeful part of the furniture I made sure to get and make enough to do both corners on the couch and over on the chair-and-a-half so that everything matched. After I finished I asked Jason if he noticed anything new in the living room, and he had about 6 wrong guesses before I just gave up and pointed at the patches. He thinks this shows how well they blend in and is not continued proof of how unobservant he is.

Looks like our living room furniture has little leather elbow pads, like on tweed academic blazers/sweaters. I am very happy with the refresh and hope that it will continue to extend the life of this couch because I don't want to replace it anytime soon.

A Door By Any Other Name

There was a very heavy windstorm right before we left for our road trip. It broke the glass on one side of our porch door. Once we got back, Jason and I discussed what to do about it and decided that we would replace all three screen doors using the people we got to do (most of) our windows in 2018. Since Jason had been the main person to deal with that, he reached out to get a quote for the doors. 

We have an enclosed porched at Casa Verde, so there is a screen door into that space (which has the broken window from the wind) then once you are in the porch there is a screen door in front of the main wood front door. Then in the back there is a screen door before the wood back door. Basically all of these are broken in some way, usually the spring and cylinder closer part. Also we are slowly switching from white doors and windows to black ones as we update things so this is a chance to do that for the doors.

Anyway, Jason got the quote and wanted me to look over the fine details with him, "starting with the fact that they said they were for storm doors," which had him very confused and concerned. I explained that 'storm door' is actually the more accurate and contractor-used term for a 'screen door.' He wanted to know what the wooden front door types where called, my guess was 'exterior door' but I wasn't as positive on that term. It is going to take some time for them to be ready and installed but I will post the before and after shots when they get put in.

Halloween In Quarantine

Disclaimer: Ok, so we aren't really in Quarantine at the moment or even doing extreme self-isolation, but it rhymes better with Halloween than "pandemic" or "covid" does.

Happy Halloween!

Jason and I on Oct 31, 2020

Selfie taken with Jason's Phone

I think this is the first year at Casa Verde that we haven't given out candy! We normally get between 50 and 100 trick-or-treaters, it is hard to keep track because Jason messes with my system of counting (he gives more than one piece of candy, and eats it while handing out, so who knows what our real numbers are.) This year we here highly discouraged from doing the traditional Halloween celebration in Toronto because we are a 'hot zone' with substantial increase in Covid cases recently. So our blinds were pulled, and lights turned off, super sad!

So, why are we dressed up this year? Well, we did a on-video, in-costume, mini-raid (20 instead of 40 players) on WoW. Our costumes were put together about 15 minutes before it started, since I do still have a dress up box with various bits and pieces; which is now also home to Jason's cowboy hat I made him buy for the Calgary Stampede.

There was still fun for kids, I am part of a local neighbourhood parents group on Facebook and a women in the area arranged for a physically distanced parade, scavenger hunt (we were an 'eye ball house' check out photo), and ghost message game in a nearby park. All the kids in the parade got a treat bag (I sent her a bit of money towards making them). 

The activity sheets were posted on Facebook and we printed off the one for the park to try it out. It was quite the challenge! Jason and I spent over an hour wandering around the park to do it, we had to find 100 little ghosts and then colour in squares on a grid to learn the message. We found 95 of them and discovered that the answer to "What does a ghost say?" is "Boo!" I took a picture of Jason working on it, he took over the colouring part right away, and my job was to hold the pencil crayons. It might have been designed for kids, but I had a great time!

Love Is Strong, Memories Are Fading

So happy to wake up this morning, and all mornings, beside Jason. He is truly one of the greatest things in my life and sharing time (and a house) with him is so much fun! I love him in ways that I don't even have words to describe.

We are off to enjoy a fancy Valentine's dinner together this evening. And, as he reminds me, it will be our seventh Valentine's Day as a couple. I am terrible at remembering dates or keeping track of time, every time I get this type of information (usually from Jason) I am shocked at how long we have been together. The year 2010 is burned into my brain as the year that I moved to Toronto, and it feels like I lived here for a long time before meeting Jason, but it was only a couple of years later - in the summer of 2012. This means we have been together for almost eight years!

And in September of this year it will be our fourth wedding anniversary! I really need to remember these things. Here are some key relationship dates...

July 12, 2012 - Met Jason for the first time, at a Starbucks. I have this date noted in my planner each year and I try to remember and acknowledge it.

August 9, 2012 - He kissed me for the first time, on a streetcar. While we were dating we used this as our anniversary.

October, 2013 - We moved in together (Rrunuv Bayit.)

May 8-10, 2015 - We got engaged. Yes, it took a full weekend.

May, 2016 - We moved into our house (Casa Verde.) Though we bought it on Christmas Eve in 2015, and then we signed our mortgage papers on February 25 and the closing date was March 1, 2016. The move in was delayed to allow for a couple of months of renovations.

September 24, 2016 - We got married. This also took a full weekend, but for anniversary purposes we count the Saturday date as the main one. I have this marked in my planner too, so that I remember each year. Though I purposely planned for it to be on the 24th to help me remember (liked my birthday.)

Oh, and Jason's birthday is November 29, this is in my planner too since I get it confused all the time. (My brother was born the day after and my dad died two days before. The end of November is a busy time for trying to remember things and keeping dates straight.)

Wow, That Was A Whirlwind!

Flipside is closed now. After spending the Fall last year working on the creation of my cafe/bar, mini-donut shop concept, I took possession of a beautiful 1000-square-foot space in Toronto's Historic Distillery District at the start of 2019. It took two full months to renovate the space and continue to work on development. We opened for weekends in March, did six days a week in April, and then, starting in May, we were open everyday until this past Friday when I decided to close down.

It was a heartbreaking decision, which like all my decisions was made very quickly when the financial reality of my situation presented two options: crash and burn in a flurry of bankruptcy sometime in mid-2020 or exit gracefully by the end of the month with a lot of debt. I didn't want to ruin supplier relationships or deal with collection agencies hunting me down, I have been feeling like I was in over my head since the start and the idea that things were going to soon take a much worse turn didn't sit well.

The weekend was spent crying, cleaning, and packing up a shop that I have spent a literal year building. The painful implosion of a lifelong dream of hospitality small business ownership. I am not as devastated as I thought I would be, the year has been very challenging and I am definitely worn down. A second blow to my already fragile emotional state was that instead of getting everything moved into storage, at the last minute all my equipment and supplies ended up going into the garage, porch and dining room at Casa Verde. Now I get to be surrounded by the byproducts of my dream's demise everyday.

I locked the door and gave back the keys today. No more Flipside, I am gutted to be saying goodbye to this incredible experience.

Some Of The Things We Missed

During my missing streak, when I didn't post on Always Standing from June to September there was so fairly big things that happened - aside from starting a small businesses (though frequently related.)

Here are some things that happened...
- Got to Long Point a bit, but not nearly enough
- Summer Solstice Event involved a full road closure and wasn't as tiring this year
- I had a big team at the office with three students hired for the summer
- Kristen, Noah, Jason and I went on a road trip, got to do some white water rafting
- Mom and I went to Las Vegas, she did five posts about it on her blog
- We got our driveway re-paved and the roof done at Casa Verde
- Had an awesome day at Wonderland with Jeska, as is tradition

Much Nicer!

Fun staging tip - Use boxes under a blow-up mattress to give the appearance of a bed. (The suggestion online said milk crates, but we didn't have those.) Obviously you can't sit on it, and we used a king-size sheet to cover the boxes. I looked into renting things from a professional staging place but it was all really expensive. I figured that using ideas from the internet and borrowing from friends if we didn't have the right stuff to use would work out just as well. Luckily we have friends with awesome taste and were able to use some really great pieces to highlight our basement.

Also, this picture below is perfect for the end of our demolition photo reel that shows the progression from inspection to the end of the tear-end.

Staged The Apartment -- Posted To Rent

The Bedroom

April 2018

Stage It!

Staged The Apartment -- Posted To Rent

Set up the basement with our stuff, borrowed stuff, and a cheap IKEA couch.

April 2018

Also I re-potted some of my succulents after FINALLY finding the small white stones that I wanted to use. Ended up getting a, very expensive, bag of fish-tank gravel and it looks amazing. I can't wait to move this group back upstairs.

Cartouche Has Returned To Me

Item Lost: My Cartouche Deck
Time Lost: Some time in Rrunuv Bayit, maybe end of 2015
Last Place I Remember: With other decks of cards on the white bookcases
Place Found: In an old plastic storage shelf which a bunch of sunglasses

Since we moved into Casa Verde a few boxes and plastic multi-drawer storage containers have been kept in our office, waiting for me to unpack them. These are filled with old jewelry, pens, sentimental items and such. They have been driving Jason crazy so I finally decided to go through them all.

I was able to whittle what I wanted to keep down to about a shoe box worth of things that have important memories attached to them, a small bag of office supplies to take into work, and apparently over 100 tampons. We donated a lot of things, including two different point-and-shoot cameras that we came across.

I think the most important thing I found was my Cartouche cards! I mentioned missing them a few months ago. So glad they weren't lost forever, going to start using them again. Let's see what the future holds!

City Rhymes

Originally I was planning to pick Jason up at Weston Station after work so he could get home faster. However, we got a lot of snow today and my drive north from The Junction to Casa Verde was slow. I ended up sending him a text to let him know it wasn't a good idea for me to come get him, and my suggestion after that accidentally rhymed:

"Uber from The UP or take TTC."

Custom Door Means Tiny Fridge

One of the things we did in the basement renovation last year was install a new exterior side-door. It ended up being a fairly costly element of the project because it had to be made to custom dimensions. (Blurry night-time photo of the new door.)

At the moment, we are further upgrading the basement space and even though the kitchen is already very nice, we decided to improve it more by getting a new fridge. When Jason went to research, it turns out we had almost trapped the old fridge, and severely restricted our new fridge choices, with our custom door. After Jason took the old fridge apart into as many pieces as possible, the delivery people were able to squeeze it out - we currently have no railing on the inside portion of the stairs. If we hadn't gotten it out before we rebuilt the railing we would have had a big problem.

The new fridge is so small! It is probably about the size of the one we had at Rrunuv Bayit, so I guess it is appropriate for an apartment.

Somewhere Nearby

It has been a long time since I seen my cartouche deck. I have seen it in Casa Verde so I know it wasn't lost in the move but I don't know where exactly it is. I have been doing the 'ignore it and it will show up' thing which is a variation of the 'fix it fairy.' But I think it is time to do a serious search, I miss it and want to peer into the future.

An Adult Thanksgiving

Jason and I had his immediate family over for Thanksgiving lunch on Sunday and with a bit of pre-planning, and a lot of pre-cutting it was really easy. Though I did serve 'Turkey' from a box which was a lot more simple than a full bird - though still took a long time in the oven and involved setting an alarm to wake up early enough in the morning. It wasn't until much later that I realized it was probably the first holiday meal I have done and that Jason and I have hosted together (in our house.) Very adult.

On the same day we went for dinner and Kristen and Noah's where they had cooked a full turkey themselves, at their house. So much adulting! Also, homemade cranberry sauce which was very good. It was all delicious, and I think I want to incorporate more turkey into our normal meals moving forward.

Photo of Maya, totally not an adult! Mike sent this to me, I was sad not too see them but glad that they had a good Thanksgiving in Edmonton.

Meme Ad

I got this flyer in the mailbox from a real estate agent and I thought it was a cute use of the well known meme:

Luckily our tax assessment doesn't think Casa Verde is a mansion in a beautiful estate as implyed above, it is actually assessed at MUCH less than the cost to buy it. (Technically this is good for taxes, bad for our confidence. However don't get me started on Toronto residential property taxes....they are too low and it angers me.)

Bringing Back The Verde

I wanted a modern font for our house number at Casa Verde, it really updates the look. My plan had been to possibly 3D print some since buying them is much more expensive than the more traditional house numbers. Eventually I ran across a project online that included a recommendation for numbers that weren't too insanely expensive, and the grass highlights would mean that the house could tie back to its name.

So here is another little weekend project that we just finished. Though it feels like it took much longer because gathering the supplies (like getting the house numbers) took months:

New House Number And Mail Box

Casa Verde - July 2017

We also fixed up the area right below the mail box. It used to be a pile of bricks blocking animals from getting under the porch and some cracked grey patio stones. A couple of weekends ago we had a big dump bin so that we could tear up the cement pad in the back yard and dispose of all the concrete. We took the opportunity to move some patio stones around on our property - getting rid of broken ones and clearing them out from areas we don't want to have them anymore. We also had to get a couple of bags of red rocks and even did proper excavation, lining it underneath with landscape fabric to prevent weeds.

Jason and I are really bad at taking before photos, even though I know how great they are when things line up side by side. Here are a couple shots that can fill in for a true before and after shot of our house number:

Slowly Improving The Facade

Bought it - December 2015

New eaves - March 2016

New house number - July 2017

Casa Verde

I am very happy that the old number is gone!

Casa Verde - July 2017

Yes, I know that the 9 is a bit tilted, Jason and I can fix that with a normal drill - just moving the nail at the bottom over slightly. We needed to borrow a hammer drill from the Tool Library in order to screw the plywood backing onto the brick. That was the main focus this weekend, so that we could return the tools last night.

Also, in case you can't tell from the photo, it isn't real grass. (It might look weird in the winter.) It was quite the 'crafty' project, there was spay paint and trips to Micheal's:

Cleaner And Lighter

When we first purchased Casa Verde we did a lot of renovating in the basement:

- Demo

- Kitchen

- Bathroom

- Storage

- Main room

- Electrical box

We wanted to be able to rent the space out to help cover mortgage costs. Also, it was important to create a space that we were comfortable having someone live in - as you can see from the links above, it was very gross for the previous tenants.

One of the things we tried to do was reuse things, this was difficult because of the aforementioned grossness. We wanted to reuse all the doors but by the time we finished we had knocked down and moved so many walls that they didn't fit and it would be better to get new ones - except for the bathroom. We were able to put the original bathroom door back on. We kept it with the 'wood' look because it was easier and I wanted to have natural textures in the space.

We got a request a few months ago from our tenant to pant the door white. We still have leftover paint so it wasn't an issue, but it did take a long time to have a free weekend that was warm/dry enough to do it. So this was a little weekend project (spray painted the mirror, painted the door frame and door):

Small bathroom upgrade: Painting everything white

Basement Casa Verde

Before and After: July 2017

Tenant was right! It looks much better painted white to match the rest of the bathroom. It really brightened up the space making it feel lighter and more open. I was also able to touch up some scuffs and dirt on the walls too since it is all the same paint colour - which really cleans things up a lot. Even though it has only been a year, it makes me want to do touch ups elsewhere in the house too, there is so much wear and tear that seems to happen. It isn't that Jason and I are rough on the house but I think our walls dent easily (plaster) and the pale colours we have everywhere show grime.