I've been enjoying a lovely lazy day today. Mark made us a yummy breakfast this morning and we had some of the whole wheat bread that I'd made yesterday. It turned out very nice, much better than the white bread I had made previously. We don't eat a lot of white bread but I made white because I was out of whole wheat flour. I'm really loving our bread machine (getting sick of hearing that yet?).

We decided to stay in today and hibernate and recharge as we both go back to work tomorrow. I guess I'm ready to get back at it, three weeks was a long break and I feel better for it. I'm happy about what we've been able to get done around the house since I've been off and I feel like we had a good break as well.

The main floor of our house is really shaping up. It totally needs to be painted but that will have to wait. For now, we have the living room sorted out in a way that we're both happy with. Our house doesn't have an eat in kitchen or a dining room. Part of the living room is supposed to be for dining but we hadn't been using it for that purpose. We had put our table and chairs in the front hallway (next to the kitchen) since we moved in (over 2 years ago). We'd talked about reconfiguring things and moving our table into the living room like civilized folks but hadn't gotten around to it (ie we kept putting it off!!).

Yesterday we finally did it and it looks really nice. The downstairs is finally "unpacked" or at least is clear of all boxes. At the same time, we're trying to clear out our office and get it sorted out. In the meantime, our guest bedroom has become completely full of "stuff." I'll be sorting through it all over the next few months, repacking stuff, throwing stuff out, selling anything that is "ebay-able" or schelping things to goodwill. Our house is about 50 or so years old and it's not very big so we don't have a lot of storage space. We've decided to use the third bedroom for two purposes: as an office / computer room and for storage. We need to make a trip to IKEA to purchase a few more pieces for our STEN shelves and then we'll be able to start moving things back in here.

I'm so happy about all of this, about finally getting rid of the clutter in our house. All of my goals for 2003 involved organization. The work we've done this weekend goes a long way toward meeting this particular goal (notice, I'm not using the "R" word as I don't belive in resolutions!). As promised, here is a "before and after" photo thing of the one end of our living room for those of you who like visuals. We plan to paint the room a deep red shade and to purchase a new sofa and chair, in the meantime, here's what it looks like:

I'm up past my bedtime tonight. This is really the first chance I've had all day to sit down in front of the computer. We got a lot done today.

I woke up pretty early this morning and threw the ingredients for whole wheat bread (my first attempt at that) into my breadmaker. It was pretty early though so I ran upstairs, back to bed for a bit of a sleep-in. When I finally did get up, the bread was still only 1/2 done so I made up some peanut butter muffins (yum)!. It was still snowing this morning when we got up (and subsequently snowed off and on all day today) so we didn't venture too far from home.

We got a tonne of cleaning and sorting and moving of furniture around done today but I'm too pooped to write about it right now. It does look good in our living room now...and we have a proper "dining" situation happening too. I'll post a picture of it tomorrow, right now it's time for bed!!

woohoo...winter's here, finally!!

We're getting snowed on, right now, as I type. We had to go out this afternoon and do a couple of errands and the roads were pretty slick. It wasn't that we had a tonne of the white stuff or anything, it was just very packy snow and the plows and sanders hadn't been out yet. It looks loverly out there right now (although I think I can hear someone stuck outside at the mo).

Our long weekend is ticking along and we're enjoying ourselves. We got stocked up on provisions and don't have to be anywhere or do anything this weekend so I think we'll stick close to home. We didn't bother going out for the computer bits and bobs this afternoon, Mark's watching the prices on some memory so we may wait a little bit to get that project done. He moved some of the heavy stuff up here from the living room this afternoon though. Tomorrow I'm going to finish emptying the shelves and then we get them taken apart and the new ones installed. It's starting to look really good downstairs, a lot bigger and brighter. We probably should have done this ages ago...oh well, we didn't, we're doing it now, and it looks terrific!! yay, us!!

It was so windy last night it seemed like you could feel the house move. You couldn't, but the sound made it feel that way. It was really crazy. I love crazy wind storms, as long as I'm somewhere safe when they're happening. The wind brought a bitter cold with it though. Oddly, we've had almost no snow. It looks more like fall than winter outside. I'm not complaining though because I hate shovelling.

We had to take Mark's dad to the hospital this morning for his pre-op examination. He's having a cataract removed on January 14 so he had to get a chest x-ray, blood work and an EKG today. He's been waiting for the surgery for over a year now and he's very excited about it. I can't imagine not being able to see well enough to read. He's mentioned a couple of times, when we have been out in the evening the and the moon as been full, that he sees a ring of light around it. I think it's terrible that it's gone on this long. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that he doesn't get bumped. The hospital he's going to isn't too bad for that sort of thing so it should all go according to schedule.

I just finished rolling coins and we had over $300 in our jar. I think we're going to take the coins and go back to the computer store tomorrow and get some stuff to upgrade our machine. It'll be nice to do this while we have some time off and Mark can rip everything apart properly and put it back together in an orderly fashion. It seems like we have cords running all over the place right now (and, the machine'll be lots faster when we're done!! -- yay!!!)

In with the new...

Or rather...out with the old!! I actually worked on some of my new year's goals today...well, one goal in particular, a job I've been putting off starting for a while now. I began to tear our office apart today and three shelves out of it and down to our living room. Tomorrow Mark is off and we're going to empty the big wooden crate-like set up we have in our living room and get these black shelves into place.

When I was moving boxes around to get the shelves out I realized that a lot of what we've had packed away can be tossed. Last summer I threw out 5 or 6 banana boxes full of papers, magazines, cardboard...it made so much space in our spare room. I'm finding that some of the boxes that were buried at the bottom of the pile are full of similar stuff which can also be tossed. I know it sounds sort of silly but it's exciting for me to be getting organized, finally!