My Romantic Home

Ive been following another blog of late,called My Romantic Home.

http://romantichome.blogspot.com/

It has lots of wonderful cottage decorating ideas that I just love such as this great way to recycle old wood windows into a greenhouse garden conservatory.

Today she posted about these architechtual appliques that can be used to dress up your thrift store finds. I can see me buying a ton of these.Check out their site for lots of cool appliques.
http://doityourselfchic.com/

I love how she applied one to her bed and what a difference it makes.

Since Ive been reading her blog , I have been collecting thrift store finds that have that cottage feel to them. Unfortunatly, I get stuff so fast and toss it in my storage locker before I remember to take pics. I managed to take a few though.

Here is a rug I got for 45 dollars, its a beautiful soft green colour( for some reason it looks blue in the picture but its not, its green


I found these cool looking jars in thrift stores, the smaller one was in a different store, couldnt believe that I found a matching one.


I love this old candle holder


I found a deal on these at Canadian Tire of all places and bought a dozen of them. They have beautiful purple glass in them. I always wanted a relaxing pillow room and think these would lend the perfect ambience


More junk store treasures....two wonderful fanciful candle holders and a set of small hand- made birdhouses for the patio. I also got a lovely table and chairs that although they are made of resin, have a beautiful rose design in them that makes them look like wrought iron from a distance.Forgot to take a pic of them before they went in the locker.


I really pleased I was able to find two of these containers which I will mount under my home for waste water tanks.They are 4ftx4ftx3ft so should hold lots.Ive been trying to get some of these for months now, so glad that issue is out of the way as I need to install them first before I start building anything.

I got 4 of these windows from a house demo. I'm keeping two for myself and gave David the larger one with the orange frosted glass for his bathroom and the other one for the bedroom loft. It was dark as Hades up there and with no opening to air it out in the heat, quite unbearable on hot sunny days. He just installed it yesterday and what a HUGE difference. It makes the whole house look different to have so much light coming from upstairs and the view is awesome. We laid in bed and watched the full moon rise last night,gorgeous. It also nice to be able to see whats coming down the river at us without having to run downstairs to investigate strange noises. The other night a barge went by and almost took out the other shore from us. Very scary to watch three tugboats grinding away at the hull of the barge trying with all their might to push it away from our neighbors floathome.They just squeaked by with inches to spare.

Our new view from the bedroom


The marina as seen from upstairs





I cant wait to get my place built, as the seasons change, I find myself so restricted as absolutely everything I own is in storage. I may have to go buy a whole new winter wardrobe as I can't find my clothes and don't want to rip out my storage looking for them. In the meantime, I will continue to shop....sigh, life is hard :)

Movie Star Floathome

The last few weeks we have had a couple different movie location scouts come down to the marina and take a look around. This morning we got confirmation that Nickleodeon wants to use Davids floathome for for some scenes in a movie. Filming is slated to start end of October.

I was talking to the location manager and told him I thought I would make a good location scout and he is willing to teach me some things about the job. I'm soo excited. I've wanted a career change for quite awhile now and had no idea what exactly. I think I could be good at something like this, either that or set/ props decoration kind of stuff. Either way,I would love a job that uses more of my creative skills and offers me fresh challenges. I hate routine!

I'm so proud of David for all his hard work in making this place such a cool home. We always get a good reaction from people walking in the door, but to have a roomfull of Hollywood bigwigs all in love with the place just the way it is, was grand to see. Sometimes my life is like a fairytale!!

Good for a Laugh

Check out this link for a good laugh. Its a blog type of thing , where a young man named Justin, records all the funny things his old man says.

Heres a priceless example......"It's just a fucking june bug, calm down. Jesus Christ, what happens when something bigger than a testicle attacks you?"



http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays

Why am I always Laboring on Labor Day??

I am having camera issues ( can't get one of them to work and seemed to have lost the cord for the other), so I do have pictures but will have to post them some other time..... Now for our regularly scheduled post.

Davids big barn of a house is finally getting the roof insulated. I found an ad on craigslist for 26,000 feet of free insulation from a tear down of an old folks home. We rented the biggest truck we could get from Budget and spent a day driving out to Maple Ridge and grabbing as much as we could.


At one point,I fell through a hole in the floor at the job site and thought I broke several bones, but was just badly bruised. Gave myself a good scare though. A few minutes for the shock to wear off and I dusted myself off and got back to work. I wasn't giving up on all that insulation. Winter is on its way and this place is a popsicle as soon as the temperature drops. I was sure we had more than enough to do his place and mine, but I think most of it will end up in here.

This job can't be over fast enough for me. I have been lugging insulation around for three days now and can't stand the pain anymore. I have had more cold showers than a horny teenage boy. The place is looking great though, such a difference already. I think one more hard days work and it will all be done. Next chore is get the woodstove in the kitchen hooked up with a chimney and we should be able to survive winter.

I have collected a few more things for my place lately. I got a beautiful hutch that I am going to place either at the end of my built in bed or the far bathtub wall as a place to have a tv and some storage for books or bath goodies. I also got a beautiful antique dish sideboard that will either go in the kitchen to keep with the country kitchen theme I am going for or it will end up as a dining room china cabinet. I have to play with things once I get some walls up and see what looks best.

I have been going to alot of concerts at the PNE this year and some house parties with live bands. Its been nice to be around so much music again. I have been sucked into the vortex that is Mitchell Island and it's so hard to get away from here for even a few hours most of the time. I went to April Wine, Headpins, Randy Bachman and got some decent pictures and an awesome video of April Wines finale. I think I could be a rock photgrapher. Sounds like a fun job to me.

I was at the beach last Friday and I have a funny feeling that that was the last real summer day for me. It was a good one tho. Every musician I know was there and they jammed all day long. I was surrounded by music in every direction. Jamie brought his drum kit to the beach and a bunch of guys had battery operated speakers and electric guitars and basses etc. There were a few banjos, a violin, sax, trumpet, flutes, handdrums, shakers, tamborines, you name it. Best Beach EVER!!!!!!! What a fabulous day. Wish I didn't have to wait another ten months before I have another day like that. That was the best summer I have had in fifteen years, can't believe it's over already.

I ended up selling my 18 ft runabout and the 80 hp motor the other day for the paltry price of $500. I basically gave it away, but it was taking on lots of water and I didn't want to deal with it. I'd rather get my house built, then waste money on an old boat.The thrill of cruising up and down the river wore off quickly once I saw what a gas pig it was. Next boat will be a sailboat for sure. I still have a kayak if I feel the need to go for cruise.

Well its back to the showers for me, I can still feel fiberglass tickling away at me.
Happy Labor Day all, hope your not working too hard!

Party Time

It's Davids birthday on Sunday so we decided to have a toga party last night. It was awesome, we had at least 60 people here, most of them musicians. We had 60 pounds of bbqed salmon and a huge buffet table groaning with food. A good time was had by all.



















Well my arm seems to be feeling better these last few days, so I am going back to work tommorrow, I hope it holds out, its been an awesome vacation ( well except for the pain ) but I need to refill the coffers.

A day in Vancouver

This is a few weeks old now, but we had the wildest storm here on the night of the fireworks. Katkam is a cam that takes a shot every few minutes looking over English Bay in downtown Vancouver. Someone took all the pics from that day and put it into a montage video on youtube. It shows the storm rolling in, the sky turn the most unreal orange colour, a huge lightning storm and finally the fireworks. It's Vancouver in all it's glory, well worth watching, enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNgk1pEHi_Q

Sorry, for some reason I still can't get the link thing to work, so you will have to copy and paste the url, but its worth it.

I'm Financially Set For Life...

...providing I die before Friday!

Well July didn't turn out to be as lucrative as I thought it would be. After a few weeks of talking, I finally started work at my friends massage clinic. I was only supposed to work two days a week there and would have to build my own practice by going to the office and sit there all day hoping for walk-in business. After the first day, the owner told me she had bursitis and asked me to cover her shifts for the next week. It turned out to be a hectic week with me covering her shifts, my own, plus still working at the other clinic and doing home treatments.That brought in a good chunk of change but as always happens the minute I look like I'm getting ahead,things started falling apart.

My van started overheating and two trips to the mechanic and a thousand dollars later and it still overheats ...sigh. The last day I worked there, I had a guy come in to the clinic and give me some story about how he was a Doctor that worked nearby, knew my boss and he needed to borrow some money for a cab as his car got towed with all his money in it and his pregnant wife needed to get to the hospital, blah, blah, blah, anyway, I gave him 40 dollars to get him out of the office as I was in the middle of a treatment. Turns out my boss never heard of the guy, so I called the cops and found out he had been running the same scam all over town. I felt a fool for falling for it but after some thought, I realized it could have been much worse. He had come in after all the other businesses had closed for the day and had me cornered in the office. If he had pulled a weapon, I would have been utterly helpless. Needless to say, I was less than enthusiastic about going back to work there.

As things would have it, I wouldn't have to worry about it for awhile. I woke up Monday morning with swollen glands and a raw throat. Called in sick in case it was swine flu or something. A few days later we were hit with the heat wave of all time. I couldn't sleep in the bedroom so dragged my mattress out into the living room. I guess as I didn't have a headboard, the pillows fell off during the night and I woke up with a pinched nerve in my neck. That was over two weeks ago and I haven't been able to work since.

Ive been in excruciating pain all through my right arm and neck.I have a CT scan this Tuesday to see if they can pinpoint the problem. They tell me I can expect 3 weeks to 3 months to recover from something like this. All I can really do is manage the pain which I do with Demerol and Advil. This makes me too lethargic to do much of anything. The only relief I got was floating in our scummy river on an inner tube with my arm propped up and a frozen drink to cool off with. I never thought I would purposely set foot in our river but with temperatures soaring, it suddenly didn't look so bad after all. I spent hours drifting around in the lagoon half out of my mind with pain and overheating. Rough week!! Thankfully it has cooled off lately, now if the pain would just go away, life would be sweet.

Off course all this non-working means no money to build the house just yet. I think I have found most of the material that I can get for free. Now I need some cash for the framing material.

I did manage to score an awesome wood stove.

It needs a cleaning but is very cool looking. I like it because it doesn't take up alot of space but has two burners on top for cooking.It has lots of style and chrome which needs redoing but it will be worth it when it's finished. I can't wait to get the place built and see all the stuff I've acquired put together. I just have to be the heron and be graceful and patient and not give up.Hope your all having a great summer.xxoo