This Is Life

There has been so much silence this year, and I say it every time I post, but it is so true. I feel like I have been at odds about my blogging. I still love it and I love the inspiration that I get from other's blogs, however recently I have just enjoyed focused on being present each day to do things with Halle. To be out in the real world exploring and making memories with this little family.

Most recently, we took a little family "staycation" and enjoyed some time on Vancouver Island. We spent a few days in Nanaimo, broken up by a camping trip to Juan de Fuca Provincial Park. One of the benefits of living in BC is being surrounded by so much natural beauty. There is always something to explore and discover, and we are so happy to just disconnect and be outside with Halle. Here are a few photos from our recent travels here on the West Coast...

We started off with a few days in Nanaimo, eating yummy food, exploring and playing.

A sunset ferry ride to the Island, with a view of Mt. Baker.

H and I loved walking along the waterfront trail in Nanaimo. There were tons of boats and geese to look at, and the best part was watching all of the float planes landing and taking off.

Once we left Nanaimo, we drove towards Victoria and on the way we stopped at a pretty fantastic winery. Tried a bunch of delicious wines and came home with a bottle as well.

Our camping location was at Juan de Fuca Provincial Park. A beautiful area, made even better by nearby China Beach. The beach was only a 1km hike from our campsite, and we visited a few times. The best was on our first evening there. We headed to the beach for a little while before the rest of our friends arrived. It was absolutely beautiful and we had the whole place to ourselves...

We spent the next full day swimming, splashing and playing in the Sooke River.

On Sunday, we spent the day hiking around and exploring at Botanical Beach. What an incredible place to be when the tide is out. All of the rock formations you can climb and walk around on, and the sea life you can spot in the little tide pools. We all loved it!

After a few nights away camping, it was nice to return to a hotel in Nanaimo and take a hot shower again. Best.shower.EVER! The remainder of our time on the island was low key, lots of walking around and hitting the park and waterfront trail again. We also did a little fishing at a small pond, which was a lovely evening activity.

Have you been off exploring recently? Taken any trips far or near? I'd love to hear where you've been and tips on what to see and do! We're always on the look out for new travel destinations. Feel free to share any summer travel blog posts in the comment section!

3 Years

Today our little girl turns 3. It feel like she's always been with us... but at the same time, it feels like only yesterday I was holding her as a tiny newborn. 

Like any parent would say - Halle as brought us so much joy and love. She makes us laugh, play, imagine and think hard everyday. Not only has my heart filled with love for her, but everyday that I watch B with her I fall in love with him all over again. He is such an amazing father, and I feel so incredibly lucky to have them both in my life.

Everyday I marvel at our little girl as I watch her grow, learn and become her own person. She's smart, thoughtful, adventurous, sensitive, funny (hilarious, really), creative, inquisitive and friendly. She is the best helper we could ever ask for - whether we are cleaning, cooking, gardening, or out running errands she always wants to help... and more often than not she doesn't slow down our progress. 

She has the biggest heart - always offering hugs and kissings, taking care of her "babies" and friends and sharing. There has been a lot of talk from her recently about having a baby (nope... not pregnant!), and I just hope we can give her a sibling while she is still excited about it. I know that with all of the love she has, and her helpful nature that she would be the best big sister, but until that time comes, we'll just enjoy this time we have with her!

I'm wishing this sweet little girl a very Happy 3rd Birthday, and looking forward to spending the whole day doing fun things with her!

Dinosaurs for Halle

It's been very quiet around here. I can't even tell you how many times I have sat down to start a post and I just never finish. We've done a lot around here, including the creation of our vegetable garden out back. We're still working on the bench (a few other things have been higher priorities recently), I'm getting ready to paint the downstairs rec room and we're on the hunt for Halle's big girl bed (she still LOVES her crib, but I think we're ready to move her to a big girl bed). So, hopefully things will start to happen and this blog will see a bit more action soon.

For now, I had to pop in quickly and share Halle's 3rd Birthday Party, which happened on Sunday. She asked for Pink Dinosaurs and I did my best to deliver. The day was overcast and it drizzled a bit, but our birthday girl and her little friends had a great day. What could be more important?

I made the banner myself, using last year's as a template. I traced each of the shapes and the letters (except for the "R" in Three, which I had to freehand), and then painted everything in. I'm really happy with how it turned out.

The cupcake liners & cupcake stand I found at HomeSense. Those little pink dinosaurs on top of the cupcakes were made from Salt Water Taffy (also purchased at HomeSense). I had found instructions in Chatelaine on how to make them, and B put them together on Saturday evening while I was baking the cake. He did a great job!

Halle had asked for a "Sprinkle" cake, so I used this recipe that I found on Pinterest to make the cake & the whipped vanilla buttercream frosting. Both were awesome and will stay in my recipe book for future use!

The kids were happy just playing together, but I did have a few activities for them. I had photocopied some dinosaur colouring pages that B's Mom gave Halle, and B also buried some dinosaur sand moulds in Halle's sandbox for the kids to dig for. They loved the latter one, and also loved playing with some little dino's I tossed in there for fun.

I honestly think Halle's favourite part of the whole party was having people sing "Happy Birthday" to her. She just loves it...

I can't believe she will "officially" turn 3 tomorrow! These past three years have just flown by... and it's been an absolute pleasure being her Mama. Planning her exactly what she wanted for her birthday was the least I could do! 

I've Been Benched

First off, I need to thank everyone for their input on my last post. There were some really great suggestions, including one that has really started to evolve in my head... so we'll see where that goes!

Now, for an update on the pew. The last I showed you, our bench was looking like this...

Well, I've been a busy bee, taking every opportunity that I can to get out there and strip it clean of the two layers of paint. 

After some stripping and then letting it dry out, B went at it with a random orbital sander and a belt sander to get rid of some of the leftover paint.

What did we discover when B hit some of the parts of the pew that had not been touched by the stripper? The paint would've come straight off really easily had we just sanded it from the start and skipped stripping completely. Yeaaaa.... so had we done that, we would've saved some money AND probably have all of the paint sanded off by now. However, as it currently sands, we still have some work ahead of us to get the rest of the paint off...

I am frustrated knowing that we could be in the refinishing stage already if we (read: I!) had just attempted sanding before stripping.

While sanding B also discovered that the back of our pretty pew is solid cedar - a very nice cedar, and he's intent on staining it. I on the other hand, am not completely convinced. After reading Jen's comment on my last post, I'm pretty sure I'd like to do something two toned (pulling colours from our end chairs at the dining table). Something along the lines of this pew, or this one. B and I will continue to discuss this.

So, with the progress we have made so far I am still hoping to have this project (as well as a few others I have started), completed before our house guests arrive later this month! I also believe that now that we've been in our West Coast home for over a year, I owe you some updated pictures of our spaces! Hope to start snapping some photos one space at a time once I get them cleaned up. 

Have you been working on any projects recently that seem never ending? Maybe you've had a frustrating experience with something you are trying to tackle? 

How I Got My Blog Groove Back

Well... it's been far too long since I've been around these parts. I've just been busy being a Mom, keeping home, doing fun things with the family and small projects around the house. Nothing has really given me that spark recently to write... even when B began building Halle's playhouse in the backyard, or started working on tiered vegetable garden (all of which there will be photos of.... soon). Then, the other week, I was doing my usual craiglist creep when I struck gold!

That my friends is an 11 foot church pew... which I paid $100 for. Yes... ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS! I was thrilled that I was able to score this (and so thankful to our wonderful friend who helped me out and loaded it into the pack of his pickup truck and moved it to our place while B was away). It's going to be the perfect addition for seating at our 12 foot dining table...

The pew will go on the far side of the table where the two blue chairs are. However, I'm still stuck on what to do with the pew. I'm in the middle of stripping the paint off...

I've made some more progress since this photo was taken, but I still have a lot left to do. The wood seems to be in okay condition, but I'm not sure I want to stain it. Even if we use the same stain as we used on the table and light fixture, it would come out a different colour (just like the table and light fixture did). I'm concerned that it will be too many types of woods and tones competing in the space (especially since we also have our wine rack and a new little wood table that I scored at the Salvation Army. 

So, I guess I'm looking for a little input. While I strip and sand this big old pew down, I want to know - What would you do? What do you think I should do? Stain it? Paint it? I'm thinking maybe a cream colour, similar to the light part of the plaid on our head chairs at the table. At this point, I'm leaning towards painting (which would save me a lot of stripping down the line)... so give it to me! What should I do?

A Little Closet Update

Here I am! Still kicking, though my drive to blog seems to have faded drastically. I think a lot of it has to do with my 2014 motto to simplify life. I've been enjoying the little moments with Halle these days. We finished her first round of swimming lessons together, we visit the library weekly, go for long walks with friends and the other day even enjoyed a nice lunch picnic! I've also focused a lot on sorting and organizing our home, and preparing much healthier meals for us.... and I even bake our own bread now! It's so nice and I've been feeling much happier and far more relaxed.

I am, however, hoping to get back on here and share what we'll be up to in the next little while - including our back garden plans and hopefully the built-ins in our dining room (we've been on the hunt for the right cabinets recently). In the meantime, I want to share a quick change we made in Halle's room recently.

I just felt like Halle's closet wasn't providing great storage for us. It had a lot of hanging space, but that big blank floor invited things to just get thrown down there, and the top shelf just collected items that were idly thrown down and then forgotten about. I knew we needed a better solution...

When I took that first photo I had already cleared out the floor space, so next I emptied that shelf and removed all of Halle's clothes. With everything out, it was as simple as B removing that wire shelf (that I was happy to say good-bye too... they seem to dominate our storage spaces in this house, and this is my first step to rid our home of them!).

Though I had originally hoped to find an IKEA Expedit for cheap to center in the closet, we found something even better. The open Hemnes Bookshelf from our old entertainment unit had found a home in our front hall a while ago, and was just collecting items that didn't have a proper home. The other week I realized it would be the perfect solution to add some extra storage to Halle's room. Along with some brackets (to anchor the bookshelf to the wall) and some closet rods from Home Depot, Halle's closet now has some better storage than before...

Overall, we haven't gained more hanging space, but I wasn't looking to add hanging space (we had more than enough). What this new configuration allows us, is an easier way to organize her hanging clothes, plus find better homes for the items that had previously just been tossed into the closet. We are working on potty training at the moment, so I expect that we should free up another shelf and a half soon and it will be a good spot for some extra toys, shoes, etc.

The top shelves currently home some special books that I don't want her touching without our supervision (like my Beatrix Potter books), and some special teddy bears that are also not every day toys, but my parents had gifted to me when I was younger.

We never did paint the interior of her closet, but down the line we are positive the carpet in here will be ripped out - so we could always paint the closet at the same time. 

This was a nice little project to get us moving again! Our biggest upcoming project will surely be our back garden. Halle helped B to plant all of the seeds in started trays and we have a number of sprouts coming up for our tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers! We're excited to see how this progresses!

What projects have you been working on recently? Or what do you need to get moving on now that spring has sprung? (Well, it's sprung out west at least!)