Spring Fever

This week we've been enjoying the sights, sounds and scents of Spring. As I type this, my windows are open and I'm listening to a steady steam of water flowing down the drains outside. The snow is slowly disapearing and my backyard is looking more green (okay....brown.) than white. We are soaking it up as much as we can since this is likely only a tease until the real Spring arrives with more permanency. This week Spring has meant......

Mason splashing in puddles. He's wearing Elizbeth's rain boots from just last fall. His feet are catching up very quickly to hers...someone's headed towards size 15 feet like Daddy....

Going for walks. Elizabeth wearing her new rain boots. We opted to buy her the giraffe boots instead of the pink butterfly boots since Mason will be wearing them soon enough.

Tulips. I just can't resist Spring tulips.

All sorts of fresh cut flowers. I always stop by the "older" flower bucket at the Superstore, and get them for 50% off. You can get some really beautiful bunches of flowers for $5.00 and under, especially if you hit the store the day they mark them down! I've noticed our store does this on Thursdays. These are miniature carnations which I love since they are cheaper than most flowers, so you get a large bunch of fluffy white flowers for a reasonable price.

The kids get new bright Spring coloured church clothes. Elizabeth's dress and Mason's shirt and shoes were gifts from my mom - she has such great taste!

Spring sales! I had some groceries to do yesterday and Morgan said "take your time" ( I LOVE when he says that) and so I decided to make a stop at Homesense. I snagged this spring wreath for $2.00!

I'm sure we'll get hit with a blizzard next week but it sure is nice to be basking in sunshine and have a Spring break.

Ingolf Chairs

Today I enjoyed eating breakfast on my new kitchen chairs. I have dreamed about these chairs since we first got married. At $89.99 a pop, I was never willing to spend $400+ dollars on chairs alone. When we moved to Calgary, Morg and I bought IKEA's second cheapest chairs available, which suited our family and our budget. At the time, I splurged on the Ingolf chair pads to spruce up the more plain chairs we had decided on. I guess I never really got over the Ingolf chairs I didn't walk away with because they've been in the back of my mind since as a "maybe one day..." purchase. They aren't paricularly original in any way, just EXACTLY everything I've always wanted in a kitchen chair. I started looking over a month ago for some interesting and reasonable priced kitchen chairs on my favorite kijiji site. I started off looking for some old farmhouse style chairs, or something antique looking that I could paint. About two weeks ago, someone posted 4 Ingolf chairs! I had plans to paint them white and was so excited. Much to my disapointment they were already sold. Two weeks later, another posting! This time they were in an antique white paint, with a bit of antique crackling - perfect for my already distressed black table. I had my doubts that they would only let me part with 4 of the 6, but when I called, she said 2 were already gone and she only had 4 left - PERFECT! You and me were meant to be, Ingolfs... When I picked them up, it was the woman selling them's husband who was home. It hit me suddenly that this was potentially a very dangerous situation, so I was quick to spit out something to the effect of "my husband is a cop and he knows where I am right now!". Although it did actually came out quite calmly and did actually flow with our small talk conversation..... My Ingolfs.....: These were our chairs before. I put them up on a local swap and buy site and they were gone in a few hours so that was nice. Here are my brighter, cheerier, sturdier, more handsome chairs (you can kind of see my new light fixture that my Dad kindly installed!):

Here they are with my 3 year old chair pads to match - I actually think i might prefer them without them...

One last shot. Look at those sexy curved legs.

There's my rant about my new chairs. Morg says he'll never understand how I can be so excited about chairs. He keeps catching me staring at them and sitting on them. All I can explain is that it's just like when I met him, I fell in love instantly and couldn't get him off my mind. Good thing I only had to wait 5 years instead of 10 to have the chairs!

Pedestal Table Revival

I really have always loved a timeless round pedestal table. When we first moved to Calgary and had no kitchen table I searched kijiji to find a cheap one. I found a decent one for a $30 price tag so I was sold. Unfortunately on the way home we encountered a very unfriendly cop (whom later would become Morgan's co-worker...) and after a steep $130 dollar ticket, the table wound up costing us whopping $160 dollars. I worked out on our balcony for days to create my fantasy white pedestal table, although it was kind of a wimpy looking table to begin with and my high gloss paint and varnish job made everything stick to it. We weren't sad to see it go when we replaced it with a table my parents gave us when we moved into this house. Recently, however, a friend of mine was moving and gave me this pedestal table that her kids had used as a basement craft table. My brain starting formulating fantasy pedestal table ideas again, although this time not with white and not with sticky varnish. As a before, it's your generic oak pedestal table, just in a little rougher shape than normal, but MAN it's a solid piece of furniture and I love the chunky pedestal. Mason also makes an appreance below in his lounge wear. We appropriately call this his "Team Canada" outfit. It was decorated with alot of permanent marker. Here is the after. After some sanding (I hate sanding), primer, and more sanding for a "distressed" look, she's a whole new table.

I couldn't make up my mind if I wanted to go for a more elegant look and have it plain glossy black, or go for a more shabby look and distress it. After I painted it all black, I knew the "elegance" wouldn't last 5 minutes with my kids eating at this table so by giving it an already antiqued look I don't have to worry about additional bumps and scratches.

I have a feeling though that I will be changing it to white one day when I'm sick of black. Shhh don't tell Morgan.

The new table has given me a couple more ideas to help spruce up our eating nook. I bought a new light fixture on kijiji a couple weeks ago for $15 and I have a plan for the wall featured here...we'll see how it turns out....

Next piece of furniture is an old coffee table that I found at the thrift store for $6.49. Morgan rolled his eyes when I came home lugging it up our front steps and through the door but I think he is getting more and more patient and accepting of my new addiction. We're not quite at "encouraging" though......in time maybe.

Morgan's 28th on the 28th

This is my husband Morgan (and daughter). He turned 28 on January 28th this year - I wonder what his golden year will bring?....

I asked him what he wanted to do for his birthday and in tradtional Morgan fashion he replied "nothing, we don't need to do anything for my birthday". So I went behind his back and called some of our best friends to ask if they would like to join us for dinner to celebrate. It was such a great time. Our cheeks hurt from smiling and laughing the whole night.

We went to Joey Tomatoes because we've always wanted to sit at one of their huge round tables. The picture below was taken after a very long and plentiful dinner. Angela insisted on taking the picture and photoshopped herself in after. For someone who is a professional phtographer, I'd say that's a pretty slack job of photoshopping Angela!

Carrie and I.

If Morgan gets his hands on your camera, you'll likely come home with one of these:

All four couples. Adams', Kyle's, Sager's, Siakaluk's. Sorry Adams', for ruining your pic.

After moving from Ottawa to Calgary it was so hard to leave family. I can still cry at the drop of a hat thinking about how much I miss them and I would do anything to be in the same city again. Over the past couple years we've met so many wonderful people (many of whom are pictured above) and continue to meet so many great friends that I feel very blessed to call them our family away from family.

Day at the Pool

This is a short post about our morning today enjoying a quiet swim at the pool. The "Mom and Tot" swim time (Morg prefers to call it "Parents and Tots", even if he's the only Dad in the pool) is only $3.75! We went first thing and enjoyed having the pool almost to ourselves. The kids and Morg hiding while I seeked.

We alternate between the big pool, the tot pool, the baby pool and the hot tub pretty frequently. Morg says Elizabeth has pool ADD - she can never focus on one pool for very long before she's up and running to another.

While we swam Elizabeth asked for french fries afterward. We usually hit the Wendy's across the street after a pool date to get the kids fries (and Morg a Frosty) but we hadn't been swimming since early last fall so I thought it was funny she remembered that we usually do that after swimming.

Also, here is the table I've been working on - this is the before. I'll have the after picture posted soon.

Good night!