My Christmas holidays are still going so I have been keeping busy this week as Dustin went back to work before me. It ended up being more lonely than I expected because most others were already back at work too! Sheesh.
So I split my time with working on the house and doing some of my hobbies. The week has already evaporated but I do have a few things to show for it.
Well, you can't really tell but I did paint the skirts and arcs in the hallway. Only with one coat so far because Dustin doesn't trust me to do a perfect job on the final coat...
Once the paint is done we can finally put in the flooring! (The paint colour that won is the grey on the far left of the test patches on the wall.)
It was too nice to just do inside stuff so I mowed the lawn which made a lunch time picnic in the shade the perfect break before more work.
The secret is the iced coffee and the fact that I grated the egg for the egg sandwich and put fresh-from-the-garden dill into the mix. I swear, if you don't like egg sandwiches, give them one more try but grate the egg rather than chop it. So delicate and lovely.
The final half of that working day was ripping down the ceiling tiles in the guest room. They are basically made of weetbix and the don't even sit evenly so the ceiling looks all wavy. Plus there is no insulation in the roof (a fact that reared its hot head the more tiles that came down and the more hot air moving around from the hot day). This room was an extension to the house back in the 70s so we couldn't get to the ceiling through the attic as it wasn't linked. So if we wanted ceiling insulation it did require the ceiling tiles to come off. Which works in our favour because they were awful anyways.
And since we have a guest coming for more than a couple nights in March, this project was high on the list. It will also get a fresh coat of paint and a new light fixture and we will move the light switch. (Right now, it's behind the door about 3 steps into the room on the left instead of in a very tidy and standard place that is easily accessible to the doorway.)
It was disgusting what was up there. All sorts of cobwebs and dirt! I vacuumed after just about each tile came down which was probably inefficient but kept me going without that constant creepy-crawly feeling.
Now we just need to check with the electrician about whether he needs access through the ceiling to move the switch (or if it's just plain easier that way for him) and then we'll put some proper gib up and I think I can start painting! We are cheating and just painting over the wallpaper in this one. After learning that the walls underneath are too fibrous for a nice finish, we would either have to re-gib it all or put new wallpaper in. So painting over wins here.
I did keep a day aside for a kitchen creations day so I spent yesterday making fresh pasta with garden-fresh basil in it, as well as a batch of perogies, pickled some garden beans and made a rhubarb chutney with the rhubarb our neighbour shared with us. My feet hurt after all that! But I can't wait to eat the freezer full of pasta and perogies. This time I put bacon and cottage cheese in the filling and there's heaps of filling left so next time I just have to make the dough, yay! I think it'll be at least a couple of weeks before I can test how the beans went and I am not entirely sure about the chutney. It's sweet and spicy and tart all at once but we've already eaten all the delicious cheese we had over the holidays so I will have to get a fresh block to test it out. Or it might be yummy on pork. No pictures though as my hands were too busy all day!
Well, I took the advice I gave Dustin about taking time off at Christmas this year (I did almost just go back to work early as I was in that in-between zone of not quite relaxing because there's so much to do around here and also not being overly productive because the projects are kind of slow moving and not having a lot of energy to get out in the hot sun and do outdoors stuff so I almost caved but have decided that I should heed my own advice and just take a break.)
This is the first year that we've both had an extended time off at Christmas. I can't think of one year in the past where we've done that. Usually due to not wanting to use up the 2 measly weeks of vacation days we used to get in Canada! Although even with four weeks of vacation it has felt like quite a dent in the annual leave days... at least we tried it though and we sure did get up to a lot over the break so did spent the time well. I can't decide what to do with my one remaining day.... work or play? I will mull it over with this glass of pinot noir, dark chocolate and maybe an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia... then decide tomorrow.
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