Gardens, Renovations and Home keeping

Well, I've been somewhat delinquent in blogging everyday and I'm afraid that will likely be the norm this summer.

It's not that I won't have lots to blog about. There will be plenty!

However I'll be so busy getting things done, there won't be a whole lot of time to blog about it!

About a year and a half ago we ripped out our downstairs bathroom, intending to redo it ourselves.

Well. . .

We ran out of both money and know how.

A toilet, trouble light (the kind you use when you need to look underneath the car), plus a box of wet wipes was all that was left of our second bathroom.

In a house with six people. . . three of whom are women.

Now our main bathroom seems to have sprung a leak. Every time we shower, water leaks into the downstairs bathroom.

So, what to do?

We no longer have a choice.

Both bathrooms must be ripped out and redone.

Thankfully the value of our house has gone up significantly since we bought it. That means we can use some of our equity to get things done and we found someone who can start very soon.

But once you start thinking about renovating and money is available, what happens?

That's right!. . .

Well. . . while we're at it. . . we might as well. . .

In our case, the furnace is the same age as the house. 48 years old. Every winter we wonder if this is the year it will give up the ghost. And say a little prayer, that if it does, it's not -30C!

Then there are our windows. We just had a major storm last night, with high winds and driving rain which caused water to come in around the edges of our kitchen window. The same window that freezes up every winter and who's opening mechanism is no longer attached fully to the window, which requires paper toweling to be stuffed in the resulting hole.

I hope we don't find anything else we might as well do, because this is more than enough for me!

The storm didn't drop any hail here at our house but in the garden plot where I have started a veggie garden ( another post I haven't gotten to yet! Sorry!) hail flattened a good portion of our garden .(Ev and I are doing it together)

The only bright spot is the fact that as we hilled up each bed, they were not underwater like many of the other gardens!

I still haven't weeded the gardens at the school across the street that I put in over the last few years, but thankfully Ev and her friend managed to get to that, as well as planting more plants for me. (Thanks Ev!)

And then there's home keeping. . .

My plan had been to spend the summer ruthlessly purging anything I haven't used in the last six months with the exception of seasonal items. I had also hoped to try out new recipes for meals as well as baking .

I wanted to preserve the harvest, learn to draw and putter in the garden.

For now though renovations come first.

I'll blog when I can and. . .

I'll have a guest blogger over the summer!
My friend Jurrina is going to Holland soon and will blog about her family's adventures while they are gone and I can't wait to read about it!

Oh, no! I just looked at the time and I have to leave in a half hour! I haven't even cleaned the kitchen yet, never mind the huge piles of clean laundry waiting to be folded!

Got to run, but tomorrow I'll try to post pictures of the garden and bathroom (you may feel the need to cover your eyes for that bathrooms though.)