Are you wondering what happened to our deck progress?

    Yesterday as I was reading back over the last couple months of posts (which didn't take long as there are so few of them :)  I realized that I inadvertently left everyone hanging about the progress of our deck redo. So, I apologise for that and I'll tell you that what happened was this.
    We sold our house in April with the closing set for June 30th and part of our agreement with the buyers was that we would fix up our deck before they moved in ( you can read a bit more about all that HERE and HERE ) basically the deck was deemed unsafe by their inspector and as the buyers had two kids of their own and she was planning a daycare in the home a bad deck would be no good (even though we were told by our inspector when we bought the house that the deck was just fine ) Anyways, so began the journey of the deck redo. Everything was going well, permit acquired, contractor chosen, demolition day happened ,and we were off to a good start. Except we didn't plan for the weather to be the wettest, rainiest spring that blasted records set 30 yrs ago! Seriously, it was bad. Our local soccer fields were flooded so much, there were people canoeing on them, streams and rivers flooded over their banks, it was pretty bad.  




     So, what happened with our deck? Well it got put on hold of course until the weather cleared up and everything dried out a bit. By that time, we had moved out (during a downpour!) and the closing of our house finalized and the new owners moved in. Luckily the new owners were very understanding and were OK with the work finishing during our transition. But, I still haven't gotten a chance to go back and ask them if I could take "after" pictures. We've driven by and had a look and it turned out very nice indeed, we just wish we could have had a chance to enjoy the new deck for a couple days! :)
      So, there is the story of our deck. The highs, the lows, the crazy weather, thankfully this summer the weather has cooperated and we've had lots of nice hot sunny days!

So, how about you? Crazy weather? Projects that didn't quite pan out the way you had hoped? Having a good summer?

A Beautiful Day for a Hike

A few weekends ago, Pat and I had a hankering to go on a hike. Since the friends we were staying with had the same idea, we all went together :) We went to a place called Ross lake and it was just gorgeous! It is days and moments like this that I am so grateful for living in such a beautiful part of our country. All the pictures taken in this post were taken with my new iPhone and I'm not sure why they are so washed out :(

We are pretty fortunate that our kids love to hike as well. They still talk about their favorite hike so far which was to Idaho Peak last summer ( you can check out that excursion HERE ) Gabe was my little hiking buddy so there are quite a few pics of him and the girls stayed way up front with our friend who is a super fast hiker (the fact that she has legs up to her armpits might possibly be a reason why she is so fast ;)

This huge boulder was right beside the trail so Pat and the kids had to conquer it! Stella really really wanted to join them. :)

Awwww family photo op :) When we got to the lake we took off our shoes and waded in the nice cool water. I should mention that it was a really really hot day in the low 30s so it was especially nice to have this pretty alpine lake to cool off in.

And of course we had to have a snack, trail mix of course! My little guy was so cute perched on a rock with his bare feet and his trail mix I couldn't resist sharing this pic.

Part of the hike was to pick our way through the bottom of this old rock slide. I thought it looked pretty cool so I told the hubby to go pose for me :)

And last but not least I had to share this picture to give you all some idea of how high up we were. This is only about half way up the drive part of the day and the hike was about 45 minutes each way ( I think).

All in all it was a great hike and a lovely day, I'm really glad that we are having such gorgeous weather after the extremely wet spring we had!

Have you been on any good hikes lately? Do you like hiking or hate it? Enjoying some gorgeous weather?

Our life this summer so far....

Hi!
I want to apologise first for the serious lack of posts this month. I had planned to keep up the pace but found that a few places where we stayed in our "New Home" had no cell service and unfortunately the little gadget I picked up to have mobile Internet relies, of course, on cell service. So here
we are and I am going to attempt to update you all on our life lately.

We've been doing a LOT of reading (there's no TV in the trailer)

We've been discovering native "wildlife". Meet Toady the toad whom we discovered close to our campsite one night. We've also seen a few deer, a black bear and a moose! Welcome to the great (not so white) north!

Pat and the kids have done a bunch of fishing. The kids are getting to be quite the little fisher people, Cadence and Gabe like casting from shore, and Nyla really enjoys trolling in the little boat.

This is the view from one of our campsites in one of my favorite places.

And then more reading!
This next month brings us swimming lessons, a wedding, a visit with some family from far away, harvesting and planting in the garden and hopefully more time on the beach!
How is your summer going so far?

Our New Home

This is our delightful home for the summer! So far, after a week of living in it no has killed each other yet :) we have weathered a couple of storms, the first one, the kids and I were stuck in the trailer for a few hours while there was a torrential downpour outside. The kids were wonderful, Nyla read to her siblings for about 45 minutes and then they all played barbies for awhile. After that day I learned a few things like make sure to have a few board games and some cards handy for games of Go Fish etc. And the other thing I learned was to check the weather forecast and plan for indoor activities like we did during the second big storm which we went to the indoor swimming pool in town. We had a blast! And the kids slept like logs that night. Bonus! Hope your summer is going well, isn't it just flying by?!

Summer fun!

I know it's been awhile since I've done a "real" post but we've been enjoying the warm weather that has finally arrived in our neck of the woods :)

Happy 4th to all our american friends!

Happy Canada Day!

Where are we living this summer?

So, as most of you know we sold our house (as long as all goes well on the 29th of this month, fingers crossed!) and some of you may be wondering, where are you moving to??
Well although I would love to be moving to something like this...


                                             (source)

or this...


                                           (source)

or {sigh} this...


                                          (source)

We haven't found our perfect house/farm yet (and truthfully if we found something looking like any of the above pictures it would most likely be out of our price range {sigh}) So, here's our plan...
We are staying at my mom and Al's house for a month, house-sitting and garden-sitting while they are away on a sailing trip (I know, I'm jealous too!). Then, we are going to be camping for the rest of the summer in our tent.

Just kidding! About the tent part, not the camping part :) No, we are getting a travel trailer to camp in for the summer :) We are going to really enjoy our local area and see all there is to see for camping spots. We live in a gorgeous area with mountains for hiking and biking, a lake for swimming and water sports and tons of little picturesque towns to explore. We have to stay in our area because my hubby still has to work, but it should be fun with the five of us and our dog Stella. :) The kids think it's going to be a grand adventure (they love camping) and they know they are also going to spend some time on Grandma Dusty's farm :)

So, anyone else camping for the summer? Anyone think we're crazy? :) Have a great weekend!

All pictures above were found on Pinterest.

Our Kitchen Update

This post has been a long time coming, I know, but I finally went ahead and took some "after" pictures of the little reno we did in our kitchen. You can check out the original post HERE.
So without further ado, here's our kitchen:

Before




After

Before




After

Before









After

Before





After

I am so happy with the way everything turned out! It is so much brighter and happier in our kitchen now :) I was originally thinking of painting either the island or the stools a different colour like maybe a barn red or black or green, but after living with it like this for awhile (and because of the fact we were selling the house) I decided to leave them. I figured it was nice to have the wood tones there to tie in with the rest of the house still (which is log remember) and the ceiling as well. I wanted to add more pops of the red as I like to do that all around the house, it's kind of a continuity factor (and I just love the colour red!) but since we're now moving I guess that won't be happening:) I can't wait to find out what our new kitchen is going to look like!
So, I hope you have enjoyed the tour. If you have any questions, I'll try and answer them to the best of my memory :) Stay tuned and I'll tell you the adventure we are going to have this summer and our plans on where we're going to be living! 

Are we sick of this yet?

Hi! I know I've been really deck heavy with the posts lately, but I promise I'll share something non deck related tomorrow. I will say it has been a little challenging posting on the ol blog and will be for the next week or so as we go through the last stages of selling our house and moving (as well as last week of school/gymnastics/soccer kerfuffle around here) so please bear with me as we go through these changes. Hopefully I'll be back to blogging normally (is there such a thing? :) the first week of July :)

So, onto deck updates!

Last week I shared how we got our cement wall all ready to go (you can check out part one here and part two here )

The next step was to get the wood materials delivered to start on the framing and joisting (is that a word? oh well, I'm just going to go with it)

Anyways, my little man sure enjoyed watching the delivery from his perch in the window :)

And then after a few hours of hammering, sawing etc we had this....

Woohoo this baby is finally taking shape!! Now, if only the weather would cooperate we could finish this project :)

Anyone else waiting for weather to cooperate to finish an outdoor project?