The jumping beans

Yesterday the boys competed in the TDSB south region track and field meet at Varsity Stadium. Matthew in the triple jump, and Cal in the standing long jump. Who knew that our kids were champion jumpers?

Well, maybe not champions, but at least good enough to represent their school for their respective grades.

It was a beautiful warm, sunny day -  just perfect for an outdoor meet. Alan and I took the morning off work and walked up to the stadium, which is conveniently located on campus just a couple of blocks from our buildings. It was a pretty exciting event - there were several hundred people there, with jumping events going on in the center field concurrently with the running events on the track.

It was fun to watch the boys compete. They were both very serious about it. In an unusual display of restraint Cal sat quietly awaiting his turn. Perhaps nerves played a role?

And his jumping style left me in stitches. He looked so frog-like.

 

But style aside, he can jump 1.51 meters (almost 5 feet). Not bad for someone who just turned 7 and isn't anywhere near 5 feet tall yet! 

While Cal had been practicing at school and home, Matthew hadn't really been working on his jump. But the goofy look of intense concentration on his face while he was competing shows how very serious he was at the event.

They didn't appear to give out ribbons after Cal's event and we haven't heard anything, so we assume he isn't moving on to the city finals. Matthew placed 4th in his event, so he's moving on.

It's kind of funny that Matthew's moving on to the next round because he wanted to skip school the day they were doing the track meet because, as he put it, "I hate track and field".  He doesn't seem to hate it quite as much now - perhaps we'll make a track star of him yet!

The Hockey Trifecta

It's been a banner hockey year in our household. Cal's team won their house league championship game, Matthew's select team won the city championship, and now the infamous Flying Puckheads have won their Hockey Association of the Arts division championship.

And I've got the 400 pound, butt-ugly trophy on my mantle to prove it. Even though it looks like a child made it out of cardboard, that sucker is welded from some seriously heavy metal.

Thankfully there's only one trophy, so it needs to make the rounds of all the players on the team. Hopefully the circulation starts sometime this week. 

Not bad for a team of mainly middle age badass science profs!

Living room drapes

Finally! Drapes in my living room!

I've been living with too-small sheers in the living room window since we moved back into the house. And for the past several weeks they've been worse than usual as I've only had one of them hanging.

Back in January I bought the material for drapes. The fabric is a pale silvery grey, with embroidered flowers in charcoal and taupe.

I procrastinated about making them for months. I was feeling kind of intimidated about sewing them, and was especially dreading putting in the grommets to hang them. So I waited for my talented sister to get home from her winter travels so I could rope her into helping me. Wonderful sister that she is, she actually took the material away and made them for me for my birthday!

This morning my sister in law, niece and I ran in the Sporting Life 10K race and the rest of the family came into the city for brunch after to celebrate Mother's Day. My sister came bearing delicious muffins and my new drapes. Did I mention how wonderful she is?

After everyone left I  really wanted to take a nap 'cause I'd been up since 6 am, but I wanted to get the drapes hung even more. And seeing how it was Mother's Day, my wish was Alan's command.

Well, not really, but he did help me out without complaining or getting grouchy when we ran into a problem.

We pulled down the old curtain rod. You can appreciate how off center the window in the living room is, and why I decided to go wall to wall with the new drapes.

We got the outer brackets hung, and then realized that we had a big problem since the rod has to sit across the trim at the top of the window. The three brackets that were included with the rod were all the same size, of course, but the window trim is a few centimeters thick. We couldn't attach the central support for the rod, and even if we could figure out an alternative support for the center, there isn't enough space between the rod and the trim for the curtains to slide.

There are two possible solutions for this problem (1) build out the brackets that attach to the wall at either end, or (2) find longer brackets for the two ends. Solution 2 seems easier than trying to figure out some way to shim out the brackets from the wall, so a trip down to Designer Fabrics is in my near future.

Since we had the rod ready to go and I was dying to see how the drapes looked, we hung them up. I just stuck a long screw in the center for the rod to rest on. While there's no space for them to slide closed in front of the window, they need to be bundled at the side for a few days anyway to make sure that the pleats are all regular and lined up. 

They look gorgeous. They add some much needed depth to the room, and it's amazing how much cozier they make the living room feel.

Next up - figuring out how to reface the ugly 70's brick on the fireplace and a new area rug.

Springtime cookies

I'm so happy that spring has finally arrived. The grass is green, our lilac has a tonne of flower buds on it, and the quince is in full bloom.

So when I was asked to bake some cookies for the 125th anniversary of the boys' school, I decided that some flower cookies were in order.

Making iced sugar cookies is at least a two evening process for me. The first evening I bake the cookies and make the royal icing, and the second evening I do the decorating. Sometimes you need to wait for one layer to dry before you can pipe on the next set of details, so the job can spread out over three or more days. I picked up a great tip from Sugarbelle's website for making the center of the flowers using royal icing and sanding sugar. It saves a day because I can do the flooding and the center detail at the same time.

I started out with two bags of royal icing with flood consistency (like shower gel), and two different kinds of sprinkles.

I piped out a tray full of  circles onto wax paper taped down onto a large cookie sheet.

Sugarbelle said to let them sit about 10 minutes before sprinkling with the sugar/nonpareils, but I found that they didn't stick very well. Next time I'll pipe out all the circles and then sand them immediately.

The pink sanding sugar covered really well (I piped the pink second so it was wetter) while the nonpareils kind of bounced off the icing and rolled around the tray. They were a failure for cookie use, but are fine for throwing on top of ice cream or cupcakes for the kids.

After waiting a day or two (depending on the humidity) they peel right off the wax paper. If they're sticking, you haven't waited long enough. Once they're fully dry, you can throw them in a container and store them in a cool, dark place forever.

I baked two sizes of flower, and piped the outline in white on both of them. I flooded the small ones with white, and immediately dropped the pre-made center into the wet icing.

Alan came down just as I was finishing and said "I like your nipple cookies". Nice.

I hadn't seen it. And I didn't stick around the baking table at the 125 Celebration to see if the pre-teen boys snickered over them like my full-grown husband did.

The shoe storage solution

With four people in the house using the front door and main hallway every day, there tends to be an accumulation of shoes. A lot of shoes.

Although I built a low shelf in the bottom of the closet to provide additional storage space, it wasn't quite enough to deal with the running shoes, cleats, boots, etc that are used on a regular basis around here. So in an attempt to keep things corralled, I built in some shoe storage last weekend.

I started with 1' x 10" boards, which is what I used for the two shelves that were already in the closet. I cut them to size and built a simple box.

The width of the openings in the box is 10". I determined how wide I should build it based on a pair of Alan's shoes sitting side-by-side. Sandals can be stacked so that multiple pairs fit inside each cubby.

I nailed in all the shelves, and then filled, sanded, primed and painted it before installing it in the closet. That way there were no touch-ups needed on the walls. A little caulking around the seams, and we had ourselves some much-needed storage.

Spring cleanup

We took advantage of the warm weather this weekend and did some tidying up in the back dump yard.

It didn't always look this bad. When we started reno'ing last year we weren't sure if we would replace our appliances. Since we were doing the entire basement, main floor, and half of the second floor, and we don't have a garage, the appliances ended up under tarps on our back patio. And there they sat since last July. At some point recently the tarps blew off.

We tried to locate a charity that could use them. While the dryer was really old, we bought the washer and stove when we moved into the house in 2000 and they were both still in great condition. Unfortunately, not many charities are interested in appliances, and Habitat for Humanity has a bunch of hoops you have to jump through before they'll agree to accept them.

For most of the winter we didn't really even notice that they were there as it was dark by the time we got home in the evening. And then they just became part of the landscape. It's been such a miserable spring that we haven't been out in the yard. But with the fantastic weather this weekend, I realized how badly I wanted those things gone.

Thankfully, there are lots of guys listed on Craigslist who will come and haul away your old appliances for free. We called one and he'll be here on Tuesday to take it away. I'll be happy to be able to set up our table and chairs on the patio. Hopefully it won't be for long though - we plan to build a raised deck outside of the sliding doors and a large patio beyond it.

We have an unusually long yard for the middle of the city. It's 20'x210', so it feels a little like a bowling alley. I think that dividing it up into smaller, defined areas will help break up the long, alley-like feel. The plan is to build a raised deck area where we can put the BBQ and some comfortable seating (I'd like one of those L-shaped sectionals) right outside the door, and then steps down to a large patio at ground level where we can put the table and chairs. Whatever we do, it's going to be a big improvement over what we have currently!

Mr. Fox and the Search for the Missing Dress

Lest you all think that I ended up with all the talent in the family, I'm presenting my teenage niece's latest project. 

Mr. Fox and the Search for the Missing Dress 

I love it!

But you know, it just adds one more thing to my list 'o stuff that I want to learn how to do!