Mod Mischief

Slowly but surely, we're making progress in our apartment.  After several hours scraping and scrubbing, with the help of some Clorox Green Works, the tile was free of paint and Chris was able to recaulk the top of the counter. It wasn't nearly as bad as we feared it would be . We taped off the opposite wall ...   and painted it one shade lighter than the tile. Now we're on the lookout for a round bar table because we've decided to convert the kitchen table that came with the place into a coffee table for the living room.

I just got an invitation to the 10 year reunion of my exchange to Belgium. Starting way back in the year 2000, I spent one of the best years of my life living not far from Liège on a Rotary Youth Exchange . While the invitation brought up many pleasant memories it’s also got me feeling really old. Just last night, Chris and I were up late talking about things we want to do and places we’d like to go. Pretty soon commitments to work and a house are going to prevent us from doing whatever we want. In many ways they already do. According to this article I’m relatively well adjusted (although much of it resonates with me), but I’m still feeling a push to take advantage of being young and stupid while I still can. So I just might end up buying a school bus after all. Forget the convertible, this crisis calls for something a little funkier . Now to convince Chris that it’s a good idea to take off the entire summer for an epic roadtrip…

Snap Ottawa included a photo of Chris and I at the Tarts n' Crafts sale in their January edition. Perhaps next time we'll try to attract more attention to what we're calling this blog.

  The London Calling cover for a fan of The Clash I'm a little behind on my record orders but hopefully I'll be able to do a few more this weekend.

I'm building a dinosaur. It's one of those crazy project ideas that got stuck in my head and now I'm determined to actually do it. And I don't want just any dinosaur, I want a life sized dinosaur that I can ride on. I've been doing some research online and watching every dinosaur movie I can get my hands on (yes, that includes all 3 Jurassic Park movies) but that didn't quite cut it. I decided I needed to go see some real dinosaurs to get a better understanding of their scale. Chris and I made plans to go to the Nature Museum but as soon as we told anyone we were headed there they eagerly asked to join us. Before we knew it we had so many friends interested it warranted a group reservation! Our dinosaur hunting expedition turned out to be a great success and I can't wait to go back to the museum after their grand reopening in May. The photos I took didn't turn out great because I had my camera settings all wrong, but they're still going to b...

We've got tickets to Burning Man 2010! Photos from Camp :D's photobooth

Our first Green Bin pick up is this week! I've been looking forward to this for months. Now that we can compost almost everything , including kitty litter and Kleenex, there's almost nothing left to throw in the trash. The only thing that still goes in our garbage can regularly is the unavoidable, non-recyclable plastic that unfortunately comes with most products. Now we just need to find a better source for paper kitchen waste bags as the ones from Hartman's are rather pricey.

  the kitchen - before When we first moved into our new apartment we were surprised that all the tile in the kitchen had been painted over. You'd have to be crazy to paint over tile, we thought. But sure enough, at some point the landlord hired a painter with a spray gun who painted the entire apartment (walls, ceilings, fixtures and everything) off-white. The only room to escape this whiteout was the bathroom, whose turquoise and black tiles gave us an idea of what to expect under the paint in the kitchen. what we found But maybe they weren't so cra z y after all. When we started scraping the paint off the tile we discovered that before the great apartment whiteout, someone had tried to paint the tile in a checkerboard pattern with less than fabulous results. It appears that they started painting but never got very far and what they did do was pretty sloppy. The paint the would-be checkerboard painters used was very persistent and after hours of scrubbing and scraping it ...