Shop Day!

Hello! We both had a shop day today, and we both managed to finish a couple of projects that we started earlier. Yay! Here's a pic of us with our stuff:

If you want to see more/better piccs, we'll be posting them for sale on our web-site (www.sleepingforeststudios.com) - there's a link to it in our links.

We also got some exciting mail today, as Anita's house portrait came in the mail. We absolutely love it!


She did an amazing job, now we just have to figure out where we want to hang it!
Gotta go for now, we've got a curling game tonight, but I'll post more soon.

Cat basking

Hello! I don't actually have any new pictures for today, but I thought I would write a quick note anyhow. Things are going well here, we've got a second coat of paint on all the trim except for the crown moldings, and it looks even better! We're really happy with how the living room turned out.
We had an amazing dinner tonight at Steve and Ada's house. Ada is a master chinese food chef! Yay, actually good chinese food! I've never had it homemade before - it was delicious! Our social calendar was full tonight, because after dinner we headed over to Sarah and Derek's to watch Babel. They have a projector so they can project movies onto the whole wall with surround sound and stuff, so we've been trying to see as many of the Academy award nominees as possible before tomorrow night. Babel was not as good as we hoped, but Brad Pitt, of course, was great.
I finished my job at the library this week, and handed in my keys and papers yesterday. I will be glad to not be doing that for a while at least, I feel like I can finally get stuff done again. So we'll see how that goes. Pearl asked me about the chairs I took to repair about a month ago, so I have to step up production on those. Clamp-o-rama:

Plus we've been bumming around in the shop a little, and I source out a guy who sells 4/4 pine today, so I'm curious to see what else he'll have.
Yesterday Jai went out with Jim on his Trans County Transportation route. Jai has applied to be a casual part-time driver for them. Basically acting us a chauffeur to people who can't get around on their own, and kids who got kicked off the school bus. It actually sounds like a pretty great job, so I've got my fingers crossed for him. Jim and his wife Joanne are a British couple who moved to Bridgetown last year. I haven't met them yet, but Jai says Jim is really cool.
Curling got cancelled last week because of the weather. We didn't think it would ever happen, but it was pretty awful on Monday. It's definitely starting to warm up now, though. We better make those snowmen soon! Here's Emma basking in the sun on our lovely shag:

As promised, here are a couple of before shots for your perusal:

Hello! Well, we've almost finished the living room now. It's looking really nice. It feels a lot less like a cavern, and a lot more like a room, even though it still has no furniture in it. So here's what we did: strip the wallpaper, repair two of the plaster walls, drywall over two of the plaster walls, strip down all the peeling paint off the moldings, add crown molding, and paint! Check it out:



And here's some Durings:



I'll post some before shots as soon as I can get the computer to work properly again!

some days of our lives

Hello! I've been a little slow in getting things up on the Blog lately - hopefully some of you are still out there! We've been doing a lot, but not getting that much done!
Today, for instance, we got up, ate breakfast, sanded the wall we had filled yesterday, then drove out to Greenwood to buy some paint. On the way to Greenwood, we stopped at a little antique store called Bean's. We were looking for an antque wash basin that we can turn into a sink for the bathroom, but we didn't find one.
Then we stopped at Frenchy's, which is a giant clothing store. They buy stuff in lots off freighters and from store outlets and then they throw it all into giant bins and charge almost nothing for it. We've been getting tips that the Frenchy's in Wilmot is the best one, so we had to check it out. They have a TON of great clothing from places like J. Crew and The Gap and Ralph Lauren. A lot of it is either really small or really big, but there is still enough for us to walk out with a lot of stuff. We walked out with nothing today though, as there were a lot of people there, and we didn't feel like taking the time.
Then we drove on to the paint store and bought our paint, the antique store in Greenwood, and the Chinese Buffet. Oh my goodness, the Chinese Buffet was a smorgasbord of disgusting today. The food was not good, the lady sitting immediately beside us reeked of B.O. and kept blowing her nose. The waitress wiped off the table for us, but made us use the cutlery that had been sitting on the dirty table. The table on the other side of us was held together with duct tape. But we still ate the food and paid for it, too.
On the way home we stopped at this consignment place on the highway we've been hearing a lot about. It's in an old barn and it's run by two men who are still holding on to their hippie status. They have the best tunes cranked, and STUFF everywhere!! It was really fun hunting through it all, although we didn't find anything there, either. They also import olives and feta cheese from Greece, and the guy gave us some of each as a Welcome gift. It is DELICIOUS!!! It's the best feta I've ever had. Yum! Our pottery friend Phil told us about them, and they seem like really cool guys. In the summer they make all sorts of preserves and stuff like Cucumber jam, Pear and Ginger jam, and horseradish. So that was really fun.
When we got home, we recoated the walls, sanded all the moldings that we had already stripped, and re-sanded the wall. Almost ready for paint. The living room is going to be an awesome space when we're done. I really like having the yoga classes out of it, because when they're over I can offer everyone tea, and we can all sit and chat and hang out. It's a totally different feel than doing it in the rec centre.
We've been planning out what we want to do in the kitchen and bathroom. It looks like the bathroom may end up being next, as it's starting to get a really musty smell that we can't get rid of. Jai figures it has something to do with the linoleum tub surround. We're thinking the whole thing is going to have to come out, and we will have to start from scratch. But before we go there, we still have to put the finishing touches on the living room and downstairs bathroom.
The other day we baked all sorts of things - breads and montreal-style bagels, and chocolate chip cookies. Most of them turned out great, but the bagels need a little tweaking before they're perfect. Not bad for our first try, though.

What else? We won our curling game last Monday again. That was pretty fun, because again it was one of the teams that beat us in the first round. We sure showed them - they gave up after five ends this time around! The only problem with all this winning is that we end up paying for a lot of drinks!
And the other thing is, we've been spending some more time in the shop. This is Jai's box he just put up for sale on our web-site.

And we've got some other really fun stuff we're working on that isn't quite ready yet. I'll keep you posted!

60 posts

Hello! This is our 60 th post on this Blog! Whew!
We've made small amounts of progress out here. Jai was busy today scraping the paint off the trim in the windows. I think we're going to do a dark trim in that room, since the walls are so light. It's a little blah, I'd like to paint one of the walls red one of these days.

Yesterday we went to a stove store and talked to the guys about getting a wood stove installed in our house. It's really expensive, and we don't know if we can actually afford it, but I think it would definitely be worth it in the long run. Right now we are paying an extra $350/month for oil! Ouch! So we're having a guy come out to the house in a couple of weeks to give us a proper quote.
We've been stalling a bit on the kitchen, I think because it's getting harder and harder to spend money. In some ways, it would have been better to do the kitchen right away, when we wouldn't have been so concerned, but it has given us a chance to really think through what we want to do.
On Thursday we drove out to Annapolis Royal and spent the afternoon in a pottery studio. We met the fellow, Phil, through curling. He's super nice, and we both came away from the afternoon feeling super inspired. We're both looking forward to spending more time with him.
And for the last four days Emma has been driving us CRAZY!! She's acting exactly like a cat in heat, but she can't be a cat in heat because she was spayed. I even called the adoption place where we got her, and they have the medical records to prove it. First thing tomorrow we are calling the vet that performed the surgery and getting him to take a look at her. She sure is loud!!!!!!!!
The weather here has been cold, but it's not so bad when you wake up with sun streaming in through the windows. We've had a couple of dramatic snow storms, too, just to keep things interesting. Here's some shots our our windows:

check out the new web-site!

Tonight we had a major curling victory. We played against the team that totally kicked our asses last time - when the score was like 16 to 2 and that was only because they totally stopped trying half way through. Tonight? Tonight we beat them 8-1 after five ends. They conceeded the game early! Now, this is not entirely because of our awesome curling prowess, we clearly got them on an off night, however a tiny amount of gloating is justified.


Our other major victory was finally getting a web-site on-line! Yes, we actually did it, after talking about it for a year and a half. So everyone out there should go check it out. It's: www.sleepingforeststudios.com
Let us know what you think. There are still things that we want to change, but we figured it was ready to go out and meet the world.


We had severe snow squalls here today. It's very pretty, and dramatic. Good weather for hot cocoa and looking out the window.

Snow days

Hello! Still not too much to report around here, I'm afraid. We've been having lots of cold weather, but nothing unbearable. Today we decided to check out a local farm that sells meat. They were supposed to be open, but they weren't. Of course, by tthe time we got there, it was almost a blizzard, so i don't really blame them. We did get a nice shot of the geese through the truck window, though.

We drove out to Annapolis Royal to try the Chinese food restaurant there for lunch, but they were closed for the season, so we went back to Leo's. Leo's is this really awesome little soup and sandwich cafe, they always have gourmet soups and a totally amazing sandwich menu. It's the perfect small town little place.

We took the back highway to Annapolis Royal for the first time today. You go through a bunch of little communities full of amazing old houses and big graveyards, and lots and lots of farms. It will be really great in the summer, as they all seem to have stands.


We also took some pictures of the apple orchard we would buy if we had several tens of thousands of dollars lying around. We've decided what the Valley really needs is a cidery like Merridale. They have nothing like that in the Valley at all, but orchards and orchards of apple trees wherever you look. It's crazy. Anyway, that's pretty much what's up here. We are completely enjoying ourselves, despite the weather. One of these days we plan on building a family of snowmen in our vast white expanse of a backyard. As you can see, we've got big plans and little plans!