a sneak peek

After 2 agonizing days of laying hardwood, I thought I'd show you all a little peek of what it looks like.

This gorgeous stuff now covers the entire 2nd floor minus the bathroom (that sounds like it's huge - that's 2 bedrooms and a hallway). Jeff and I adore it. Was well worth the $1500 and the excrutiatingly sore muscles. I REEEEEEEALLY want to hurry up and finish the never ending project of the dressing room redo and take some photos but at this rate it will be done next year.

Dearly departed

I was just about to start looking for photos on Flickr for tomorrow's post when I noticed that this month was a very sad month last year. On October 7th, 2009 I took one of my stray cats, Seymour, to the vets because his eyes were really goopy and I didn't want him to go through another winter sick. I was hopefully going to get his eyes fixed with some medications, get him neutered etc. and get him a forever home. That never happened. The vet ran some tests and he had a really severe case of FIV (cat's version of HIV). I had to have him put down that day. He was sooooo sweet and would have made a wonderful pet.

Then on October 14th, Oscar, another of my strays, showed up at my house wheezing REALLY badly. It was constant and he had a hard time breathing. When I got home from work, he was even worse. A mobile vet came to my house to check him out (he was a wild one and a trip to the vets would have been traumatic) and determined he had an upper respiratory infection, likely caused by FIV. She gave him a good dose of a sedative and put him in my powder room sink. Once it took effect I went in, said my goodbyes, and she went and gave him the shot. And then carried him out in a bag. He was a tough little f*cker but he was my pal and we spent a lot of time hanging out on my porch together.

And a few weeks ago, an Ottawa Flickr friend, "jadeblade", had to put her cat Poncho down. He was 17 years old and had kidney failure. He was a gorgeous Maine Coon and I loved checking out the new photos that would pop up on her photostream of Poncho.

RIP our furry little buddies.

Canned ham

I noticed I have been neglecting my page for a while. Chock it up to a lack of free time which is SO irritating. Today is Thanksgiving though and nothing is open so I actually have time to post something here before I get a post ready for the main page. I was sent a link to a photo on Flickr from a reader named Rachel who emailed looking for inspiration to decorate her canned ham trailer. I told her I had no freaking clue what the hell a canned ham trailer was. It seems she is currently traveling around the US with her musician boyfriend to make a documentary about American music. They spent three months in southern Colorado fixing up a '54 Chevy and a matching 9 ft canned ham trailer to live in. And this is what she's talking about:

HOW CUTE IS THAT CAR AND TRAILER?!?!?! I love them both. Totally rad. I can't imagine living in such a teeny tiny space though. Good luck with that Rachel!

On that note, my sister's new cottage has a huge piece of land across the road from the land the cottage sits on and my husband has been on the hunt for a vintage Airstream trailer that we could buy (with my parent's pitching in) to put on the second lot to use as a "guest cottage". He's found a whack of them so far on UsedOttawa/Kijiji etc. I really hope we actually go through with this and get one (although my bro-in-law needs to check the Quebec laws on having one on a property because they're kind of picky over there). 

HANG IT!

Did y'all see my new limited edition Eames Hang-It-All in walnut??!!

Yes, apparently it is possible to love a freaking coat hook this much. (From Gabriel Ross, my go-to online shop for all things mid-century modern)

Wedding photos!

Last night Jeff and I picked up a DVD of the photos Sarah, our wedding photographer, took of the big day. They are fantastic, and I spent the morning uploading them to Flickr (I have a whole bunch that my inlaws took that I am working on and upload eventually). Because there are over 200 that Sarah gave us, I thought I'd go through and pick out my favourites and post them here. Enjoy!