Friday, July 12, 2013
Busy in the garden
I have a nice side garden that leads from the front yard to the backyard, but after I cleaned it out it was a little bare...
2 days and way too much money later (they are all perennials, it's an investment!).....
my $5 hanging baskets...
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Final view of the old house
I finally got a chance now that we are unpacked to edit, organize and upload photos for printing and found some I took on the last day in our old house.
Packing your stuff to survive a move-why you can/should move yourself
I did lots of online research before packing up our stuff for our move as well as talked to lots of friends. In our move we only had a few scratches and one broken skateboard that was about 7 years old.
First off, we used ABF UPack. I had about 5 other major carriers come...Atlas, Mayflower, etc. they came and did detailed inventories and gave me quotes of $12,000-$15,000 and would charge $2500 for packing and supplies. They all charged by weight and all said that our goods would be delivered in 7-14 days from sending the truck off. ABF UPack is based off how much length of their truck you use (if you are doing a smaller move, they have a bulkhead that is placed behind your stuff, then they can pack another shipment going the same way in the truck) rather than weight. They did not come out to estimate, you enter some figures online. UPack estimated for the size of our home we'd need 1 truck +7 feet. I figured we could make it into one truck and played with the numbers until I got our estimate $5500. That's right, 1/3-1/2 of what everyone else was quoting me. ABF does not pack the truck, they drop it off, you have 3 days to load, they drive it to your new home, drop off the trailer and you have 3 days to unload. They also handled the customs the same way the other companies did... I still had to make the list and meet the driver at the customs house. So what exactly was I paying so much extra money for, for them to load it??? We ended up not using the entire truck, but went ahead and just paid for the whole thing since there would have only been about 4 feet left and that way we didn't have to worry about what else was being put in the truck.
My neighbor luckily worked at a job where they get tons of shipments with bubble wrap, so I didn't have to buy any which is expensive. I used small bubble wrap on our dishes and glasses and I used large bubble wrap to wrap up wall pictures, etc. I think in order to diminish some of the scratching we had on our shelving that I disassembled-think Target or IKEA shelves I should have taken some of the spongy foam sheets he gave me and put them in between the boards. I also stacked our dishes like books on a shelf instead of flat like you'd keep dishes in your cupboards. This is supposed to put less pressure on them.
I also went ahead and paid for UHaul boxes rather than getting boxes used or from grocery stores, etc. I can't say if this made any difference though I will say everything survived and some of the boxes had taken quite a beating when we arrived. I liked the ease that they all stacked up nicely, esp when we were packing things and showing the house and having everything stacked in the garage. Was it worth the price of the boxes? I don't know... maybe...esp if you moved a lot and would use the boxes again. Since the packing of the truck (see that post) mostly involved packing boxes around furniture, it probably didn't matter in the truck that they were all the same size. One thing I did differently this time than the last time we packed up is relied more heavily on small boxes than medium. This meant we had more small pieces to fit around furniture and they were easier to carry.
I also bought about 2 or 3 rolls of the plastic wrap. I used this to wrap around shelves that went to the same unit. Hardware went in a labeled baggie (put a paper in the baggie rather than writing on the baggy as this tended to wipe off). We put all the hardware in a huge 2 gallon bag and Paul took it in his suitcase rather than risk losing it in the truck. As mentioned above if I had to do it again, I'd put foam sheets between the boards as some were scratched during bumps. It did make it easy to find the boards to put shelving back together on the other side. I also used the plastic wrap to keep drawers closed and to protect upholstery like couches, etc. (did you know you can pack up your dressers with the clothes inside?)
For wrapping large furniture, I bought lots of moving blankets. They are reusable and my friends who had moved before with sheets or without blankets all said not to scrimp by saving on blankets. UHaul and UPack sell them for about $7-$10 a blanket and give discounts for buying a lot. I believe I used approx. 30 blankets. The Upack ones are very nice and quilted, the UHaul ones are made from recycled blue jeans. Both seemed to hold up equally well. After wrapping furniture, I used packaging tape to wrap around. I think we ended up using 5ish rolls of tape. Do not buy cheap tape USPS was the worst tape I used. It unstuck and tore before I was ready. Get a few rolls of strapping tape for stubborn boxes and for wrapping around the blankets.
Dining chairs I stacked in groups of 2 with cardboard free from Dania furniture and a friend's IKEA delivery. Paul dropped by Dania and found out that they got deliveries on Wed and by the end of Thursday they put them in the compactor. Find out where your local furniture delivery store gets deliveries. These were lightweight and put on top of the stack in the truck.
Sometimes I used the wrap to help hold the tape to hold the blankets in place. Online there's not much concensus about wrap THEN blanket or blanket THEN wrap except with leather furniture. Leather furniture will sweat if you put wrap directly on it. We also found that if you do wrap THEN blanket, items slide together well, the wrap is meant to stick to itself so when you put two items with wrap next to each other, they tended to stick together and not necessarily where you wanted them to.
On the furniture like this, I used leftover cardboard and made little boxes to protect the feet of the furniture then used packaging tape to wrap around the leg.
Everything made it pretty well. You could see evidence of rubbing on some of the moving blankets, but not on the furniture!
I spent $600 on boxes, blankets, moving wrap. Remember that I didn't have to buy my bubble wrap.
We also drove our car. It's a minivan that gets about 20mi/gal and we travelled through the US instead of Canada for two reasons... gas is cheaper in the US (I just filled up for the first time in Canada... my most expensive fill-up ever) and it takes an additional 8 hours to go past the great lakes in that way. To freight our smaller car it was going to be $3,000. We spent $500 on gas plus we didn't have to buy plane tickets for ourselves.
First off, we used ABF UPack. I had about 5 other major carriers come...Atlas, Mayflower, etc. they came and did detailed inventories and gave me quotes of $12,000-$15,000 and would charge $2500 for packing and supplies. They all charged by weight and all said that our goods would be delivered in 7-14 days from sending the truck off. ABF UPack is based off how much length of their truck you use (if you are doing a smaller move, they have a bulkhead that is placed behind your stuff, then they can pack another shipment going the same way in the truck) rather than weight. They did not come out to estimate, you enter some figures online. UPack estimated for the size of our home we'd need 1 truck +7 feet. I figured we could make it into one truck and played with the numbers until I got our estimate $5500. That's right, 1/3-1/2 of what everyone else was quoting me. ABF does not pack the truck, they drop it off, you have 3 days to load, they drive it to your new home, drop off the trailer and you have 3 days to unload. They also handled the customs the same way the other companies did... I still had to make the list and meet the driver at the customs house. So what exactly was I paying so much extra money for, for them to load it??? We ended up not using the entire truck, but went ahead and just paid for the whole thing since there would have only been about 4 feet left and that way we didn't have to worry about what else was being put in the truck.
My neighbor luckily worked at a job where they get tons of shipments with bubble wrap, so I didn't have to buy any which is expensive. I used small bubble wrap on our dishes and glasses and I used large bubble wrap to wrap up wall pictures, etc. I think in order to diminish some of the scratching we had on our shelving that I disassembled-think Target or IKEA shelves I should have taken some of the spongy foam sheets he gave me and put them in between the boards. I also stacked our dishes like books on a shelf instead of flat like you'd keep dishes in your cupboards. This is supposed to put less pressure on them.
I also went ahead and paid for UHaul boxes rather than getting boxes used or from grocery stores, etc. I can't say if this made any difference though I will say everything survived and some of the boxes had taken quite a beating when we arrived. I liked the ease that they all stacked up nicely, esp when we were packing things and showing the house and having everything stacked in the garage. Was it worth the price of the boxes? I don't know... maybe...esp if you moved a lot and would use the boxes again. Since the packing of the truck (see that post) mostly involved packing boxes around furniture, it probably didn't matter in the truck that they were all the same size. One thing I did differently this time than the last time we packed up is relied more heavily on small boxes than medium. This meant we had more small pieces to fit around furniture and they were easier to carry.
I also bought about 2 or 3 rolls of the plastic wrap. I used this to wrap around shelves that went to the same unit. Hardware went in a labeled baggie (put a paper in the baggie rather than writing on the baggy as this tended to wipe off). We put all the hardware in a huge 2 gallon bag and Paul took it in his suitcase rather than risk losing it in the truck. As mentioned above if I had to do it again, I'd put foam sheets between the boards as some were scratched during bumps. It did make it easy to find the boards to put shelving back together on the other side. I also used the plastic wrap to keep drawers closed and to protect upholstery like couches, etc. (did you know you can pack up your dressers with the clothes inside?)
For wrapping large furniture, I bought lots of moving blankets. They are reusable and my friends who had moved before with sheets or without blankets all said not to scrimp by saving on blankets. UHaul and UPack sell them for about $7-$10 a blanket and give discounts for buying a lot. I believe I used approx. 30 blankets. The Upack ones are very nice and quilted, the UHaul ones are made from recycled blue jeans. Both seemed to hold up equally well. After wrapping furniture, I used packaging tape to wrap around. I think we ended up using 5ish rolls of tape. Do not buy cheap tape USPS was the worst tape I used. It unstuck and tore before I was ready. Get a few rolls of strapping tape for stubborn boxes and for wrapping around the blankets.
Dining chairs I stacked in groups of 2 with cardboard free from Dania furniture and a friend's IKEA delivery. Paul dropped by Dania and found out that they got deliveries on Wed and by the end of Thursday they put them in the compactor. Find out where your local furniture delivery store gets deliveries. These were lightweight and put on top of the stack in the truck.
Sometimes I used the wrap to help hold the tape to hold the blankets in place. Online there's not much concensus about wrap THEN blanket or blanket THEN wrap except with leather furniture. Leather furniture will sweat if you put wrap directly on it. We also found that if you do wrap THEN blanket, items slide together well, the wrap is meant to stick to itself so when you put two items with wrap next to each other, they tended to stick together and not necessarily where you wanted them to.
Everything made it pretty well. You could see evidence of rubbing on some of the moving blankets, but not on the furniture!
I spent $600 on boxes, blankets, moving wrap. Remember that I didn't have to buy my bubble wrap.
We also drove our car. It's a minivan that gets about 20mi/gal and we travelled through the US instead of Canada for two reasons... gas is cheaper in the US (I just filled up for the first time in Canada... my most expensive fill-up ever) and it takes an additional 8 hours to go past the great lakes in that way. To freight our smaller car it was going to be $3,000. We spent $500 on gas plus we didn't have to buy plane tickets for ourselves.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Minecraft party
So this should have been posted back in April, been a little busy moving! Anyways... At Carter's Minecraft birthday we did a few crafts. It was back to one of our famous at home do it yourself parties. As the kids came in they made Creeper shirts. I got black Fabric paint at the craft store and freezer paper at the super market. I got t-shirts cheap at the craft store and got strawberry boxes from Costco.
First I cut the bottoms out of the strawberry flats to slip inside the t-shirts so that the paint wouldn't go onto the back of the shirts. I made Carter take the rest of the boxes out to the recycling bin...
Then I ironed the freezer paper on to the t-shirt with the cardboard inside. Freezer paper has a plastic surface on the back, so it will stick temporarily to the shirt making a great stencil.
then the kids used fabric paint with foam brushes. Try to paint from the outside in so that you don't push the paint under the stencil.
Wait the length of the party or 4 hours and peel off the stencil (I peeled it off right before guests left, then handed the slightly wet t-shirt (it takes 4 hours to completely dry) to the parent with the cardboard still inside). Shirts should be washed inside out esp the first washing and first washing should be at least 24-48 hours after painting.
The boys seemed to really like the project! I see several the boys wearing the finished shirts to school, so they must think they are pretty cool :) This was Valerie's. The boys' were green...
I also found a card game online that I printed cards off at Winkflash 4x6 size with 2 card on each picture (so 3 cents per card plus shipping). The boys spent the rest of the time after opening presents trading cards and looking through them. Pretty simple, the only hitch was getting enough of the right kind of those blasted cards printed and to us on time :) Filled up the 2 hour party slot pretty well. We also had a UTube playlist of about 20 Minecraft parady songs for the boys to watch on the downstairs TV. Some kids were disappointed about not actually playing Minecraft, but I think we had something like 14 kids and I didn't have the inclination or time to set up enough places to play it, plus this seemed to make for better interaction.
First I cut the bottoms out of the strawberry flats to slip inside the t-shirts so that the paint wouldn't go onto the back of the shirts. I made Carter take the rest of the boxes out to the recycling bin...
then I used my Wishblade to cut simple squares out of freezer paper (you could also cut out your own squares. I'm just terrible at cutting straight lines so I cheated).
Then I ironed the freezer paper on to the t-shirt with the cardboard inside. Freezer paper has a plastic surface on the back, so it will stick temporarily to the shirt making a great stencil.
then the kids used fabric paint with foam brushes. Try to paint from the outside in so that you don't push the paint under the stencil.
Wait the length of the party or 4 hours and peel off the stencil (I peeled it off right before guests left, then handed the slightly wet t-shirt (it takes 4 hours to completely dry) to the parent with the cardboard still inside). Shirts should be washed inside out esp the first washing and first washing should be at least 24-48 hours after painting.
The boys seemed to really like the project! I see several the boys wearing the finished shirts to school, so they must think they are pretty cool :) This was Valerie's. The boys' were green...
We also had a Minecraft Cake. For those that don't know... this is an exact replica. Fondant, 2 8x8 pans of chocolate cake and a lot of chocolate frosting to hold the layers that did not want to come out of the pan properly together...
I also found a card game online that I printed cards off at Winkflash 4x6 size with 2 card on each picture (so 3 cents per card plus shipping). The boys spent the rest of the time after opening presents trading cards and looking through them. Pretty simple, the only hitch was getting enough of the right kind of those blasted cards printed and to us on time :) Filled up the 2 hour party slot pretty well. We also had a UTube playlist of about 20 Minecraft parady songs for the boys to watch on the downstairs TV. Some kids were disappointed about not actually playing Minecraft, but I think we had something like 14 kids and I didn't have the inclination or time to set up enough places to play it, plus this seemed to make for better interaction.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
Our first 10 days in Ontario
The little ones and I walked all around town-getting immigration photos taken for me, mailing my immigration paperwork off (yay me!) getting a library card, buying more grass seed, and getting gelato. Took about 1.5 hours of walking around, 30 minutes or so to eat the tiny bowl of gelato. The afternoon was spent washing all the roadtrip grime off the car (though 2 rainstorms did a good job on it-it wasn't that bad), spreading the grass seed, rototilling the garden so I can plant some things and generally puttering around.
Today I spent all morning working on paperwork-sorting the stack of mail that I've been shoving aside as it arrives from my mom's, my inlaws, my post office box and that we brought. I've been paying bills, filling out forms, inputting bills (trying to find out how much we need to live each month here), banking as well as going paperless for as many bills as possible. Since we only get the mail 1-2 times a week because it's at the post office box, I figured this would help get the bills paid, esp. since I see us going less and less as the winter progresses!
We've fallen into a bit of a rhythm. I try to get to bed at a decent hour so that I'm the first up. I like to spend 30-45 minutes puttering around (usually outside if it's not raining) then get some coffee and make a green smoothie for breakfast and do any office related stuff first off before Paul starts working in there (he's working for his company from our home office). Then I hear the kids wake up and go upstairs, get them breakfast, dressed, chores done, make sure the kitchen's cleaned up, then the kids play some video games while I do some indoor chores of house set up that are still lingering-mostly hanging pictures, sorting through piles of things, organizing closets and things that we unpacked, but didn't organize. We have lunch and then either go out or work outside if it's not too hot and the kids will ride bikes in the cul du sac or hopefully I can move them to the track right next door to our house at the school. Sometimes we head to my in-laws for a swim. The post office and library are just a short walk into the town square. We have dinner, clean up from the day, sometimes go back outside in the cool or to my inlaws, then bedtime for Valerie. The boys have been staying up on "summer time" while dad's at home to play video games with them.
Paul's been working about 11am-7 or 8pm since his company is on west coast time-the office door is closed while he's working or in meetings. He has the Surface set up on Skype so people can stop into his cubicle and talk to him face to face. Some meetings are by phone or by Skype. A lot of meetings are at 10am and 4pm Pacific time. He comes up to have meals with us. The kids and I eat breakfast at the breakfast bar, then we have lunch and dinner at the dining table.
So far it's been very pleasant-every government office or building has had helpful, happy employees in it. Our neighbors have brought over wine, essential oil bugspray & gingersnap cookies to welcome us to the area.
We were walking through the schoolyard to the post office and ran into the new principal at the boys' school. He seems very energetic and friendly and was glad to meet a few students who are new just like him. He was there with his father looking over the school, picking up trash and seems quite a go-getter. We've seen his car there every day all day this week (my kitchen windows look out on to the schoolyard).
I'll show you around...
We were able to get the van in the 9.5 foot garage. Yes, we all get in and out one side, which is fine for now, since we need to get the garage door remote working, the passenger usually gets out in order to unlock the front door and open the garage door anyways. We also have our tool chest and garbage cans and strollers in there. Bikes live in the covered part of the deck for now...
The backyard looks way different with leaves!
the poor side garden was covered in Morning Glory when I arrived after 2 months of neglecting it (I did weed it in April) now after a rototill of the top it's ready for some color
The kitchen has less storage than our old, particularly missing the pantry. But it's working ok so far... The TV next to coffee maker will probably get moved-previous owners left it and we seem to get a couple of channels.
Where we eat breakfast...
Dining room is a very useable size.
Living room fits our nice furniture. Paul was hooking things up for the tv. Former owners left wall mount. TV watching and Wii will probably be mostly upstairs, unless we're watching after the kids go to bed, then we'll watch in the basement where our room is and the Xbox is.
The living room and dining room form an L so we've turned the corner into a play area. Legos and such are in there.. we're hoping to get a 5x5 foot rug to anchor the place and make it cozier (we have no carpet except a stair runner in the house)
My linen closet is holding up nicely, esp since I have much more storage in the bathroom than our old house... the cabinet is larger with more drawers and we have a nice sized medicine cabinet. The linen closet holds extra blankets (sheets are kept in bedrooms), towels (towels in bathroom hang from a 2 level 5 hook (so 10 hooks total) on the back of the bathroom door right now as we have no towel racks in there). Some spare toiletries and medicine box are in there as well as our new canister vacuum which fits nicely on the floor in it. My aprons are hung on a hook on the back of the door since I was having a hard time fitting them in the kitchen.
My first home improvement project was putting some frosty contact paper on the windows for privacy,this looks out to the elementary school!
The kids' bedrooms seem to be working out, though I'd like to find some small, basic night stands for them. I may end up making some if I can't find what I like. I think the futon in Carter's room will move into our office for guests and a desk for homework will go in it's place.
We removed the closet doors from the master closet as our "walk in" closet with the doors you had to walk into sideways. The curtain hides it and makes it easy to get in and out of. We used one brown silk panel. I like it, but if I'd thought it through more I could have probably just used one of our old curtains with clips and rings on it. Oh, well! They may work well in Carter's room. So far I've had to shorten this curtain and the one in Henri's room as well, so the sewing machine has been broken out. I'll probably move to putting clip rings on the top of them so the kids can slide them easier and will be less likely to pull the curtain rods off the walls.
We've hung pictures! I did this wall over the stairs (it's a darker color, so it's an accent wall anyways by using freezer paper-I laid out some strips of it that I had on hand and taped them together, then laid out where I wanted the frames on the paper and marked them, then I measured where the hangers should go and marked those. Then I used pushpins to put the paper up at the ceiling put my hangers into the paper, then ripped the paper around the hangers. Easy!
So, it's looking like someone lives here, not like someone just moved in :) there's still projects for home improvement and organizing (kids bedroom closets and our storage area under the entry way are a priority!) but it's starting to feel more like home.
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