Loooooooooooong time, no post

I haven't posted anything in ages and ages, and yet I keep getting people asking for me to post an update on the Farmhouse.
I promise, I will.
Uhm, soon.

Rest assured - it's looking fabulous!

Welcome Shanti!

I have been thinking about getting a puppy for some time. I did my research, and I talked to friends, family, and various breeders, but I had come to the conclusion that it was the wrong time in my life for a commitment like a puppy.

So, naturally, I went out and got a puppy. On Friday, August 25, to be exact.

Her name is Prashanta, or Shanti for everyday, both names meaning "peace" in Sanskrit. It suits her. Even though she's only 3 1/2 months old, she's perfectly content to sit quietly in my lap for hours on end. She's a purebred Havanese, and she will only get to be about 7 lbs. as an adult. She is a genuine pocket puppy, and I will now have to forever silence my jokes about small dogs being more accurately classified as rodents...

I adore her.

And here are some photos of her first week with me, including her first bath...

The Continuing Evolution

Here are some photos of how the inside of the Farmhouse is changing as time moves along. Just you wait and see - Someday I will even have doors on the bathrooms and an oven door that opens!

(The photos in the Preview are a laid out a little wonky, but you get the general idea.)


The Library/Dining Room/Sitting Area:

I should mention, most of the cleaning up in these rooms has been facilitated by my mother and Sue, who generously gave their time up to help me create some order and cleanliness...

The "Closet":




































The Bedroom:

I will post some photos of other rooms in a while.

More Pix Coming Soon - I Hope!

I have had a lot of people asking after new photos of the Farmhouse. Good news: I have some! Bad news: I seem to have lost my camera on moving day. I was taking pictures on moving day, but where the camera went to afterwards, I do not know...

When I find it, I will post the photos of move-in day, along with new photos of the house as it becomes (oh-so-painfully-slowly) liveable.

Sorry for the wait, all of you who have been asking!

Move-In Day!

Drumroll... The long-anticipated day has arrived: I have finally moved into the Farmhouse! I booked the largest U-Haul available. Everyone except my always astute brother thought I could never fill this thing. Turns out, we still had to load some stuff into cars and half my belongings are still being stored at my mother's house until construction is complete at the Farmhouse and I have place to store everything in my new home...
















The above photos are the last moments of the Great Mattress Hoist. While I was hunting through the shed in back with my neighbour Lisa for a second tall ladder, the rest of my volunteer moving crew decided to see if it would even be possible to lift the mattress and boxspring over the balcony. (The reason being, of course, that the queen size mattress set was too large to go up the 1930s stairwell...) For some reason, they made this attempt with the mattress instead of the much smaller and lighter boxspring. Halfway through the exercise, they figured - "Hey, we've come this far, we may as well keep on going!" I missed the entire event, but here's how it was related to me:

Mikie, Lisa (my brother's fiancee, not my neighbour), and Robin were on the ground, holding up the mattress and using the one ladder to raise it up. Reid was on the roof, with my mother hovering anxiously inside the upstairs verandah door. All of a sudden, Robin saw or sensed something everyone else missed, and he bolted inside, up the stairs, down the upstairs hallway, over the human-sized hole in the upper verandah, and onto the roof to help Reid hoist the mattress over the lip of the verandah. Meanwhile, the girls on the ground were left trying to keep the mattress up, and my mother was yelling at Reid and Robin to drop the damn mattress before they fell through the hole in the verandah and broke their necks. (Good thing they ignored her. Not only would my new mattress have gotten filthy, Mikie and Lisa would have been, uhm, flattened...)

At this point, Lisa-my-neighbour and I came around the corner with a second ladder. We put it to use hoisting the boxspring up. Uneventfully, I might add. See how relaxed people seem in the photos? Apparently, that was not how they looked just before I arrived on the scene...

So, my happy ending is that I now sleep on a princess-and-the-pea-sized bed, thanks entirely to the efforts of my family and friends. How fortunate am I? (I already know the answer to that question.)

Whoo Hoo! Class 3, Here I Come!

During Pau's last week here in Alberta, we went camping in Jasper. We went whitewater rafting on the Athabasca River. It was so much fun! And now I'm ready for some Class 3 rapids.

Here are some pix of our trip. The others on our raft adventure are Bas, Marco, and Wout from the Netherlands, and our guide Mark.

To the left: Our tent (borrowed from my generous brother Reid and his lovely girlfriend Lisa, campers extraordinaire). It only took one false start before we successfully got it up and livable. In the middle: Pau, atop Whistler Mountain after we took the Jasper Tramway to the Upper Station. To the right: Pau and I with the Inukshuk we built at the "magic" Medicine Lake, which disappears every fall.

Pau, leaning on an interesting and twisty tree. And the two of us, on our hike of Maligne Canyon.

Been a while... Some new changes!

Welladay, welladee... I have not posted for quite some time. Busy busy, I have been. :-)

Here are some pix of the Farmhouse I took a few weeks ago. I will soon post some new pictures. AND... I will also soon be moving in! Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinally!


The kitchen with the countertop installed. Purty purty.

And the shower, filled with garbage. But you can see the tile, which I love.







And the upstairs hallway, also filled with a lot of stuff. Including the bathtub. Isn't the yellow colour so cheerful? Jilly picked it for her room, and I liked it so much that I used it for the hallways, too.


More photos will be posted soon, I promise.