My new closet

As I mentioned a while back, we recently had renovations done that would enable us to switch our bedroom and Jeff's office upstairs. Jeff and I also switched closets, and my new closet got turned into a walk-in closet.

In the photo below, you can see what used to be Jeff's closet. Part of the renovations added the extra wall and a door, creating a second small room on the outside:



A friend asked me last night if it was big enough to dance around in. I told her that yes I could, as long as I danced in one spot. :-) It might be small compared to some walk-in closets but it's LUXURY to me! What I love most about it: when I get up in the morning, I can get dressed without worrying about waking Jeff up. In our old bedroom, I had to fumble for my clothes in the dark, tiptoe out of the bedroom carrying my clothes and anything else I needed, closing the door quietly behind me (often dropping clothes and other items in the process), then get dressed in the bathroom.

Jeff spent much of this past weekend putting in custom-made shelves and hooks and other closet accessories. One brilliant idea he came up with: he covered the wall on the right with pegboard so I could place hooks where I wanted them.

You can get a closer view of the pegboard in the photo below:



Many thanks to Luisa for making me these hangers. And they are NOT hokey! I love them. :-) :-)

To finish off the closet, Jeff surprised me with a wooden letter 'D' that he had painted himself; he put it on the outside of my closet door.



Yay for handyman technonerdboy husbands. :-) When he finished moving his stuff into his new closet, I couldn't help but be struck by the contrast in our closet organization. Jeff's clothes are all perfectly folded on the shelves and hanging on the rack, edges and shoulders lined up neatly. I tend to be a tad more...er...random.

I took advantage of the closet move to purge a bunch of clothes I never wear anymore, and as I sorted through the chaos in the back of my old closet I was surprised to find some stuff I thought I had lost. (So THAT'S where that top went.) Anyway, I'm giving the purged items to Goodwill, though I opted to keep a few at the last minute because I liked the material -- I figure I can reconfigure them with the help of my serger. :-)

Sold a painting, a mug (pottery by Luisa and me), and a bunch of cards yesterday, woohoo!

Viva bus strikes, cancelled practices and birthdays

Sigh. It doesn't look as if the Viva strike is going to end soon. Which means that Allison, Jodi and I aren't going to be able to get together to practice for our gig at the CIBC Run For The Cure. Which means that we'll be performing our new song, "Running For The Cure," without having had a chance to practice the whole thing together beforehand.

Instead, we're going to be doing a lot of e-mailing and exchanging of e-mails and sound files over the next couple of days. In terms of timing, the strike couldn't have happened in a worse week for Urban Tapestry -- we were going to get together tonight for a practice, Allison and I were going to get together to celebrate her birthday tomorrow (I might brave the YRT crowds/delays anyway), and Allison and Jodi have to get to Nathan Phillips Square on Sunday morning without Viva.

Hopefully the strike will end soon. :-\

On a cheerier note, Allison was recently inviting people to post favourite birthday pics in her LJ. Here's one I dug up from the UT archives:



Heh.

Anyway, do drop by the Virtual Birthday Party when you have a chance!

How I'm Feeling Right Now

As I was revelling yesterday about my first full uninterrupted day of work in a long while, I started to feel a bit off. Off as in dwarves in cleat boots rampaging down my throat and stuffing cotton in my ears. Blech.

Funny how getting sick when we were little kids was almost (I said almost) fun because you got to stay home from school. As grown-ups, we do everything we can to avoid it. And I -really- don't want this bug right now because there are way too many things I have to do this week. Sigh.

As crummy as I feel, however, I'm still going to register for the Canadian No Call list (or call 1-866-580-DNCL(3625)), which launches today!

Reno pics

Woohoo, indoor renovations are finished! Today is the first day in about three weeks where I'll have ONE WHOLE LUXURIOUS UNINTERRUPTED day to work.

In case you're curious about the chaos details and pics...

As some of you may remember, we used to have a spiral staircase in the living room when we first moved in:



We decided to take it out, however. As cool as it was, it was purely ornamental and took up much-needed space in a relatively small house. Plus there was another staircase a few feet away. So we took it out and put a floor in instead, making more space available for Jeff's home office.



Over time, however, Jeff realized that an open concept office may not be such a great idea after all. Then he came up with the great idea of switching our bedroom and his office upstairs, and adding a door to the new bedroom as well as another window. The following photo is what our new bedroom looks like. The far left corner below is the same corner shown in the photo above. Note the extra window!



We took the bookshelves out and moved some of them into Jeff's office, on a new wall :



And the room that used to be our bedroom is now Jeff's office. His office is pretty bare right now, with a temporary desk until he has a chance to get a real desk:



I get a walk-in closet and Jeff gets doors for his upstairs home office, so we're both pretty happy. I was nervous about the open concept upstairs when we first considered buying the house, mainly because of noise and privacy issues. Having doors to all the rooms may be less esthetically pleasing, but it's sure a lot more practical.

Without doors or with open doors, noise carries REALLY well in our house...this morning I had forgotten to close the door to my basement office, and Jeff mentioned he could hear the sound of my spoon clinking against my cereal bowl from two floors above. Fortunately he was already awake. :-)

Tonight we're going shopping for blinds as well as hardware for my closet.

We LOVED our renovators, by the way -- thanks to our friends Alison and Jeff for the recommendation.

And huge thanks to our friends Ray and Walter for their help, advice and muscles.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

English Country Dancing at Fort York

So on Friday night, I went with my friends Cathy and Ardelle to do some English Country Dancing at Historic Fort York, Jane Austen style. Cathy's been part of the group there for years but I only became interested after attending a dance workshop at Balticon.

The regulars were all dressed in historic costume. The women were lovely in their gowns, their skirts swirling around. And though I felt a bit sorry for the men in their wool suits, I have to say they all looked quite dashing and Colin Firth-like. Don't believe me? Check out the photo on the left that I took of my dance partner, Joel.

Ok, maybe that's not QUITE what Joel looked like but it's close, I swear! And he sewed his entire outfit (except for his shoes) by HAND. I managed not to step on Joel's feet during the dances, though I kept threatening to accidentally knock him over.

Melanie, the woman who taught us the steps as well as calling out the dances, also provided interesting historical info along the way that helped explain how certain dances developed. Music was provided on a wooden flute by Michael, who also wore a costume.

Anyway, I had a huge amount of fun and have asked Cathy if I could come next time as well.

For more info about the events at Fort York, see this page.