OMG - We Bought a House!!

From the real estate description: "This is it! Gorgeous totally renovated character home on beautiful tree-lined street with 6 bedrooms, family room and 3 bathrooms in the vibrant Commercial Drive area.

Extensively updated in 2006 with new roof, kitchen, appliances, electrical, plumbing, decks, bathrooms and double-glazed windows. Functional layout emphasizes design and liveability. French doors from large spacious kitchen lead to tiered deck with fabulous view of McSpadden Park. Nicely landscaped yard has a lovely blend of roman pavers and garden areas.

Within a short stroll to great shopping, restaurants, recreation, Trout Lake and public transit. Features include hardwood floors, crown molding, french doors, skylights, stylish tiling, gas range, stainless steel appliances, microwave convection oven and large open kitchen plan. Potential to convert finished space in basement to suite."

There are 3 bedrooms upstairs - 2 small and one good sized but compromised by kneewalls - and a small bathroom. On the main floor there is a good size living room and kitchen and dining area plus a bathroom and a small bedroom. The walk-out basement has 2 small bedrooms, a family room, bathroom and laundry that could be a second kitchen. The lot is 25' by 100' with a small front yard but great backyard that backs onto a lovely park. There are two tiers of deck in the backyard and a good bike storage area. The house is half a block to Commercial Drive which is a great people street with shops and restaurants. The house is 5 blocks from our existing house and closer to the sky train stop.

We have been looking for over a year and have lost in several bidding wars. But this one must have been destined for us. The house went on the market on Wednesday, the open house was on Saturday and offers were accepted Saturday night - so not much time. There were 3 offers and they chose us. They want to close at the end of March with moving date of April 2. I think we were lucky that they were selling in the middle of the Olympics - it seems everyone in Vancouver is taking in the Olympics.

This coming weekend is the closing ceremonies and the final hockey games so we are going to put up our house up for sale the week after - SO NOT MUCH TIME TO SELL OUR HOUSE - am a bit freaked out by having to move so soon too!!! And we still have to sell our lovely house in Toronto. And it needs work done before we can sell it - arggghhh. This could all end badly.

Olympic Fever

Wow - I loved the opening ceremony and the Aboriginal dancers and art - so beautiful. Valery arrived on Friday night from Calgary and she and Ian caught the last bits of the ceremony on tv. Saturday we watched Olympics on TV and went to Pat's soccer game, while Ian worked at Yaletown Live Site. Sunday was a great day - beautiful weather and we met my friend Karen and went to the Aboriginal Centre, Robson Square and the Bell Cube aftet dropping Ian off at Yaletown. Lucky Patrick won tickets to the medal ceremony and the Nellie Furtado concert so he and Valery went to that. They had great tickets a few rows from the stage. Looks like Pat really had fun!!
Ian and I had dinner at Brix - watched some of the Olympics under candleabra light - and had a gorgeous meal - pretty neat Valentines Day. Ian was off Monday so he and and Valery and Pat toured around and went to the Down town live site while I worked. Early Tuesday morning Valery flew back to Calgary - It was great to have her here for a visit.

Hopefully Valery remembers to send photos as she had the camera. I took one shot which I hope turns out of Valery at the Terry Fox memorial site. Valery has been training for what seems like a long time to be a prosthesist and has just got her first job. They studied one of Terry Fox's artificial limbs at school.

No Children Were Harmed in taking This Photo

Pat's chores are feeding the dog, emptying the dishwasher, cleaning his room and vacuuming the stairs. He is great at feeding the dog, fairly good at the dishwasher, not good at cleaning his room and LOVES to use the handheld dustbuster on the stairs. There is always some kind of role playing that goes along with the vacuuming. Today I found him lying upside down doing the vacuuming!!! What is that about??? What an inventive kid - he thought it would be fun. LOVE HIM

Oh yeah his pants are really that short on him - he has grown another 4 inches in the blink of an eye.

Doll Quilt Swap #8

I am making a small quilt as part of a swap - I know who I am sending a quilt too but don't know who is sending a quilt to me from amongst the 160 swappers. People post a bit about what they like and post their progress on quilts they are making and its a fun (and funny) community of quilters. I am having a lot of fun creating a colour wheel quilt for my partner. I have admired the colour wheel quilt posted in Purl and did some research on dresden plate quilt blocks. I made a template from a book and guessed at how many strips to make and then I found this post from Kristen and she worked out the math - luckily I was close in my guesstimating. Wonder why I did not think about math to figure it out LOL. I love rainbows and enjoyed picking out fabric to try out. Luckily I had a good selection of scraps to choose from thanks to the Pork Chop Swap swap with some of the Old Red Barn Company quilters.

Thanks for all the Quilty Fabric

I won four fat quarters from Allison at in the Sew Mama Sew Christmas Giveaway. I really admired the pink flowers on the aqua background in the picture on her blog and that is what stuck in my mind and what I thought I won. So I was surprised and pleased that I won 3 other fat quarters which at least one if not all by Urban Chiks. Thanks Allison for your generousity.

My lovely bloggy friend Marguerite from England surprised me with a big piece of strawberry fairy fabric mix from the flower fairies series. It was delightful to come home after a month away and find this thoughtful gift and a lovely felt heart. Thanks so much Marg - get well soon.


I am making 2 pink blocks for Dana's quilts to promote breast cancer awareness. Fabric strips from from my fabric swap partners will go into one block and a large pink flower and pink ribbons will go into the other block.


Absolutely lovely fabric "scraps" were sent to me by 8 lovely ladies in Flossie's Pork Chop Swap and I want to use some for some string blocks and some to make a cover for my sewing machine.

Really am so very grateful for the internet quilting community of generous women and men.

PS the forsythia in the photo was picked from my garden this morning!!!

Wonky Quilt in Progress

What's Up?

We had a lovely Christmas and travelled to Toronto so that we could spend the holidays with most of our children - Matthew was in Edinburgh, Scotland. Everyone enjoyed their presents and we ate too much good food. We took a family trip to the CN Tower which Pat had never been up and the pic of Val holding onto Pat warms my heart.

We stayed in our Toronto house and I was struck again by how much I love that house. It is a lovely Arts and Crafts house that Devon did a lot of work on renovating and putting a new kitchen and bathroom. The spaces in it are lovely and the location in the Beaches neighbourhood is perfect. I must have gone on a bit much about how great the house is because every time I said something nice about it Ian would bring up something great about Vancouver. I was not comparing just enjoying. Unfortunately our tenants did not leave the house in the best shape and so we (mostly Devon) have been doing a lot of small repairs and fix ups. We had a housecleaner in and Ian spent two days cleaning up the yard. Devon has to repaint the basement floor but did get the walls repainted. We had our favourite painter Spiros in to repaint the halls and will get the floors buffed up. Alexander was going to help, but got sick and then Devon got sick so I am staying on a few extra days to help "supervise".

Yeah!! I did get Caitlin's quilt finished and when we took her back to University she put it right away on her bed. She is really pleased with it and so am I. I have also made a lot of progress on Devon's wonky block square and am feeling good about that. I have the material for the circle quilt but the leader has been ill and has not posted yet the instructions I need. I am appreciating the delay though as I can get better caught up on my other quilts. I just have to quilt Pat's and after finishing Cait's I feel so much more confident about the quilting part. I have joined DQS8 which is a quilt swap of small quilts and I am looking forward to making a small quilt and really taking care of getting it right. We will find out who our partner is shortly and there is a lot of excitement and anticipation building. The quilt needs to be posted in early March and that works well for me.