Amberism

Happy Birthday

The sweet and lovely Miss. Munin celebrates her birthday today!

I hope you have a wonderful day full of love, good wishes and kisses ;).

Go give her some love!

Speaking of Renovating

I'm going to be scarce for the next week since Steve is heading out to Nanaimo for his new job on Thursday and we have about 6 weeks of work to do in 3 days.

It's going to be a good time at Chateau Amber and Steve.

In other news, I spent the weekend at the Calgary Folk Fest. It was pretty good. Friday night Great Big Sea headlined. I made the foolish mistake of attempting to keep up with sister and danced my ass off. I've concluded that I'm old. Saturday night closed with Spirit of the West and Michael Franti which meant more dancing.

Sunday we lazed around on the grounds and whined about how tired we were. It was fun! Although I am still annoyed that neither Fearthainn or myself won any raffle prizes. We deserved to win. Fearthainn definately deserves to win, this was her 10th folk fest! A little appreciation for loyalty raffle gods! Geez.

meh

oh look, it's cloudy and about to rain. meh.

My DJ is worried that she won't have all the songs I want played at the wedding and would like a list by the end of the week so she has time to get the collection in order. Thing is, I have no idea what songs I want played at the wedding beyond the first dance. Haven't given it any thought. Steve and I have a huge collection of music, but as a friend aptly pointed out at a house party, it's good music but not party music. Most of the music in our collection isn't stuff you dance to, it's stuff you listen to.

Please (please) tell me some of your favorite 'danceable' songs. Songs that you'd hear at a wedding. Notice there was no mention of 'good' music. Wedding music is seldom 'good' music ;). I want people to be able to get up and dance and have a good time.

We have a very, very short list going on right now. I really need help with this one.

The Living Room

Ok, I spent WAY too long attempting to get this mouse-over deal to work. If you're not in IE, it's probably not even going to work. But hell, that was a great deal of time out of my life so I'm putting it up. If you can't see it, and you want to, and I like you, I'll change it ;).

Unfortunately, I think I might have learned some html. This doesn't please me since my approach to my internet life is to remain as stupid as possible so that other people (namely Candi and Fearthainn) do all this shit for me. It's scary to think that I actually program for a living.

So, roll over the image to see the "before" pics of our very pumpkiny living room. The first two pics are a different size because those were my experiments and I wasn't about to go back and change it now. Refer to above paragraph.


Looking into the living room from the main hall. Hello! Orange! I'm not sure if this is a really fair comparison because the before picture was the day after we moved in and we hadn't unpacked or cleaned or anything, hence the disaster area going on.


Standing in the living room and looking into our main entrance way. Take notice of the chandelier in the 'before' shot. Special. And the plant hooks? They are everywhere in this house. Previous owners loved to hang their plants. The living room alone had 6 hooks in the ceiling. Steve gets very emotionally about those hooks. I've never seen him hate something so much. They're a bitch to get out of the ceiling too, since they were all anchored.


Standing in the living room and looking down the hall to my office and the master bedroom. What you're suppose to get out of this picture is that there is new flooring. See the new flooring? Ain't it purty?


Another living room angle. Yeah, we have an Africa thing going on. In my defense, my Africa thing started before it became 'trendy' and my African decor is actually from Africa. So, since I actually graced the continent with my presence, I feel justified in my decorating style, trends be damned.


Standing in the living room and looking into the dining room/kitchen. The wall is actually a dramtically different color, although you can't really tell from this comparison. The old wall was a celery color, the new wall is a linen color. The before in this case actually looks better in the pictures. In real life, the after is truly better, it's my photography abilities that are lacking.



And finally, just a general picture that really captures our love of pumpkins, this one isn't a roll over.

Tomorrow...my office! hee!

Time

I have no idea what I'm doing with my time. I have a list of things a mile long and it seems I haven't been able to put a dent into it.

I spent most of yesterday feeling rather sorry for myself since I have an incredibly sore back and had a headache from hell. Seems like I'm not in good enough shape to be leaning over tiling and grouting a floor for two days. I'm paying the price for that new floor someone else gets to enjoy. The better enjoy it, dammit.

All that rain I complained about last week has wrecked havoc on the ol' city of Edmonton. There were all sorts of tornado warnings and watches, plus one touched down to the east of the city late Sunday afternoon. Flooding everywhere in the city, and I even heard talk about a bridge nearing collapse because of all the flooding. I wasn't lying, it was raining a lot. It rained again last night too.

The good thing about the rain is that everything is all green and lush. I almost feel like I live in the tropics now, since its hotter than hell during the day and it rains every night. Beats last week theme of 'rain all the time'.

Besides the ever exciting weather, we had Steve's Mom and sister up here this past weekend, and we promptly put them to work. No time for play in these here parts. Steve's Mom moved some lillies and iris' out of the shade bed they were in, to a sunnier part of the yard (the previous owners apparently didn't look into the needs of those particular plants). She had a little unwanted help from Vegas who decided the plants were tasty treats. She wasn't impressed in the slightest, although I found it amusing. I guess pets are like children. The owners find their flaws endearing. Everyone else finds them annoying as all hell.

Steve's sister painted the second half of our sprawling family room. The first coat anyway, which was much appreciated. She did such a fine job on the first coat I almost didn't bother with the second.

So, the house is moving along so that someone else can enjoy the fruits of our labour. All I'm getting out of it is a very sore back. At least I'll be leaving behind the chill of Alberta for warmer climates soon and I can forget we ever made the decision to buy an old house in this little town. Of course, we'll probably just move on to another old house in another little town and then I'll just bitch about that instead.

This blog wouldn't be the same without me bitching about an old house. heh.

An Update

I'm not getting laid off. At least not this week, and next week isn't looking likely either. Or at any point in the near future.

As a peon, I have no idea what the heck is going on but the rumours appear to either have been way off or something changed. So, no free time for me. Bummer.

It's been raining, and raining, and raining for what seems like an eternity here. There's been Tornado Watches in the area (although not really around Spruce Grove) and did I mention rain? Not a light drizzle either, we're talking serious rain. It's getting old.

I finished The Devil Wears Prada last week, since Suzy mentioned it and then it was conveniently on sale for 40% off at the grocery store just begging me to buy it. My justification for spending even more money on books is that I hadn't read any Chick Lit in a while so it was time to read something fun in celebration of summer! It didn't disappoint! If you enjoy Chick Lit (ie: Bridget Jones Diary, The Nanny Diaries, Shopaholic books) I think you'd like it. I also bought Can You Keep a Secret and am hoping that too is a good summer read.

Speaking of books, a couple of weeks ago I read The Story of My Face by Kathy Page and couldn't put it down. I was totally captivated by the story and pleasantly surprised. I had no real expectations, it just intrigued me enough to pick it up at 80% off. Worth the read, in my opinion.

At some point I'll get the little sidebar going and do the reviews and What I'm Reading Now bit. A couple of friends and I have this pseudo book club where we all pass around the books we're reading and chat about them so why not bring that to Amberism.com at some point? Just not today. Not likely tomorrow either.

ok, I suck

I had an entry all typed up and then just closed the browser. Sometimes it's amazing I get through the day.

I was supposed to be laid off today. At least, in my little mind I had decided that I was getting laid off today. Rumour was that there were lay-offs coming, we concluded that they were coming today and I concluded that I was on the list. I'm not sad to be on the list. If I'm being honest, I was verging on giddy.

I was sad, however, to have to work the entire day when I had afternoon plans to paint my downstairs bathroom. The job thing interferes with my regular life.

But, this is Corporate America I work for so I have faith. I may still be 'downsized'!

In other far less exciting news the songbook I ordered on the off chance that the sheet music for our first dance would be in it was a total bust (of course, just ordering something on the 'off chance' screams failure, doesn't it?). The sheet music wasn't in it. Then the dog ate the book preventing the return of said book back to the states. I spent days and days attempting to find a copy of this music online and came up with nothing so I took a gamble on this songbook. Today I sit down and find the damn sheet music in about a nano-second and had it ordered in another nano-second.

Seriously, I suck. All told just getting this sheet music has cost me $50US. I didn't have a huge budget for sheet music (actually, I didn't have any budget at all!) so here's hoping this goes off well. I'm planning on having my lovely and talented and wonderful sister sing, with a pianist that I've yet to hire.

How is that fair?

These two boys go through 13 years of sheer hell and their guardians are sentenced to nine months. Nine months.

"Although they went to school, home was a house of horrors and they were exposed to a brutal way of life.

They were often tied to their beds, sometimes handcuffed. At one time, one was forced to sleep in a dog cage without even a piece of cardboard to lie on.

They were kept in diapers because they couldn't get to the washroom, subjected to rectal examinations and often beaten with a variety of household implements."

There is something seriously wrong with our justice system.

Happy Independance Day!

To all my friends in the US! I hope you're having a wonderful long weekend!

Time Flies

It's been a while since I did a real update. Things have been hectic at Chateau Amber and Steve. We've put the renovations on over-drive and things are moving along, although not quite as quickly as we'd like. We were hoping to not do any renovations over the summer months, which was a rather naive hope.

I took the entire week off, although it certainly didn't feel like a vacation. I was running between Calgary and Spruce Grove doing all sorts of errands. The previous weekend was spent the weekend with Steve's family for his nephew's graduation. Quite the shing-dig for a high school graduation.

I did the walk-through on my condo and since I'm being extremely picky about who lives there now, it's currently empty. I've been conversing with a couple from Isreal about living there, but yesterday I was having some serious doubts. They have two kids and a dog and I kept thinking about how much damage two kids (and some dogs, like say, my own) could do. They haven't put any money down yet, so technically it's still up for rent. Most of the inquiries are either college students or oddly, four adults from the Atlantic Provinces (I've had two inquiries). Four adults is just too many adults in the unit, and my condo board isn't thrilled so they had to be turned down. I'm turning down college students because well, they're college students. In the meantime while I sort all this out, Steve and I are paying three mortgages and it sucks. A lot. Especially since things have changed up here and Steve's salary is no longer being 'padded' by a live-out-allowance like it used to be.

We have booked a Marriage Commissioner for the wedding, though, which is something else to check off the never-ending wedding list. And a DJ. From here on out it should be things that are a little more fun to deal with. The last nit-picky thing like that I have to deal with is the ugly table and chairs in the hall I've rented. I can't decide if I'll just live with ugly or if I'll look into renting linens to cover up the ugly.

Happy Birthday Canada

I love this country! hee!