Groovebag

Raining and Pouring

I've been working on a film set for the last week and a half, shooting mostly nights.
That's my "day job", working in the wardrobe department on film sets.
For this particular shoot, my hours have been long (average 14 hour days) and the schedule wacky....start work at 3 pm, finish at 7am the following day.
Needless to say I feel like I have a wicked case of jet lag.
And I didn't even get to fly anywhere warm and sunny!
Last night I got home from work at 3 am.
This morning I woke up to this outside our bedroom window.

We are having the city water pipe connection to our house replaced. The original pipe is lead and the lead levels in our water are too high.
So at 7:30 am the trucks, jack hammers, back hoes, saws and loud talking (ok, yelling) work men all showed up to start work on replacing the bad lead pipe.
Did I mention I got home from work at 3 am?
I popped in some ear plugs to try to block out the sound but let me tell you, nothing blocks out the sound of a back hoe ripping out your front side walk, followed by the sound of a jack hammer on concrete.
So I gave up the fight to sleep and stumbled out of bed.
And this is what I found in our basement.....
The location of our one and only fully functional bathroom, as we are renovating our master bath.

These two men, covered in mud, ripping holes in our basement floor? I don't know them.
And they are standing right at the entrance to our one and only bathroom.
What's a girl to do?

And the one and only fully functional bathroom looked like this
The window is wide open, it's freezing cold outside, and inside too now.
And there is a big hose running through the window over the bath tub and shower.
Sigh.

We do have a powder room on the main floor of our house and for now it is untouched and not full of mud covered strangers.
It will have to do.
But, the water is turned off now.
Double sigh.
However my fantastic Husband filled buckets and jugs and all manner of vessels with water before the water to our house was cut off.
So all is not lost, just a bit loud and muddy and messy.

I'm off to work now.
At least there is running water there!

Crafty Crayons

Last week our little friend Cass turned 4. I wanted to make her a gift but was pretty squeezed for time.
I found this tutorial on how to recycle broken crayons in to new and fun shapes.
It was a pretty quick project to do...a bit messy but fun.
I wouldn't recommend doing this craft with wee ones as you are melting the crayons on the stove and the melted wax gets very hot.
In the tutorial, it suggests melting the crayons with the paper wrap still on them.
I would recommend that you spend the time peeling the paper wrap off as I found that the crayons would melt faster and it is really really messy fishing the paper out of the melted wax.
I used candy molds that I bought at the Bulk Barn.
The birthday girl LOVES frogs so using the frog molds was a no brainer and the alphabet mold seemed like a good use for some learning while playing. I also used a heart shape ice cube tray to mix things up a bit.
I would hesitate to give these crayons to a child younger that 4 as they really look like candies or chocolates and might be eaten rather than used for colouring!
I put the newly made crayons in a couple of organza bags along with a large and small sketch pad and placed everything in a basket.
A craftastic basket for Cass!

Delicious Dinner...and Easy!

I make this dinner quite often.
A) Because it is very tasty, and
B) Because it is dead easy to make

So I felt it only fare to share it.
I can't even remember where I found the original recipe.....I can't take credit for originating it, just riffing on it.

Roast Salmon and Veggies
Here is what you need
2 large fennel bulbs, trimmed of fronds and cut into 1/8ths
1 pint grape tomatoes
5 cloves of garlic
1 lemon, thinly sliced
extra virgin olive oil
kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper
fresh thyme
4 salmon fillets or I sometimes use rainbow trout just to mix it up a bit

Preheat oven to 400 F.
In a roasting pan combine fennel, grape tomatoes, garlic and lemon.
Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper.
Throw in some sprigs of thyme according to your own taste. I usually toss in about 8-10 sprigs.
Cover and put in oven until the fennel is tender, about 30-35 minutes.
Season your fish with some kosher salt and fresh ground pepper.
Once the fennel is tender (but don't let it get mushy), place the fish fillets on top of the veggie mixture, cover and return to the oven.

Cook for about 12 minutes or until the fish is cooked through.
I like to serve this dish with Basmati rice, but tonight I kinda forgot about the rice until it was time to serve the meal.
Oops.

The plate looks a little bare with out the rice doesn't it?

Another great thing about this meal is that the clean up is super fast....just a roasting pan to wash!
Enjoy.

This is no monkey business

The United Nations has made 2009 the year of the Gorilla.
This morning I listened to a very interesting radio program on CBC about the plight of gorillas, particularly about the Mountain Gorillas that live in the mountains that border The Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Rwanda.
In 2006, I was in Rwanda for about 5 weeks working on the film adaptation of Romeo Dallaire's book Shake Hands With The Devil.
On one of my rare days off, I went to see the Mountain Gorillas at Parc National des Volcans in northwestern Rwanda.

The mountains in the distance was were we were headed for our day of hiking and gorilla watching.

I was in a group of 6 people, along with one guide and one guard.
We hiked up in to the mountains for about 2 hours until the scout that went out ahead of us signaled by radio, that he had found a "family" of gorillas.

The family that we saw consisted of a giant male Silverback, one female, a juvenile male, and a baby.

As you look at these photos keep in mind that there was nothing separating us wee little humans from these giant and majestic animals.
We were just a few feet away from them! No fences. No cages.
The gorillas are quite docile creatures and only become aggressive when they are threatened.
Their biggest threat comes from human beings poaching them, encroaching on their territory in search of food and fire wood and being caught in the crossfire of armed conflicts.
The gorilla pictured behind me was the Silverback, the leader of the gang. He was HUGE. He just calmly sat there eating while the 6 of us stared at him and snapped pictures.

On that day trip, I learned that there are approximatly 700 mountain gorillas left in the world, with about 250 of them in the area that we visited.
The mountain gorilla can only survive in this habitat, so you won't ever see one in a zoo. They are truly a rare and endangered species.
I feel so fortunate to have had this experience.

Sadly, the future of many of these magnificent animals ends up like this:

This is a photo by Brent Stirton, who won the World Press Photo for this photograph. The huge mountain gorilla in this photo was killed by gunshot.
It makes me so sad to see this photo.

The walls have secrets

When you are doing renovations you discover all sorts of buried surprises and treasures only to be found once the walls and floors and ceilings are all ripped open.
Some of the discoveries are not very good.
Like rotting galvanized steel plumbing pipes.
Or floor joists that have been cut and hacked away at.
Or frighteningly old knob and tube electrical wiring.

But then some of the discoveries are like little time capsule gems of the history of the house and it's previous occupants.
The first little treasures that we found were these:
We found them under some baseboard. I'd like to imagine that the men that built this house put them there intentionally.
There are two King George pennies, one dated 1915 and the other is dated 1920. The other coin is a King George quarter dated 1928.

When we were replacing our front door, D found these jammed in to the door frame.
It is a selection of baseball cards, hockey cards, Battle Cards from the Korean War, and something called Crazy Cards. It seems that most of them are from the 1950's.
It looked like they were placed in the door frame intentionally....almost like someone was hiding them. Hmmmm.

And our latest find was this little guy.
A little lost toy soldier.

Seeing as our house has given up these treasures we decided to bury a treasure in return.
We put together a memory box or a time capsule and buried it in one of our newly constructed walls.
Inside the box we put some photos of the interior of the house before we got our renovating hands on it, a front page from today's newspaper, some very well worn work gloves of D's, a piece of ceramic tile, and a piece of roof shingle. The roof shingle has more of a story behind it for us...but more on that another time.

Maybe some one will discover this "treaure" one day!

Special Delivery

I've always been the type to get excited when a delivery truck rolls up to the house and an eagerly awaited for package gets plopped into your arms.
Today was that kind of day.
But a double dose of delivery delirium.
Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

The first delivery involved a forklift.
I was too wrapped up in thoughts of "is the forklift driver gonna hit our neighbours car" to think to about grabbing my camera to snap a few photos of the delivery. (He was an expert forklift driver and no cars were harmed during said delivery).

Here is what we had delivered this morning.

Lots and lots of drywall.
Yup.
The bathroom renovation has progressed to the drywalling stage.
I, for one, am pretty darned excited about this. It means that we are moving into the next phase of the renovation.
There is still a crap load of work to be done but we are forging on!

And then this afternoon the Man in Brown (UPS) rang the door bell and plopped a huge box in my arms that held many smaller boxes.
There was no forklift involved in this delivery just the brown UPS truck.
But equally exciting.
Our order from Restoration Hardware arrived.
Hidden with in these boxes are our bathroom  light fixtures and glass shelf .
We won't be installing these right away, but it's exciting to see the finishing touches....even if they are still packed in boxes.

Happy New Year

We had a lovely evening last night.
For the second consecutive year, we stayed in, just the two of us, got all gussied up and cooked a fan-freakin-tastic meal.
There was no stress of guests arriving and oh-my-god-I-haven't-showered-yet.
There was no stress of going out and will-we-ever-hail-a-cab-in-this-freakin-cold.
There was no stress of a-way-over-crowded-bar-and-I'll-never-get-a-drink.
There was just no stress.
Just good food.
Good wine.
And great company.

His outfit looked great with the exception of the nasty looking crocks. He quickly changed out of them into something more suitable.

I am often made fun of for my, ahem, protective eye ware when I cut onions.
Laugh all you want.
My eyes don't tear up this way and I'll be damned if I was going to ruin a near prefect eye make up job.
And the near perfect eye make up job never, ever happens let me tell you.

A dance and a kiss at midnight of course!
 There is added significance to the midnight kiss and dance for the two of us.
He kissed me for the first time on New Year's Eve of 2002 on our second date.
And then the next day he asked me to go to Mexico with him for two weeks.
That was our third date.
It was a great date.

More on that story sometime in another post.

And today we went for a nice long snowy walk in one of the nearby ravines.

All of the best in the New Year to everyone!

Redd Foxx should be showing up any day now

We have been using our front porch as a temporary storage area for the junk/unused/over used building materials that have been accumulating during our latest round of home renos.

It brings back memories of Sanford and son.

I think it makes an EXCELLENT anti theft system. Who in their right mind would want to break into this house?

 

Happy Holidaze

Behind The Times

I meant to post this first thing Monday morning.
Oops.
We went to on outdoor Solstice parade on Sunday night.
The parade takes place through a downtown neighbourhood and ends with a huge bonfire in a nearby park.
But this year, because of high winds the parade part was canceled and therefore, there was no bonfire.
That didn't stop people from coming out in the frigid temperatures and celebrating the shortest night of the year.

In the centre of this crowd is a (very brave) woman doing tricks with a hula hoop that was on fire!
At least she was keeping warm.

A giant gypsy lady puppet also made an appearance.