Vestibule helpers

I usually post a {this moment} photo and join in w/ Soulemama and followers. This week I couldn't find a photo I really loved.  But I do have a relevant video. Relevant both to the blog theme and this moment.

I have been scraping wallpaper for the past week. At first, my son thought it looked fun and wanted to help. He lasted 10 minutes.  Then my daughter thought it looked like real people stuff and had to do it too. She is 17 mths and loves to mimic other people. Likes to help herself to food on a shelf, feed herself, walk the dog, carry bags. She does all of this with such confidence and independence and disregard to her little self. She refuses help and gets mighty frustrated when the task is out of reach for her wee motor skills.

It was no surprise she wanted to scrape wallpaper. For awhile she enjoyed watching through the plexi-glassLESS door. Then she started dropping things through the opening. And then she just came on through and took over. It was cute for a bit, but I was in the groove and wanted to scrape. I tried enticing her to swap the scraper for other things she used to enjoy. BUT NO WAY. She shook her head at me and went back to work. I resigned and decided to embrace the moment and make a video.

"hereyougo" -  her first word/phrase and she has been saying it for 6 months now.  hereyougo has evolved into other meanings, such as "give it to me", "pass it to me please". "give me my soother NOW".  She also slangs it to just "go", when she is in a hurry. At her one year checkup, the doctor didn't believe me that those were her first words and wanted to know if she could say mama or papa. Um, that hasn't come up.  She seems content with this phrase.  I thought it was really cute at first. But after 1000 times ... I am relieved she has expanded her vocabulary with Buhbye, Bye and Hi and Yep. And frantically waving hands and shaking head w/ a smile for "No".

Yeah, sorry the video is sideways...I keep forgetting I can only capture landscape views.

Jewelled peacocks, little VW cars

Heading down (or up?) the Bosphorus Strait I like to stroll through the arts and crafts market in Ortaköy, Istanbul.

We find many beautiful items such as scarves, hammered gold rings, spray painted gold mirror frames, little leather pouches, peacock jewelled hair clip ...ah it goes on.

We returned to the market in search of wee, wee VW cars to add to our collection. Sadly there were none to be found. Luckily we were not disappointed by all the other goodies.

We discovered Nahil. The little knitted booties drew my attention.


I have swooned over these kind of knitted booties @ ETSY shops ever since I spotted them when pregnant with L. But I was neither gifted a pair ;), nor bought myself a pair.   Having them live, in front of me, I couldn't resist. My daughter has outgrown baby booties, but I do know two people expecting...so I picked up a couple pairs.

The woman also gave me a pretty bookmark with details of the store, Nahil; an enterprise of the Foundation for the Support of Women's work (FSWW).  Women produce the goods and the income is used to support Women and Children Center's

The website has many lovely items for sale, from soaps and sponges to knitted boots to tree ornaments and adorable dolls. The dolls are my favourite. I am pining for a couple.

Zen and the art of renovating

While fixing up my home, I have discovered several things about myself. There are certain tasks I really, really enjoy doing and others I would rather hire out for. If I list them, would it be telling? Would some personality trait be revealed? Let us see.

Staining hardwood. LOVE. Down on knees with rag and bowl of stain. Dipping the rag in the glass serving dish (its the only thing I found laying around without a purpose, but I recommend it; the glass is heavy so it doesnt knock over, the opening is large enough to put hand and rag in...and stain in a glass....nice) Rubbing the stained rag over the newly sanded floors (badly sanded by a helper).  Stroking the soaked stained rag evenly across the area. Making my way from one corner then across a bit, then down and filling in.  Keep floating pet hairs off the wet stain is a bit of a challenge.   I always thought I would enjoy owning a cedar type home that requires staining the planks every few years as an easy DIY maintenance, compared to clapboard and painting.

I enjoyed staining so much I will post two angles :). 

But I won't say what happened to this foiled, hardwood floor refinishing job.

Scraping off wallpaper. LOVE. Weird, but true. Discovered this in my other home 331kensington when I did a quick update to the bathroom before putting the house up for sale. 2 things happened during that remodel. 1) I discovered scraping wallpaper off isnt as horrible as everyone claims. 2) I fell in love with a tool, the scraper. It has been with me every since and has performed many odd jobs.
That wallpaper in that bathroom slid off. The moisture made it easy. I think I did try some product to spray on some difficult spots. This time, in the vestibule, the quaint but old brittle wallpaper requires a bit more effort. It's dusty and little pieces are flying all over and although there seems to be just one layer of wall paper, its thick. So far I have not used a product...just my handy most favourite tool ever, the scraper.

 My money is on this job, 

the last started, the first to complete

Digging: LOVE, especially in the spring time. It usually starts small, with a small plan but then I keep digging and digging. And then I need to figure out what to do with the hole/area I dug.

Spring of 2011 impromptu digging;

which led to the idea of creating a stone patio;
while I wait for the french doors leading to balcony.deck to be built

And Things I don't love but ...:
I would love to get more, make that ANY experience with electrical work. Upgrading exterior porch lights and interior lighting seems to be so accessible and easy and fun and a huge home improvement. Even if it is merely spray painting the old fixtures.  Have spray can, will paint.  But these fixtures need to come off and sometimes the wires are in the way of making an easy job more difficult. Electrical knowledge would be so useful.

 My industrial light fixture for the dining room still sits in a box. 

The old chandelier still tied back onto support. 

Calling an electrician high on my list, I'm just not good at calling.
Two pictures each, as I'm playing w/ whit balance

Painting, seems like something I would like, but I suck at it. And dread it. If the moons are aligned properly and I am in sync with my paintbrush and inner zen, I can manage painting.

Building a paver patio ... I do want to accomplish this goal, one time. I have dug out two areas in different homes. One dugout got snowed on and then the house was sold. The other one, the current one, well it just over grew with weeds while we were gone and now the ground is harder then the concrete slab that remains.

Yeah, I like details and repetition, meditative like tasks.

I used to plant trees in my twenties. For 5 years. Out in the wilderness.clear cuts of northern Ontario, Northern Alberta and all over British Columbia from the northwest side of Vancouver Island to BuffaloHead on the Alaskan border to the heart of B.C., Horsefly. One tree after another, all day long. 300 seedlings in my dual side bags, my shovel and steel toed boots. Down the rows I went (or mangles of brush). 1300 a day was a good day for me.  $0.08 - $0.25 range a tree. That works out to 200,000 - 300,000 planted trees in my career.

I think these kind of tasks that I love, staining, scraping and digging come as no surprise as I am a retired tree planter which required similar traits; perseverance and accuracy and a bit of stubborness to get the job done.

Yea, forget about completing jobs, apparently I suck at that.

What are your favourite renovating jobs?

OH my darling! True babystyle** - On a hot sweltering day

Orange ya glad I didn't say...

...Grapefruit?

on the comedian:
hat #1: cowboy hat
hat #2: magicians hat
top: pretty beaded headscarf from Assos Village market
bottoms: BumGenius all in one cloth diaper

Accessories: a cat, Hobbes look-a-like

**As much as I love clothes, BabySyle improves when she styles herself.

Vestibule upgrade begins

started in a heat wave (7/23);

necessity is the mother of invention.

our house was a sauna.

outside was not cooler but there was a breeze.

the broken plexi-glass on the interior foyer door bug me.

a lot. 

but never enough to do something about it. 

i left it as is in order to block some of the winter elements from entering.

but now it is summer

and, until yesterday, i could ignore it.

pulled out the plexi glass, 

shut the interior door and opened the exterior door.

enters the wind, warm breeze

cutting through the humidity and french door open panel,
cooling the insides, slightly.

the, er, charming ancient pompom window cover also came down.

a little antsy to do more but too hot to dig out rocks for a patio, i got my trusty wallpaper scraping tool and started scraping the quaint, but old, damaged and brittle wallpaper off.

expecting to uncover rain damaged walls. 

son thought this looked fun too and took over.

calculating the lower cost if I do the tear down and my contract-her do the patching up.

realizing i am good at ideas and starting things but not so handy at construction and fixing.

the walls will need repairs.

the old, water stained and covered-with-nasty-rugs hardwood will be cut out

and little mosaic slate or marble will be installed.

I'm a reactionary sort, you see

I just started scraping,

before I cleaned out the area.

when I realized I was serious I put the hats and hoodies elsewhere,

the mail catcher basket remains.

These designs and colours are my current favourites; A mixture of slate and marble tiles

Source: alibaba.com via Sara on Pinterest

Source: alibaba.com via Sara on Pinterest

Source: alibaba.com via Sara on Pinterest

Source: alibaba.com via Sara on Pinterest

and then back to me,

some painting,

vintage gray (i have lots of this leftover from my stripes) on the lower portion, 

chantilly lace on the upper portion.

of this very tiny foyer
39" x 74"

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

Play here, @ Soulemama

Black clouds and a heat wave

The storm that followed us home Sunday (7/17/11) night.

We managed to beat it home. The rain arrived the next morning, hard and fast.

I love rolled hay bales.

Little monkeys.

And now, as many of us are, amidst a heat wave, breaking records. 101°F that feels like 110 w/ the humidity factor (7/20/11). 

Stay cool. Check into your local pool or a stream or even a bucket of water.

2010 swim lesson

Turkish carpets

The Grand Bazaar, Over-Dyed carpets.

Over-dyed carpets were recently added to Anthropologie's rug collection and have long been around at ABC Carpet. As a huge investment. I had to go in and find out Turkey's take on this trend. Once we relocated the store on our second trip to the Grand Bazaar, Recip from Güney Carpet recognized us and was happy talk carpets. (post edit: I have now read up more on over dyed carpets and discovered that Istanbul was one of the first to do this, reclaiming stained carpets)

He had informed us that he sends many over-dyed carpets to Scandinavia countries right now. Since I am in love with Scandinavian design, this bit of information thrilled me.

Recip explained the process as:
1) shave the carpet.
2) sun dye the carpet.
3) apply and over dye the carpet.

They use vintage / old carpets for the process. The dye is not as dark as I saw on carpets @ Anthropologie, but that could merely be the lighting / photo. I am not sure. And although this is a beautiful carpet and I like that I can see the original design through the dye, I might like the colour to be even darker.

I also loved the colours and thin stripes of this carpet:

And the design and colours of this carpet:

But I was drawn mostly to the patch carpets, over-dyed pieces patched together. Gray, dark purple and yellow have been my colour motif for a year+.  I especially like the pink block with black design in this carpet pictured below. This carpet had it all.

A very old, unique patch carpet. This one was special for its smaller antique pieces and different piled patches.

Over-dyed gray, turquoise, yellow and pink.

Over-dyed large blue gray patch carpet. Very interesting!

The shop, Güney Carpet, beautiful woven art. Recip has three locations in the Grand Bazaar. The one shown below, another one that we had walked by and declined a sales persons' offer to look at their carpets. Remember, I wasn't there to buy? I just wanted to learn about the over-dyed carpets. So we had to find this one particular store. Carpet sales people LOVE to show off their inventory, it is after all, woven art. I do not like to bother people, but felt obliged to let him unroll a couple ... Can you see the layers of carpets on the floor ... hand selected for us to admire, de-shelved and spread out for our viewing.

And the third larger store, with even more inventory. At first Recip's assistant hauled a couple carpets from here to us, but then they decided it was better for us to go there. Recip told us that he had been in San Diego for a carpet convention. He was then contracted to mend a few carpets, which is his forte. He told us he could not believe that people let their dogs sit on the carpets...he had lots of mending to do. I didn't tell him I had a dog and three cats. I didn't even want to remind myself of that.

Oh look, what is this? What is in that package?