FINALLY, the transformation of the bonus room over the garage in our new house is complete!
When we decided to put in an offer on the house, we knew this room would eventually become my office, because if I was going to be working from home, I needed the larger office of the two of us (this is, of course, before COVID, so we had no clue Steve would be working from home, too). The more I kept thinking about turning this massive room into justan office, the less sense it made. I mean, I LOVE a good spacious, open room - but this one would've been overkill. I thought, "Well, I could just do like a sitting area on the other side.", but we've got places to sit and relax all over the house, one of which is a library, which is what I'd likely use my seating space in an office for (reading). So I started thinking about what else I could do. Suddenly, it just clicked. We didn't have an extra room in this house for me to convert to a closet - which had been on our list of "wants, not needs" - why not just treat this massive room as two rooms, and build a closet/dressing room from scratch? So, now that we had a plan, I couldn't WAIT to get started!
The room needed a total transformation. It was used as a bedroom by the previous owners. So fully carpeted, ugly green walls (sorry, I guess I should say "not my choice of color walls" - what's ugly to one person...), dated curtains, etc. I have a Before shot without the carpet. We'd already pulled it up before I thought to snag one.
So, first up was the flooring. Before you ask - we did the floor before the painting, because I had the hands available to help with ripping up carpet, removing the doors and tracks from the closet, and get started on laying the floor. It took a few oopsies to get down the installation, so it was slow-going the first couple nights, but once we got the process down, it went super fast. I did most of the full boards myself, and had help from a friend for the boards that needed to be trimmed down before being installed. The final result was SO much better than the carpeting.
Next up, painting! As you can see in the pictures above, the green was pea soup, and just NOT in my palette of acceptable wall colors. Since I now knew I was doing two rooms, I needed something neutral that would work for both rooms. Grey fit the bill. Once I got the walls painted, I started putting my office together. That meant unpacking all of the Oz boxes, and starting to arrange the shelves. By this time, Christmas was getting close, so I got to put up my Oz tree while I worked, as well. I took a picture of the final room, so everyone could see how pretty the wall color was, with the Oz stuff able to shine.
The only thing that was missing was the perfect chair. Lo and behold, a few months later, I found that, too!
Now, it was on to the big project (I know, like reflooring and painting aren't big enough, right?!): the closet. Now, I'll start this with a little backstory about me. My whole life, I've had fanciful dreams about what my house would be when I "grew up" (still waiting for that part to come). When I was little, I knew my house was going to have a spiral staircase, and a rotating door to get into the kitchen. Each room was going to have its own theme - one of which was a beach, with a hammock. As I got a little older, in my teenage years, it was the dream of having a house on the lake. We would pass them all while we were on boats in East TN, or North GA, and I would just fantasize about that being mine one day. As I got into my 20s and 30s, the one thing I knew I wanted was a room I could turn into a closet. Well, here we are, I'm pushing 40, and two out of three ain't bad! I'm on a lake, and I have my "room as a closet"! For these pictures, I am just going to show you progress pictures, with captions under each.
So first was putting clothes into the already-existing closet, and purses wherever they were out of the way.
Next came building the shoe rack.
Harvey appreciates shoes as much as her Mama.
I quickly realized I had enough room to fit two more shelves, so I put those on order while I continued to work.
Next up was the a-little-bit-of-everything rack. I also realized I had room for another jewelry shelf, so I put it on order with the additional shoe racks.
Coming along!
Jewelry rack, with rack #2 underneath it.
Two more racks of shoes makes it complete!
The vanity table was a nightmare to try and figure out. I searched and searched for tables that would fit around that floor heater, to no avail. Finally realized I had enough depth next to the shoe rack to use a desk, instead. It's worked out great. I have hair accessories in the left drawer, makeup in the right, and my extensive perfume collection and vanity mirror up top!
I added the bench next. Harvey approves. It has storage inside of it, so all of my boots are stored in there.
Then came the rug... I'm certain this is additional approval she's showing, here.
Then hung the mirror. This mirror was actually a stand-up that I converted to a wall mount, and I love how it turned out!!
Artwork was up next. I found a Canadian artist on Etsy that I fell in love with, and asked her to customize a few of her pieces for me. I'm saving those as a surprise in the video below, and will credit her at the bottom of this blog. Her artwork is exactly what floats around in my head, and what I would be sketching for myself, if my health conditions hadn't taken away my ability to do so. She's fantastically talented, and I encourage you to check out her stuff!
See that small-ish stack of purses in the first picture? It turns out to be way more that it looks like when you start color-coordinating all of them...
I built the purse shelves from some scrap lumber that my neighbor had. Cut it down (actually I didn't cut it down, but...), painted it, added brackets, and mounted on the last free space in the existing closet. The shelves need to be a little deeper, for how big a lot of my purses are (you'll see in the video), but I made it work. Lastly, I added a small laundry basket next to the sweaters, and the dressing room was complete*!
*Confession, I want to change the curtain "door", and I might add more artwork on the other side of the shoe rack, plus I need lighting - but complete for now.
So, finally... here it all is together. I've rearranged the clothes in their sections a couple times already, and probably will again. My OCD-tendencies and anxiety result in a lot of rearranging in any project I ever take on. Currently, the dresses for example, are by strapless, sleeveless, short sleeved, then long sleeved - and by color within each of those. I might change it to just color-coded, period. We'll see...
ENJOY!
As far as where everything came from - the desk was from Amazon. Chair came from Wayfair. Closet is all IKEA, other than the bench (Amazon), and the rug (Overstock). The artwork is from BrookeJadeStudio. I'll add the image here, so you can see all 4 drawings better than you see them in the video (I wanted Allie to be the feature, there).
So, the only thing left is to get at least one more bookshelf or storage cabinet for the office, so I can display the rest of my Oz stuff/spread out what's currently on the shelves, and have a place for all of my supplies, craft stuff, etc. The big projects are complete, and it's on to the next room!
I was shocked, when writing my last blog, that it had been 9 months since I'd written last. I said I was going to write the post about our wedding, next.
It has now officially (tomorrow) been one year since that blog, and not a draft has been written.
I guess life has changed a bit, huh? So, I am still going to do the wedding blog, maybe even tonight, but want to just do a general catch-up blog, first. I have a blog that I know is coming soon, but posting it without catching everyone up first would not make any sense, since none of you know what has happened in the last year, unless we're friends on social media. Brace yourselves - this is going to be a long one.
My last blog was July 2nd of last year, and I was discouraged about us finding a house. Exactly 18 days later, we did just that! When I was still in the States, and not sure when I'd be able to move up, we would talk about where we were going to live. My joke was always "well, we'll have a house on the water, for sure." Knowing that would never be the case, because the housing market up here is so expensive, that waterfront property was out of our reach. We'd been looking in an area that had big yards, because we had a precious pooch, that needed space to run. As all of my readers know, we unexpectedly lost her in 2017. But we stayed in the same area, because it was still the area we loved. On July 19, we got a text from a friend for us to take a look at a house in a different area, that we'd not had any desire to look at. His advice "I know it's not where you're looking, but trust me." We looked online, and it was a lakefront house. We called our realtor, asking her to add it to the 3 houses we had lined up for viewings the next day. When we showed up at the house, as we turned on the street, I was already saying "Ughhh... I hate how close the houses are to each other." When we parked in front of the house, and got out of the car, I instantly said "Wow... I love the outside. Look at that door! It looks like a lakehouse. You don't even notice that it's close to the neighbors."
I was in love before I knew I was in love.
As we walked through the house, more and more got better. So we came to the moment we were "dreading". Going down to the basement. Every other house we'd looked at that we'd loved the main floor(s), the basement had killed it. For those not familiar with our relationship, we met on Twitter and became friends from both being Braves fans. We both happen to be big sports memorabilia collectors, so we were in need of a big basement to display everything. We walked downstairs, and I won't say we were blown away by the basement, but we could definitely see it working for us, plus it had my much desired downstairs guest bedroom. I love a guest bedroom where your guests feel like they have their own space at the end of the day. We walked down to the lake (even though there was no need - IT'S A LAKE, I'll take it), and by the time we got back up to the house, we looked at each other, and just knew. By early afternoon, we had an offer in on the house, and by that evening it had been accepted. We were under contract for our house!!
This was it the day we saw it first.
And this is the view from our backyard.
So, our closing day wasn't until October 1st. Lots happened between then, most important: MY BIRTHDAY. I kid, my birthday used to be a big thing... but now that I live up here, the multiple friend celebrations can't happen. Our most notable thing between July and October was our visit to Newfoundland. Steve is from there, and his sister/her family live in St. John's. So we decided to go over Labor Day weekend. I am going to post some pictures, but NONE of them do the beauty of this area justice. I hope to get better with our "good" camera, and go when we can spend a good amount of time for me to capture the magnificence properly. We had SUCH a fun time with family, and I was sad to leave.
I also HAD to get screeched in while I was there. I am now an honorary Newfoundlander. I'm going to post the video of that moment first, but I HIGHLY recommend you watched them in order, because the guy that did the ceremony was BORN to do this job, and it was one of the best experiences of my life.
The moment of being declared an honorary Newfoundlander (last of the series - video 5)
Pre-show (video 1)
Cooking the Newfie steak (video 2)
Most of the ceremony, plus kissing the cod! (video 3)
The shot of screech! (video 4)
So then, October rolled around, and we moved into our new house! We have done SO much work on the house since we've moved in, and even hosted a couple of parties in November and December, even though the house wasn't anywhere near ready for company. We got the fabulous news that Steve was finally going to get his hernia surgery that he'd been waiting on for almost 2 years at the time. The week before his surgery, COVID became a thing in North America. THANKFULLY, since it was so new, it did not delay his surgery. 2-3 more weeks, and he would've been on another indefinite end list. That being said, it has been our life since then. He's thankfully back at work (but from home), but we've been mostly at home for 5 months now.
Yes, it sucks at times - my Mama & Stepdad were supposed to visit us end of May/first of June, and got cancelled - but you know what? We're healthy, and have income and a roof over our heads. I say we're good.
I am grossly behind on updating this blog, and there has been a lot to talk about, but no real time to stop and do so. There have been more immigration steps, house hunting, wedding planning, our illnesses, cat illnesses... and suddenly it's July.
So, I'll do my best to catch everyone up with where life is now, and where it's been since I last posted in November (NOVEMBER??? 9 months ago, really?!).
So, given the position I was put in with suddenly being without a job, I had no health insurance after the first week in October. As I've spoken about a little in this blog, I have several health issues - some life-threatening, and some chronic pain-related - so not having insurance just flat-out isn't an option for me. That put us in one spot: we needed to get married as soon as I moved up, so I could be put on Steve's health insurance through work/put in my PR application with immigration so I could get a health card.
We got married on December 18th (took us a month to get all of the paperwork in order), in the lobby of our apartment building by a Justice of the Peace. While she was fantastic, I'd been planning our wedding for 5+ years at this point, so the idea of giving up what I'd been working on/dreaming of for us really upset me. We decided this would just be the "official, but not official" marriage, and we'd go on with the actual wedding in the Spring, and celebrate that as our "official" marriage, and anniversary going forward. It's what would've been the wedding if I'd still had my job when I moved up, so it only made sense.
That being said, above all else, this is a shoe blog. I bought these heels 3 years ago, and literally never even opened the box they were shipped in; saving them for our wedding day. I decided to give them a trial run on the "official, but not official" day, and thank goodness I did. They're PERFECTION, but too small, and I would've been in trouble if I'd had them on for the "official" wedding. But look how pretty!!!
Review: 6" heel. Fits SMALL. I'd for sure recommend going up a size. Keep in mind, I'm used to having my toes squished, and being uncomfortable for the sake of fashion. These were unbearable, and I only wore them for about an hour, if even that.
Since December, we've been house-hunting like crazy. The market is out of control right now in Halifax. People are listing for $50,000-$80,000 above what their house is worth, and getting it. It's been incredibly discouraging, especially since we waited this long to be together, and now are still waiting to start our life here on our own. We're getting glimmers of hope here and there in the last 2 months, so I'm trying to stay positive and know our house is coming soon.
Other than that, we dealt with health issues (both us, and Gus - our sweet, 18 year old cat), and *I* dealt with wedding, Wedding, WEDDING. That'll come in another post. It was almost 6 years in the making - it's earned a solo post.
I am still holding off on a job search, in hopes that we'll find a house soon, and I can get us through the move before taking on the stress of resumes, interviews, etc. We'll see if that plan changes in the coming months, if no houses come about.
So, until next time (i.e. THE WEDDING), it's good to be back, and I'll see you all soon... I hope!
I know better than to proclaim my "health goals" out loud, because that's an instant jinx. My health goals are going to take a LOT of mental work for me to reach (3 years of in-your-face stress has broken me). The physical part is easy, once you break the mental.
That being said, as a very small step, I am going to attempt to start cooking every meal for myself again. I find it's very hard to cook for one. I've cooked for two most of my adult life (and, God-willing, that'll be true again soon). So when I have tried to cook just-for-me over the years, I end up with leftovers, that usually go bad in the fridge because I don't want the same thing again, or I forget about them.
As a result, I've resorted to a lot of simple dishes, or heat-and-eat. And, of course, eating out. I've also noticed when I DO try to cook, I feel like I have to follow a recipe a lot of times. And I have forgotten many of the things I used to cook on a regular basis. My "chef" instinct has faded tremendously. It's still there, don't get me wrong. I can still follow said recipe, but not have to break out the measuring spoons/cups for tsp, 1/2 cup, etc. (any chef worth her salt can eyeball those things). But that natural ability to see ingredients in the fridge, and put a meal together has left me for the most part.
Most of my life, I've been one of those people that knew while I may not always be happy about the weight I was at, I would never be obese, because I'd reach that "frustration level" somewhere around size 8-10-12, and hit the gym hard, to never let it progress to an uncontrollable state. And up until about 2010, that theory held true. I'd usually hit 8, get fed up, get down to a 6- and maintain that for a respectable amount of time.
Something changed after that. I've spoken about my anxiety before, and I don't want to use it as a cop-out for laziness, because there has been a lot of that, but I think it has been the driving force. From 2012, forward, I have gone through a divorce (essentially, though not a legal marriage), moving, beginning the immigration process, my father's death, my step-grandmother's death, my cat's death, changing paths on the immigration process and starting anew, a couple of friends' deaths, family moving in with me, adopting a new cat, my step-grandfather's death, family moving out, and my paternal grandmother's death. Some of which was traumatizing, some just life-changing, but all at least came with a bit of warning/preparation time. Then we capped it off with losing my sweet puppy (of almost-11 years) VERY unexpectedly. Which I still can't fully process. It's like I haven't really had time to "settle" my anxiety in 6 years before the next thing happens. And my health has suffered.
So tonight, I am taking a VERY small step toward the old me, and cooked an improvised/healthy dish. Baked shrimp egg rolls. Nothing but olive oil, shrimp, garlic, spinach, broccoli slaw, and lite soy sauce. Didn't even use the egg for the sealing/basting. So, maybe it's just a roll.
