Wordless Wednesday - All You Need is Cheese

Vacation property a la Kate Winslet-style

First, I'm looking for a cottage rental on Manitoulin Island. Anyone know someone?

Some might not even know where that is. This should help.



That's the 31st largest island in Canada, according to Wikipedia. Largest in the great lakes with a booming population of 12,600. Actually far bigger than I expected. But I digress. If you know someone who has a brother / sister / stepdaughter / uncle with a cottage, let me know!

It was while searching for a cottage that my mind starting wandering toward 'house swap' websites. After quickly realizing no remote, island cottage was going to be found, I couldn't help but see what else was out there. Naturally, I went right to England to see if all the homes looks like Kate's quaint little, country cottage in "The Holiday", and I did come across this gem!

Photo: HomeExchange.com

What about this super cute place on the Avon River?

Photo: HomeExchange.com

BF and I have been talking about taking a trip, so I was starting to contemplate the house swap concept, when one glaring item came to mind. Could I get a swap with my house? It's cute, but what do I have to offer? 

• Near wine country (by Canadian standards)
• Big semi-private backyard, deck and hammock (soon)
• Good neighborhood

That was all I could come up with. Who wants to vacation on a busy street in the 'burbs afterall? It's not even quiet.

It would never hurt to post though, right? It would also be a good motivator - get my house up to 'swappable' standards. Then, I realized BF's place would be even better- in the country, backing onto a woodlot and large river, overlooking rolling fields. All that's missing is a deck and a couple of big, comfy chairs. This might be even better motivation to get his house in 'swappable' condition! 

I may be dreaming, but what a great way to vacation, don't you know? Has anyone done a house swap or know someone who has? Any recommendations or insight?

Bad Blogger Girl

One month + 2 days.

Question: The length of time between my last 2 posts. 

It certainly didn't take long to come up short on my goal of posting 2-3 times per week. I missed the bloggy world, unfortunately, I'm a full-time working girl and only a part-time blogger. Not only has life taken over lately, but there has also been very little of interest to post about in the past few weeks. I've commented to bf multiple times about getting the craft room done, but truth be told, unless I were to work on it during the wee hours of the morning, it is going to be yet another month before it's complete. I did sand some drywall last night.

Funny enough, after I started writing this, I cruised my blogroll and came across Amanda's post from last week, Rut. Check out the comments... We could start a support group for bloggers sitting on the sidelines these days! The farmer in me thinks it's the weather. It has been a long winter afterall.

I don't usually post comments I make elsewhere, but this time they sum up what I have left to say.

 Savvy Homegirl Says:

Wow, I was going to say I’m ‘totally with you’, then I saw all these comments. Perhaps, it’s the time of year? We’re all blogged out, needing a break?

I have to agree with Babs too though. Quality over quantity. We can’t all be Young House Love, completely dedicated to home projects and blogging. I have a full-time job that pays me for being at work, traveling, putting in copious hours of overtime (well, maybe they don’t pay for that, but still). When I hit a rut, I find when I do pull back out and start writing again, I have some (hopefully) worthwhile and interesting posts.

Hopefully you agree on the last point!

Never Too Soon For Spring Cleaning!

The time change has brought with it more energy than I imagined. Or maybe it's the unseasonably warm weather? Either way, I tackled the most massive spring cleaning job I've ever tonight. I wish I'd taken pictures.

Our Girl Guide group meets at a hall downtown, and over the past few months our 'supplies' have reproduced grown from a cabinet-full to multiple cupboards, boxes, bins and plastic bags overflowing across our storage room. Now that the former Guider's basement has been unloaded into our storage room, we were finally fed up with the mess and decided it was time to do something about it.

It wasn't quite this bad, but every week when we walked into the room, we felt like it might as well have been.

Photo: Ed's Project Bike Blog

It was more like this:

Photo: X-tropia

Our storage room would be Blue Raddish Girl's dream. Oodles of boxes of wooden craft cutouts, pipe cleaners, silk flowers, ribbon, lace, beads, Popsicle sticks (4 boxes to be exact) boxes and bags of felt, foam and 3 bins of crayons. It looked like White Rose had dropped by with a truckload when they were going out of business. In fact, we are fairly certain something like that went down.

We tried to document as much as we could. Our goal is to not buy another craft supply for our unit. We should be okay. Yep, that's FIMO at the bottom. That clay you cooked in the oven to make beads! Do you know what else we found? Gimp. Apparently, it's not called that anymore though. Too politically incorrect. Sheesh!

Pipecleaners - red, neutrals, sparkly, 

Fake flowers - pink, white

Wooden craft pieces, clothespins (dollpins)

Corks

Popsickle sticks - large, coloured and small

Tin lids

Barettes, porcelin faces

Beads

Pom poms

Sequins

Googly eyes

Film canisters

Easter egg dying kit

Balloons

Photo matting frames

Doilies

Ribbon

Foam letters, confetti

Scrap paper, construction paper

Clothespins

Stickers

Plasticine

Silk flowers 

Paper bags - brown, white with handles

Red twisted paper

Cotton batting

Plastic Bottles (Bracelets)

Pringles containers

Walnut shells

Straw hats and lace

Felt

Foam, felt, paper

Seam binding

Yarn 

Drinking straws

Cotton balls

Trillium SWAP kits

Be Prepared Kit

6 SWAPs - don’t know what they are

Parafin wax - 1 box

Crayons - 3 tubs

Coffee filters

FIMO

We actually didn't throw out as much as we expected, but we still left with 2 bags of garbage, 1 recycling bin of cans and bottles, a couple boxes of paper and cardboard and a few boxes still to sort. It took 4 hours, but now we have a cupboard of craft supplies, labelled and accessible to our girls. We have hula hoops and balls where they can reach them (rather than buried under a mountain of boxes that was certainly a liability) and a cupboard of "Guider Only" material. Oh, and we can also see the floor again!

Perhaps, I'll take an 'after' shot next week to brag a little...