After the storm

I'm posting this very late but I've got a photographic backlog building up so here you go.

The day after my last post we went out looking at the remains of the ice.  It really is quite fascinating when you've never seen it before.  It looks man made where it's fallen off the trees, Tom said it looked like someone emptied a giant cooler.

And on the pine trees it was really cool.

If you look closely you can see all the striations where the needles were, it's like an ice fossil.

To finish off, here is Rose managing to look like some adorable, model child which she is certainly not.

And look what promise of spring was hiding underneath all the ice.

Good Techno Jeudi

Today I had an eye glass catastrophe.

They are totally mendable but not without my glasses.  Mmm, could be a slight problem.

So here is techno boy in his natural habitat.  At least he's sitting up straight this week.

And now onto some weather.  We had an ice storm last night.  I've never really seen one before so when the pavements had melted enough to walk on safely we went for a saunter round the neighbourhood for a look-see.  

There wasn't a lot of damage but a few branches had come down here and there.

The way that everything was shrink wrapped in ice was really neat.

I took a ton of photos but the light wasn't great and they really didn't give the right impression of how magical it looked.  I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been thinking it looked magical if our power had been out but we were lucky.

Button tufting and a mask

I went out on my own last Saturday.  Now you might think that this is such an unusual occurrence that I would be doing something terribly exciting, but you might not be right.  I went on an upholstery course to learn button tufting.  Here is my resulting sample.

I'm pretty pleased with how it came out but have no idea what to do with it.  I might try to attach legs and use it as a foot stool.

This next bit is a public announcement of sorts as I've not got around to telling anyone yet but Jacob, Rose and I are going to England for a couple of weeks in April.  Today I made Rose a mask to help her sleep during the overnight flight.

What a bundle of contradictions she is, she's currently listening to Iron Maiden in the bath.

Techno Jeudi

A note on the bean bag.  It has been pointed out by my dearly beloved that it looks like an expensive pet bed.  I'm not happy, mainly because now he's said it I realize he's absolutely right, but given that Rose is the only person who sits on it it's probably fairly apt.

So here's TJ.

Yesterday we went to see The Princess Bride at the cinema, my treat not the kids.  It was showing at the bargain price of $3 a ticket at 10am which was a bit weird but it was well worth it.

Today we waited in for a man to come and mouse proof the house.  It turns out he can't come until Monday but it gave us chance to play an epic game of Ludo.

Can you guess who's winning?

March Break 1

Three days into March break and we've not done much that warrants photos yet.  I'm blaming it on the miserable weather and everyone being a bit out of sync because of the time change.

On Monday we had a bunch of boring jobs to do and lunch out as bribery.

Yesterday we went to see Zootopia at the flicks. On the way out Rose announced that now she knows what she wants to be when she grows up.  A vision of a tiny but scary police officer in 'respect my autoritah' Cartman aviators flashed briefly through my mind but it turns out she meant she wants to be a bunny.  It's probably for the best.

Today Rose came to my Pilates class (Jacob declined) but I didn't join in her cheerleading and I made a new beanbag cover to replace the denim with embroidered animals in the family room.  Jacob chose the fabric and Rose is modelling it.  For about 3 seconds I considered setting up some sort of fancy, rustic pastiche to show it off like a proper blogger but I'm afraid I couldn't be bothered so you just get it in situ complete with clashing child in odd socks.

New Siding

Last week we had our siding replaced, having someone climbing the walls of the house all week disturbed my equilibrium and as a result no blogging got done.  So here is a before and after of the house...

Wow, it's like a really difficult spot the difference isn't it.  You wouldn't believe how long it took to choose exactly the same colour!

To be fair, what you can't see on these pics is that there are no longer any woodpecker holes and that all the boards which had cracked and fallen off over the winter have been tidied and covered up.

I've been watching quite a bit of Grand Designs recently and a lot of people back in the UK are cladding their homes with untreated larch and claiming that it will last forever with protection from its own natural resins bla bla.  Well Kevin Mccloud, I give them 39 years before its all falling apart and full of small creatures, there's a bit of doom and gloom for you.

Techno Jeudi

Here we are, all back to normal after 2 weeks of not-techno Jeudi.  Enough said.

This week has been one of those weeks where I've been busy all the time (apart from the 3 hours a day spent on Pinterest) but haven't much to show for it.  The only exciting development in our lives is the beginning of our siding work.  Here is the scaffold and the first few panels of the new vinyl covering.

You can't really see the colour round the corner there but I can tell you that from the road it closely resembles a very large slab of dairy milk.  I'm not sure if this is a good thing.