And then I started to shriek like a little girl, because I literally couldn’t contain my excitement for my hedgehog meeting.

He was delightful! He was literally quite prickly at first, but his owners had spent a lot of time socializing him and when he got used to the new person smell he was very curious and cuddly. He was surprisingly quick on the ground and  was very adamant about not having his things taken away from him- and when he was upset he curled up tightly and huffed!

It was all far too cute for me to handle.

So he may be a little moody, but it’s pretty much decided that we’re running away together. Have you seen his button nose? How could I resist!

Kitchen gardens hold a special place in my heart. I love how old fashioned and relentlessly practical they are, and growing up my Baba’s garden was one of my favourite places. I loved pulling out peas and carrots for snacks, and when I was really small I would hide under her huge rhubarb plant with her tabby cat Chuckers, and pretend that I was Alice in Wonderland and that Chuck was my tiger guard.

Last year I was over zealous with my planing and my first attempt garden got huge so quickly that I stopped taking pictures of it in favour of trying to beat it back as fast as was humanly possible. This year I was careful not to over plant, and I’m hoping that I can enjoy it at more of a leisurely pace…

How about a tour? :)

I have five raspberry bushes that are starting to give a little fruit, lettuce, basil with leaves the size of my hand, all kinds of different hot peppers, pickling cucumbers, four different kinds of tomatoes, beans and even leeks!

I’m definitely just making up my gardening skills as I go along, but so far my plants are getting super sized really quickly. And while I don’t have a tiger guard in my grown up garden, peeking into the backyard to see everything grow and waiting the right time to dive in is a pretty close second.

And until my garden is ready to give me more food than I can eat? I have two words: farmers market!

We started thinking things like:

Who can live in this little house!? It’s smaller than our last apartment.

And it was decided. We would move. We felt very decisive and adult.

And then Mister asked one little question:

But Kyla, wouldn’t you like to start a business? It’s all you talk about. You could start selling on etsy again, you could keep putting time into your blog, you could start doing design work…. if we move that would be really hard. Why don’t we give you a chance to do what you’re in love with?

That kid is just full of good ideas & this summer will bring many good things, including not moving even a little bit and the launch of a new little business in these parts.

I think a pre-emptive: WOO HOO! is in order.

At the start of the holidays Mister and I said to each other “If there’s one thing we do it’ll be get our spaces sorted!”. We’re lucky enough to have a couple of “private” spaces in our little house- I have a functional (but not pretty) craft room, and Mister has the (very unfinished) basement. Of course that sentiment eventually devolved to “If there’s one thing we do, it’ll be eating expensive cheese!” before bottoming out around “If there’s one thing we do, it’ll be staying inside at all costs!” territory. I mean really, if the holidays aren’t for expensive cheese and bumming around, I’m not sure what they’re for.

We were going to make cheap fabric wall panels for my craft room first. We made sure the car still started (again with the cold, I know) and then hit the roads. Because…

I was so happy with the results that I pretty much curled up in my day bed and drifted off to sleep.

Which was around the time that I heard snarling, yelping, and screaming from downstairs. I ran down the stairs, screaming for Mister, only to find him in the middle of a full fledged dog fight. Mister had kicked Mal off of Ash and as he picked Ash up, Mal had grabbed Ash’s leg and was hanging from him. We separated them, got them caged off into their own areas and inspected the damage.

As suspected, Mal had started it and Ash had been gouged. Under his eye there was a big gash, and his paw where his idiot brother had been hanging from him he was sore but not cut. I tried not to freak the poor puppy out, grabbed the phone and called the vet.

And all I could think was “we were asking for this”. Lately it’s been cold. Cold that they can’t walk for long in, even with puppy boots and jackets. When it gets this cold, we just can’t give them the exercise they need and being a high energy breed, they get pent up and flip out. And we haven’t wanted to make the financial investment of buying a treadmill because we’re only a one and a half income house while I’m in school. But with Ash wounded, Mister and I exchanged knowing, guilty, aren’t-you-glad-they’re-not-children looks. We thought about the vet bills and all he said was “I’m going to Sears.”

Two hours later I was almost crushed to death trying to get a treadmill out of the back of our car. And then there was the hilarious “Who goes down the granny killers (basement stairs) backwards while trying to not be steamrolled by something that weighs as much as a clydesdale” game that we followed it up with.

I still can’t feel my arms.

I’m just saying.

Okay pictures!

I’ve long held the belief that only yuppies own treadmills but I’m enough of an animal person and Cesar Millan devotee to be sure that tired puppies are relaxed puppies, and relaxed puppies don’t fight. This is an “ounce of prevention” situation. And besides, I could get buff in the mean time!

It could happen!

Thankfully Ash is on the mend, the puppies are reconciled, and we’re a little breathless but are glad to have made some room in our budget to account for random purchases here and there. While the end to the holidays was more stressful than I hoped it would be, I guess there’s no reason I can’t take a little piece of my holiday wisdom forward and that eat expensive cheese whenever I want, right?

I mean I’m not vegan yet.

I’ve been telling myself that we can’t get into the holidays yet. We can’t celebrate anything! I’m going away this week, so we’ll celebrate when I’m home.

Sometimes I just have no idea what I’m talking about.

Late Friday night, fuelled by powdery community hockey rink grade hot chocolate (one of my favourite treats) I decided enough was enough. I was kicking off Christmas. We hopped in the car, hands numb and breath hanging in the air, and slipped over icy streets to the nearest shopping district. We went to the LC to gather up wine from France and South Africa, and seasonal beer that tastes like Cinnamon and Christmas. We scoured the fake tress until we found a skinny little waif of a seven footer that was beautiful and pre-lit. It graciously allowed us to skip the near-marital experience of trying to get a real tree into its stand in favour of plumping up the new tree’s wire branches.

I’m not really sure how many time I referred to myself as our “Tree Fluffer” but each time it was funnier than the last, I promise you.

Sometimes waiting for the perfect time to celebrate gets in the way of the joy. As an incessant planner I always want to know what’s next, what will be happening when, and if there’s anyone around who will humour me enough to synchronize watches with me. But sometimes the best thing for my heart is a late night mission to the liquor store, some cheap hot chocolate, puppies scrambling underfoot, and a wire ode to a real tree to have start the season right.

And, as in all things, seasonal micro brews really help.

To say that Mister’s is a sports family would be an understatement, so when we were offered a buy in on season tickets to the Vikings it was a no brainer. Minneapolis is one of my favourite cities and we would have definite, multiple reasons to go this year! Perfect. Only somehow our normal lives, the honeymoon, the road trips, and family get togethers piled on top of each other until it seemed like every other weekend I have found myself (pretend we’re from the 1920’s just for a moment) abroad, or at least very otherwise engaged.

Fact #1:
You would be amazed how repeated 16 hour excursions in the car can dampen the fun of any city, no matter how awesome.

Fact #2:
You might be surprised that while eating Combo’s for breakfast (they’re pretzel bites that are infused with petrified cheese product) might be an exotic & Americana kinda way to start your day once a year, it really does get gross after that one time.

Fact #3:
You might not have considered that while you are very keen for everyone else to take care of your Terrible Black Dogs (aka The Brother’s Grimm) while you’re away, not many people will match your level of enthusiasm.

So while it’s been fun, it’s been draining. And add being back in school & going on your honeymoon to the mix and you really have a strategy for partial systems failure. Notably immune & communications systems. But when the time came this weekend, I got in the car secure in the knowledge that there were amazing deals at Archivers and secretly hoping might be our last trip down this year.

I did really well! I bought Christmas presents, travelled with his family the whole time, and even survived being without my data plan in the US. And then late Sunday night, pinned down under the huge sky somewhere between Fargo and the Canadian border, I regret to inform you that I snapped. Mister’s Dad mentioned going down again in two weeks and I thought I was going to implode on the spot. Because there is no. friggen. way. I’m getting in a car for more than 30 mins for a very long time.

It’s been a wonderful summer & fall with lots of adventures, but I’m finished. I am tired of wanting to be at home, of camping out in hotel rooms & cabins, and of having a fridge full of condiments but no food. I’m tired of crashing early & forgetting to meal plan, and eating french fries and greasy veggie burgers because that’s the only thing on anyone’s menu for vegetarians. I’m finished with cramped legs, itemizing when we left the country, how much we spent, and if we did or did not receive any presents. I’m even tired of paying cash for items and not claiming them when I go through customs, and there is nothing like that for fun.

So in lieu of my repeatedly making decisions that keep taking me towards stress instead of calm, this is a general notice to the universe:

I am commencing nesting for the winter and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me!!!

Seriously, try me.

Mark my words, I’ll shiv you with a wreath.

{image: Inoka}

There is a battle that takes place in our house every year, where lines are drawn and sides are taken. Come mid-October, Mister and I already sizing each other up. Finally one day he makes the announcement, “I’m going to the basement!”

And so begins the seasonal decorating.

Growing up, my family wasn’t big into the holidays. Christmas was the big dinner for us, and aside from that we never really had much in the way of traditions. But with Mister’s family, there are little rituals everywhere and the changing of the seasons is marked constantly. There’s the change from baseball to football to hockey. There’s summer decorations, fall decorations, fall/thanksgiving, fall/halloween, fall/US Thanksgiving, and Christmas- just from September to December! His mom’s house is a tightly run ship where the chance to throw a little party or make things just a little more special is an opportunity to be jumped at.

When we started dating it was like accidentally side stepping into a universe where TV mom’s were real, and where I had been elected Chief Anthropologist. And the decorating thing? Turns out it doesn’t skip a generation.

To date, Mister’s biggest decorating soft spots are as follows:

1. Elaborate Halloween front yard graveyards
2. Christmas mini-villages, the miniature ones you can get at craft stores

So far the negotiations have allowed that we have some indoor halloween decorations, and whatever Mister wants to do outside is fine with me so long as sound effects are kept to a minimum (I don’t want to anger the crazy neighbours- see incident #1 & #2 for new readers) and that it’s not all rigged up before the week of Halloween. I have to admit that his self control has been impressive, especially since we’re only on our 2nd year out of apartments & he used to build theatre sets.

While I might not be ready to welcome a miniature Christmas village into my home yet (ever? So waspy. Really.) at the same time I’m starting to see the value in starting our own traditions. If we don’t start them now, when will we? After four years of living together we still don’t really have any proper ones, so this year I’m officially kicking some off:

• Girls Pumpkin Carving Party – I love carving pumpkins! Last year I made Princess Peach & Bowser & the year before I made a jolly roger, snow white & an orc. Every year my girls tend to end up at my house, so I’m making it a tradition. This year I even pre-gutted the pumpkins found Halloween sippy cups for our wine. Because we’re classy.
• Abstaining from Pumpkin Spice anything – I always get excited for the seasonal lattes at Starbucks and then the minute that I see that pumpkin spice makes my soy latte orange, I remember I like Gingerbread, not pumpkin. It’s always so disappointing.
• Sloppy Joes for dinner – We almost never make sloppy joes, but on Halloween it always seems to come up. So a sloppy joe/tofu sloppy joe feast it is!
• Toasted Pumpkin Seeds - I’m a salt-o-holic, and the next week of pumpkin seeds is going to be delicious. Four pumpkins worth of seeds! Life is good.

The autumn wreath on our door is definitely a slippery slope- or at least a sign of things to come for our front yard. But maybe starting small with wreaths, graveyards in our front yard, and sloppy joes, is the way big traditions start. Maybe 10 years from now, we’ll still be carving pumpkins the week of Halloween, with our significant others & little ones. Maybe we’ll all move back to town, and knit ourselves into our own little extended family.

You never know what can happen when you plant a seed. Even when, or maybe especially when, that seed is a sippy cup full of wine.

]]> http://www.kylaroma.com/2009/10/the-slippery-slope/feed/ 45 http://www.kylaroma.com/2009/08/makeover/ http://www.kylaroma.com/2009/08/makeover/#comments Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:30:18 +0000 Kyla Roma http://www.kylaroma.com/?p=1396 I spent most of last week covered in paint, with drop cloths and drill bits at my feet. I would sip coffee with Mister in the morning, and as soon as he left  I would get down to business. Here is what I was working with:

(usually we have all the doors on…)

Let’s Review:

• Huge 1940’s built in cabinets.
• Tiny “galley” style space with lots of storage but that looks… really cramped.
• Basic, ugly, melamine bottom cabinets that do not match the top cabinets what so ever.
• White 1980’s organizational panels on the backsplash that are being underused because you can buy no accessories for them.
• Bee stencils. Fucking everywhere. Driving me crazy, all the time.

What I did:

• Painted the walls & built ins.
• Painted the backsplash & backs of the cabinets in a high contrast colour.
• Replaced all hardware on all cabinets.
• Installed chalkboard (used chalkboard paint to turn it from green to black)
• Wallpapered over bottom cabinets.
• Pulled out old organizational system, repaired & painted backsplash.
• Installed hanging pot rack from ceiling.

What we got…

I’m in love with it! I love the blue (the backs of all the cabinets are painted out blue too), the fresh paint on the cabinets makes them look new again, and the hanging rack for the pots & pans means that cooking is so much more fun! The wallpaper wasn’t as difficult as I thought it would be (pattern repeats are tricky-ish though) but I would definitely do it again. The biggest moment of sheer terror hiccup was finding out there was another ceiling above ours that was preventing the anchors for opening when we were trying to hang the pot rack. Luckily with some violent smashing about, they finally worked.

And the chalkboard? Makes meal planning actually a lot of fun, so we’re sticking to it much closer than before. Go buy a chalkboard for your kitchen. It’s endlessly charming.

All in all, the makeover was under $200 and took about 4 days of work with drying time for paint and a short attention span.

What do you think, sirs?

When we moved into our first house last year there were a number of things that became immediately clear. Mostly that it really was 100 years old, and in some places you could tell. Some of those 100 year old home things are beautiful- our huge front window is original to the house and, being poured by hand, has a beautiful warbley look to it so that everything on the front street seems slightly less real than everything inside the house.  In other places, those well worn looks aren’t so appealing, like how no one has re-finished the hardwood floors since the 1940’s. Which I think is a project for next year.

Mostly our little house is incredibly sweet, but there are those things that start to nag at you after some time and for me the kitchen and mudroom downgrade our house from shabby chic to shabby. And being that I’m now home all day, being unemployed, walking the dogs, and making lunch dates with anyone who is within a 100 km radius of me (I MISS HUMANS!!) this week I decided I needed a project, and damnit, I was going to make over our kitchen by Saturday, and the mud room would be re-done the following week.

And yes, I have examined the possibility that this could be kinda the same as when I decided to wash and iron all of Misters shirts in 12 hours while drinking wine and watching The Virgin Suicides, thank you for bringing that up. But something about this project just feels a lot less desperate- don’t you agree? Of course you do!

Late last night, most of the work was finally finished. The huge 1940’s built in cupboards were painted, new hardware was secured, the back splash was a beautiful robin’s egg blue (and the backs of all the cupboards were too!). I had spend the morning twittering nervously about how I was going to wallpaper my (cheap, ugly, bargain bin) lower cabinets and after wrestling with irregular cabinet measurements, pattern repeats, and my better judgment for most of the morning and afternoon I had successfully wallpapered for the first time.

AND IT WORKED!

Mister got home from work, and I ushered him into the kitchen shrieking, “Don’t look!! Don’t look! Okay!! Now look!” which was followed by the requisite ooh’s and ah’s. And guys, he really liked it. And I love it. And I was really proud that we’re making the house a little more perfect for us.

As the night rolled in, the heat from the day broke into a rolling thunderstorm. I ran downstairs in my vintage slip nightie, threw on my leather jacket and came out onto the porch. Mister was already there, taking it in. I sat on our front steps, put my feet out into the rain, and as the sheet lightening lit up the sky I could see the paint on my hands and legs from the day of work.

“One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three…” Mister counted, before thunder boomed through the air.

“Mister?”

“What’s up Ky?”

“You know what? This painting, sitting on our porch while there’s a storm- this… just all of it? This is why I wanted a house.”

For the first time in a long time, I slept all the way through the night.

{image: Delikatissen}

First of all, there’s the physical work we did last summer. We re-painted the house, pulled hedges out from everywhere we could find them, replaced the doors and windows, and re-did the back yard. I showed it to you in the winter, but would you like to see the difference a year makes?

We doubled the thing and took down the tin shanty! If you could look straight down you would also see the rest of my garden and our little well worn, much loved deck. After three and a half years of living in second story apartments with no access to the outdoors, the novelty of being able to WALK OUTSIDE WHEN I LIKE IT is never lost on me.

The house its self is tiny, just 850 sq. ft. and only has one “true” bedroom – but it fits us perfectly. Mister and I have decided we can stay here until we have babies who are in kindergarten or so which means we’ll be here for a very long time (we’re not starting a family for a good many years yet). I have my own craft room with bookcases of scrapbooking paper, drawing pencils, camera equiptment and a little day bed. We have an office, a claw foot tub, hardwood floors, a nice little set of “granny killers” (our steep stairs, as my mom has dubbed them) and huge south facing windows that are perfect for gazing into while drinking espresso. I can walk or bike to anything I need, and we’re 5 mins. from the best patios in town.

This house is the tenth “home” I’ve lived in my little life, and the feeling of relief I get from knowing we can just stay here takes my breath away. I finally feel like I’m really home. It’s turning 100 years old (!!) this summer, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s the perfect little shabby chic place for us to stay.

Happy 100th birthday, Little House!

What makes you feel at home?