a peek inside the fishbowl

If you live in Ottawa you know it’s been a pretty long and hot summer. To that effect, I’ve been dutifully filling up our two bird baths with fresh water. I also added something new to the mix. Well, new-ish. I had this on the go last summer and thought I’d revisit the idea for […]

Our espresso machine was given to us as a gift from my inlaws and for many years, it was truly the gift that kept on giving. Sadly, it was beginning to show its age and was dying a slow death. It was time for a replacement unit so we started to research a new one. […]

This is the timeline of our family couch history, in a nutshell: 1995 or ’96: Mark’s Swedish “park bench style” bachelor couch was traded in for one we bought together at The Bay. April 2005: our family won a huge contest hosted by the Ottawa Citizen. The prize: a complete overhaul of our living room. Our couch was taken away, reshaped […]

It happened this weekend, and I am very sore today.   Over the years we’ve developed a system. It’s basically this: rake leaves onto huge tarp, drag tarp to giant leaf compost, dump leaves, repeat 100x. Thankfully it goes quicker now that the girls are older, but I still wish an elf with a giant […]

Suffice it to say, I am overwhelmed by the state of our back yard at the moment. It’s a beautiful mess back there. I was secretly hoping that the recent windy weather would blow the leaves to Timbuktu, but half of them haven’t all fallen off the trees yet. The other half just piled up in the least convenient […]