Bathroom Renovation

I love to read other blogs about home renovations, and our house has had many. We purchased our house a little over a year ago, and are slowly completing all sorts of projects. Today, I thought I would lead you on the adventure of our bathroom renovation. Let's say this was the easiest renovation in the house for me, mostly because my parents came and did the entire thing while we were in Nova Scotia last summer. It was definitely the best thing to come home to.
I've heard that bathrooms and kitchens are what sells a house. Now obviously this was not the case in our purchase, price sold the house, the rest we could work with.

Here's our before bathroom from the previous owners:

The counters were ugly.
The storage room was horrible.
The tiles made me cringe.
And the peel and stick floor was hideous. Although that cute little girl there does enhance the picture quite a bit.

After having owned three of their own homes and helping my brother and sister both do renovations in their respective homes, my parents are definitely getting the hang of everything relating to renovations. This was their third complete bathroom re-haul. I gave direction as to the type of fixtures I wanted to see, but otherwise left everything up to them, knowing full well that my mom was there to reel my dad in when he was picking tile, etc.

I must say, the end product is more than I ever could have imagined. They tiled the entire shower, the floor, gave decorative touches to the tile. New vanity, new toilet, new space saver, new fan, new EVERYTHING.

It's not a huge bathroom by any means, but it has so much more room to store everything and works great for our family. A close up of all the tile work.
I can't thank my parents enough for this renovation because I didn't have to deal with ANYTHING. It was great!

Speaking of Nova Scotia....

The kids had so much fun spending time with their family members out there!

A huge benefit to being on mat leave meant that we could just pick up and make the huge drive across three provinces to spend two weeks with family. Unfortunately, we did have to attend the funeral of R's grandmother, but with 13 children, 32 grandchildren, and 33 great-grandchildren, I would say she led one heck of a life.

You can definitely say this is a beautiful park, right on the ocean. Minus the fact that it is FREEZING COLD. Hmmm...winds blowing across water, good place for a park. NOT.
Big N LOVED the duck pond.
Not too shabby of a view either....

But, after a diet consisting of pizza and donairs for a week and the entire family sleeping in one bed, it's nice to be home and back into the routine we call life.

Easter!

Since we were in Nova Scotia the two weeks leading up to Easter, we didn't get a whole lot of activities done, but we were still able to have some fun. We painted eggs one day.


We cut and paste a basket and then coloured eggs to put in the basket another day.

We made rabbits to hang out with the basket on a third day.

All in all, the kids had a great Easter, and got spoiled rotten as per usual.

Monster Puppets

I was walking through the grocery store the other day, ALONE. It's surprising how much fun grocery shopping is when you don't have two kids in two. But, that's besides the point. I saw a package of brown paper bags. Since, I'm turning so crafty, I thought I could definitely find some ways to use paper bags, so I spent the $2, and bought the bags.

The first of our paper bag crafts was N Monster. A few cuts, a little pasting later and we had a great finished product that Big N used to torment her brother with for a good half hour. Sorry Little N, some day you'll be big and will be able to get her back.

I must say Big N's skills are dramatically improving. She did all the gluing herself in this project, I had to rearrange a little bit, but she did a GREAT job at putting the glue on the bag.

Missing in Action

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. We unexpectedly made a trip to the east coast to attend a family funeral. We packed up the kids in 1.5 hours and drove for the next day and a half to make it to Cape Breton. We had a great time (despite the circumstances) and the kids enjoyed being able to spend some quality time with the family. I will be back in the next couple of days to update the blog. Until then, be happy you don't have the same amount of chores I have ahead of me (although we only left two avocado to mold on the counter, that was a successful packing mission!)

Rainy Days

After spending a week being able to go outside and enjoy the park, the backyard and all the things that remind you of spring, we're back to snow and rain and days inside. The first day knocked the wind out of me. Big N, Little N and I were all super bored of each other, to which Granny can attest, not many times does she get numerous calls in one day. But, we thought of an activity. We built a fort.

This was the first fort that Big N can actually remember building, and she was not a fan of the building process. She was VERY upset when she wasn't allowed to try to climb on top of the fort.We ended up spending the majority of the day in the tent. It started with a tea party morning, and some book reading. After nap time we brought in the computer and watched a movie with a popcorn snack. All in all, we did what we could with the rainy day blues.

Now, bring on SPRING!!!