why we love rain/windstorms, a roaring party and reminiscing and planning!

kids - THIS is why we love rain and windstorms in the winter:

TA-DA! the snow is all gone today!

yesterday when we still had snow on the ground, we chose to have a party day and a party day we had! we partied because we didn't go out on new year's eve and we partied because jambaloney hit a HUGE milestone in his work on his contract! in addition, we knew that we were getting a severe rain/wind storm at midnight last night until about noon today - so thinking that we might be out of power today, we decided to party in case that happened. and a party day was had!

party day started in the hottub of course!

no proper party day could happen without eggs benedict and cauliflower for breakfast!



we played cards after the hottub, went for a walk around our beautiful yard, sat together chatting about jam's contract work, chatting about our plans for this year's garden...and just chatting. we did that for a few hours with many walks and hottub dips in between. party animals we are.

but then it was time to bust out the SERIOUS party day moves!

we peeled some pomegranates - woohoo!

we had a crudites plate for lunch...sorry no pic. then more walks, hot tub dips and chats.

supper was steak fajitas with homemade salsa and grilled peppers and onions in the fajitas. and hot sauce for jambaloney. and some pickled beets, kimchi and pomegranate seeds. yummeh!

by this time it was early evening so we busted out the BIG party day guns - we coloured together in our colouring books!

  

jam did the fish, i worked on the grapes. HEY - don't laugh. we love colouring together and these colouring books are for adults. jambaloney got more done than me because i had to stop and feed cats. and these are colouring books FOR ADULTS. don't believe me? have a look:

apparently colouring as an adult helps keep your mind lively, it is very relaxing once you get into the groove as everything in your head goes away...all you think about is what your next colour pencil will be.

again, as we were partying hard for the whole day - of course the next thing to do was to sit side by side and start sorting out our puzzle pieces together on a package of bankers boxes. another great thing to keep your mind sharp!

by then it was proper nighttime  - let's say about 8pm. it was time for the hottub. it was a cloudy night so we turned on the lights in the hottub. then we went crazy and turned on the jets too! we KNOW how to party!



sitting in the hottub - we made plans for this upcoming year and plans for next year. we are trying to save money to add an addition to the front of our tiny kitchen. it will be our sunroom and we'll be able to use it as a reading room, proper sunroom to overwinter plants and grow some more exotic plants like lemon/lime trees. but the best thing about adding an addition will mean that we will be able to re-do our crappy little kitchen. all of this takes time, first to save for and then to actually build but we can do it.

in talking about all of that, we reminisced about our beautiful, beautiful, beautiful home that we left back in ottawa.

here is walking into the kitchen at our old house. the kitchen wrapped around to where you see the closet.

notice all of the drawers and bottom cupboards. here is walking around to where the fridge is.

and this is all the way around the middle island.

custom-designed bird's eye maple floor-to-ceiling cupboards.

around the back of the island looking at the sink.

kids - we left that huuuuuuuge kitchen and moved into this:

yep - that's the whole kitchen and it has been a challenge! for the first year that we bought our crappy little cottage but still lived in ottawa, our friends b&j did alot of work for us. b painted the cabinets in the kitchen and the whole house.

we eventually replaced the bottom cabinets and painted the kitchen white to make it look bigger. it looks nice but it's still as small. and notice the barbie fridge and stove. the barbie fridge is almost 5ft tall.

now scroll back up and look at my old kitchen - sooooo much room in that kitchen! so yes - it has been a challenge coming to this tiny kitchen but we high-fived ourselves in the hottub for having the gumption to do it for the last 5 years! then we got out of the hottub and did a raindance in the snow for our friend Dani in south africa.

the sunroom addition will allow us to have more kitchen and more kitchen is what we need! but we also miss having a sunroom. we loved our sunroom at our old house in the city and spent so much time in there! here is a pic of a bit of the sunroom from the outside of it.

here is a pic looking into the sunroom.

here is our little bamboo table that currently lives on our porch. the chairs tuck into the table and is great for small spaces.

and here is where we spent thousands of hours talking about our future, making all of our plans, figuring out how we really wanted to live our lives, decided to buy this crappy little cottage and move to it. it's also where we read many gardening and homesteading books and had many, many naps together on.

we loved that sunroom and can't wait to build one similar to it. we don't have a lot of space in this house for plants and we love plants! we'll be able to have a room to dream in surrounded by plants, looking out at nature in all of it's glory and figuring out our future plans. we'll have enough saved for this addition in spring of 2017 - woohoo! we have friends who can come and have a look and tell us the in's and out's of how to build it, we have our friend j and p, both of whom can pour concrete and build and then our friend d will help. jambaloney will round out to 4 and they can probably whip that addition up pretty quickly. we are excited.

continuing on in regards to party day - we came in after an hour and a half in the hottub, kinda' pruny, but happy. we started a movie at about 9:30 and jambaloney promptly fell asleep at 10pm. i stayed up until the wee hours of the morning reading blogs and researching crazy stuff that interests me and then went to bed.

i would say that, all in all, we put led zeppelin, the who, kiss, the oscar's after parties and the kardashians to shame! when we party - we party HARD - bahahahahahah!

jam's off to work on-site tomorrow and i'll be doing some pretty boring chores. hope you all had a great weekend!