Friday Favourite Moments #14 2026

This was a big week of favourites, and included some of my favourite things!

1) Couch moving (and other post-reno tasks)

One of the big things which needed to happen after our reno was moving the couch from our old living room to our new one. The couch had been hard to move into the old living room and then the reno made the doorway about two inches smaller. Thus, I'd been nervous for a month that it wouldn't fit through the door and would have to stay in our old living room forever. The night before we moved the couch, I was actually awake in the middle of the night for a couple of hours. That's how worried I was. So while my friend and three of our kids left to clear out our second storage unit, Dave, Tim, Sam, and our other friend moved the couch. 

I was so relieved to come home and have it in our new living room. I didn't even want to be home when the whole process happened! (And no, our couch isn't that big -- it's just that our doorways are small.) I'm so thankful for our friends.

2) Easter Sunday and "flowering the cross"

 

I always love the Easter service at our church and it's one of my favourites of the whole year. This year's service was an especially memorable Easter as we "flowered the cross." Basically, this is a tradition where you cover the cross with flowers to signify the new life that has come from it. I hadn't heard of it before but my friend, Alissa, saw the cross covered in chicken wire in the middle of the sanctuary and said, "Are we going to flower the cross?!?!?!" And we did. It was such a joyful part of our service. Our one pastor explained it and then said, "This might be holy, joyful, chaos" and that was a perfect way to describe it.

 

This was one of my favourite things I've ever done on Easter. After church we had Easter Dinner with Tim & Janice, and while I have no pictures, that was also a favourite moment.

3) New coffee maker

 

My cousin got this coffeemaker and then my aunt got one too. My parents used it at my aunt's and thought we would like it, so they ordered one for us! We set it up this past week and we love it! You can make a single serving of coffee or espresso and it's so easy. We've gone through a lot of coffee beans this week making coffee. And now Dave and I will no longer have to negotiate who gets the last cup in the pot! I especially love that it doesn't use "cups" so there's not extra waste. Dave loves that he doesn't have to pre-grind beans.

 

4) Flowers and tea time with our best friends

 

Remember how last year we visited a botanical garden and had a tea time? (You can read about it here, if you want.) Well, this year we decided to make it a mother-daughter event with our best friends. Rachel, Janice, Tessa, and I went to the gardens and wandered through the exhibits. This year was called "Bloomland in Oz" so it was fun to see all the Oz touches! Then we had the most delicious tea time together. It was such a fun day!!!  

  

 

5) Reading Nook

Since the renovation, we have some much bigger spaces in our house. One of those spaces is my and Dave's room so we decided to create a reading nook. We ordered a rug, picked up a comfy chair from IKEA, and set it up. We need a light and a side table (and some books and some time to read!) and our reading nook will be complete! Sam helped me put together the chair earlier this week and that was a favourite moment for sure.

6) Church night

Dave and I are Jr Youth sponsors and last night we had a supper at church with the Jr Youth. We played games and it was so fun! We're going to be doing this weekly for the next bit and I think it's going to be a favourite (but exhausting!) evening in the week. And it might also mean that my "favourite moments" posts are going to be late for the next few weeks as I came home last night completely wiped out! Jr Youth are ENERGETIC!!!

So those were my favourite moments from this week -- lots of friends, flowers, church, and post-renovation activity! How was your week?

Post-Renovation Report #1

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, the bulk of the work on our renovation is done. We're still waiting on a few things but we've basically been moving into our (new to us!) house and making it home again. I've shared many of these pictures and stories here before, but I wanted one place to gather them all. So here's what happened in the first week after we had access to our whole house again.

On the Saturday that March Break started, I took down some letters which had been in Rachel's old room. In taking down the letters, some of the plaster came out. So I patched the holes with compound, and sanded them smooth. I discovered that patching holes is kind of fun and now I'm a little addicted to it :)

The following week we returned from the Dominican on Friday. By Saturday morning I was priming that strip of fixed wall and then taping and painting my new office.

 I was highly motivated and by 1pm, the first coat was done. Rachel and Dave helped me with some taping, but other than that I did the first coat all on my own.
 

That afternoon, our good friends came over and helped us move everything from our neighbours' basement. Sam's old room/Dave's new office, is the holding area for everything, as it is the room we need the least at the moment.

Our friends also helped us move some furniture, so they took apart Sam's bed and put it back together in his bedroom and also moved his dresser. (Looking back, we must have moved Sam out of his room first and then unloaded boxes into his room, but it really was all a domino effect!) 

We moved some of the living room furniture into the new living room. However, we couldn't move the couch because we needed to move it down the driveway and there was a construction vehicle blocking the way. Yep, they left it parked here for a week...

Rachel, in a slightly emptier old living room and some of Sam's boxes outside the powder room, waiting to be moved downstairs. On Saturday night, Dave, Rachel, and I painted the second coat in my new office space.

On Sunday morning, the first order of business was to determine if two coats of paint was enough in the office. We decided it was, so then we started moving our bed and Rachel's bed into our new bedroom. There is no door between my new office and our new bedroom, so we had to wait until we were done painting the office to move into the bedroom.

Then Rachel started fixing holes in the walls (and got addicted to it so now we fight over the job), and I did some priming of the bigger patches. 

 

On Sunday, Rachel's bestie came over and the two of them taped and primed Rachel's entire room.

S had so much fun priming that she came over after school on Monday and she and Rachel painted the first coat of colour on Rachel's room. Rachel loves that she and S got to do so much work in there. And honestly, I was fairly tired of painting by that point so I was thrilled to have them do the bulk of the work. While Rachel and her friend were painting, Dave, Sam, and I cleared out one of our storage units.

 

Dave and I did the second coat of paint in Rachel's room on Tuesday night.

Wednesday was operation "move Rachel to her room." When I got home from work, Rachel and I took apart her bed, moved it to her new room, and put it back together. That night Janice came over and helped motivate me. We moved some shelves to my office and to Rachel's room, cleaned off a bookshelf so Dave and Sam could move it to Sam's room, and moved some food into the kitchen. Oh, and we folded some laundry too. I really needed a fresh infusion of energy and Janice coming over was exactly what I needed!

Sam with shelves in his room and our living room with a little more furniture in it.

Our rec room/laundry sorting area and a view of our bedroom with Rachel's bed not in it!!! It was fine to share a room with her for two and a half months but we were all happy to have our own rooms again :)

From Thursday through Sunday, we took a break to get away to Toronto, visit IKEA, celebrate Sam's birthday, and focus on some non-renovation tasks.

On Monday night I finally got to move some dishes into my glass cupboards and I was so excited!!! We also picked up the bean bag chairs for the rec room downstairs. And at some point, we moved the TV down there.

 

We didn't do much renovation related work last week as it was Sam's birthday, Passover, and the start of the Easter weekend. However, we did a lot this past weekend so I will write about that another time. But for now, this is the end of my first post-renovation report. I didn't realize how much work moving back into our house after the renovation was (mostly) over would be. And there's more to come...

Monkeys, Coconuts, And Relaxing, Oh My!

Today I'm taking you back to the Dominican Republic to tell you about the rest of our March Break trip. We had two days of relaxing and then decided to do an excursion. We chose to do an all day visit of Puerto Plata. The interesting thing about this tour is that most of the other people were from Quebec so the tour was conducted in both French and English. It was a good challenge for me to see how much French I understood, which was a surprising amount!

We stopped at a store first and learned about how to tell real amber from fake amber (real amber floats) and we were also introduced to Larimar, a mineral found only in one part of the Domincan Republic. We did buy a piece to get framed for our travel wall as we thought it was so interesting!

Then we went to a cigar making factory. While the process of seeing them make a cigar was very interesting, all the workers were smoking cigars and it was very smelly. Also, all I could wonder is how many of the employees might end up with cancer :(

I was very excited to see Calle de las Sombrillas (Rue de Parapluies in French). I snuck away from the cigar factory to walk down the block and capture this picture.

We ended up on the town square and it was surrounded with Victorian wooden homes which were so pretty. After this, we had about an hour to walk around and explore.

We visited Paseo de Doña Blanca (known as Pink Street). While we were there Rachel got the opportunity to hold this monkey. She had one briefly on her shoulder a few days previously on the beach but the owner wanted $20 if you wanted to take a picture with it. This owner only charged $5 so Rachel got her photo shoot. It was so adorable because at one point the monkey reached out and grabbed onto a piece of Rachel's hair. Awwwww. Adorable.

 

We also headed back to Umbrella Alley for some pictures. Rachel and Sam really wanted to try a coconut so we bought one for us all to taste. 

 

I enjoyed seeing all the murals and we also explored this cathedral on the square which was so pretty.

After this we headed to a place where we walked through a beautiful garden and ended up at a rum factory. We were walked through the process of how they used to make rum (on the right is a picture of an old still) and then we had a rum tasting. I didn't taste all of them but the pineapple rum was especially good. And I'm not a big rum fan.

 

We then ended up at a restaurant for lunch. I don't know what it was about this meal but we all agreed it was the best one we ate all week. It was so good! We also enjoyed the grounds of the restaurant.

 

I also really liked the various art installations they had on the grounds of the restaurant. (The photo on the left is flowers made out of plastic bottles.) We also got to walk through a cocoa grove and learn how chocolate is made. It was very interesting. After that we explored some grounds near a fort in Puerto Plata, where I clearly took no pictures, and then we headed back to the resort. I think we spent more time on the beach for the rest of that day.

The next day was our last day at our resort. In the morning, the groundskeepers were pruning the palm trees. I asked if I could lift a palm branch. They were surprisingly heavy. Later that morning, I was hanging out on our patio reading, and a groundskeeper offered me a fresh coconut! He cut the top off and then handed it to me. How often does that happen?!?!?!

 

This was the patio off of our room and I loved to sit here and read and watch the woodpecker pecking a hole in the palm tree. (That's what the picture on the right is!) This offered a nice change of pace from the beach.

 

One thing we loved was watching the cruise ships sailing out of port every day. They became a good back drop for photos!

We did wish we were sailing away on them though. We tried an all inclusive this trip because we needed time to relax and we had never done one as a family. While this vacation was very relaxing, we all agreed that we much prefer cruises so that was good to find out.

Rachel being silly with a lime on the beach!

You could walk past the other resort and follow a short path to a look out. From there you could see one of the two places where the cruise ships dock in Puerto Plata. This was the view from the lookout to our beach.

One last view of the pool, with palm trees, with the beach in the background, and a picture of our resort at night. It really was a lovely place to stay.

On the last morning, after we had checked out, but before our airport transportation arrived, we took one last walk to the lookout point to enjoy the view, and the warm weather. And then we flew home.

So that was our March Break getaway. Like I said, it was just the relaxing vacation we needed after a winter of renovations, and I'm so thankful that we did it.