Wednesday Hodgepodge #650

I think I've only participated in the Wednesday Hodgepodge once before but, I've been feeling a little uninspired blogging wise, so I thought I would link up this week. The Hodgepodge is hosted by Joyce at From This Side Of the Pond and, according to her blog, this is number 650. That's amazing! Find Joyce here.

1. April 22nd is Earth Day...what's the most 'out of this world' place on earth you've ever visited? Tell us something about it.

I've had the opportunity to visit a few "out of this world" places. Some of them have been here in Canada. Did you know we had deserts in Canada? In the photo on the left, I'm at the Carcross Desert in the Yukon in August 2019. In the photo on the right I'm at the Great Sand Dunes in southern Saskatchewan. Both of these places are incredible!

 

Another "out of this world" place I've been to is Craters of the Moon Park near Taupo, in New Zealand. This place was filled with craters, steam, and bubbling mud. It felt other worldly for sure.

 

As for a less common "out of the world" place, I've also been to Mongolia. My dad and I did a trip on the TransSiberian Railway one summer and had a stop in Ulaan Bataar, Mongolia. We hired a driver for the day and they took us out into the countryside. We ended up riding camels in the desert and it was such a memorable experience! Did you know that edelweiss grow in Mongolia?!

I feel so fortunate to have visited so many "out of this world" places.

2. A favorite quote, verse, or song lyric with the word earth in it?

I love the hymn "For the beauty of the earth." 

For the beauty of the earth,
for the glory of the skies,
for the love which from our birth
over and around us lies;
Lord of all, to thee we raise
this our hymn of grateful praise.  

3. What's the most trivial thing about which you have a strong opinion?

Hanging out laundry! I think hanging out laundry is very important and, as Dave would tell you,I think there is definitely a right way and a wrong way to do it! 

4. What's your most commonly used kitchen utensil or tool? What's the last thing you made using that tool?

I have two, larger, stainless steel, serving spoons which my parents bought me years ago. They are so handy and I use them all the time. I can't remember the last time I used them but we tend to pull them out for pasta, salads, rice dishes -- we use them A LOT!

5. Marilyn (Memphis Bridges) gave me a great book of 3000 questions, and I'm going to try to use one in our Hodgepodge every week. Here is today's - 

What is your greatest extravagance?

My greatest extravagance in terms of money is travelling, especially Disney cruises!

 

My greatest extravagance in terms of time is reading. I spend a lot of time reading.

My greatest extravagance in terms of time and money is baseball, especially seeing my Blue Jays.

My daily (little) extravagance is flowers and Coke. I enjoy a Coke almost every single day and I almost always have some kind of flower around so that probably adds up to a greater extravagance than I realize.

6. Insert your own random thought here.

WHY is is still snowing?!?!? I want to enjoy our backyard and it's too cold. I'm ready for some spring warmth. Instead, I'm still wearing mittens. Grrrrrr. Although today might be warmer. Here's hoping...

Thank you Joyce for hosting a fun link up. I'll look forward to reading other posts while I wait for Rachel to have her annual dance photos taken tonight.

Friday Favourite Moments #15 2026 On A Monday

 Last week had a few favourite moments but a not favourite moment was how exhausted I was all week. Thus, I didn't blog and I didn't get a favourite moments post done for Friday. However, I felt much better this past weekend so hopefully things will continue improving.

1) Kids playing "bunny baseball"

 

As I mentioned in my "10 on the 10th" post, the kids are at the stage where they mostly bicker, which is a normal teenage thing, I guess. So I really enjoyed watching them play "bunny baseball" one day when I got home. Interacting nicely -- off screens -- physical activity -- win-win-win!

 

2) Rachel's dance

Last weekend was filled with performances for Rachel for dance. I volunteered at three of the performances. I enjoyed getting to see Rachel through out. And I really enjoyed the one performance I got to watch!

 

 

3) Living centrally

 

One of the things I really enjoyed about Rachel's dance shows is, that even though they were in two separate places, we could walk to both shows. I love living so centrally, and you know I loved all the time on my favourite path.

 

4) Everything's back in our house!!!

 

Last weekend, we emptied out all the things we'd been storing in our neighbours' garage and, for the first time in five months, everything we own is now back in our house. Now we just have to find spaces for all of it! Hahaha!!!

This will eventually be our guest room, but it's not quite ready yet :)

 

5) Starbucks date

 

I bribed Rachel with Starbucks if she was willing to walk home after her rehearsal and dance show. She was amenable and we had a good Starbucks date! And a nice walk too!

 

 

6) New office rug

I ordered a rug for my office, and for some reason, it only shipped part way. So they sent me another one and it arrived last week. I'm going for a garden-y spring theme in my office. Can you tell?

 

7) Rachel's vanity

Rachel has very specific ideas for her new room and one of them was having a vanity. She bought it with her own money and then she and Dave assembled it this past week. It is definitely living up to all her hopes and dreams.

 

8) Recycling gone!

I don't normally creep on the recycling people but we had so much to get rid of. The city has changed our systems and now it's only picked up every two weeks. We had a lot of recycling after unpacking a lot, and buying a few things, and I was so happy to see it go!!!

So those were my, somewhat random, favourite moments from last week. I'm hoping I have a little more energy to blog this week and will be able to catch up with you in blog world.

10 On The 10th: April 2026

This past Friday was April 10th and I documented my day in 10 pictures.

I love our new coffee system. It was a gift from my parents and it uses real coffee beans (as opposed to K Cups) and Dave and I no longer have to debate who gets the last cup of coffee in the pot!

Coffee with a view in our new living room. I still have to get used to this view!

It was rainy so Dave drove me to work. After I'd finished my coffee, I made a cup of tea. I'm drinking a lot of tea at work these days to combat the chilly, rainy mornings.

By the afternoon it was beautiful out and I enjoyed my walk home.

When I got home the kids were playing "bunny baseball" in the living room. Teenagers are weird but I loved that they were doing something together, off of screens!

They are doing construction on a couple of streets around us. This means that it is harder for us to get out of our neighbourhood by car, and that our street is busier as people look for alternate routes. Boo.

I walked, along my favourite path, to my evening commitment.

I was volunteering for Rachel's dance show. She hated her costumes for this show so this was the only picture she let me get. We didn't intend to match! Hahaha!

Rachel got a ride home with another dancer but I wanted to walk when the show was over so, once more, I was walking along the path.

This was a pretty typical, early spring, day for me, with a lot of walking!

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...