Happy Father's Day to Our Fathers

Like a tiny seed

Firmly in the soil

Nurtured with a love i think

So rare

Given room to breathe

Given time to see

It's now so clear to me

You were there

And with each changing season

Though I grow a little stronger

Rising up to touch the open sky

And if I gave you a reason

Not to hold me any longer

You gave me a thousand reasons why

You are my steady oak

Standing tall and strong

Protecting me with everything you have

And I know deep inside

I would not have survived

Without you by my side

I love you Dad

Love Amy & Steve

Our House and Gardens

It's kind of fun buying a house in November. You end up with a surprise garden in the spring. We knew we had a magnolia tree, and we knew about the red maple, but pretty much everything else was a surprise.

We have a magnolia tree right outside the front door:

There are Hostas growing in about 5 different spots:

Chives are growing beside our chimney:

Yellow Lilies make our shed look pretty:

Lilacs were a fun surprise since they are one of my top 5 favourite flowers! I had to cut some and have them inside before they died so I could smell them all the time. We had them in 2 places;

the living room:

and the bedroom:

There is a large Weigela tree in our backyard and a tiny one in our front yard:

There is a big Red Maple tree in the front yard that is very colourful from about April until November. I think it's actually a Royal Red Maple:

We have what I think may be 2 Smoke Bushes in the front yard. If anyone knows for sure what kind of bush this is, I'd love to know: (*update: They're called Concord Japanese Burbury *)

I discovered just this morning that we have 2 large Peonies! One of my favourite flowers. One is in the back yard and one in the side yard:

The side of our house surrounded by big, awesome plants:

Close up of the side garden:

And this is our house at night:

I love our cute little house and yard :)

The Kitchen!!

We finally got most of the work done in the kitchen. The only thing left is to put handles on the doors and drawers. We even have the handles picked out, we just need to save some money in order to buy them. They're only a couple of dollars each, but when you have 20 doors and 10 drawers it adds up fast.

Here is a before, mid, and after shot of the doorway area leading into the hall:

Before we did anything to the kitchen

After we painted the trim around the door

After we painted the trim and removed wallpaper, painted it light grey, and removed wood from cupboards

Here is Mom doing all the hard work

Mom and Laura helped me scrape off the old wallpaper and paint.

Here are some pictures of the back door area:

This is after we painted the door trim, but before we

painted the trim around the oven, or did any wall painting.

This is after we painted all the trim and walls

It's a very subtle colour but it really makes the kitchen look brighter, bigger, cleaner, and more modern. I really love it and look forward to adding the door handles and some art :)

DIY-ing is fun!

In December I saw an ad on Kijiji for 4 tv trays for $5. The flower pattern was not really my style, but I have been closely following about a dozen different DIY and Interior Design blogs since before we bought the house, so I assumed I could figure out how to make these tv trays look cool.

The idea is nice and simple. It's kind of retro-minimalist. While I wouldn't exactly define my style as "retro-minimalist", I have been learning that it's good to layer and combine different colours, fabrics, patterns, textures and styles to create your very own look.

So, I think these tv trays will fit nicely into my look. Whatever that is :)

This is the original tv tray with the old flower bouquet pattern.

It took a good half hour at Walmart the other day to decide what colour I wanted to use. I wanted something colourful, but also something that could go in any room. I thought pink would be cute. Or blue. But I decided on grey and white. I am going to paint my living room grey and white, so I thought the table would look good with those colours, since whatever i put on the table can add a splash of colour.

It also took me a while to decide on the new pattern. I finally decided on this stencil:

I thought it would look cute, and the grey and white would be subtle enough that it wouldn't be too high contrast (Steve doesn't like high contrast damask-like patterns).

So, I spray painted the tray white:

It took almost a whole can of spray paint to cover the original yellowish colour and the original flower pattern. Luckily it didn't take 100% of the can of paint because spray painting the stencil did not work well at all. I just re-painted the tray white and spent about a week thinking of how to get around using a stencil while still having some sort of design or pattern.

Finally I decided I'd try to make random stripes with tape.

It worked great! I really like it.

Here it is in the hallway with my new pink vase and a black and white engagement picture of Steve and I:

I bought 4 of these trays, and I don't know if I'll do the random stripe thing on all of them, or if I'll try different patterns and colours on the other 3.

Now to paint the legs... and the kitchen, living room, dining room, hallway, bedroom and bathroom :)

Renovations!!

I just renovated my kitchen, by myself, for free!

Well, I'm not 100% finished, but very close. And it won't be 100% free, but almost! I still have to buy some handles for the cupboard doors and the drawers.

The renovations mostly consisted of painting and removing wood trim. I am not a fan of wood trim. I am a white trim kind of girl. White trim looks good in any situation.

Here are a couple of pictures of the kitchen before I did anything to it:

See how 80's it looked? It was pretty dark for being mostly white. Most of the walls, 4 out of 5 of the appliances and the back splash are white, but because of the dark green counter top and the wood trim around everything, it seemed so old and dark.

Here are some before and after pictures:

(I should have cleared the counters before I took the after pictures)

This is looking at the back door and the oven.

(Notice the wood trim around the oven and the shelf above)

This is after I painted the wood trim, added some place-holder handles on the lower cupboards (to see if they would look right) and fixed up the storage space above the oven.

And yes, that is a laptop hanging on the wall.... I'm married to Steve Day the computer genius. Steve actually hung that there as a surprise for me. He knows I like to look at recipes online while cooking, so it's my Kraft.ca laptop :) What he may not know, is that I also like to listen to dance music while I cook, so I can work off some of the calories I'm about to eat! So it's also my youtube laptop :)

Doesn't it seem brighter already?!

This is a before picture of the other side of the kitchen.

(The sink/dishwasher area).

This is the sink/dishwasher area after I painted (almost) everything white. I left the counter top trim unpainted because 1) I don't know yet if the paint I have will be strong enough to stand up to every day use on a counter top and 2) I don't need EVERYTHING to be white.

This is a before picture of my stove area.

And here it is after I painted it white.

Unfortunately, I forgot to take some good before/after pictures of the removal of the wood trim that was hanging below the upper cupboards. You can see them in the first two pictures, and you can see that they're gone in the other pictures.

The kitchen is so bright and clean and white and nice now. I love it!

Painting the living room is going to be one of my next projects. I have paint chips taped up in three places around the room to see the paint colours in different lighting. I am 99% sure I found a favourite, but I have to wait until Steve gets home before I can decide for sure. (It's his house too, so I guess he should have a say in what colour the living room is)

The colours all look pretty similar in this picture, but they're quite different. I think we're going with a grey colour. My favourite is called Surreal Blue.

I will continue to (excitedly) blog about our home improvements as they happen.

Day Media Inc.

Steve is in Alberta once again. Originally for just one month, but it may be as long as 3 months!

He is out there to start an advertising company. The basic idea is advertising on parking meters, but it's even better than that. It's a system called 'sponsored parking' where businesses pay for ads on parking meters, which actually makes it free to park there.
They have been working on getting Day Media Inc. started for about 2 years now. They are pretty close, but still have a few things to do.

Yesterday, 7 February 2011, Steve presented the idea to the Lethbridge city council. They need to amend a bylaw in order to operate since the parking meters are city property. The council didn't give a 'yes' or 'no' answer, but instead said they wanted some more info. So Steve will be doing a bit more work and then presenting it again in a couple months.

This is some of the press coverage:
It was on multiple radio stations (Rock106)(94.1 CJOC)

The radio station, Country 95.5FM has the following article by Marion Warnica:

"Lethbridge's Own Dragon's Den Rejects Free Parking Scheme"

The familiar 'ping' of coins into a downtown parking meter slot may be an endangered sound in the city's downtown, if one company has its way.

Lethbridge-based "Day Media" approached council with a business scheme that would see advertisements on parking meters. A percentage of the profits would feed back to the city so residents don't have to pay for parking.

Council rejected the idea, but Mayor Rajko Dodic told the group this "isn't the end of the road" for them. He recommended they do some more research and create a formal business plan before pursuing it further.

Company president Steve Day says he's been developing the concept during the past two years, and has the informal backing of several businesses that he heard of through "friends of friends." The company wasn't able to formally solicit businesses with the concept because they don't yet have a business license. But they did bring it to the attention of the Heart of the City Downtown Revitalization committee and the Downtown Business Revitalization Zone [BRZ].

The two downtown business groups are split on the issue. Heart of the City, a committee that's a division of city council, rejected the sponsored parking scheme. But Steve Day says the committee misunderstood certain aspects of the plan, and he hopes to win them over with a formal presentation. At the other end of the spectrum, the BRZ - an independent group formed to promote business downtown - fully supports the idea. Executive director Ted Stilson wrote council a formal letter, waxing enthusiastic about the plan's potential to attract more business to the city's core. "I believe that their sponsored parking concept would be an excellent tool to attract more customers to the downtown," we writes. He goes on to say he would be "excited" to see the "unique" idea implemented in the downtown.

The city's elected representatives are not as sure. Councillors raised several concerns about the company's lack of a formal business plan, the fact the idea was already rejected by the city-directed Heart of the City group, and the concept of placing paid advertisements in the public right of way - which is currently not allowed under city bylaws.

"This would be quite an exception, and an exemption to that rule. And I could see it opening the door for other advertisers wanting to get in on that," says alderman Jeff Carlson.

Carlson says the presentation just left him with too many questions, and that many of his concerns echoe those of the city committee that originally rejected the idea. He says the fact the company tried to go around that decision undermines the process and sets a precedent that could drag the issue out "for years and decades."

"I do get concerned when somebody does approach a committee, the committee makes a reccommendation, and then council says - send it back to committee for more discussion," he says. "There needs to be some trust factor between council and committees of council, that when a committee makes a reccommendation, council trusts it."

Representatives of the sponsored parking plan say their experience at city hall has inspired them to apply for a business license and come up with a more formal plan, which they'd like to bring back to the Heart of the City group within a month.

The Lethbridge Herald has this article on the front page by Gerald Gauthier:


"Parking Meter Proposal Gets Hearing, Little Else"

A company proposing to sell ads on downtown parking meters will have to do more homework if it hopes to get city council's okay for such a venture.
The owner of Day Media appeared before council members Monday, seeking approval to sell business sponsorships on parking meters. Company president Steve Day told council the sponsored spots would provide free parking for downtown patrons, and a portion of the advertising revenue would be returned to the city to offset any potential losses of parking revenue.

Once a parking meter was sponsored, a special advertising shroud would be placed over the meter head, eliminating the need for users to plug coins into the device, according to Day. Enforcement could still be done by chalking tires, as is already done in one- and two-hour parking zones in the city, he said.
After listening to Day's pitch, only a minority of council members were convinced the idea warranted referral to city administration for further study. Instead the proposal was simply filed as information.

Council would have to amend the city's land use bylaw before such a venture could go ahead.

Mayor Rajko Dodic said it would set "a bad precedent" to allow advertising on meters, which are technically a public right of way, and he suggested the company has done too little in terms of market research so far for council to give the idea serious consideration.

Ald. Jeff Carlson also said he felt it would be inappropriate to allow advertising on publicly-owned meters and that doing so could lead to problems with enforcement.
"It's a frustrating response," Day said afterward. "We strongly feel we have a solution that can benefit not only the city but the motorists and businesses."
He described Lethbridge as the perfect city for such a venture because of the number of parking meters about 1,600 and the size of its business community.

The proposal has so far failed to gain the backing of the Heart of the City revitalization committee but it did receive a written endorsement from Ted Stilson, executive director of the Downtown Lethbridge business association.

But he added he wasn't surprised by it and intends to pursue the issue further with the Heart of Our City committee in the hope of returning to council within a couple of months with a more detailed proposal.

Day acknowledged his company had little in the way of market research to go on given the fact he hasn't obtained a business licence yet and therefore couldn't do any direct soliciting to gauge interest from local businesses.

"What we will most likely do is go and get our business licence, we will solicit businesses and officially get feedback as far as who would be interested," he said. "This is similar feedback to what we were kind of expecting. We expected them to defer it to another committee."

Meanwhile, Ald. Joe Mauro was among the few council members who felt the concept merited a closer look by administration.

"I think we haven't given it a fair chance. I feel council is making a decision without having all the facts," he told his fellow council members.
He also asked council to consider waiving the business licence fee for the company, an idea that didn't sit well with some members of council, including Mauro.

"We did get some support out of it, and it's very, very encouraging to see that," Day said.

Day isn't based in Lethbridge, but he said his company has established a home-based office in the city.

Technology

Technology is growing so quickly! This is a video from 1994. They are trying to figure out what "@" means and what the internet is.
I remember 1994! It was only 17 years ago... which sounds like a lot, but think about how much technology we got in those 17 years! We went from pre-internet times, to what we have now in less than 20 years! Crazy! I look forward to the next 20!!!