All stuff ready to go 🙂

So let’s begin. Last few nights I was dreaming about the textures and colour schemes and so on. I knew that JYSK was selling the shoe rack unfinished, so I was ready to shell out another $10 for a wood stain. To my surprise they had the shoe rack in the finish I wanted! Brilliant, one step closer. As it goes I had a bunch of card board boxes in the garage. The night before I was ready to start the doll house Jason decided to “tidy up” the garage and he threw all of the cardboard into the recycling. Luckily Klara always has a secret stash somewhere and surprise, surprise  the perfect piece for the ground floor flooring was in my closet. Dollar store is a great source for odd things and shelf lining sticker in wood finish created a pretty looking flooring. I gave myself a challenge to use as many items I have in my various craft stashes as possible. From my bookbinding days I have perfect cuts of high density cardboard and a treasure in the form of wall paper sample book that one parent brought into my work several years ago. This together created the first wall.

I couldn’t resist creating a little recycled treasure. The sparkling wine cork holder and a piece of orange string created a wall scone for the front entry. I need one more, so another reason to buy another bottle of our favourite Muskato 🙂

Now I’m contemplating all the wall and windows. I usually don’t make sketches, I put stuff in a place and see how it looks, very scientific, ya know. I bet professional designers do that all the time. 

My work offered me less hours this week 🙂 I know that it sounds funny, but I love working my afternoons, because I’m most productive in the mornings. I’m trying to find the right balance between employment and all the work involved in housework, cooking and our garden, while preserving our weekends for family fun. I think I finally reached the equilibrium and Sara will be going into the daycare two days a week for the full day, so she can have some classroom work, as well as being with her friends. This gives me full six hours a week for “me time”. I know that I need to take care of myself, since most of my days are consumed by taking care of everybody else. Everybody says that, but it’s very hard to put yourself first. 

I came across several blogs mentioning that they got some awesome doll house chairs from Crate & Barell. I did some searching and made my first furniture purchase, full $16 (including shipping to Sean, thanks Sean, I will repay you in Cadbury chocolates as usual) for six chairs!!! Who knew Christmas ornaments can be so awesome. I will need to make some comfy pillows for those…

Ok, it’s almost ten at night and I don’t feel the “creative juices” flowing tonight. I need to close my eyes and move some walls :)))

Turks & Caicos we will be back, promise 🙂

Sara got to play on the beach and we snorkeled right next to the pier. As soon as you put your head under water there are about twenty different kids of fish swimming right up to you. Snorkeling is so peaceful, the water was so warm and so salty that you didn’t even have to kick to float. The sand is white and very coarse, because when you look closer you can recognize broken sea shells. It feels like semolina.

The colours, the green and the amazing colour of the ocean just makes everything cheerful. The local museum has five rooms altogether. Slavery, coral reef, discovery of the oldest ship wreck and landing of the capsule with John Glen in 1962 are the highlights. http://tcmuseum.org/ 

We walked around, went to the local post office to get some nice stamps for friends. Sara was so desperate to play on the beach that she kept stopping and playing with the sand on the road.

Lovely lady in air conditioned Dodge Caravan drove us back to the port. She told us all about the local events, how the community shut down for two days after a car flipped and two teenagers were killed. Nobody worked, because the whole island was at the hospital. The island produces only one thing, salt for deicing Canadian roads :). Everything else has to be brought in.

Grand Turk is tiny and the most pleasant. All the people we met were friendly, nobody bothered us with some “authentic” trinkets. This little place gets almost leveled by hurricane every couple of years and people just get on with life, repair what can be repaired and move on. The town has two streets so one can’t get lost. 

December 6th

Woke up on Grand Turk, 26 C with some clouds, oh my.

The dock is located about 3 km away from the town. There is a brand new cruise center with the usual duty free shops, Margaritaville, but also fabulous beach and pool. After two days of some serious rocking we are walking on dry land.