Happy New Year 2024-2025

After some medical issues in mid-December, we enjoyed a quiet Christmas at home, following some family visits further afield during better travelling weather in late November. We watched a full slate of the "usual" holiday movies - Scrooge (the 1951 version), The Grinch (original cartoon version), Christmas Chronicles, Klaus, A Boy Called Christmas, Noelle, One Magic Christmas, Serendipity and The Holiday. It was another green Christmas here with mild weather and a few dandelions.

We headed off for Coxmas and enjoyed a lovely second Christmas, complete with the customary Chinese food dinner and the annual Chip Choosing competition, wherein we each bring a bag of Lay's salt and vinegar chips and then hold a "blind" taste-off to eliminate one bag each round. John managed to win again, so for the third straight year since inception, the trophy shall stay in the London area. We enjoyed fires on the back deck with Dave, with unseasonably mild weather (+12 C!) accompanied by the World Juniors and NFL.

This year's festive streaming service was Disney Plus, so back home for New Year's we plowed through a number of Marvel franchises for the annual "marathon" - mainly X-Men, Avengers and Moon Knight - with lots of Modern Family in there for breaks. For food, we opted for the usual sporadic grazing on appetizers and snacks rather than actual meals. New Year's Eve was also green, though considerably more soggy than Christmas.

Bring on 2025 - a year sure to bring many political and cultural changes both at home and south of the border, some highly anticipated concerts and sporting events, at least one wedding (no, not ours), and an epic trip to celebrate our 25th anniversary together. 

Happy New Year to all!

Another Green Christmas

The Chip Gauntlet is thrown down!

Mike's bowl is the first one out!

....and then there were two....

The Trophy stays at home!

November Notes

 In spite of a beautiful November in terms of weather, the inevitable winter prep has begun. I also found a few odd chores around the yard that needing my attention, while conditions were still favourable.

I raised the existing walkway, which was slowly sinking into the clay, and began adding new pavers to also extend it out in the increasingly wet area between the stairs and the car. I also pulled a lot of weeds and other plants and put cloth and gravel down around the new heat pump....which was technically installed in a garden.

Meanwhile, inside the house Jane discovered a "make work" project. We bought a new cabinet for the kitchen pantry, so we decided to take the opportunity to paint this very small room before installing the new cabinet. That led to....removing wallpaper.....then removing the old panelling.....then moving and replacing the old light....and miscellaneous demo. Still no paint. Still no cabinet.

So now we're left with exposed walls consisting of some plaster, some drywall, some bare insulation, some metal....yeah. We're waiting for some local plaster specialists to come and do their thing before we paint, and assemble that darned cabinet that started this whole mess.

We also opened the studio and hosted visitors for a day as part of the Wheatley Winter Sale.

In and around this, we managed to squeeze in a few overdue visits to eastern Ontario and Grand Bend before the snow truly flies.

Empty pantry

And during tear-down!

A bit of everything behind the walls

Funky new light fixture!

Gravel around the new heat pump

Raising and extending the walkway

Welcome!

Wheatley Winter Sale