Big Change

Our time here at Blogger has drawn to a close. Please join us (along with all of my old posts) at our new site, HERE. Thanks, Blogger, for five great years.

Harps Eternal

Another great hymn sung by a fine choir. This arrangement of "Hark, I Hear the Harps Eternal" is by Alice Parker.

Dilbert and Choices

Jeff here again. Stefanie is still sick. Today we're going to Ikea to buy our new kitchen cabinets and Stefanie is doubting her colour choice. I think she should choose cabinets the way Dilbert chooses clothing.

Have a good weekend!

Marching On

Last week was 8 voices... this week is 8 hands. This is a larger spectacle than I usually choose for Sunday music (my days of flashy church offertories are, thankfully, long over) but I think variety is good and I love to see young people collaborating to create church music.

Dilbert and Caffeine

Jeff here. Stef has been completely knocked out with a bad cold this week and she's fed up having to drink tea.  To cheer her up, here is my coffee-loving wife's favourite Dilbert.

Have a good weekend!

8 voices.

1 beautiful piece of early music.

There's not much else to say. 

Here's Voces8 with Orlando Gibbons' 'O Clap Your Hands'. Perfection.

Dilbert and Learning New Office Equipment

Jeff here. I'm training today for my company's new 3D printer. I hope it goes better than this.

Have a good weekend!

Blue Background Part 2

Home makeover reveals are always better with a "before" photo.

It seems I forgot the before photo.

Here's the best I can do- a photo of our family room from 3 Christmases ago. Ignore the decorations and look at the built-in bookshelves at the back of the room. Rather boring and messy, despite numerous attempts at staging.

Here's what what we did last weekend: 

Happier, brighter and, after a book purge, lighter. And bluer. It's a lot of blue (Benjamin Moore's Electric Blue to be exact) for someone who has painted the last three rooms in her house white, pale grey and white, but I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

Blue Background

The Princess Margaret Show House is always filled with wonderful decorating ideas. The dining room from the 2011 house has remained in the back of my mind for the past two years. Isn't that hit of blue in the back of the dining room cabinet beautiful?

Photo by Michael Graydon in the October 2011 issue of House & Home

This inspired us to do something this weekend... I'm putting the finishing touches on today but will post some photos tomorrow!

The Ground

I stumbled upon young Norwegian composer Ola Gjeilo (pronounced Yay-lo) last month. While Gjeilo composes pieces for choir, orchestra/symphonic winds and piano, his main passion is improvisation (he is a pianist and you can see him in action here).
I'm in awe of anyone able to improvise at this level.

In 2008, Gjeilo composed a Sunrise Mass for Choir and String Orchestra. In 2011, he further developed the chorale from the last movement "In the Moment" into a free-standing anthem entitled "The Ground".  What's fascinating is that the piano accompaniment stands on it's own as an improvisational-style piece (you can here a version of it here). All together with strings, I find it simply beautiful.

Here is Kairos String Quartet and the composer, Ola Gjeilo, accompanying the Central Washington University Chamber Choir.

Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloria tua. Osanna, Osanna in excelsis.

Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini. Osanna, Osanna in excelsis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, Dona nobis pacem.

Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Hosanna, hosanna in the highest.
Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.
Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, Lamb of God, grant us peace.

Returning with Dilbert

And we're back! We'll get back to regular blog posts next week but for now, here is Jeff's Friday Dilbert.

Have a good weekend.

Rather than feel guilty for not blogging here, I'm going to officially take a 2 week break so that I can deal with three big projects that are simultaneously coming to a head.

I'll be back the first week of July...

Instruments of Peace

John Rutter's setting of the Prayer of St. Francis is a piece that brings me peace. It's been a long week (hence the lack of blogging here) and we've planned a peaceful and quiet day today- something most welcome.

Bedazzled

Life on Van Island is pretty casual and the dress code here reflects that. It took me a few years to make that cultural shift but now I'm completely comfortable in my 'uniform' of in jeans and cotton shirts. I have even given up wearing heels... something I would have never believed six years ago. While I love the freedom and ease that comes with this part of island living, I do miss the little bits of glamour that existed in my pre-Vancouver Island life. That's why I think I need to get the Ultimate Sparkle Umbrella by Klair.  I think this is the only bejeweled accessory I have a real chance of integrating into my current wardrobe.

Photo from Masato.co.uk

Sweet Spirit

I love the story of how Doris Akers wrote the gospel hymn Sweet, Sweet Spirit (you can read the story here). It's a gospel piece I remember from my childhood sung many times by men's choirs or quartets similar to this one (click here). I love when old classics are renewed in new arrangements and sung by new artists. The Choir of Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford has a wonderful version on their CD Voci di Fuoco that has made me enjoy this piece in a whole new way.

Voice of Reason

It feels these days that we have a lot of pots boiling on the stove. Even before our laundry room is finished, Jeff and I are trying to make some decisions about our kitchen redesign but have been quite overwhelmed by the incredible number of choices out there in everything from cabinet door profiles to tile to oven features. Usually, I'm the dreamer and go off on all sorts of wild and wonderful ideas before reigning myself in and coming back to Jeff, who is quite rooted in reality. That was, until we went shopping for kitchen appliances last weekend and Jeff fell completely and totally head-over-heels for this:

Jeff sees this cooktop as a thing of mechanical beauty. I see this cooktop as a mass of unnecessary moving parts that will inevitably go wrong and that probably can't handle my big soup pot in the first place.

We decided that "Star Trek Stove" (as Jeff has affectionately named this one) needs to stay in the showroom and we need to go back to the drawing board. Jeff is quite heartbroken about it. I keep looking outside, expecting to see pigs flying around because this kitchen has totally upended our usual roles. Me- the main voice of reason while finally planning a new kitchen?! It was a little more fun when I was the dreamer.

Back to the Laundry

With both of us busy at our day jobs during the week, progress has slowed in the laundry room. The cabinet doors are up with new hardware (except for a few drawer pulls that will be recycled from our soon to be gutted kitchen) and the tile is all cut and measured for the landing. We should be able to finish cementing it down tonight then grout on Thursday night.

In the meantime, I'm starting to sort through everything previously stored in the laundry room to determine what needs to go back and what can be purged. It's a cathartic but slow process that I enjoy because it restores chaos back to order! I'm not so good with chaos. And yes- we're already making plans and decisions for our upcoming kitchen renovation. This is going to be our most ambitious renovation yet- moving walls, closing up exterior doors and refinishing old parquet wood floors. It's a level of chaos that hurts my head to think about.

Creative Blues

Because I'm up to my eyeballs in three simultaneous work projects, I'm craving the opportunity to do some creative things at home. That probably won't happen until July... in the meantime, I'll just dream about turning the extra meter of blue chevron fabric in my sewing stash into this. 

Photo from here

Christ Alone

I read two very interesting blog posts about church music recently - Why have men stopped singing in church and Worship is about Christ not impressing crowds. I think both posts make good points. Reading this left me thankful that there are some great modern hymn writers out there. I think Keith and Kristyn Getty are two of the best.

Dilbert and Workload

Jeff here. Stefanie is very busy this week with work. Here is how too much work and stress is handled in Dilbert's office.

Have a good weekend!

Laudibus In Sanctis

Psalm 150, the Psalm that talks about praising God with trumpet, cymbals, lyre, timbrel and harp, is one that has been set to music many times and for obvious reason. One of my favourite settings is one by William Byrd, that first appeared in 1591. The Jerusalem Academy Chamber Choir does a magnificent job of this piece.

Dilbert and Re-framing

Jeff here. In the midst of renovations I forgot to post a Dilbert last week. I think re-framing is a good tool in all kinds of situations.


Have a good weekend!

Laundry Progress

Our laundry room makeover continues moving forward, although slowed with us both at work during the day. Here's what we've accomplished so far this week:

We repainted the pantry shelves. I still want to go back and fill the nail holes but the difference in these from their original rough dark state until now makes me happy. We're going to give the shelves a coat of urethane tomorrow night for some added durability.

Jeff added tongue and groove pine paneling on the back entrance wall with the hanging cupboards. 

We painted the paneling it the same colour as the wall (Benjamin Moore's Wickham Grey), added chair rail trim and added the end pieces and trim to the cabinet. 

We also installed the wardrobe cabinets in the laundry room. Jeff had to build a support platform for them because the Ikea feet raised the boxes 3/4 inch higher than the sewer pipe running right on top of them. We decided building a support platform was easier than moving the poop pipe. 

Jeff said the other night that he's already forgotten how the room used to look. It's quite a transformation so far. 

In the Pink

Last weekend, while on the mainland, we met our new niece. The day before we left, I decided she needed some additions to her wardrobe with custom embellishment. With a bit of ribbon and a few butterflies, here's what I cam up with. I love my nephews dearly but it turns out that sewing "in the pink" is great fun.

Tellin' The World

Another great choir singing a great spiritual. There's nothin' better.

Here's the University of Utah Singers with Moses Hogan's arrangement of "I Can Tell The World"

Progress

Progress in the laundry room is trucking along. There is a fresh coat of Benjamin Moore "Wickham Gray" that has livened the whole place up. It's fresh and light and we both like it very much.

The first cabinets are up! Ikea's mounting system for wall cabinets is BRILLIANT and they are easy-peasy to put together. Jeff chose the "Stat" door fronts and they work very well with the whitewashed ceiling and cottage-y look of the room.

Jeff also made square panels to hang real light fixtures. Goodbye bare bulbs! We got the idea when we were looking at Ikea model kitchens and it looks great.

Jeff and his dad also stacked our washer dryer. Tracking down the right stacking kit took 2 weeks and five more phone conversations than it should have required (hear that Sears Canada?). Nevermind- it's up now and it works great. I love being able to see lost socks in the bottom of the dryer. Here's a full view of how things are shaping up. Those light fixtures are such a big improvement and the room no longer feels like a cave. 

Suckers for Punishment

After completing our bathroom renovation earlier this year, I'm pretty sure I promised we were done renovating for a while. We must be suckers for punishment because we have two renovations planned for this year... the laundry room and (gasp) the kitchen. Going over to "the mainland" for our cousin's wedding was the push we needed to start on the laundry room; on the way home we stopped at Ikea and filled Jeff's parent's truck with new cabinets.

I've not shared a lot of pictures of our laundry room here for reasons that will soon become obvious. If you remember, we replaced the basement stairs a year and a half ago. Jeff also built "The Enorma-Closet" 4 years ago (on the right side of the picture below) to address the crazy lack of closet space in our house. We call her "Norma" for short.

While these two things made made a HUGE difference, the laundry/utility room is still a little haphazard and we aren't making use of the 9-foot ceiling for storage. There's also a mess of plumbing behind the washer that drives me nuts. And notice how dark it is in the photo above?

That's because of the ceiling. It's old, dark, rough wood that sucks every ray of sunlight away. The lovely light fixtures (if you can call them that) weren't really helping the issue, either.

So that's where we started. Jeff moved the junction boxes so they were in line with each other and added a third junction box by the pantry. Voila! We had a little light! 

After we painted the ceiling white, we had a LOT more light. We kept the ceiling open because the kitchen is directly above and our kitchen renovation is going to involve moving a lot of plumbing and electrical.

I wish more projects started with paint. We're now quite motivated to keep this project moving along.

DIY Wedding

Here are some more photos of the wedding we went to last weekend. I was pretty involved in the preparations (from doing all the flowers to helping the bride pick out a dress) and Jeff created the ingenious cardboard tube vases that held the flowering branches at the outdoor "altar" and did 101 other tasks behind the scenes. Here's what we helped create:

The part that made me most nervous - making the bride's bouquet. It was a rustic hand-tied bunch of white hydrangeas, Queen Anne's lace, pink and green lisianthus, purple scabiosa, cream stocks, ivy and lime green puff balls. Against the bride's eggplant purple dress, it was very pretty and I was very pleased with how it turned out. 

What kind of boutonniere do you make for a groom allergic to most flowers? A green one. Thankfully, it looked great against his purple tie and shirt. 

Jeff's aunt, another cousin and I made the centerpieces out of thrift-store clear glass vases, greens from our gardens, mystery purple flowers from my garden, pink tulips and yellow ranunculus. The mantle was simple - just votives and ivy. 

The groom cut wood disks for under the centerpieces. My mom sewed table runners out of sheer curtains the bride found at Value Village. A trunk from our maple tree (trimmed several years ago and stashed in the garage) became the place cards. And the wedding favours? S'mores ingredients for the bonfire that happened after dinner. 

 The groom fabricated the fantastic cupcake stand out of wood disks and a brass frame. The cupcakes were from Lynne's Lovecakes in Chilliwack and they were delicious. The icing was the best icing I've ever had - light, smooth, not grainy and not sweet. They tasted as good as they looked.

The bouquet wilted during the heat of the wedding but perked up once it got back into water. It survived our day-long trip to Ikea and got home, 2 days later, looking fairly fresh.

I don't have pictures but we also did two huge arrangements of Solomon's Seal, pink snapdragons, green bells of ireland and a mass of other greens for the front of the "altar". It was great fun... and I'm happy it's over!