Goodbye little house

Today we handed in the keys to our little house, that we rented for 7 years!

We have had many parties, gatherings, music lessons, and meetings here, and have had many people stay in our basement: our in-laws, friends, fellow artists; from Toronto to England to New Zealand!

My mom helped us clean. Our kitchen has never looked so nice!

I'll miss the little octagonal windows in our living room. I'll also miss being in a whole house and being able to make lots of noise and music. I played flute for many hours by that corner window.

Here is the big bay window in our bedroom, that I was so happy about when we first moved in. But it made the room so cold! I don't like the cold but the hubbie did.

I'll miss our little garage and the apple trees that grow alongside it. And making apple crumble with those apples. I'll miss seeing my Pa standing at the garage door, storing stuff in there while they moved out of my childhood home.

I'll miss the wild pink roses that grow on the front of the house.

But look, we are almost moved into our new apartment, that isn't new at all, but is the first place we will own! Looking back is hard sometimes, but me and my husband are excited to be looking forward as well!

Backyard apple tree

There's a lovely little apple tree in my backyard. It was rather overgrown and wild, then the gardeners cut it back a few years ago. The following year it bloomed lovely apple blossoms, but no fruit. Last year it did bear some fruit, but the apples were small and sour. This year, they are perfect. I don't know what variety they are, but they are delicious. My mom was in our backyard picking apples - she came straight from church, that's why she looks so fancy.

And here she is again, on the same day! That's how good the apples are!

My niece and sis came over to get a few that my mom overlooked. There's a little crab apple tree back there too, but we were focused on the main apple tree.

I got a bowl of apples of myself. True organic produce, just steps from my house!

Spring Cleaning

It's spring! Sort of. The weather is not cooperating. April showers, May flowers...but mainly lots of rain in Vancouver. In any case, I'm trying to clean the house! I started with our shoe area.

This is what it looked like before:

Isn't that TERRIBLE?? Shoes pouring out everywhere! So I bought a STAAL shoe stand from Ikea. This was one of their Wacky Wednesday sale items, and I got it for $69.99!

The during shot: move all shoes out of working area to make way for...

Ahhhh! Three drawers of organized shoes. It doesn't look like the coat rack will fit, but it does, since the drawers only open a little bit. Let's hope we can keep going on this cleaning stuff!