If we thought we would be coming back from Vancouver Island to having golf courses closed until May 20th in Ontario, would we have still come back? I think both of us feel the answer is ....YES! And besides who could have golfed this week anyway?
We had two days of snow this week and now the weather seems to have turned, and it finally felt like spring today!
We didn’t let the weather get to us, no. not us! We got busy inside instead!
Monday I had to go to Toronto to return my 3 year old Mazda CX-5 off lease, and pick up my new 2021 Mazda CX-9. If you aren’t in the car business let me give you some advice.
”Buy appreciating assets, and lease depreciating assets”. Since cars depreciate, you should lease them, unless you drive a lot of kilometres a year. Since no one is driving right, now, leasing a car makes a lot of sense, because you are really only paying for 1/2 a car in your lease payments. Anyway, I love my new CX-9 and Richard loves it too. He had wanted a slightly larger vehicle and the CX-9 fits the bill perfectly.
Arriving home after my long drive from Toronto. Such a comfortable driving vehicle!
The CX-9 is a Signature trim and has a lot of ‘bells & whistles’ like Apple Car Play/Android Auto, premium Bose sound system with 12 speakers, heated and air conditioned seats, 20 inch alloy wheels, I-Active sense safety features, rear view camera, adaptive cruise control, wireless phone charging pad, Adaptive front-lighting system, Driver Attention alert, Heads up display, 2nd row captain’s chairs, plus a 3rd row of bench seats, power folding mirrors, power rear lift gate with hands-free access, and a 10.3 inch display with a user friendly infotainment system. I loved driving the CX-5 for the past 3 years but I love this car even more! Having worked with Mazda for over 20 years in my previous life at the Bank, I am really ‘sold’ on this brand. The craftsmanship is first class with real Santos Rosewood trimmed centre console, panel and door switch panel, and the vehicle is an IHS Top Safety pick as well. Mazda does not make the display ‘touch enabled’ as that would not be very safe, to be touching the infotainment screen while driving. I’m sold on Mazda and I hope you consider Mazda the next time you need a vehicle! They are great vehicles and my family has been driving Mazda’s since Mazda first came to Canada back in 1968. Mazda Corporation is 102 years old this year and started out as a cork making factory in Hiroshima, Japan. I never did get to visit Japan with Mazda unfortunately, but I think that will be on our ‘bucket list’ one day to go and see the Mazda Museum in Hiroshima at Mazda Motor Corporation.
If you are a regular blog reader, you will remember that I ordered a ton of stuff from IKEA and Wayfair to keep us busy when we arrived home. I also bought Richard a new Dewalt cordless drill with 2 battery packs! I’m sure he was wondering why I was being so generous, buying him new power tools. I am sure he didn’t realize I had ulterior motives!
Richard putting together the laundry room cupboards.
IKEA did not send the metal strip to attach the cupboards to the wall, in the laundry room. Last evening Richard was ready to throw the cupboards out the window, but his patience along with his stress tablets he takes, (B complex) prevailed. He called up our local ACE hardware and was able to go and pick up this metal strip with their curb side pickup to solve the dilemma of the missing metal strip. But once he got the strip, our walls were not straight and this strip fit at the bottom of the wall, but not where he needed to put the cupboards. Richard was able to cut the strip this morning with a hack saw, and make it fit.
So while Richard was in IKEA land putting together an armoire and cupboards for the laundry room this week, I was organizing the double linen closet. What a job! Having run Lakeshore Bed & Breakfast for 7 years at our home (we closed the B&B 3 years ago), we had so many sheets, pillow cases and towels that I had to go through and then figure out what was going and what was staying. While I was dealing with linens, I did the same with our table clothes and fabric napkins and napkin rings. What a job!
Napkins all nicely organized.
Placemats and napkin holders organized.
Tablecloths are all organized. I must have thrown out 10 bags to the textile waste depot at the Fort Erie dump!
Once I finished the linens I decided to tackle polishing all of our silverware!
Silverware nightmare! I also threw some of the badly tarnished silverware out as well. I figured why not? I was on a roll with getting rid of stuff!
After I finished with the silverware, I then thought I would start working on changing up a few tables for our sunroom with new colours of chalk paint.
Changing this table from turquoise to blue to match the other tables in our sunroom. Its fun to have the option to paint out a table to add some colour to our beachfront home!
With the stores all being closed for in person shopping we really need to plan ahead if we want to do any projects. I got the idea to order some grass seed, potting soil and top soil from Canadian Tire so we could use it on the weekend. Since Canadian Tire takes 24 hours to get an order ready, I ordered yesterday, for pick up today. We had bought so many different types of vegetable and herb seeds while we were on Vancouver Island and we needed to get the seeds in their trays to start growing, if we have any hope of having a vegetable garden this summer! Richard and I both got a text from Canadian Tire to say that our order was ready last night. We were quite surprised that the order was ready so quickly, so while Richard went off to Bridgewater Country Club to pick up our takeout dinner order of fish and chips, he decided to stop at Canadian Tire as well to pick up our Canadian Tire order. When he arrived at Canadian Tire he was told our order wasn’t ready. Oh well. Its not like he made a special trip and Fort Erie is such a small place its not like he had to drive far either, but you would think that if an email is sent, it means the order is ready?!
This morning I really wished I could be golfing!
So instead of golfing, I had a cup of Earl Grey with oat milk in my golf mug!
A Mazda CX-9 and a golf cart! Perfect!
Today would have been the ’Men‘s Opening Tournament at Bridgewater Country Club’. Richard is on the Mens’ Club Board at the club, and his annual responsibility is to organize the Men’s Opening Tournament. The weather would have been perfect today for the season opening tournament. Oh well. We can only hope that golf courses open soon in Ontario!
As I was finishing up waxing the chalk painted table this morning, Richard called me from the laundry room to say the cupboards were up! That only took him 24hours to get them up! What a big job!
The cupboards are up! But how do we hide the metal bar?
I had ordered a new rubber Laundry mat from Amazon and it showed up today just in time to finish off the laundry room. We need to buy some grout still to fix the tile that we had to remove another time.
That’s how we hide the metal rail! I had bought these pictures last year at Winner’s and never put them up.
The new armoire from IKEA that Richard also built and installed this week. Our laundry roof is looking really spiffy! I’m so happy with how it turned out. We now have tons of added storage and everything looks so neat and tidy! Richard did a fantastic job and he didn’t even start to curse in French like he usually does when he is working on IKEA projects!
After a quick lunch of homemade BLT’s, Richard went to Canadian Tire today and finally picked up our grass seed, top soil and potting soil. We got right to work with our respective jobs outside, before it started to cool down for the day.
Before Richard could even start his project he had to shovel the sand that was still on the grass over to where the big tree is on our property. The surge damage from Lake Erie last November is still evident with rocks in our garden and sand all over our lawn.
Mixing the grass seed with the topsoil before spreading it on the lawn.
Richard putting down the topsoil/grass seed on the lawn. If you look in the background the Terns are going crazy today! The Terms seem to swarm at certain times of the day and they really like the area over behind our neighbour’s home. Buffalo is in the background. It is hard to believe we have not been to Buffalo since February 2020. We used to hop in the Z4 and go over for dinner on a whim to see our friends Dave and Karen and park at their place on Franklin Street. Let’s hope those days come again soon! I’m missing our Buffalo shopping options as well as the fun stuff like walking tours and concerts!
The finished lawn. We have a lot more work to do outside still like removing rocks from the gardens, laying down mulch and pulling weeds, but it is early still in the season!
I set myself up on the deck to plant all of my seeds into pots.
Crazy hat lady, but it is great to keep the sun off my face when I’m not wearing sunscreen!
So many seeds! Trying to figure out what to plant in each pot or seed tray!
And we are finished! We brought our folding table in from the BBQ area as it perfectly fits the 3 seed trays and 4 pots. I sprayed everything really well and we will keep these seedlings warm in the sunny, south facing window of our kitchen. Let’s hope they grow quickly so we can transplant them into our veggie garden in May, after the long weekend!
We had a huge amount of projects this week! Richard looked at me while he was sipping on a Strongbow cider after we cleaned everything up and said “We won’t be keeping this pace for much longer will we?” I said “Just imagine how great it will be once the golf courses are open and we can come back to our home and know that everything is in order, and there is nothing more to do!” I’ve ordered a few more things from IKEA and Wayfair too, so stay tuned for our future organizing projects! Marie Kondo...you have nothing on us!
And while we would much rather be golfing, finally having the time in retirement to tackle all of the projects I could never get to, is very satisfying!
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