Surfing in Tofino

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I hate this page. But it is what it is. Sometimes when I scrapbook I feel so completely uninspired...I think I need to take a break for a few days.

sibs

This pic was edited with some fancy digital scrapbooking program by my mom. I'm actually not sure how I acquired a copy of it.

Husband Stealer

This is what I found last night when I came to bed.

Apalling.

Nass Valley Visit

These pics are from last summer when my family came to visit. We went "up the Nass" as they say around these parts and checked out some of the natural and First Nations history. It was really awesome, I can't wait to go again this summer and camp out.

Sistas

This is such as awesome picture of my sisters-in-law, Becky and Mary that I just had to scrapbook it. I love bright colors of their jackets.

I think I know what kind of a morning this was...

I did this page a while ago but I thought Leanne might like to have a looky...

These pics were taken one morning when I was still living in Dad's basement suite. I busted into Leanne's room on a Saturday morning and snapped these. She wasn't very happy with me.

The day Zoe tried to kill me.

So the other evening I attempted to walk our pitbull-lab 'rescue dog' Zoe, who is a puller. And by puller I mean she's an 85 pound steam train aiming to thwart my every attempt at a reasonable pace.

We had only made it about three houses down from home when she yanked so hard on my arm I lost my footing and rolled my ankle.

So what does my cuddly, loving, loyal family pet do?

She abandoned me. And not only did she abandon me, she ran across the street into 'Harlem', dragging her leash gleefully behind her.

Make no mistake, she knew she was in the deepest of shit when we found her.

I think it's time for a special leash so that she can't pull. But for me, I think I'll just walk Sierra instead. Overall I think I prefer zig-zagged unpredictability to abandonment.

Proof.

As stated in a previous post, my dog Sierra thinks she is the wife. This was clearly evidenced this evening when she approached Dave, who was unsuspectingly lounging on the sofa, jumped on him and, while gazing in my direction for a glimpse at my reaction, spread 'em. The gall.

Dave sees this as playful banter, but I know the truth.

Fine. Be that way.

Alright, I will.

please mummy

sierra 2, originally uploaded by dahansen85.

Sierra giving me her 'I wants you to throw my saliva-soiled, pink mop-head' look.

The Puppy

sierra, originally uploaded by dahansen85.

Seen here is a photo of our border collie, Sierra, giving me the 'I wants to cuddle' look. Charming.

The Glory

The Glory, originally uploaded by dahansen85.

The Beach is that way

The paper and chipboard on this layout is from a kit at Terrace's own scrapbook store.

The pics were taken on our honeymoon when we visited Ucluelet, BC, near Tofino. It was wonderfulls.

Next to Godliness

Our long and arduous journey has finally come to a close. I gave the bathroom a much-needed scrubbing while Dave sealed the grout and mickey-moused our curtain until we can get a new one. We need to touch up some paint, but even with the imperfections, the shower is perfectly glorious. It may not look like much next to the designs you see in mags, especially considering we bought the cheapest tiles we could find, and this was Dave's first attempt at this type of job. But I don't care. It's fucking fabulous.

Next project: Crown moulding in hall and kitchen. Coming soon.

Miserableness

The shower continues to be the bane of my existence. We spent an hour and a half cleaning grout off the tiles, the floor, the tub, the sink and ourselves. I had to endure another bath before bed and we hit the sack at about 12:30. While winding down for the evening after cleaning up I noticed that I had unfamiliar pricking pain in my right eye, which steadily got worse and worse until it was 3 am and I was in the bathroom sobbing because it felt like there was a shard of glass in the damn thing.

Dave, faithful husband that he is, poked around in my eye for a while and determined that we should go to the hospital and let them use their magical eye-flushing machine to fix me.
The nurse directed us to what she called the 'eye room' which I noticed had a drawer labeled 'circumcision supplies' and a box marked 'umbilical cord cutters'.

I sighed and reminded myself that I live in a small town with a small hospital.

The doc squeezed all kinds of foreign material into my eye, turning it a bright shade of orange and effectively numbing the pain - for a while. As it turned out I had somehow managed to scratch my pupil. I'm convinced that the godforsaken pit of despair in my bathroom spit grout in my eye at some point.

We got home from the hospital at 4:30 and at 10:00 I arrived at work exhausted and squinty-eyed. Vampirishly sensitive to sunlight, I immediately closed all the blinds on the south-facing, floor to ceiling, wall-to-wall windows that pour sunlight in all day long, put up a barrier between my line of vision and the glass door and hunched over my computer to work.

As long as I stay away from garlic and crucifixes I'll be fine.

Shower

Shower 7, originally uploaded by dahansen85.

Filth

Shower 6, originally uploaded by dahansen85.

Getting there..

Shower 5, originally uploaded by dahansen85.

Workin away...

Shower 3, originally uploaded by dahansen85.

I'm spoiled.

There is something about bathing that I find entirely disgusting. You get in to the nice warm, clean water and before long it is gray with dirt and used soap and then I'm like, eww I'm soaking in my own filth!

So you can imagine my disappointment that our shower is out of commission at the moment. Knowing it needed to be tiled, we saved our money and purchased some tile and supplies. Dave agreed to work on it after Christmas so a couple days before New Year he pulled down the old lino and we began the joy of renovating.

We are busy people and Dave recently began his year 1 carpentry apprentice class. This has kept him very busy with homework, so he has been working on it in bits and pieces.

It is now January 21 and I have had to bathe for over 3 weeks.

The up-side is that it is almost done. Dave finished tiling yesterday and he just finished doing the grout. A working shower is at the end of the tunnel, I can almost see it.

I hate crap

001, originally uploaded by dahansen85.

For my 21st birthday my husband and I spent the entire weekend working 12 hour days at a sample booth in Costco for the fair-trade coffee company we used to work for in Victoria. As a result, my birthday gifts from Dave were all from Costco. He bought me two awesome books on scrapbooking, and a massive stack of patterned paper. Unfortunately for me and unbeknownst to him, the patterned paper was cheap and mostly ugly. I still have 90% of it two years later. I'm trying to use it up but...I just can't. It's too cheap and too ugly.

It'll make a lovely gift for a beginner scrapbooker, which is exactly what I plan to do with it. Maybe today. After I finish my Riel paper. Uggh.

In any case I did manage to use one page of this Costco patterned paper on this layout. The paisley design on the left border of the page. That is the first one I've used in....definitely months, possibly years.

Borrowed the layout from Inspired Blueprints and the lovely lady in the picture is my mother-in-law. Hi Elizabeth!

A late night Endeavor

003, originally uploaded by dahansen85.

I worked on this layout last night, while I was working on procrastinating on my homework. It's amazing what you can get done when you're trying not to get stuff done.

I got the layout idea from Just a Thought.

I still haven't finished my paper.

Distractinator

I have a serious problem with procrastination. I can't explain it, I wish I didn't do it, but some part of me deeply desires to cram all my work into the last possible minute. Right now, I'm supposed to be writing a paper on why I think Louis Riel was innocent for the North West Rebellion. It's due tomorrow. Honestly, I don't feel like doing it, I don't have a plan for when I'll get it done, but I feel confident that by tomorrow at the beginning of class, although the paper might be still hot from the printer, it'll be finished and awesome.

In the meantime, this blog is turning out to be a great tool of distraction. I am currently sitting in a comfy chair in the college library, where I was planning to get some homework done, but sitting here I realized that while I normally enjoy my evenings surfing the web and watching reruns of The Office, it can't hurt to get out of the house if only to let Dave enjoy one of his terrible werewolf versus vampire movies. What can I say, it's all about give and take. But I guess I'm not really giving since I'm enjoying this. It's a selfish good deed. Wasn't that a Friends episode? I'm sure I've seen that one.

Zoe

Zoe, originally uploaded by dahansen85.

This layout is of our new addition to the family Zoe. She was previously owned by a large family who lived outside of town. They never had money to spay her and when they decided to move to Kelowna they didn't want to risk her getting knocked up during the craziness of moving. Dave's boss' house became a temporary home for her...until they convinced us to take her. She is a darling, but...let's just say we REALLY need to get her spayed. She has serious procreative urges.

gramps

Another recent scrapbook page. This is my Grandpa, and this picture of him was when he was a pilot in the army. As it turns out my Gramps is a very intelligent and adaptable man and in his later years has learned how to successfully navigate the internet and most recently has joined facebook. If he hadn't posted this picture, I would not have been able to print a copy and happily commemorate his sacrifice to our country in this adorable scrapbook layout. So, I'll concede, facebook does have its good qualities.

Daddy's Little Girl

Daddy's Little Girl, originally uploaded by dahansen85.

This is a recent scrapbook layout I made of Sierra with my husband Dave. Sierra is our resident Border Collie, a gift from me to Dave for our wedding. As displayed by this picture, she believes herself to be the wife and me to be the family pet. Little whorebag..

Some pics of the rig

Terrace

A little about me perhaps...I live in the occasionally beautiful town of Terrace, British Columbia. I used to live in Victoria, where I graduated from high school, got my first real job and met and married my husband. My family lives in Victoria and they often rant about how I should move back and that I better not have any kids while I live in that shithole up North. (Their words not mine)

So why move to Terrace you ask? Well, it was quite a spur of the moment decision to be honest. My husband Dave has some family here and we came up to visit last Thanksgiving. Surprised by the affordable housing prices in the town (especially compared to the then-soaring housing market in Vic), we decided to put in an offer on an especially cute one that was situated across the street from a school and park. (Little did we know at the time that it was also 4 houses away from the secion of town commonly known as 'harlem'.

Such is life.

So in the space of one weekend, and with the help of Dave's lovely grandparents, we had put in the offer, found David a job as a carpentry apprentice, arranged an inspection, and found house-sitters who could take care of things until we could move.

So now we live in Terrace.

Just another way to make noise

Hi, I'm Amber. This is all new to me but I'm looking forward to trying my hand at blogging and seeing what it's all about.