This has been quite a summer. It's been a summer of moving...again. It was only 2 years ago that we moved from our Grover Street home to Orange Street only now to have moved yet again to Bedell...the "country". We bought another rental property. On top of that, we have two of the apartments torn apart in renovation mode in our triplex. Our son and daughter-in-law renovated their apartment and we wanted to help them. Our daughter and her family moved out of their house and our nephew bought a house. Our exchange student daughter, Maria, said it best before she left to return to Spain, "Your family is crazy. You're always buying and selling houses." Yes Maria. We sure are crazy.

The first project, and arguably the most important, was the house that we bought to live in. It's a country house with 5 acres, great landscaping...a POND, an adorable field and a 1200 square foot house. It's so dang cute. There's wainscotting everywhere. High 11 foot ceilings. Open concept kitchen/dining/living room. There are only 2 bedrooms but oddly enough 2.5 baths...go figure. And tons of people would've come in here and been perfectly happy with this kitchen and the colour scheme but I couldn't leave well enough alone. So we ripped the kitchen out. Yup. And sold it. And then we bought another used kitchen which my husband, father and father in-law have slaved to install in any spare minute they have. Meanwhile, my mother, mother-in-law and I have painted the cupboards a lovely olive green. And they keep chipping and I told Dana, "We will just keep touching them up until there are so many layers that you can't see a chip anymore." Or maybe that was Dana who said that but regardless, we are in it now and we aren't going back to white so we will keep the touch-up paint out.

This is what we hope the space will look like when we are finished renovating. People ask me all the time, "Are you doing a big renovation to it?" "No," I tell them, "Just a new kitchen. New flooring. Paint throughout." That's at least the plan for now. So why is it taking so long?

Well one reason it's taking so long is because we are parents. And our kids are doing projects too. And we want to help them. And quite frankly, I love seeing the final details fall into place. Like this staircase. I spent one entire day painting this sucker. Every spindle. Every rise and newel post. But isn't she gorgeous? And now this lovely 2 bedroom fully renovated apartment is rented to a lovely family and my son and his wife can sleep at night and eat proper meals because it's rented and finally making them the income they bargained for. So what did we do with all our free time after that project was done?

This is just one of the apartments that is currently under construction. My husband finally acknowledged he could not possibly do it all in the whole 2 months he has off from teaching in the summer (and go to NYC, Nova Scotia, New Hampshire...) so he hired a young guy from our local carpentry program, Eugene the Carpenter. He couldn't possibly be more of a God-send. We love him. He is knocking it out of the park and so hopefully we will have a couple new tenants in these apartments before very long.

And then when life got boring for a split second, we thought, "Hey, you need another project! You should buy another house and rent it out!!!" And so we did. We bought this adorable tiny house that is jam packed with potential and then we landed the world's best tenants. We struck up a deal with them so that they do the renovations as part of the rental agreement. It's a win win. And I mean, he is a contractor and she was an interior design engineer so to say that they are fantastic and a perfect fit for us is an understatement. Already they have painted thoughout and laid new flooring almost everywhere.

And so as to not leave you thinking we started a hundred things and finished none of them, here is a picture of the one finished room in our house...the principal bedroom. Isn't it cute? I colour drenched the walls in emerald green and wallpapered the focal wall with perhaps the most beautiful wallpaper I've ever seen. Don't look too closely at the mouldings...they may just be leaning up against the wall but listen...it feels DONE. And I am so thankful. I am thankful for this new house. I am thankful for this new career. I am thankful for the opportunities that keep coming and allowing me to do what I love.

And I so I won't complain that I can feel winter creeping in and maybe will have to figure out how to run this new propane fireplace.

At least I have a fireplace right? Right.