Counting down the days now, until we head across the pond to visit our youngest, who you may remember is living in England. We're quite excited, as we haven't seen her in a couple years, though we Skype regularly. We have two wee step-grandsons over there who have only ever met us via computer, so we're looking forward to that as well.

Dree and I keep putting off working on the front garden, as it has just been so hot here, but we really have to get to it this week, before the weeds take over completely! When I put in the second half of the front garden last year, I put plastic on the ground, around the plantings, and spread white stone on top of the plastic. Hardly any weeds on that side. So you know what that means (sigh), We have to scrape the stone off the old half, pull all the weeds, put plastic down, and re-spread the stone. I bought new stone to add on top as well, as there are some bare patches, and it really DN stay as nice and white over time, as I would like.

Bill is trying to convince us to move our office into the little blue house (the house my parents used to live in behind us), but the heat of summer has made us even more appreciative of the coolness of our split-level offices, and he's having trouble budging us, LOL.

We are hoping to work on the kitchen in September... but there is a very high liklihood that he will be laid off shortly, so we'll have to see. On the one hand, he'll have lots of time, GBG, but on the other hand, money will be a lot tighter, as he probably won't get a job overpaying him as much as this one did! Apparently the recession that hit the rest of the country 5-6 years ago is now trickling down to the Uranium industry, leading to mine closures and massive layoffs over the past few months. So if anyone knows of a job for an SAP specialist, with 10 years experience in maintenance, and a real knack for writing macros, let me know, LOL. OK, enough gloom and doom, he's a hard-working, warm, funny, caring and way smart man, and any company would be lucky to have him - so hopefully one of them will realize it and snap him up quick, ROFLOL.

One of the things we want to try in the kitchen, is a bit more moving around. Right now we have a small 3-drawer island poking in to the room. It's very useful, both as a place to put hot things coming out of the oven, and as depository for all the microwave dishes. But it does make the room seem a bit crowded. SOOOO, lol, we've decided to move the hot water heater (which is hidden beside the frige, in a cupboard) AGAIN.

We're thinking it will fit in the back corner of our walk-in closet, which is just storage of things we never wear right now, GBG. It will be close to the main washroom (upstairs), and right above the kitchen sink (middle floor). It will be quite a ways from the basement bathroom, but we hardly ever use that tub (it's actually full of bolts of stitching fabric right now, LOL), so may take time for hot water to get there. In future another owner could put in one of those mini-hotwater tanks for about $300, to have a separate supply to that room, if they wanted.

This will let us move things around, kind of like this:

Obviously not to scale, LOL. That grey circle is the hot water tank (black circles are the sinks, which are actually square), and the oven-microwave/pantry are a floor to ceiling wall. So on the THEN picture, you can see both those items have been moved against side walls, and the stovetop/island would have be counter height (with one continuous countertop), and open to the dining room...

That's what we're kicking around anyway. We'll see what happens in September! For now, let me say bon voyage, and I'll tell you all about our trip when we get back in August! Happy stitching!!