More lake info: water levels

Another handy Rice Lake lake resource (say that four times fast!)

This is a graph showing historical high/low water levels on a given date, as well as the current water level.
Handy!

pssst. We're thinking of making a trip to the cottage this weekend. *giddy*

Always a geek...

I think this is pretty cool. They are satellite photos of Lake Ontario (and area - included Rice Lake) that show, among other things, the amount of ice on the lake. Each day they upload one or two new photos.

For those of you not familiar with the location of Rice Lake, it's that diagonal slash (low left, high right) just north of Lake Ontario, about half-way along the lake. Note the lack of white. White = ice.

Cottage Life show

Yesterday we went to the Cottage Life show at the International Centre in  Toronto (near the airport).

It was huge! It filled four halls. We arrived around 10:30 and left at 3:00 with our feet worn down to the nub.

It was almost overwhelming there was so much to see and do. Fortunately our focus was narrowed, because there are particular things we're interested in, and other things that we're not. For example, we're not interested in buying a new boat, even though there are some lovely specimens to be had if we ever fall into $30,000 we have no other use for. We're not interested in building a log cabin, or a new barbecue, buying a new cottage, or purchasing a clear acrylic toilet seat with antique fishing lures embedded in the plastic (Oh, I wish I were kidding). Neither are we interested in $1000 bunk beds, quilts with wolves on them, boat operator card tests for $60, or antique carriage seats.

We were, however, interested in composting toilets, water filtration units, dock systems, and solar/wind energy. Also, $10 canoe paddles, fresh squeezed lemonade, and Pizza Pizza slices. And if we hadn't had to march all the way back along the whole length of the show to get 'em, we would've been interested in $12 butter tarts (the second package was half price).

I was astonished by the sheer number of people there. It was wall to wall bodies and very hot and claustrophobic at times. Definitely not for the faint of heart. But it was productive, and we're armed with some good information now.

Le Bateau

Sorry I haven't posted much this week. At first my time was consumed building a tutu tote (probably best if you just don't ask about that one), and I've been sick for the rest of the week. Bleh.

We went to see the folks about the boat last weekend (not the exact boat shown in the photo, but same model/length/year/motor/colours,etc.)

It's a good little boat. It's in great repair and the engine looks really clean. We've asked the current owners to get the motor marine tested for us (so we know it's good because a mechanic says so), but if everything goes well we should have a boat soon. We're stymied right now because they won't take it in for the marine testing until the temperature no longer drops below freezing overnight. Also, apparently the docks at Wood Duck are below water in the spring, so until the water-level dips, there's nowhere for us to tie the boat up anyway!

And so... we wait.

I suppose we could always put the canoe into the water and paddle over to the island in the short term to start some of the interior clean up activities. *ponder scheme*

Ice is almost gone!!

This photo was posted today on the Rice Lake Today website. I'm sorry it's so small, they only post itty bitty pictures there. This is a shot of the Island from the south shore of Rice Lake. Our cottage would be on the left-hand side of the island in this photo, but around the back.

That's open water you're seeing folks. We need to get our hands on that boat!

Oh, speaking of boat, I'll have another post for you soon about that.

C

Cupboard doors again.

Cupboard doors are coming along marvelously. What do you think?

On the left, what they look like now... on the right, what they used to look like.

Maybe just a teeny improvement, huh?

I can't wait to get out to the cottage to put these in! The ice is steadily melting, but not super fast around the island.

meltmeltmeltmeltmelt

The Great Refrigerator Roundup

About a week ago, cher Capitaine called up The Great Refrigerator Roundup to have them come and haul away the narsty fridges that have taken up residence in my garage.

You remember the fridges, don't you? They looked like this.

The Great Refrigerator Roundup is a program run by the Hydro company to have working fridges greater than 15 years old hauled away for free, the idea being that you're not sucking up so much energy using these beasts. It's a good idea. It's better than having the Town come and take away your fridges, because you have to pay them $20 per fridge (for CFC containment activities), and the fridges count towards your maximum of twelve items for a special collection pick up. This way we got two more big items hauled away in our special collection, and the fridges are taken away for free. Le Capitaine is pleased. Le Capitaine's wife is also pleased: I get my garage back!

I suspect these two lads thought I was a loon standing in my driveway in my pyjamas taking pictures of their truck. Since I have no designs on winning the hearts of the fridge movers, I'm not terribly concerned about their low opinions.

One last wave good-bye!
Good-bye ugly fridges!

Kitchen cupboard doors

I got a status update photo from my Dad today. He and my Mom are working together to renovate the doors for the kitchen cupboards.

Just to jog your memory, here's what they looked like when we bought the place:

and...

Remember the plastic orange inserts? Eeeee. How can we ever forget.

Well, today they look like this:

Dad has pulled the rickety doors apart, replaced the plastic with some pretty bead-board paneling and reassembled the trim with some sturdy biscuit joints. The doors are all neatly arranged in anticipation of Mom giving them a full coat of paint. I've also picked up some brushed silver knobs to put on the doors when they're dry. I think it's going to make a huge improvement!

Thanks Mom and Dad!

This makes me inexpressibly happy

Ahhhhh.

Biodegradable goodies

Last night I went shopping to stock up on some biodegradable cleaning products. Because the cottage is not on septic, most of the grey water flows into some sort of weeping system. (I think. It's been a while since I stared at the bottom of the cottage. I know there are black PVC drain pipes that do not go to the composting sheeter holding tank. Unfortunately, I don't remember where they DO go, nor can I find a decent photo that shows me. )

Assuming that the grey water just goes into the ground and leeches out into the lake eventually, I want to minimize the chemicals and other nastiness flowing from the Lodge. With a bit of digging, you can find all kinds of biodegradable products at your local Walmart. In some cases I even had a choice among different brands!

Here's what $35 bucks will get you:

 Clockwise from top left we have:
- dish soap
- kitchen and bath cleaner
- window cleaner
- laundry detergent
- dishwasher detergent tablets
- conditioner
- goat soap (for cleaning your goat! Duh.)
- shampoo
- body wash

The hardest thing to find was the shampoo/conditioner/body wash. I had all but given up on finding it after scouring the aisle when I stumbled across it on the way out, hidden in a corner with the MANLY soap products [insert manly flex here]. There was only one brand, but there were a few options within that brand (3 kinds of shampoo: volumizing, moisturizing, or 2-in-1, that sort of thing). The cleaning products were much easier to locate, and there were generally three or more brands to choose from.

The real test will be seeing how well they work. Saving the environment's not going to do you much good if your goat's not clean.

---

Here are some websites for the companies shown above:
Live Clean
Caprina
BioSource
The Green Line (Walmart house brand)

Melt! Melt! Melt!

The ice is starting to melt on the lake:

This photo was taken in Harwood (south shore, about half-way along the lake).

Fun!

Boat operator card - reprise

I took the test today (so did the captain).

The questions were far too easy/ridiculous to actually assess any degree of knowledge. I think it might have been a psychological test, judging by the spelling of "personal flotation devise" 4 times in one question. I'm still trying to quell the nervous tick it induced. But I passed and am now a pleasure craft operator!

I just need to get me a pleasure craft to operate.

Boat operator card

The "Ice Out" date contest is in full swing over on the Rice Lake Today website. General concensus among the guessers is that it will happen very late in March or in early April. With that in mind, we need to get hopping on buying a boat and obtaining our operator cards.

An operator card is sort of like a driver's license, except for a boat, with the exception that an operator's card is valid for life and cannot be revoked.

However, much like a driver's license for a car, you still need to pay and take a written test. Strangely, there is no "practical" test required. Based on these criteria, SpongeBob would've passed Mrs. Puff's class years ago.

Depending upon which website you use to apply for the test, it can cost you anywhere from $25 to $50 for the exam. (I'll give you two guesses which site The Captain o'Cheap chose.)  I find that the study materials at the pricier site are better quality.

Once you pay the Exam fee, you can retake the exam as many times as you need to until you pass; but you can only take the test once in a 24-hour period.

You need a test administrator - rather like a witness - who is above the age of majority and is not a family member. The test site emails your 36-question multiple-choice electronic test to your administrator. The administrator has to ensure that you:
- Don't talk
- Don't use books/papers/cheat sheets
- Hand in your test to the administrator before you leave

So it's pretty much like every test you've ever taken since Grade 1 onwards.

That administrator has to provide you with a nice private spot (under their control) to take the test, but Agents of Transport Canada (hereafter referred to as Agents of Doom because it's much more exciting) have to be allowed in. The nice private spot (if it's in a commercial venue, or sports facility) needs to have walls to keep the riff-raff away from you and to keep you from seeing the riff-raff or, really, anything else.

If you cheat - you're out. And the administrator can only oversee 20 test takers at a time. No more. Oh, and they have to be able to show the Agents of Doom that they are aware of, and followed, the "test protocol" instructions, if need be.

That's about it!

What have I learned so far? That I am incapable of typing adminstrator without leaving out the second "i". Every. Single. Time.

I made this!

♪ Toot! Toot! ♫

I'm tooting my own horn today. See these cute pillows? Total cost: $3.40 each. You can't beat that! My secret: I used cotton/linen tea towels from IKEA at $5.99 for two.

The pillow stuffing is a combination of polyester fiber-fill and foam chips that I've had lurking around my craft room for 5+ years.

I like to use foam chips for pillows, even though they're a tremendous mess to handle, because I find pillows stuffed with the fiber-fill only look nice and puffy at first, but then get mashed flat after a few uses. With the foam in there, it springs back out after being compressed.

Got Junk?

I don't!

Today we got rid of a mountain of crap from our garage.

Strangely, when the garbage collection dudes arrived, I had a hard time witnessing a lot of those items being tossed into the crunching garbage truck. Not the junk from the cottage, I have no attachment to that stuff. But the purple dresser is still good - just massive, and the desks no longer serve any purpose. Even the computer monitor worked perfectly - it was just dated. The coffee table was still in good nick too. I'd had all of this stuff since my first apartment in university. We had tried to sell/give away a lot of it at garage sales, but there was no interest. *sigh* Sad to see it go. It hurt a little.

Goodbye, my desk *sniff*! I confess I did have a brief moment of panic when they were loading the truck, "I should've stripped all the drawer handles from the dresser!" but the rational half of me talked to the crazy half of me and said "No, you shouldn't have." And the rational part was right.

I think I expected them to cart the things off whole, and donate 'em somehow. I didn't imagine a scary furniture crushing behemoth to pull up at the curb. It was all a little shocking. Caro sposo thought it was cool.

You'll notice the fridges aren't in the heap. They'll be collected next week. I can't wait to reclaim the garage!

Pleased as punch

I've been labelling the glass jars that Nicole picked up for me at IKEA, and I'm so happy with the results I just had to share:

 

Voyons, are these not the cutest!? I'm in love!  ♥ ♥ ♥

I love it when my crafty world and my cottage world collide. I cut the letters out using my Silhouette craft cutting machine and used brown adhesive-backed vinyl that (in this case) is sold by Cricut, but other companies sell it too, and in many colours.

The only problem I'm having now is figuring out what I'll be putting into all of the jars so I know which labels to make! The letters peel off the jars fairly easily, so if I waffle (moi? waffle?!) about it, I can change my mind - and my label - later.

It's getting warmer here. It was +5 C this morning, going up to +9 C. The kids wore running shoes and spring coats to school for the first time. Everyone seems to be wearing an ear-to-ear grin. I think it's because they all know we'll soon be able to get to the cottage. That has to be the reason. ☺

It's my blog and I'll do what I want with it...

Like post photos of my lumpy, deaf, lop-eared, geriatric cat with a sticker on his nose.

Because I love him.

Damn you, IKEA! *shakes her fist*

We went to IKEA today to buy the bunk bed for the kids' room at the cottage.

We left IKEA $500 lighter.

I told you.... I TOLD YOU I can't leave that place without dropping $500! Did anyone try to stop me? NOoooooo.

In actuality it came to $492.31, and we didn't even get a $0.50 hotdog. Dangit.

In addition to the lurvly bunk beds which I can now paint, I also picked up:
-striped fabric for the kids' curtain
-coupla toss cushions
-cutlery ($4.99 for a set 20 pc.? ding ding!)
-plastic plates and cups a'plenty
-linens for the beds

-cute coat rack for inside the front door

And some stuff for around the house (about $65 worth).

It looked a bit like this (boy, it sure doesn't look like much when you present it this way):

It's all arranged on the quilts I picked up last weekend. The striped fabric will be for the roman shade in the kids' room, and the plaid will be some extra cushion covers. I've already picked up the paint for the walls and the bed. Walls will be the tan, bed will be the lighter red.

In this photo you can see the toss cushions with the embroidery on them.
♥ Love! ♥

I wanted the big *cough* $30 pillows, but Captain cheapiepants was there, so I compromised on the cheaper, smaller pillows.

And following are some photos of the individual bits and pieces.

So about those bunkbeds

I have grand plans of building my own bunk beds. I've found the dream plans for it: straight cuts, basic timber, how hard could it be?

I went to Lowes on the weekend to price out the lumber. Gah. My lovely, money-saving bunk beds are going to run me $320+!! It's all because the design uses 1x? timber. The schmancy wood costs easily four times as much as the construction-grade stuff. This does not save me money.
 
Excuse me while I sit here and pout for a few minutes.

[pout]

[pout]



Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I have a few possible bed schemes to share with you.

Scheme number one [rubs hands together scheme-ily]:

IKEA.

Bor-ing. I know. But it's a very affordable scheme. $150+tax will get me a pine bunk bed with slats. Not glam, but very functional (and paintable). Comes with a hot dog for $0.50 more. Hot dogs can make or break the decision for Captain Cheapiepants, who is nearly as ravenous as he is cheap.


Scheme number two [more scheme-y hand rubbing]:
Build my own bed out of 2x3, 2x4, and 2x6 construction-grade boards, essentially the same design as the IKEA bed, and buy the bed slats from IKEA for $21. Will run me about $90 before taxes, including the slats. Does not have an optional hot dog.

Of course a trip to IKEA for a $150 bunk bed, or even just for $21 slats will end up costing me at least $500 because I can not leave that place without dropping a boatload of cash. "Swedish for Common Sense" my ass.

So here's the question I'm asking myself:

"Is $60 worth the time it's going to take me to measure, cut, and drill the wood, because either way I'm going to be painting and assembling the bed m'self."

I'm leaning towards "yes!", because I really like to make sawdust.

What would you do?

And this is why we'll wait until spring...

Lake... before going back out to the cottage:

This photo is the picture of the day today on the Rice Lake Today website. Note the Jeep sunk into the lake.

I was reading on the board last week that other people on our island were at the cottage by boat last year on April 3!

We need to get moving on that boat purchase.

If your nose runs and your feet smell...

... you're put together upside down (or so sayeth my dad, who knows a lot about this sort of thing).

I think I might be put together upside down, but not because my feet smell.

[pause]

*sniff*

Nope. We're all good here.

No, the problem is that I've been going about things backwards:
- Go to buy a cottage; don't have any money lined up to pay for it.
- Buy an island cottage; don't have a boat.
- Buy linens for bunk beds; don't have bunk beds.

I need to back up for just a second. You need to know that I was contemplating making easy nine-patch quilts for the kids' bunkbed at the cottage. I figured I could do it for less than it would cost to buy 2 quilts. Everything I was seeing online was costing $100 or more per quilt to buy something prefabricated. Then I did some price checking on quilting cotton. It was probably going to run me about $50 to make it. But still... that's $50 in my pocket!

Then I did a bit more digging and found something online for about the same price. AND I didn't have to lose days of my life assembling it. Win-win.

I went shopping yesterday for twin-bed quilts. I fully intended to buy this:

 

Because, well, it was cheap ($50/twin).  And the colours were nice. I found it at Bed Bath and Beyond.  Captain Beaver-pincher said "I bet there's an online coupon for that store." And sure enough, after some digging he finds a coupon for 20% off. So, off we go to the store with two coupons printed out (one for him and one for me) to buy the pretty quilts.

Only, when we get there, they don't have them. (dangit!) Eric asks a clerk if they have any in stock, and they don't (dangit!) but she asks if we saw the red Nautica quilts that are on sale at the front of the store. So we toodle over and we see these:

Well, not exactly. What we saw was a quilt in a bag, but unfolded, this is what it would look like.  Not bad! It has that patchy, cottage-y, rustic quilt quality that I was after, and I love the colours (I'm a sucker for reds). Best yet: they were on sale for $39.99 (reg $109)! Factor in captain cheapiepants' coupons, and they came to $32 ea. plus tax.

WOO!

Here's another look:

Dangit I love a bargoon.
Now that I have the quilts, I have the colour scheme for the back bedroom. The walls will be tan and I'll paint the bunks red. Oh, the bunks. [shakes head] that's a story for another post.