Oh, hang it all…

I’d forgotten how insane the first two years of a new baby are. I mean, really insane. But the little one is almost two now, and suddenly I have time to do projects AND blog about them!

Last year we started doing Suzuki violin with the three older kids. Then I got violin envy and bought myself a cheap violin so I could play along with them during practice. And then I started to miss my viola, so I reclaimed it from my brother (he borrowed it in high school) and traded it in for something smaller (I have no desire to repeat the tendinitis I had in high school). So now we have four violins and one viola, and that’s a lot of cases to keep out in the living room.

Have you ever noticed that the stupidest things can keep you from doing a task? Like, the garbage can needs a new bag but you don’t really want to put one in, so you leave the cheese wrapper on the counter for the next person to deal with?

(What, that doesn’t happen in your house? The Mr. and I are going to have a talk about this…)

Around here we call it “friction” – the annoying little things that are a deterrent to doing things right. Having a laundry hamper with a lid is friction. Having to stand on a step stool to reach the healthy food is friction. Having to open your instrument case, remove the instrument, attach the shoulder rest, and remove the bow – you’d better believe that’s friction.

As any Suzuki parent will attest, it can be enough of a challenge to get your kids to practice their violins. And frankly, even I would sometimes choose not to practice – even though I love playing my viola – because I only had a minute and it would take more than half that to get my viola out and ready to play. So I started thinking about ways to store the violins so that they’re ready to go, easy to see, and still safe from bumps, scratches, and dry air. And I started thinking about how violin shops display their instruments, and after some googling and some more thinking I built this:

Can you spot the viola?

It started life as a BONDE storage unit from IKEA. We’ve had it for 12 years and have used it to store wine glasses, serving platters, candlesticks, menorahs, and basically anything that wasn’t ugly enough to put behind closed doors.

But now it’s a violin display case. Because it has a door, the violins can’t get knocked or scratched when they’re hanging there. Also because of the door, I can humidify the air a bit so the instruments don’t dry out and crack. And because the door is glass, we can see the violins hanging there, whispering “play us… play us!”

Do you need one of these? Well, then. Roll up your sleeves and gather the following:

• 1×3 dimensional lumber, length determined by the side of your cabinet and the number of instruments being stored.
• several wire hangers – one hanger is good for two instruments.
• some narrow wood lath or wood moulding, same length as the board (one for each side)
• finish nails
• carpenter’s glue
• wire cutters
• pliers

So here’s how I did it (in about 10 minutes.) First, I took a piece of 1×3 lumber and drilled holes into the side. You’ll have to measure your instruments for best results, but I found that a spacing of four inches between instruments works well for the children’s violins (1/16 to 1/4 size) and six inches are needed for a full size violin and 15″ viola. So measure those distances on each side of the board, and using a narrow drill bit, drill holes into the sides. The holes on both sides should line up with each other.

Next grab some plastic-coated wire hangers (we get them from the dry cleaners), cut off the twisted and hooked part, and straighten out the rest with your pliers. Cut a length of 12″ for each instrument you’ll be hanging. Then shape the wire into a rectangle (about 3″ on bottom and 3 1/2″ on either side), with the cut ends forming the top of the rectangle.

Partially fill the holes you drilled in the 1×3 with carpenter’s glue. Place the two cut ends of the wire rectangle into one pair of holes (one end on either side of the 1×3) and press them as far in as they will go. Hold them there for a moment so that they stay when you let go. Repeat for as many hangers are you need.

Theoretically you should be able to stop here. But I’m paranoid about my instruments, and so I added a strip of 3/4″ moulding to each side of the board (I used both glue and nails) so that the wire cannot be pulled out of the board. I recommend doing that.

Finally, you’ve got to attach the hanger to the inside top of the cabinet or shelf. I was able to take the shelf out and install the hanger while it was on the floor, but you might have to do this inside the cabinet. If you do, get someone to help you hold it up straight while you screw through the board and into the top of the cabinet. I used 4 screws and it’s quite solid.

The bottom line here is that in one fell swoop I’ve reduced the number of excess wire hangers, used up some of my scrap wood, and made it extremely easy to just pull an instrument out and play it – even for a short minute or two. The kids practice more, I practice more, and the living room looks just a bit more sophisticated.

If only all of life’s friction points were this easy to eliminate…

Case closed.

 

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Better living through chemistr- I mean, manual labour.

See that? It’s my new antidepressant.

Until a few weeks ago, I had never wielded an axe. But we had these two trees in our yard that had to come down, and given how much I love wood fires it seemed prudent to keep the wood. Unfortunately, the arborist wasn’t willing to go as far as splitting the logs for me.

That’s how I wound up on Amazon, buying an axe.

It arrived two days later. I had watched a youtube video and read a few articles about how to split wood, and so I ventured out into the backyard to get started on my woodpile. I set up a large stump as a chopping block, cleared the area around it of tripping hazards, and picked out a couple of good-looking logs to be my first victims.

I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow (pun intended.) Instead I’ll just tell you that the entire time, I felt like some Hollywood princess on a reality show about trying to live like pioneers. The axe bounced. The wood toppled over. I chipped off tiny little pieces of kindling when I’d really been aiming for the centre of the log. After an hour I was sweating profusely and my arms were shaking. I had split a grand total of ten logs. It felt good.

I definitely had that post-workout high. And then there was the satisfaction of doing something productive and useful (something I could actually physically point to and say, “that wasn’t there before, and now it is.”) It was so unlike the feeling of completing any other household chore. You know that feeling? “Look at that clean floor! I just mopped it and it looks so goo- oh. It’s okay, honey. I know you didn’t mean to spill the entire bottle of juice (sob).”

In psychology 100, we learned about “learned helplessness.” Scientists put puppies in a box with a little divider. Once the puppies were settled on one side of the box, they were given a mild electric shock. The puppies moved to the other side. At this point, the control group was left alone (only receiving shocks if they returned to the first side of the box) while the experimental group was given shocks no matter where they moved. It didn’t take long for the puppies in the experimental group to just lie down and give up. That’s learned helplessness: the feeling that whatever you do, nothing will ever change. And learned helplessness is a factor in clinical depression.

So much of our work is cerebral, ephemeral, or both. It’s easy to feel like what we do doesn’t really make a difference. There’s so little concrete work in our modern urban lives. That’s why I’ll be heading out most mornings to swing an axe, chop some wood, and achieve a better life through manual labour.

It’s good to have a goal.

Instant gratification is nice. Working hard towards a goal feels good in its own way, but there’s something fun and exciting about being able to start and finish a project in the same hour.

After installing the baby seat in our Bakfiets today, I took a look around the garage and noticed that I still had a bucket of PVC pipes and parts left over from a different project. I had intended to use it to build a bike rack for the kids, but I didn’t have enough of the right connectors for that, so I built this instead:

N has been really into street hockey lately, and R likes kicking a ball around, so I’m hoping this net will inspire some pickup games.

Want to make one yourself? It’s very, very simple. You need:

• PVC pipe – 2 of each of the following lengths: 40 inches, 32 inches, 15 inches
• PVC connectors – 6 elbow joints, sized to fit the above pipe
• Netting – I used plastic netting that is sold in the garden centre, but use whatever you like. You’ll need a piece that’s at least 48″ wide and 48″ long.
• Zip ties – these are sometimes called cable ties. Anyhow, pick up a bag of light-duty ties (should be about 50 in a bag.)
• A pipe cutter for PVC (not expensive at all, or you can have the pipe cut for you at the store.)
• Scissors

That’s really all you need. I feel like it’s a simple enough project that you don’t need a step-by-step tutorial, but for those spatially challenged folks among us, here’s a diagram of where everything goes:

Happy building! I’m going out to play.

On knowing your limits.

“I could never do that.” I hear it all the time. From friends and family commenting on my new spice pantry to random passersby admiring my cargo bike laden with three kids, people seem absolutely positive about what they can’t do. Sure, it’s good to know your limits… but I’ve come to believe that most of us don’t know our limits at all, because most of us don’t push them.

We have a concrete walkway from the street to our front porch. It’s been there for as long as the house has, and it shows. One square in particular was all cracked and uneven because of the massive tree roots that grew directly under it. It was a serious tripping hazard, and it needed to be fixed.

Our recent foray into living frugally led me to wonder how hard it could possibly be to break up about 6 square feet of concrete and pour some cement into the resulting hole. Seemed like it would be worth $200 to do it myself rather than hiring someone to do it. And so off to Home Depot I went in search of a rental jackhammer. I was thinking of something smallish, like this:

Instead, what I got was this:

The thing was so large it needed a wheeled stand for transport. I couldn’t even lift the thing. I got it home, installed the humungous drill bit (bruising my palm in the process,) and dragged it over to where I needed it. I pressed the button and pushed down on the handles. The bit skittered across the concrete and lodged itself in the lawn. I tried starting on an existing crack. It was better right up until the bit got stuck and I couldn’t pull the breaker out. The neighbours were stopping to watch. One came forward and offered to play with R while I solved my problem. In the end, the handyman who was working next door came out and helped me sledgehammer away some concrete so I could remove the breaker bit and start all over again.

After an hour and a half of inept fumbling, and with childcare provided by Sesame Street, I had finally, finally broken up the concrete into pieces the size of half a cinder block each. My arms were shaking as I dragged the tool back to the car and heaved it into the trunk. My hands were too weak to remove the bit, so I coiled up the power cord and hoped that I hadn’t caused any permanent damage to the machine. Or, you know, myself. We took the breaker back to Home Depot and then the kids and I celebrated my triumph over the concrete with frozen lemonade and cookies.

On a side note, I used a sledgehammer at various points along the way, and afterwards a contractor who was working a few houses down complimented me on my sledge technique. That just about made my day.

So now there’s a pile of rubble where a concrete slab used to be, and as soon as I can lift my arms again Mr. December and I will clear it out so I can pour the new concrete.

While I was wrestling with the stuck machine, the neighbours came over and started talking about all the former neighbours who tried to remove a concrete walkway by themselves. Apparently none of them succeeded, and the implication, of course, was that I would fail as well. My mother’s response when she heard about my adventure was, “why didn’t you hire someone? You shouldn’t do that kind of thing yourself!” But why not? Because most people don’t? Because I’m not a hugely muscular male? Because everyone imagined I couldn’t?

I could. I did. And I never would have known had I not tried. It’s reminiscent of how I thought I’d never be able to bike the kids all the way to school and all the way home without being red in the face and wishing my legs would just fall off already, and now I can comfortably bike 20 kilometres in a day and wish I had somewhere else to cycle off to. There’s no mystique to using a jackhammer or cycling a cargo bike or building a pantry inside a wall – the trick is to go and do it.

I don’t know what my limit is. I can bike 200 pounds of bike and kids (plus myself,) I can demolish a sidewalk, I can sew a quilt. I haven’t yet failed completely in anything I’ve tried. Practicality may win out in the end, and I may never truly know my limit, but I know that I haven’t hit it yet.

As the Jewish New Year approaches I’ve been more introspective than usual, and I wonder where my spiritual limits are. I feel like I’ve gotten spiritually lazy and started saying “I could never do that” rather than trying and then deciding whether I want to “do that.” It behooves me to be as brave spiritually as I’ve been physically, and start trying.

Which of your limits would you like to push?

Save

Hipsterriffic!

My hubby has a new bike.

Actually, it’s a new-to-him bike. The bike itself is very, very old, having been a bar mitzvah gift to my father-in-law (he’s now 68 years old – you do the math.) It’s been hiding in my in-laws’ garage for a long time – twenty years at the very least – but its potential was easy to spot even through decades’ worth of dust and grease. As soon as I saw it I knew it had to be Mr. December’s next bike.

Now, I’m not a bike mechanic. I didn’t know the second thing about bikes (I did know the first thing – that sometimes tires need to be pumped up and chains need to be oiled.) Fortunately for me, there’s a collective called Bike Pirates that offers a DIY bike repair space, tools and parts, and volunteers to help guide you – on a pay-what-you-can basis. Even better? Sundays are reserved for women and transfolk, with the aim of removing at least some of the barriers that exist for women and transfolk to learn to fix their bikes. In practical terms this means that when I arrived with a curious toddler, a volunteer was happy to entertain her with random bicycle parts while I worked on the bike. And worked. And worked.

I installed a new rear brake and new brake pads in front and in rear. I de-greased. I scrubbed the chain and oiled it anew. I removed the tires, checked the inner tubes, and installed new tires. I trued up the rear wheel. I replaced the gearshift cable and learned how to oil a Sturmey-Archer internal hub. I fixed the lopsidedness of the handlebars. I installed a (previously loved) kickstand.

Then I came home and installed a rear carrier rack… with zip ties, since I was missing some of the hardware. And finally, the piece de resistance… a milk crate.

Isn’t it a hipster’s dream?

Now here’s the question: Initially we decided not to re-paint the rusty parts, and to put on a milk crate instead of a fancy cargo-carrier, on the theory that it would look less shiny-new and less worth stealing. Seeing as it’s extremely retro-cool, do you think the bike is more likely or less likely to get stolen than if we had given it a new paint job?

 

I know this great hole in the wall…

No, seriously. It’s a hole… in the wall. Or it was. See?

In my eternal quest for more space in our little house, I started thinking about all the wasted space between the walls. The more I thought about it, the more I pined for a shallow pantry in which to store our canned goods. My longing turned into a burning desire, which turned into the above hole. Seeing that empty cavity inside the wall made me sigh with contentment.

Then I got to work.

After enlarging the hole and building wooden carcasses for the cabinets, I slid the carcasses into the wall:

As you can tell in this photograph, they’re not level. That’s okay, though – neither is anything else in my house.

At this point, Mr. December frowned and complained about the gaps between the carcasses and the edge of the wall. I tried to explain the magic of trim and quarter-round, but he didn’t seem to get it… until the trim was all in place:

Suddenly it looks like something you might actually want in your kitchen, right?

I painted the trim…

And added doors to match the rest of our kitchen (thank God for IKEA)…

And then filled it up.

Oh, and we painted the inside my favourite colour… so now I smile every time we open our pantry. And you would not BELIEVE how much stuff it holds! The shelves are only deep enough to hold one can, which means we can always see everything in there. This pantry has freed up three whole drawers in my IKEA pull-out pantry, which now proudly house the small appliances that were cluttering my countertop. I love this thing. It’s the best hole in the wall ever.

And now I’m eyeing a huge expanse of wall in the hallway where our bedrooms are. With no plumbing and no electricity running through it, that wall is wasted space just waiting for a purpose. I can’t wait to build floor-to-ceiling cupboards there to store toilet paper, lightbulbs, cleaning supplies, extra toiletries, craft materials…

If you could have a cupboard like this anywhere in your home, where would you put it? And what would you fill it with?

Tutorial time: Make your own Scooter board!

I’m back. I won’t go into it too heavily, but the knee problems led to no biking which led to some depression, and then I got mastitis while we were in Niagara Falls for the weekend, and I’ve just been one sorry example of humanity since then. But all through it I’ve been creating things, lots of things, and I’m going to share one of them with you now.

It’s a scooter board.

Never heard of one? Neither had I, really. But K has been in occupational therapy to work on some issues, and our OT introduced us to scooter boards. They’re just what this one looks like: a board with four casters. You can do quite a lot with one, including strengthening abs and back muscles, improving bilateral coordination, developing motor planning skills… it’s also just a fun toy.

Now, I’m too cheap to run out and buy every piece of equipment that K uses in her sessions (although heaven knows I’d LOVE a cuddle swing,) but I’m more than happy to make anything and everything I can… especially if I already have the materials.

Do you want to make a scooter board? Keep reading…

You’ll need:

• a piece of wood that looks big enough and comfy enough for your child to sit on (let’s say 12×12″ at  minimum)
• four identical casters, rated high enough for your child’s weight
• sixteen screws not longer than the thickness of your wooden board
• an electric drill/screwdriver
• pencil
• some quilt batting, foam, or an old towel (optional)
• fabric to cover the padding (optional) – this can be an old sheet, an old t-shirt, or a piece of fabric you love. It doesn’t really matter.
• staple gun and staples (optional)
• hammer

Step One: turn your board upside down. Place the casters on the board where you want them attached (I recommend as close to each corner as possible, so it’s harder for the board to flip over) and use the pencil to mark the holes. Pre-drill pilot holes (very small holes) – this makes the wood less likely to split when you drive in the screws. Attach each caster with the screws.

Once all four casters are attached, you can call it a day. That is, if your board has nice smooth edges and isn’t so smooth that your child can slide around on the top. At this point, my scooter board looked like this:

If you want a nice padded board, stick with me.

Step Two – Wrap the top of the board with the batting (or old towel, etc), making sure that there is enough to wrap to the underside of the board. Secure the batting around the edges of the board’s underside using the staple gun. Tip: if the staples don’t go in all the way, gently tap them with a hammer until they’re flat against the board.

Step Three – Wrap the fabric around the board, making sure that the edges extend past the edges of the batting (padding.) fold the edges so that the raw (cut) edge of the fabric is hidden, then staple the folded part to the bottom of the board.

Step Four – The corners are tricky. Do your best to wrap them neatly around the casters. If you feel like getting really fancy you can remove the casters, stretch the fabric underneath them, and re-install the casters. I just did some judicious snipping and wrapping, trying to do the corners the way I would wrap a present. Glue down the corners with fast-drying glue of some kind (hot glue is a great choice, but I didn’t have any.) Failing that, use duck tape.

Aaaand… you’re done! For a great abs workout, sit on your scooter board and use both legs at the same time to pull yourself along. Or you can lie on your stomach and pull yourself around with your arms, noticing how dirty the baseboards are from this angle. Whatever you do with it, happy scooting!

Oh, and a word of commonsense caution: store this out of the children’s reach. If they were to leave this on the floor after playing and you were to step on it in the middle of the night, you’d be pretty banged up. Just sayin’.

Frustration!

Remember that TV commercial for the board game Frustration? “Frustration can be fun!” No, no it can’t.

I’ve been working on a very intricate quilt for the last couple of weeks. It’s been the bane of my existence. Anyhow, I finally got the top pieced and I spray-basted the whole thing together with the batting and the back. I started quilting. And then…

CLUNK.

Ugh. Really? the thread started bunching up under the quilt like little multicoloured bird nests. I sighed, took the machine apart, cleaned, re-threaded, changed the needle, and started to quilt anew.

CLUNK.

Grrrr. Maybe I missed a small piece of thread that’s stuck between two metal pieces? I repeated the whole cleaning and re-threading process. Now to fire the machine up again…

CLUNK.

I’m stuck. I’ll have to take the machine into the shop on Monday and hope that it doesn’t take them long to fix the timing (I’m pretty sure that’s the issue.) I suppose this is what a backup machine is good for… although I’m not sure if my darning foot will fit on the IKEA machine, so I might be out of luck as far as the quilting goes. Maybe I can work on some of my smaller projects.

Or maybe I should turn my attention to the clutter-pit that is my house. First up – the calendar area.

(Can I maybe just go back to bed and hope for de-cluttering elves to show up tonight while I sleep?)

Choosing to love our small home

Our house is small; I’ve mentioned that many times before.

I’ve also mentioned that we’re unsure of whether we should renovate or move when this house becomes too cramped for us.

After a lot of research, hours of discussion, and many spreadsheets (my husband is an engineer. Every major decision gets its own spreadsheet,) we have decided to take the third option. We have decided to stay put.

It sounds odd, but there it is. When we asked the question, “what problem are we trying to solve?” the answer was that our house feels crowded and cramped, and that there isn’t room for our stuff. Our STUFF. Not “there’s no room for our kids to play” or “we don’t have space to entertain the way we’d like.” We have plenty of space for the people… but not for the stuff. Am I the only person who thinks that’s a really sickening reason to move? Talk about first world problems.

We know that we have too much stuff. We have so much stuff that we don’t even know what most of it is. During the summer Mr. December and I spent a couple of days clearing space in our basement rec room, and we unearthed most of Mr. December’s life as a bachelor as well as much of our early married life; quirky cocktail shakers, a once-prized alcohol dispenser, an entire box of things to re-gift, even dishes that came from his student hovel. All that stuff made its way to the curb economy. Whatever remained went in the garbage. And we still have more stuff.

Our house isn’t like an episode of Hoarders. We’re more like the people who call Hoarders and offer themselves up only to be told that they’re nowhere near as cluttered as the TV show’s guidelines require. But there’s stuff everywhere, and when we remove it there’s more stuff, and it’s just too much. It’s enough to make me think – fleetingly – of how nice it would be to start from absolute scratch the way people do after a natural disaster. Not that I would ever, EVER wish for any kind of disaster to befall us (or anyone); it’s just the thought of being able to have only exactly what we need without having to dig through boxes and piles of our old stuff.

Anyhow, as I was saying… that’s not a reason to move. We love our home, and we’ve invested so much of ourselves (also our money, but moreso our time, sweat, and creative energy) in making this house work for us. We don’t want to leave, and that’s that.

And since we’ve decided to stay put, something has to give. Our new plan is to get rid of all the junk over the next few months, and then make small modifications to the house that will enable us to stay here as long as possible. It’ll be a great winter for DIY projects (did I mention I got a great deal on a circular saw and a table saw? $100 for both!)

Someday, hopefully soon, I’d like to take you all on a photo tour of my house so that you can see why we love it so much. In the meantime, tell me: do you move frequently, or do you like to stay in one home for a long time? Do you find moving easy? Difficult? I want to know.

Little Sukkah in the Big City

For those of you not keeping track of the Jewish calendar, we’re now halfway through the festival of Sukkot, the next-to-last in our month-long marathon of holidays (trust me, the Christmas season has nothing on the Jewish holiday season. We’ve pretty much got at least two festive meals a week for four weeks.) I love Sukkot. Building and decorating the sukkah takes care of any residual Christmas-decorating envy I may have, and it’s a mitzvah to invite guests into the sukkah, which I love to do.

We built our first sukkah several years ago, on the driveway. It was lovely (if poorly lit) until the wind started up one night. The canvas walls acted like an enormous sail, and the next morning we found our entire sukkah lying on its side on our next-door neighbour’s lawn. The next year we tried the backyard, which meant that bringing food and drinks to the sukkah involved walking through the back hallway and through the third bedroom, then down the porch steps, sometimes in the dark. Also, there was no urgency involved in taking it down; I joke that we’re the Jewish equivalent of people who haven’t taken down their Christmas tree by June, because last year’s sukkah was still up as of this past May.

Anyhow, after last year’s debacle in which I pressured Mr. December to set up the sukkah, which we then failed to use (it wasn’t my fault! I gave birth on Erev Sukkot!) he declared that I was on my own. I recruited a friend’s husband to help me build (bartered, actually, for some groceries and a place to bury their placenta – true story.) And build we did! I even used a circular saw to cut the lumber. And the reason I had to cut the lumber? This year we have a new location, the best yet! This year our sukkah is on the front porch.

The banner says “welcome” in Hebrew. The gate keeps the babies inside. The roof, as per Jewish law, is made of a natural material (bamboo) and lets in the rain and the sun. Come inside…

It’s a mitzvah to decorate the sukkah. Some people use strings of lights and tinsel (especially in Israel, where they don’t really associate that stuff with Xmas,) others decorate with fruits, vegetables, and other harvest-themed decor, and still others hang posters of Israel, of great Rabbis, and of quotes from the Torah. I’ve decided that since Sukkot is also called “the season of our happiness” we should decorate the sukkah as we would for a big, joyful party.

All of our decorations are handmade by us, and they dance beautifully when the wind blows through. You might recognize my reusable fabric streamers from last Purim.

A paper chain is an easy craft even for a preschooler. For this one I cut strips from gift bags that were too shabby to be re-gifted. I handed them over to K along with a roll of tape and she spend the next hour engrossed in making the chain.

This banner, and the “welcome” banner, were made using a batik technique involving blue school glue and craft paint. This one depicts a lulav and etrog, or as Wikipedia calls them, the Four Species.

We even have a light in our sukkah. The front porch light is plenty bright in the evenings, and it doesn’t require us to run extension cords at all.

Oh, and those paper balls are from a tutorial by Creative Jewish Mom. Aren’t they cool? I love them so much that I might just bring them inside and hang them in the playroom when Sukkot is over.

So that’s our sukkah. Thanks for visiting, and Chag Sukkot Sameach – Happy Sukkot!