Category Keeping Up Appearances
Sunday, sunny Sunday
What do you do when you have a rental car in London on a sunny Sunday? Return the car early and spend the day at home! Haha, I know what you’re all thinking: “Riiight. Who are you and what have you done to my brother/boyfriend/hot role model.” But I kid you not. The point of […]
Window boxes!
From some very young age (maybe 8 or 9?) when I first saw my mother’s photo albums from her time as a student in Germany, I have wanted to (1) live in Europe, and (2) have flower boxes in my windows. This has been an elusive goal. I’ve done parts of it — this is […]
Christmas flowers
At Thanksgiving I told Lady I wasn’t getting a Christmas tree. [gasp; maternal gears start churning] Then I told her my plan to get Christmasy flowers instead. [whew] So that’s what I did today. Got up before dawn (which, let’s be honest, means about 8:00am in London in December), caught the bus to the Columbia […]
Fall clean-up
Nothing like a little yard work to keep the home-going blues away for a little while longer. (Also? I love my leaf vacuum.)
There may be a reason you haven’t seen pumpkins used as vases before
Cute and whimsical for a seasonal arrangement? Yes. Good at being a vase? I’ll let you be the judge: After only five days I discovered that the pumpkin had melted into a mushy, moldy, leaking mess. I salvaged what I could….
Who needs a place to stay in Seattle?
It’s official: Seattle’s hottest AirBnB property has just gone live and is open for business. I mean, if I’m not going to stay there, why shouldn’t you? You just have to promise you’ll let me back in when I move back from London. Here’s the listing. It’s perfect for weekend get-aways, longer-term corporate arrangements, and […]
Priorities
When you’ve just moved in and don’t have dishes, bed linens or toilet paper, the first thing to get is a jar of lilies and a mobile.
Fire and fury
My landlady’s definition of a proper clean and my definition of a proper clean are not the same. I had her clean the flat twice before I moved in, and while the second attempt was a much more valiant effort, the bathroom still wasn’t habitable. Because mildew. Even after two allegedly “professional” cleans there was […]
An awkward first Friday
First Friday in London, I’ve got this world-class city at my fingertips and what do I do? Umm, well . . . At about 7:00pm, I pulled my head out of my work emails and realized that despite the glorious sunlight still streaming over the city (we’re farther north than Calgary, so the days are […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 