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Meat space

Meat space

Apologies for a really quiet fall. I Have been spending time in the meat space as part of the GREAT DISILLUSIONMENT I have been having with the online world.

Sorry that this is more of a list than a post, but you get what you pay for!


Bringing in the herbs

It has generally been a fairly busy autumn season as Thanksgiving & Halloween are generally chaotic times and then runs smack dab into Christmastide, which is just bonkers. Halloween is also our favourite holiday of the year so we tend to do a LOT at that time of the year.

I had a free night hotel reward I had to use so we headed to Kingston for the weekend to do Fort Fright at Fort Henry. It was only a day trip but it was good to get away and the kids love Fort Fright. Our friends invited us for Thanksgiving so we baked some pies before we left to bring with us on the Monday for dinner.

Our kids really lean into it by going to a local farm for their myriad haunted houses and other activities. We also do the obligatory pumpkin carving night. I love that our teens still are into dressing up in elaborate costumes and heading out to trick-or-treat. Gen-Z is truly amazing and I really like how they are more than happy to savour every moment of their childhoods. That meant we hosted 8 children for dinner before they headed out into the night. Mr. Tucker and I stayed back and handed out candy to the neighbourhood kids and it was a pretty great night.


 

My book-slash-travel-slash-trivia-slash-craft club went to Montreal for a weekend in November. We took the train which is still an absolute treat even for my adult self. We managed to grab a table together so we could chat and it was a relaxing fall ride through the countryside. We booked an Airbnb which was mostly accessible and right in the middle of where we wanted to be. We did all of the requisite Montreal things: lunch at Swartz’s, Bagels from a variety of amazing places, and a fun trip to Notre Dame cathedral for the sound and light show. But also we just chilled out, played games and chatted. It was a lovely weekend with friends.


Ok, we ate a LOT

Mr. Tucker took a 3-day knife-making course in November as well, in which he crafted a blade from a metal ingot, sewed a leather pouch for it, and carved a wood handle as well. It was an intense three days but he ended up with a fantastic Pukka knife that he made with his own hands.

We also did a knit Viking bracelet class at the Tool Library which was super interesting. It was my birthday gift to myself and we both came home with cool bracelets. Hopefully they will host another class in the new year because even though I was slow, I really enjoyed the process.

Mr. Tucker and I did most of our Christmas shopping in October and the beginning of November. This year, instead of buying Advent calendars we made them. They kids actually loved them and asked us to do that again next year. It was just things like lip balms, tea, face masks and stickers but it was fun. Right after Remembrance day, we finished all of the wrapping. Then all that was left was to nab the book-a-day Advent calendars from our local used book store and we were done for the year. I know that this seems INTENSE but December is a chaotic month between my birthday, Christmas parties, school concerts, the Winter Solstice party and Christmas that getting all of the gifts out of the way means I can lean in and enjoy the events…


Pics with Krampus at Coffin Creek


Decorating the tree


Advents

…and events there were! There were two PWHL games we got to end the year with, which was a teaser for January. I was sadly sick in bed on my birthday which was also the evening of The Eldest’s Christmas concert, so I was forced to miss it. We did manage to have cake, so YAY? I did manage to have my monthly dinner with friends from Dragon Boat and we went to the restaurant where my Stepson is chef, which was, as usual, amazing.

The parties were great: we have been having a friend Christmas get-together for around 20 years now and it has become more and more subdued over the years. In the beginning, we used to have these absolute ragers of food and drink where we were up until 6am still chatting. But we’ve become more sleepy in our old age and the party starts and ends earlier. I’m not made about it: it’s kind of lovely to have friends you can age with where you are all on the same page as the years go on. While we were out seeing friends, the kids were baking and decorating 4 dozen cupcakes for The Mission’s Cupcakes4Christmas event. They did an amazing job. I truly love having teenagers. They’re great!


We hosted a wonderfully quiet Winter Solstice party where we drank hot apple cider and made painted wood ornaments, strung dried citrus garlands and tossed our wishes into the fire with our hopes for 2025. It was low key and stress free, which is exactly how I like it. The kids invited friends so we got to share our 25-year-strong tradition with some new folks. It is one of my favourite nights of the year. A peaceful evening of fire, friends, food and introspection.

Naturally, that lead us right into Yuletide. Gone are the people-pleasing years of large dinners with the entire family descending on our home until Mr. Tucker and I were crushed by the weight of expectations, food, and alcohol. In the good way that the pandemic years turned everything on its head, we were happy to not have to host and so when restrictions let up, we…just didn’t host. The kids loved the new low-key Christmas where they didn’t have to dress up and perform like Circus animals for relatives with huge expectations. Shocking to no one: no one invited us to their houses when we stopped hosting. So it was, indeed, a fantastic decision.

Now we have a lovely Christmas Eve with my Dad and his girlfriend and my cousin (and his new partner joined us this year, which was amazing!). We order Chinese food, catch up and have a few drinks. Christmas morning starts late, we unwrap gifts and chill out drinking coffee or tea before Mr. Tucker whips up some crêpes for brunch and then we veg in our PJs and watch movies or shows. This year we watched the very last season of What We Do in the Shadows.

Finally, on Boxing Day my Stepson and his girlfriend come over and Mr. Tucker and my Stepson whipped up a feast before we have drinks and play Euchre. A perfect Christmastide, if I do say so myself.

So now we are smack dab into the Omen Days (intercalary days) or as I like to call them, “the days where we are made of just chocolate and cheese.” It ends with Women’s Little Christmas (or the Epiphany) (which I also wrote about last year). The plan is for the kids to have a NYE sleepover with their friends, a games night with our favourite folks, The Lytles and to generally putter around until school starts on January 6th.


Some last-minute wrapping on Yule Eve

Of course, so many other things have been happening including a bit of a personal renaissance (more about that soon) but it all comes down to this: I had planned to do a lot more in-person activities in 2024 and I DID IT. I had thought I was slacking on this goal but looking back even over the past quarter – I did a lot of stuff out in the Meat Space!

But I am getting ahead of myself…goals from 2024 and a wrap up is soon to come!

Kitchen reno results!

Kitchen reno results!


A very unimpressed Cooper

Well, it’s done! While I said in my last post that it would probably cost less than 4 replacement cabinet doors, it was closer to 11. Oh well! I guess a potential career as an estimator is off the table. We also didn’t end up using the handyman. Mr. Tucker managed all of the tiling himself.

We only put the finishing touches on the kitchen early this week and although it took a little over three weeks to finish, that is mostly because we have other things on the go as well. We went to Kingston overnight on Thanksgiving weekend & our kid’s activities have started up again so between meals and work and activities and social stuff, we have eked out a kitchen refresh as well. I am terribly impressed with ourselves, if I do say so myself.


Chaos reigns!

The majority of the kudos belongs to Mr. Tucker who removed the metal peel-and-stick tile (which was glued on – LOLSOB!) and then pre-prepped the wall for filler/patching, base coat and sanding. He then tiled 25 square feet of wall, painted all of the other walls multiple times (including the stairs to the basement and part of the hallway), built the island and put up new light fixtures. Meanwhile, the kids and I took the cabinet doors outside and sanded and painted them. I am making it sound so easy but quite frankly, it was a ton of work and Mr. Tucker spent most of his non-working, non-family care time working on it. But on a positive note: the cabinet doors don’t hit the light fixtures now!

We also purged and organized a lot of the stuff we had in the kitchen, relegating some stuff downstairs (holiday items like cookie tins, mason jars and a pan large enough to fit a turkey), selling some higher-end items and putting some stuff up on our local Buy Nothing group. I still need to do a few things such as sell the Ikea Kallax storage we had in the kitchen but overall we have set things up to be way more efficient than it had been.

With new closed storage of the island, we now are able to hide things that once looked like it was overflowing from baskets and piled on surfaces. We also bought some Ikea organizing pieces – such as a few knife holders for a drawer and shelves so we could store mugs and dishes on two levels within a cupboard. I will also admit that we splurged on plants, plant pots and some hanging acrylic shelving for the windows. I also received a free fern and a free palm tree from people in the neighbourhood.

The challenge is that if it were up to me, we would have a bright & colourful quirky kitchen with green or yellow cabinets. If it were up to Mr. Tucker, we would have a cold, modern and dark industrial kitchen. These are two fundamentally opposite styles so we decided to settle on a classic white look: something not too trendy so that it doesn’t look dated in a few years but also something we can jazz up with pockets of colour and personalized decorative bits. It looks pretty sterile now but I am sure as the days go on and we bring more herbs inside and find hangers for our dish towels & put up some art, it will warm up a bit.

At the end of the day, this is what we spent:

To be honest, we had to compensate for some lack of knowledge with money. Because the walls were in bad shape, when Mr. Tucker tried to prime them they bubbled up. So he ended up running out and buying a special sealer to rectify that. We probably could have found an alternative (we did watch some videos that suggested diluted white glue) but we are always pushing the boundaries of time/money/life so I consider that a learning tax. Overall, the paint and tiles make up the largest category at 42.4%, the new lights and the island were about 34.2% of the cost, and the decorative items were 23.4%. As the kids say: I’m not mad about it. Considering we got a quote for $9000 for a small (2×5) backsplash and to replace two countertops (bathroom and kitchen, less than 5 ft each) last year in the condo – and that guy wanted to tile over the backsplash tiles that were already there – I consider this a solid deal. Besides, we got to learn new skills and have the satisfaction of finishing a DIY project.

The one thing I did not factor into the costs was out Tool Library Membership. I suppose for accuracy’s sake we could toss on a little over 1/3 of that cost for $100 adding to the total here. But honestly, we get an OTL membership every year and it is difficult to price out the value of it because it depends on what we borrow and how many classes we take there. So I decided to leave it out. We feel that the OTL is a super important resource for our community so even if we didn’t use it at all one year, we would still pay for it.

In the end, I am pleased as punch with how it turned out. I had never noticed how reluctant I was to spend any time in that dark gray kitchen. But the kids love the new island and sit at the bar stools (Ikea – $20 each!) and chat with us when we are making dinner. Behold, the glory of the new kitchen:


(Yeah, I could have maybe tidied and staged it better for the final photos but this is real life, not instagram)