100 Posts!

Wilt Chamberlain celebrates our
milestone with us, 51 years ago.

We've officially published 100 posts on our blog! That seems like a lot, so we're going to celebrate it. 

Since we started blogging on October 29, 2012 (almost exactly 5 months ago) a number of things have happened:

• 5.76 Million babies were born! (Welcome one and all!)
• 2.34 Million people passed away. (Our condolences to the families.)
• We've had a change in Pope! (Congrats, Catholics!)
• 159.2 cm of snow fell on our fair city! (Good thing a bunch of it disappeared, or else it would almost be up to my head!)
• Something called the "Harlem Shake." (And if you haven't heard of it, count yourself lucky!)

We're really excited to hit this milestone, because at times the blog has been a bit of a challenge. (I've definitely almost quit more than a handful of times!) It's hard to keep being vulnerable, sometimes I still feel embarrassed when people talk about it. Philip makes a joke that my dream for the blog is to have thousands of readers I don't know, but none of the people I do know. That's obviously a joke, because I love that our family and friends have been so supportive, but it sure is a lot easier to write these posts from the heart when I don't think about the people I know who will devote a moment in their day to reading it!

It's been a great project for Philip and I to tackle together; we both love writing and this is a fun way to do that as a couple. It's also a great challenge, pushing us to be disciplined with writing every day, coming up with new and interesting content, and hopefully pushing us to get more done on our house. We've had to branch out from house projects a little bit because we don't have limitless amounts of time and money to devote to renovating, but it's also forced us to develop an appreciation for the little things: a drawer better organized here, a small painted canvas there, even a random trip to Urban Barn.

Looking ahead, we have some exciting plans for the blog. We've heard from you iPad and iPhone users about your frustrations trying to comment on our posts, and we're working toward a resolution. As well, we have an exciting series or two up our sleeves. And more than anything, we're looking forward to reporting our bathroom progress (as you'll see from our April's upcoming banner, the weather's finally starting to warm up here in Winnipeg, which means we might be able to embrace our insulation challenges!). And after the bathroom, well, the To-Do list has some exciting things in store!
 
What would you like to see from our blog in the next 100 posts? Leave your answer in the comments below (or iOS users, go ahead and leave them on the Facebook page).

Quick note before we go: tomorrow is Good Friday, a statutory holiday here in Canada, so there will be no new post. Philip will return with the exciting conclusion to his "(Pipe) Dream Sports Room" next Friday, but you can look forward to another "Sparks and Recreation" this Saturday for your Easter Weekend reading pleasure.

2013 Resolutions: Philip

Cass asked me to share my New Year's Resolutions with you. Last year, I stuck with my unpublished goals through until May. This year, I hope publishing them puts me over the top.

Now, everyone has goals about diet and exercise, relationships, and even faith spirituality. And those are good, so briefly: I want to exercise every day, max out at one sweet a week, keep a bimonthly date night with my wife, and get back in the habit of having daily time with my Bible (or YouVersion app, as the case may be). But those resolutions are boring to read; you've seen them a million times. What I want to do is focus on the New Year's Resolutions that are a little less common. Like...

1. Get two rejection notices.

Some of you may know that I'm a bit of a writer, with dreams of being an author/screenwriter/playwright (really, whatever storytelling medium will have me, poetry slams included). But so far I haven't gone and sent anything off. Why? Maybe I'm too nervous. Maybe I just don't know where to start. But this year I intend to start changing that. And aiming for two rejection notices is a bit of a hedge; as long as I send stuff a couple of works off to a publisher, I either make some strides forward in my writing career or I achieve my resolution!

2. Watch this year's Best Picture nominees before next year's ceremony.

That gives me a year to watch 9 movies? I can do that. Part of striving to be a great artist is understanding what makes art great. Being truthful and discovering your voice are great, but if you don't have a good understanding how to deliver, you're back to square one.

As an aside, maybe I'm just starting to hit the target demographic, but this year's batch seems pretty strong. ZeroDark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Lincoln, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Argo; these are all movies I wanted to see as they've come out. I've missed them all so far, but there's no reason for that to continue.

Cass: I'm going to pretend I don't know Philip only wants to see this for Jennifer Lawrence. 

3. Get everything upstairs that's not related to the kitchen done.

Okay, so our bathroom reno has started to drag on longer than a Fiona Apple album title (h/t Hollywood Prospectus podcast). But we will get it done! And we will get the spare bedroom done! And the living room-ish! (It butts up against the kitchen, and our plans for it can only be fully realized when we can scratch together the coin to actually finish the kitchen.)

Having a beautiful living space is a top priority. Can't wait to share it with you as we make that happen.

4. Rediscover my At-Work Mojo

Last year I was kicking butt at the beginning of the year. But then some plans changed due to my company's integration with some of our sister companies. And then we lost one of the employees in our department and a lot of his work landed on my desk. And somewhere in that maelstrom, the je-ne-sais-quoi that had me at the top of my game at the beginning of the year faded.

It's time to refocus on what makes me great and what holds me back, so I can release my inner Kraken.

5. Run a marathon.

Ha. Haha. Hahahahahaha. I'm totally kidding. While I have the utmost respect for those who can, the reasons I don't want to run a marathon are legion (although if you quizzed me right now, the fact that many marathoners lose control of their, ummm, plumbing during the race would be reasons #1 through 18 on my list). But being able to jog 5K without dying would be nice. Maybe I'll work toward that.

So those are my resolutions. I hope to be back on the Friday Phil horse soon; as Cass mentioned, I'm directing a play that I adapted (writing pretty much all of it last week), but who knows, you may have me back sooner than later. (That is, if the blog will have me back!) This week, tell us what you're looking forward to most in 2013. 

Learning to Blog

If there's one thing this blog has forced me to do (okay it's forced me to do a lot of things), it's probably become a bit more tech-savvy. I was always pretty good on the computer as a kid, but this is a lot more advanced at times. 

One of my goals is to improve my blog every week. When we started it was sort of on a whim and so since then we've added a lot of features including:

• Pages like About Us, Take the Tour, and Our To-Do List
• Weekly polls
• Icons allowing you to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, & Pinterest
• A blog roll showing some of the other blogs we read
• List of popular posts with the most reads (for the record our highest ranked post so far is my very first crafting experience at 109 reads). 
• An ever-changing banner which we're hoping to update every month.

I still have an incredibly long way to go, but I've started dabbling in Photoshop to take my iPhone photos up a notch, and hopefully I'll learn some html at some point so I can add some more features to the blog and have some freedom to customize. Maybe someday the banner will even be designed by me instead of Philip...okay that will never happen. 

Today I added a search feature to the page which allows you to search a keyword and it will find the posts that include it. This should make it easier to find that post you're looking for about our bedroom inspiration, or yard work, or learn more about how I organize my day-to-day tasks. 

Some other goals for the blog are to start having some guest bloggers (if anyone's interested - let me know), feature some of your houses and renovation projects, and keep up with blogging every day even when it gets tough. I'm also working on creating a page that categorizes all of our posts in an easy to find way so that you can easily see all of the posts about a certain room in our house or a certain type of project. 

We'd love to hear from you about features you'd like us to add to the blog. One thing we have to figure out is why iPhones/iPads can't comment, that's an issue. Any ideas for our January banner update? Features on other blogs that you'd like to see here as well? Let us know what you're thinking in the comments, we love to hear from you.

I try not to have any posts without pictures (add that to the list of goals) so I went on a hunt for a relevant joke/comic to add here...this is so unrelated, but it made me laugh so here goes. 

Another goal: all pictures should have captions. 

Poll Results 2 (Must think of a more clever title)

This past week we asked you to let us know what kind of blog reader you are. The results are in, and most of you love reading blogs, and some of you have your own (for those of you that do, share your link! We'd love to share our readers with you and add your blog to our own Google Reader). 

In the spirit of blog reading and sharing, we thought we'd each share our top three blogs to read with a little bit about why we like them. 

Philip's Picks

Since I’m sure Cass has covered the renovation/decor beat off pretty well (and, honestly, she’s the one who monitors the daily goings-on in that world for me), I’ll cover three of my favourite blogs from the non-renosphere.

Grandland's Hollywood Prospectus - Philip's top blog choice

1. Grantland’s Hollywood Prospectus and The Triangle blogs

These aren’t typical blogs as I like to think of them, because their authorship is so diverse and so similar to the more traditional journalistic endeavours of Grantland’s main oeuvre. But I’m a sports-and-pop culture-oholic, and this is where those passions intersect. Shane Ryan’s daily “About Last Night” piece is a daily must-read on The Triangle side; it’s like a brief version of The Daily Show or SNL Weekend Update; I get the top headlines along with a comedic take on said headlines. On the Hollywood Prospectus side, Dave Jacoby’s “Reality TV Fantasy League” infotains me by providing überanalysis of shows I don’t even watch (or would otherwise care about whatsoever).

2. Donald Miller’s Storyline blog

Donald Miller is my alltime favourite author. His blend of memoir narrative, his authentic take on the struggles and discoveries of faith, and his wry sense of humour hooked me a few years ago when I really needed it. It can be a bit dry sometimes; I worry sometimes that Miller’s losing the humour aspect of his voice. But as far as challenging content and understanding the nature of leading and living a great story, Miller can’t be beat. And if you’re looking for more humour with your daily dose of inspiration, check out this honourable mention for Jon Acuff’s blog (author of the also-good Stuff Christians Like blog).

3. All the others I read infrequently.

I don’t read that many blogs regularly in large part because of the house this site is dedicated to and, you know, the need for gainful employment. But I’ll send a quick shout-out to the following occupants of my Google Reader:

Battleship Pretension: Cinema podcast with infrequent articles

Bryan Allain: Author, blogging coach, and resident of Intercourse, Pennsylvania

Chad Gibbs: Author of “God and Football,” which would only be more perfect if the football it talked about would be Canadian and not college.

Cory Edwards: Hollywood director of the first “Hoodwinked” and a hilarious guy I found through the Steelehouse Podcast (R.I.P.).

Hyperbole and a Half: Allie Brosh doesn’t update this anymore , but the archive of her crudely-in-MS Paint life experiences is worth it alone.

Rachel Held Evans: Rachel Held Evans is the author of a couple books that make conservative Christians upset, and that’s a calling in itself.

Seth Godin: Because I’m in Marketing and this is required reading.

The Big Picture: Boston.com’s amazing curated galleries of large photographs from around the world.

The Oatmeal: Matthew Inman is the hilarious (albeit oft-crude) illustrator behind this comic and the book 5 Very Good Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Face.

XKCD: I don’t always get it, but XKCD is an imaginative comic lampooning science, geek culture, and everyday life.

Cassondra's Picks

Young House Love - Cass' favourite blog by far.

1. Young House Love

I've talked about this blog in the past, and it's because it began my love for blogs, as well as really helping us to gain confidence in our DIYbilities. John & Sherry explain things really well and come up with really fun projects, plus Clara & Burger make my day. Their blog is definitely what inspired this blog and we only hope to one day be as cool as them (although our friend Brittany said one day we'll be as famous as Oprah & Tyra combined - not sure if we'd need the Tyra boost if we were as famous as Oprah...but we'll take it!) Through this blog I also learned about Katie Bower and her blog is also a great light read.

2. The Faux Martha
This is the most beautiful food blog I've come across. Wonderful recipes, but the presentation of them is what really gets me. The photography is outstanding and the way that she describes food is delicious. I've made a couple of things from her site already, including rhubarb ice cream and definitely recommend it! 

3. Ditto.
I'm in the same boat as Philip as far as picking a third blog, I read a lot of blogs but they are all equal in my heart! Here are some more blogs I love:
Making it Lovely
Cape 27 Blog
East Coast Creative
iHeart Organizing
Ugly Duckling House
7th House on the Left
Our Fifth House

We hope that you'll enjoy reading these blogs as much as we do! If you visit any of these blogs leave them a comment letting them know and maybe even tell them where you heard of them :). Philip has been a long time blog reader, and I am more new to the whole concept but was a quick learner. Definitely a blog addict now and talk about the bloggers as though they are my real friends...

On another note, Christmas is coming fast! With December beginning this week, we'll start chatting about Christmas a little bit more and the decor/renos we have in store for that time of year. You've already seen my pine cone craft which was a bit of an early Christmas decor project, and you have lots of that to look forward to. Answer our poll this week about how prepared you are for Christmas - I'm sure you're beating us.

A Monday Morning Lesson in Blogging

Good Monday morning to you all! Today we have a short post, followed by the introduction of a new feature (we'll make you wait with breathless anticipation for that, realizing you can at any time scroll down to find out what it is).

But first, on behalf of Cass and myself, as relative blogging newbies ourselves, allow us to share a quick tip for all those who aspire to write a blog themselves, something we learned this morning the hard way:

Save your posts in more than one place.

Sound basic enough? Well, it isn't always. Sites like Blogger/Blogspot seduce you into using their own word processing utilities by making them so darn simple and being not-always-that-awesome at importing formatting from other word processors like Word.
But then you may run into a scenario where, just maybe, you send the post you spent time refining over to your husband for some last-minute editing, and perhaps he makes an edit and--realizing that he doesn't want to make edits to the original--attempts to undo the edit he just made by using the Microsoft Word shortcut CTRL+Z. And, who knows, what if he mis-hits (I realized this word needed a hyphen when spellcheck suggested something rather rude) the Z and somehow delete all the text.
And, you never know, maybe he doesn't realize that Blogger has its own built in Undo button. And maybe he'll try and close the document before Blogger autosaves, not knowing Blogger autosaves anyway when you hit "Close". And then you get a panicky phone call from your aforementioned husband with the fateful words "It's gone."
Not that that happened to us this morning. Noooo. That would be something that would happen to less experienced computer users than us.
In totally unrelated news, today's planned introduction of Cass' delightful system of organizing our household chores and scheduling regular maintenance here at Grandpa Joe's House will have to wait for the afternoon. We promise it'll be good.

And now, the new feature you've been waiting for... POLLS.

We know that now that U.S. election season is over, everyone's wondering where they'll get their weekly dose of statistics that mean oh-so-much to your daily life, right?
Leave it to GJH to fill the void with--to the right of this post--a new polling gadget.
Actually, we've put it up because we love to hear from our readers in the comments and this will be a great way to get even more interaction with you guys.
This week we're asking what your personal decorating style is. (As you may know from our About Us page, I had a lot of no trouble answering this question.) 
Then, alongside my regular Friday post (for which Cass is still hoping you suggest a better name than TGIP),  Cass will do her best Nate Silver impression and break down the stats and discussing our own answer to the poll question, so we're hoping to get lots of responses from you before then! If the four options available don't dangle your chad (yes, we're stuck in 2000), feel free to add your own individual response to the comments!

On a side note, we've heard some people have had trouble with commenting, if you can tell me what the issue is I'd love to get that figured out because we really like to hear from you! (For instance, let us know what you're using to access our page--PC, Mac, iPad, etc.--and whether you were logged in using a Google account, other account, or posting anonymously.) Thanks everyone, and have a great start to your week!

About Us

Today we launched another page to the site which gives a little bit more information about us, the blog, and why we decided to write it. Feel free to post more questions that you'd like us to answer and we'll try and add them on! 

Check out the page here.

An Introduction

Some History...

Philip bought his Oma's condo almost 2 years ago, it was wall to wall beige carpeting and walls, with a splash of pink on the lovely velvet sofas. After almost a year of work and some serious nail hole patching, we had an entirely new place.

We got married August 2011 and moved into our freshly renovated condo. With the wedding money we decided to move forward with a kitchen renovation, making our condo complete.

The Present...

A year and a half later, after making some major condo improvements, we're ready for the next challenge. On July 30th we got possession of our new-to-us, fixer upper.  Grandpa Joe's house is so wonderfully 60s and more than ready for a facelift.

We're hoping that this blog can force us to document our progress and share the adventure. We're new to all of this, but by the end fully intend to be handier than the offspring of Bob the Builder & Bob Vila (although I'm pretty sure that he drives a bulldozer, and I don't know that we'll ever reach that level of skill).

We finally exited the Stone Age upon having our internet hooked up, so we're a little bit behind on starting this blog and there will certainly be some posts about what's been started/completed so far, but at least that means we can post regularly with a little backlog of to-do's completed). Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment with a link to your own blog so we can do some reading and hear all about the projects that you're working on as well!

Philip & Cassondra Wiebe