Home Office

I am excited to start to see my new home office take shape.  I only have to do a second coat of paint on the feature wall and I am pretty sure I will be done with painting.  (Except for a little touching up on the ceiling where I got a little overzealous with the roller, oops)  I am liking the colours I chose and I think it will be a nice change of pace from my current treatment space.  I would like to really put some thought and care into the way I decorate this room.  Even if it takes me a while to get all the pictures hung and different decorations purchased, I would like to make it a nice.

I have told a few of my regular clients about my plans and so far the reception has been mainly positive.  I only had one long term client who...not that she seemed upset.....or didn't understand why I am doing it....she just didn't seem super happy about it.  I realize that it will be out of her way, but for an appointment once a month or so, I am hoping she will come to see me at home.  I have been treating that particular client since I was at Dance Saskatchewan, so probably for about seven years.  I will continue to give my clients a heads up about my leaving and I hope that the reception will continue to be positive. 

I am getting really excited, but also a little nervous about making this transition.  I think it will be really good, I just hope that enough of my regular clients follow me that I don't have to do much advertising. 

Ridiculously Busy Weekend

I think I have always looked forward to long weekends.  Because, hey, it's an extra day off work.  However, I think since it has been so busy at work for the last four and a half months I really seem to appreciate them more.  Typically the days off are just spent relaxing, or doing things at home like cleaning or baking or knitting or relaxing.  This weekend was particularly busy!

Friday started out with having friends over for coffee.  They came over in the morning and I gave a knitting lesson and Jay visited.  I think the lesson went well.  She caught on easily to the basics, it will just take practice until she builds more confidence and gains an understanding of what the different stitches should look like, and how to tell if something isn't right (at least that's what I found when I first started).

Friday afternoon Jay and I headed down to the Midtown to look at Tip Top Tailors for a jacket he had seen at Market Mall on clearance that they didn't have in his size.  Unfortunately the Midtown didn't have it either, so we browsed around a little then headed home.  After a quick look at the weather forecast for the weekend I decided that I should probably get out and hang the Christmas lights.  I manged to do that without falling off the ladder, so that was a plus.  Friday evening I headed down to my 'office' to start ripping up carpet.  It actually came up fairly easily and only took me half an hour or so to get it all taken out.  Next I spent a bit of time taping around door and window frames.

Friday evening I got an interesting email from one of my old massage instructors at McKay.  She was emailing to find out if I knew any clinics that were hiring as she had just given her notice at work because her workplace had too much 'drama' that she was tired of dealing with.  I emailed her back and said, yes, my clinic will be hiring as two of our therapists are leaving.  She emailed back with a ton of questions, which I answered and she seems interested.  She is going to stop by the office tomorrow morning to look around and drop off a resume.  I have never worked with this girl before, but I would say that she was a great instructor and she has at least ten years of experience and likely a lot of her own clientele.  Great timing, I hope it works out!

Saturday morning I woke up quite early and couldn't get back to sleep (between thoughts of painting and the email from my massage instructor).  I thought that five hours of sleep would have me looking for a nap by lunch time.  However, Saturday was another productive day!  We got up in the morning and I took Kiwi for a walk then I shoveled our couple inches of snow that fell overnight.  Then we headed over to Home Depot to buy my painting supplies!  We decided a while back that we wanted to cook a turkey this weekend, just for us to enjoy so we stopped in at the local bakery to get some bread to go with our turkey.  We settled on a loaf of olive sourdough which was delicious!  When we got home I went downstairs and got to work painting!  I probably spent 3-4 hours down there and in that time got a first coat of the light green paint on everything, then did a second coat on two of the walls, which just left one wall and the inside of the closet for today.  I am pleased with how the colour looks, and I am looking forward to doing the feature wall to see how it all comes together.  Last night my lack of sleep caught up with me and I spent my time relaxing with some knitting, surfing the net and a soak in the tub.  We were in bed by 10:30 and I slept like a log all night!

Today we went to church in the morning.  Then came home and I baked skor bit cookies.  After that I headed downstairs and finished up the green paint.  On closer inspection of my paint job yesterday I think I did an alright job.  I only saw drips in the closet, which I don't think anyone will see.  I have to say painting closets sucks.  After spending a few hours painting yesterday and today I have to say that I don't love painting.  It's okay, and I am not quite as sore as I thought I would be, but it's not my favorite thing.  I don't know if I would have the patience to paint our whole house by myself.  I could probably do another room if I had to, but I won't be opening a painting business any time soon.  I capped off this afternoon with a nice nap.

It has been a good weekend.  I look forward to watching my home office take shape.  My inlaws are hoping to come up in two weeks to help me lay the flooring.  That will depend on the weather though because it can be so unpredictable at this time of year.  Once that is done and we put the baseboards back on, all that will be left is to start trying to figure out how to decorate and find some decent but inexpensive furniture to use in the room.  Fun! 

So many colours...

I have been trying to narrow down the colour(s) that I would like to use for my home treatment room.  I am about 95% sure now that I am going to go with green.  I am thinking that I would like to do three walls in the same, lighter colour then do a feature wall in a darker green.  I debated about doing a feature wall in an entirely different colour.  I came to the conclusion that I think it would look a little too crazy for a relaxing massage treatment room, so I believe I will just do two shades of green.  I also am thinking that I would like to use orange as an accent colour in the room.  I have seen some photos of green with orange accents and I think it works well together.

I am not sure how Jason and I managed to pick out paint colours for our house so easily.  Not that our house is painted really exciting colours but it seemed to come to us pretty easily.  I have found a couple of times that I have picked paint chips that looked nice in the store, then either outside, or in our house they look awful.  It's hard to know what undertones will come out until you get into the space you will be painting and see how the light affects it.  At the suggestion of a couple of friends I decided to tape a few paint chips to the wall in the room that I am going to paint.  After doing that it felt a lot easier to narrow down the colours.  The ones I thought I liked initially were either too dark, or had undesirable undertones.  I think I have it narrowed down to about four colours, two lighter colours and two darker feature wall colours.  I am hoping to possibly start painting this weekend!  I spent some time removing baseboards last night and managed not to break any!  I think my next plan is to do a bit of taping around door and window frames, pull up carpet, finalize paint colours and buy some painting supplies.  Exciting!

I am also pretty sure I found the flooring that I am going to buy.  I have been watching flyers for a few weeks and last week we got a J&H flyer and their cork flooring was on sale this week!  I went and checked it out, and though it's not as cheap as other flooring, I really do think that the functional benefits of it will outweigh the cost.  I am hoping to go tomorrow morning and buy it.  This is fun :)