Monthly Archives: July 2011

After the daily renovating Steve and I have been retiring to our backyard, safely away from drywall dust and the smell of paint, home to warm breezes and true summer night feelin’.  Unfortunately we do not have a light in the backyard so hanging out in the dark-yard after dusk can get a little difficult.

On one particularly grueling day of renovating I was shocked to see Steve sill having the energy to drag out the ladder and proceed to hang up lights outside (hammer and all).

The lights created a beautiful warm orange post sunset glow a la Christmas in July.

We can now hang out in the backyard after the sun sets to play cards and have our own patio beers to our hearts content!

When we first moved into our house, we gave every wall a coat of fresh paint.  After our paint job, upon closer inspection we noticed a slight soft bulging and straight repetitive vertical lines going across the wall at even spaces, and concluded that it was obvious that wallpaper was underneath what was already several layers of paint.  So for this reno we decided to strip the walls down to the original layer of wall.

What an undertaking it has been.  There’s been layer upon layer of wallpaper, telling the story of the decades, from 90′s to the 80′s, 70′s 40′s and down sandwiched amongst varying shades and coats of paint.

The colours of the last 1-2 layers of wallpaper were a soft rose and ghostly grey-blue.  Quite beautiful, but in pretty rough shape and smelling old and musty.

Last Wednesday night we headed to This Ain’t Hollywood to see PS I Love You.  A duo hailing from Kingston, Ontario, they’re signed to Paper Bag Records and have been getting major acclaim from all your indie type music sources such as; Pitchfork, as well as some noted recognition for their Polaris Music Prize nomination.  Their debut album Meet Me at the Muster Station was listed in  Exclaim! for Top Pop & Rock Albums of 2010.

I came across this video a little while back, and loved the gritty lo-fi sound, and catchy guitar hooks.  So when I got wind that they were coming to town I was happy to be able to see yet another fantastic live musical act making a stop in Hamilton.

I can barely manage to keep a beat and breath at the same time.  Meanwhile Paul Saulnier can rip it up on the guitar like something furious, wail and play the foot-pedal bass organ like a pro all the while keeping pace with the quick and steady licks of drummer Benjamin Nelson.

For more PS I Love You Videos you can check out Southern Souls acoustic sets of Starfield, Little Spoon, Butterflies and Boners, and Facelove here.  AND if you want to see PS I Love you they’ll be doing another show October 3rd at This Ain’t Hollywood.

An honourable mention goes out to Hamilton’s The Mystics for their mad tambourine playing, and for taking us back to the days of rough edgy rock with their opening set.

 

The days are so hot and dry.  It’s perfect for hanging laundry out on the line.  This load dried in no time flat, and looked so colourful and beautiful blowing in the summer breeze that I just had to take a picture.

 

One of our favourite things to do in the evening is to sit out back and watch our garden grown.  It’s amazing to see the fruits of our labour blooming and growing so quickly.  I love picking things fresh from the garden and incorporating them into a meal for that day.

 

 

Still in mid renovation.  The walls are down.  The floors are peeled back, and the original ones are exposed.  We are living in a state of civilized chaos.  The demolition proved to be some what of an excavation.  Many layers of paint and wallpaper, a doll arm, 1980′s baseball cards, and a lot of 100 year old dirt, dust and rubble.

The wall with the bookshelf was was actually a doorway from way back when.  You could see the roughed out frame of the old doorway trim from behind the drywall.  As you can see in the next photo that wall is now gone.

Tonight’s art crawl will feature a super cool exhibit called Zoo at Loose Canon Gallery.  I’m plugging this exhibit not only because Steve has work in this show, but also because there are some sickeningly talented artists that are part of the show too.

Jacqui Oakley and Jamie Lawson are the curators of this show, and are also unbelievably amazing artists, whose work will be exhibited in this show.

Here’s a little sample of some of their work.

Image from: jamielawsondesign.com

Image from:  jacquioakley.com This link will take  you Jacqui’s website, where she details some of her processes in doing this beautiful illustration (so much work to do behind the scenes!)

 

*Loose Canon Gallery, 150 James St. north, Hamilton

Last weekend we visited the Aberfoyle Antique market on a hot and gorgeous summer day.  For the small price of $2 per person we were granted access to more antiques than you could ever dream of.  There were some good bargains, while some vendors were looking to fetch a pretty penny.  We bought some old postcards to add to our growing collection, a steel grate that we will use as our cold air return floor grate (we were happy for the find because old grates are hard to come by), and two steel outdoor chairs that I love.

The Aberfoyle market is open every Sunday 8am-4pm, starting generally from the last Sunday of April to the last Sunday of October, rain or shine.

*Aberfoyle Antique Market, 57 Brock Rd. south, Guelph, 519.763.1077

July 1st is our official 2 year mark of being Hamiltonians.  After the Canada Day fireworks at Bayfront Park we went to This Ain’t Hollywood to check-out the sounds of the one and only Lee Fields and his 7 piece funk/soul band The Expressions.

The show was fantastic.  Lee Fields has clearly been around a while, although this was the first I had heard of him.  His voice is phenomenal, and I would even be so bold as to say he rivals the funk and soul classic Mr. James Brown.

 

*This Ain’t Hollywood,  345 James St. North, Hamilton, 905.529.9500