Reader's Digest Version...

Jumped all the hurdles:
- rezoning the property /check
- fire inspection /check
- health inspection /check
- business licence /check
- Ontario Master Business Licence /check
- domain name, website purchase /check

Got the logo finalized, business cards designed, brochure for first year operations printed, "Did you forget anything? bathroom amenities cards printed, breakfast cards printed....

We have a driveway now - woofrickin'hoo.... it's solid, above the grass level.  There's two spaces together, then another separated by a good 8 to 10 feet of grass,  In this grass peninsula, we'll put a garden with a electric lamp pole - a $50 find at Hab4Humanity - eventually.

The lakeside patio is in now - as wide as the sunroom, out about 12 feet out - looks fantastic.  There's a smaller one on the driveside entry, with a paver path leading out to the parking.  NO MORE WET MORNING FEET!  There'll be another paver path leading from the lake patio towards the lake, turning right near the breakwall and heading toward the right corner of the property, where we'll build a small patio with a firepit in the middle.

Planting:  we've put in more gardens:  a circular one at the end of the rose of sharon new hedge, with grasses and low and high flowering plants.... a fruit garden along the west fence (rhubarb from last year, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, grapes).... matching bella donas, hostas, russian sages on either side of the side door.... 2 large wisterias along the front rail fence.... a bigger garden around the entry post of the driveway.... a whole forestette of silver maple twigs and fir mini-brush babies... the only disappointment are the 6 dinosaur pines (will grow up to 70 feet in 15 years!) - extinct.  I called Vesey's and they refunded the pricey corpses.  Good company.

Lots of what I planted last year has come up/is coming up/looks like it'll be coming up.

Green bedroom is almost ready for occupation..... just a few adjustments, touch-ups, .... hooking up the minifridge. 

Bought the paint for the outside of the house.  Behr's exterior paint plus primer.  Stuff is thickthickthick.  I'll be scraping hard, doing some repair, then painting a side of the house at a time... and what did you do for your summer vacation, little Margo?

So much more, but at least I've reduced the no-posting-guilt-load by 25%........ also, not completely my laziness, the new Dell Vostro 3700 laptop (remember that evil brand and designation) completely fried itself after exactly three months.  The Dell service was great - after online around the world of irritating bad English/worse accents, Steve in Nashville became my shining knight from DellHell and arranged two visits to my workplace, 2 complete new motherboards and extraneous arcane and  other parts - but the Dell device itself was a black hole of sadness.  The new Dell Vostro 3750 just came in, minus the already-paid-for pricey MS Office Professional 2010, which still hasn't been worked out to my satisfaction yet, but at least I've got a laptop again.... so I'm catching up... adding some pictures a bit later will help.

Ciao

Fie-yah, Fie-yah..

Today the Fire Inspector came to look over the cottage.  Everything looked great to her... she advised in the placements of two alarms and two extinguishers and two signs. 
I've done exit plans, framed them and put them on the back of the bedroom doors.

After Kee get these things up, which I've already bought, I can email her and she'll give the OK on the business licence.... the final municipal hurdle.

Now, it's just a short quantum leap to receiving our first guests:  tiling mudroom and sunroom, building new side entry deck and lakeside patio, finishing blue bedroom, getting the new queen mattress, beginning and finishing blue bathroom, getting driveway and parking spots created, making the pathways to the house.....  aaaaaannd the list goes on.........

B&B 101

Here I am, stuffed to the gills on abfab food and B&B 101, thanks to Pam Rudolph of Carriage Lane B&B, Peterborough.  Not the only things I'm trying to digest though, I've also got a head full of B&B data that I've got to chew through and absorb.

I've had 3 breakfasts today - at brekkie time, late lunch and late supper, because Pam has thoughtfully screwed up meal schedules for her and her inappropriately funny, adorable husband Ben, to give me exposure to her tried and true breakfast recipes for the time I'm spending here, learning at her table.

Pam runs an extremely professionally delivered B&B academy, giving newbies like me a solid footing, practical advice and proven direction, based on her more than a decade experience in bed and breakfasting.  A career that, while maintaining a upper-tier B&B, has expanded beyond, as she put it, "bed & heads", to culinary classes, hosting events, concierging visiting educationals and other professionals and delivery courses in starting a bed and breakfast.

Friday, I left Wheatley and drove along Hwy 3, with a colourful honour guard of changing motorcycles - it was Friday 13th, the traditional excuse for bikers of all bikes and backgrounds to gather at Port Dover - from hogs to scooters... although even if I was an 89 year old female virgin nun, I would not show gripping a scooter at Port Dover..... the laughing would be unbearable even if I still did have my hearing.

I stopped at Courtland, visited Saffire Blue, a small family business, a warehouse for toiletries - shampoos, conditioners, essential oils, etc.  I bought these three things, plus shower gel, facial cream and cleanser, and 8 oz plastic bottles and pump caps.  I'll be making my house blend of bath products, with a blend of lavender, clary sage and rosemary essential oils.  I've bought clear labels and will label the bottles accordingly and fill and refill them for guest use.  The skin care products, I've bought for myself.

Next, a north turn onto Hwy 59, where I stopped at a nameless town because I saw the magic words - "Liquidation".  Grabs my brakes everytime!  I ended up buying a new mini garden hoe, a small I'm-on-my-knees rake and a bottom-loading black and stainless steel water cooler.... and a skirt.  Unbelievably, in this hole-in-the-wall liquidation warehouse, was a teeny boutique of lovely cotton skirts, shirts and tees.  How serendipitious, eh?

Driving then up to merge with the rightfully detested Hwy 401, it took me three lifetimes of bad karma to get through Toronto... what a bumper-to-bumper hellhole that stretch is!  After spasming through that 1.5 hour stretch, Peterborough wasn't far, and Ms GPS had me at Carriage Lane B&B nicely.

Starting last night, after an aromatic Indonesian rice and beef supper, we outlined the course goals, my starting point, the level of preparedness I'm currently at and then viewed pictures of our home, the rooms and the property.

Early this morning we began, as they say, in earnest.  Pam is just a resource to be reckoned with.  I fired off questions and concerns and she's got all the answers.  Leading me back to her well-prepared curriculum when I veered us off track, I was in the enviable position of being her only client this weekend, her only focus.  We broke for a late lunch, worked again until 6 and then reconvened for a delicious breakfast/supper.

Pam and Ben are a wonderful couple, their professional lives multiple and varied, what with the bed and breakfast, her culinary career, his outside work (now retired) and their caring, selfless interest in fostering troubled children, setting aside the B&B at intervals when they see a child they can help.

We've done the majority of the curriculum by now and tomorrow will wind up the course with a few extra items and review.  Pam supplies a certificate, hard copy assist materials, a tax receipt and a lifeline for assistance.  With completion also comes a free year registration with BBCanada, the premier marketing/booking machine for Canadian bed and breakfasts.  That's worth $100, taking the course price down to $350.  Money well spent, I think.  I have more confidence in my strengths and knowledge after this time with Pam.

Maybe a bit of return trip shopping........ home again, home again, jiggity-jig......

Long time, no post...

.... because life is so freakin' busy!  .  I feel guilty about not posting all of April.  I'll get a ton of text down, then add pictures in later.  A few days before posting after a long drought (avoidance), the inner nag starts tapping my inner shoulder, then prodding my inner chest, then I get down to it.

But a few recent points of interest:

This has been the wettest spring/what spring?/cold, damp, miserable.... seems like the past few years we're a three season climate zone - prolonged, pissy winter/hot, all-too-short summer/really nice autumn.  The lake has been wild for weeks on end, with rain nonstop.  We've had another tree down, on the roadside lawn, just missing the house.  The driveway - if there was an intergalactic market for mud, we could supply the multiverse - is a gloopy catch 22 - if we had a driveway, we wouldn't have any mud/we can't get a driveway until the mud is gone. 

The zoning amendment went through!  Huzzah! and Hooray! and thanks to the zoning gods.  I went to the Council meeting on April 10th with the fabulous GGs for support (and 2 pitchers of sangria for extra fortification).  We were next to last on the bill and were passed immediately.  Now we can get our business licence - which I think I'll do tomorrow.  This was our biggest - not obstacle - but biggest piss-off, I guess, in the B&B journey.  Having B&B homes near us that didn't have to pay off the local government with an expensive zoning amendment was - expensively irrating.  But - it's done.

.... assembled our first tax return data that included B&B financials.  We've kept the majority of receipts, invoices, etc., especially the big tickets - boiler, insulation, zoning applications, and such.  What we've spent on this thing is eye-wideningly, head-shakingly there in black & white.  As there was no actual B&Bing going on in 2010, this is ground work for next year, our accountant Al tells us.  This summer we'll be officially open in a limited capacity, so next year's tax return will hopefully be a bigger, better bang for those bucks.

.... this weekend, travelling to Peterborough to study B&B academy - at Carriage Lane B&B.  The curriculum includes professional hosting, culinary, housekeeping, promoting, finances... the compleat angle.  I'm going solo, Kee's working and actually, doesn't think a high percentage of the schedule relates to what he'll be doing - there's no tiling, wiring, plumbing or cement work on the timetable.  I'm really looking forward to this - having successful experts show me how they perfected a wheel I just can barely recognize as wheel-shaped.

This has, as I've said, been a completely crap spring.  But now the lake is actually turning blue - instead of muddy grey-brown.  The sun is out a bit more - I hung laundry on the line on Sunday.  It reminds me what we fell in love with and why we bought this place - in the first place.

All those hundreds of bulbs I planted in the fall - I'm getting results:  hyacinth (hyacinthi?) of all colours and sizes, blue bells, white phlox and tulips in cream, burgundy  and blues and lots of white, sky and dark blue muscari.  What I thought - and looked in the pictures - were white paperwhites and something else - are actually yellow.  I don't like any yellow flowers.  Ninety-five percent of the stuff I planted was white or blue, with purples making up the remainder.  Lots more are upcoming.  I'll have to check my maps to see what was planted where... finding out what it is I'm looking at or what isn't where it should be coming up at.

D gave me a five foot tulip tree for Mother's Day, it's absolutely beautiful and very, very sturdy.  He planted it in the roadside yard and it looks great.  On Sunday I enlarged the roadside corner garden, planting two white lilacs, four rhododendrons, and some other white and purple flowers.  I added some hollyhock and morning glory seeds up close to the fences.  That garden will be all white and purple.

I'm going to kill a rabbit.  A mangy grey rabbit has been eating my flower shoots - the crocus have been comletely nibbled to a half inch of the ground.  This thing is so stunned I got within two feet of it.  I've tried human hair, cat litter and mothballs.  I think next I'll try a bb gun... or someone with a rabbit-killing firearm of some sort.  I've never killed, even hurt an animal, but this is beyond personal - it's financial.

Went to another auction with my sister on Saturday.  Bought a useless fan [crap], a four piece setting of handpainted dishes [pale green with white dot flowers - dinner and salad plates, fruit and soup bowls and a platter], three really nice fadey, white framed watercolours of birds and two really lovely, deep-hued watercolours of water birds, an art deco wooden magazine rack and a trim little art deco table, both of which I'll clean up, restain and use in the blue bedroom.  I'm getting very picky and less frenetic with my bid card.... things are getting filled up.

Bought a fan for the sunroom - bit of an e-purchase drama there.... I searched through the net, found this lovely wall mount "Old Havana" fan:  heavy black ornate base with a black and bronzish fan unit.  Very period, very 30s looking.  One site had it priced several hundred cheaper than others.... and after checking very carefully, I bought that one.  And by very carefully, I mean - as much as I compared that one site against the more expensive sites, I could find no difference in the fan, while at the same time being extremely not-careful at all. What was delivered, what I bought - was the base - only the base.  The fan unit holder.  Not the fan.  No fan.

Me and Mr Liu had an extremely close e-relationship for the next few days, ending with me spending three hundred plus more to acquire the remainder of the picture of the lovely Old Havana fan that I thought I had already bought. Whatthe?  Well, it's up, it's gorgeous and I'm learning to move on from these type of things..... as these type of things do pop up.

I am a mad breadmaker right now.  I recently bought a bread magazine and one of the recipes was the dutch oven no-knead method.  So far I've made about 10 loaves - it's amazing!  The bread looks like every beautiful artisanal loaf you ever did see.  Tonight, before I did the final 1 hour proof, I smeared four cloves of roasted garlic over the top, some Mediterranean herbs and some pepper, then folded the top and bottom, left and right sides over.  Let it rise for another hour, then baked.  It tastes fantastic. 

This dutch oven method broke big about five/six years ago and has fan sites galore.  All you need is flour, salt, yeast, warm water, a heavy cast iron dutch and time.  The results are beautiful, professional-looking and delicious.

The Notice Goes Up....

Bueno, today I picked up an envelope at the post office, from the Municipality of Chatham Kent, containing:  a yellow notice to be posted at the roadside of our property; a receipt for the cost of actions taken; and an official Municipality letter about our intentions - a zoning change to allow operation of a 3 room bed and breakfast. 

This means our neighbours will receive their letter of our intentions also.  I've laid a bit of groundwork:  visits with muffins, breakfast breads, scones and a short spiel..... maybe you've heard we'd like to open a small bed and breakfast, just 3 rooms, seasonally, for birders and their ilk, just a neighbourly visit to say, don't worry, there'll be no changes, no additions will be made to the house........

So, hopefully, no one will turn up at the Council meeting early in April, showering on our parade.   

I'm making slipcovers for the leather parson's chairs in the sunroom dining area - more accurately - I'm making an abysmal mess of making slipcovers. 

First attempt:  finished to the point of hemming - tried it on the chair - toooo tight.  Reread pattern directions:  wrong chair - not a parson's chair, but the thinner back chair.  Shit/damn, rip, repeat.

Second attempt:  correct chair type, worked up to the point of sewing in the side panels on the upper chair front - cannot read the directions.  Something rounded is to be sewn to be something so squarish that I know I'm just not getting this.

Third attempt:  call sister Ting, who's a professional.  She'll save me.

God, but I'd like to just dump this one on somebody, but I can sew, have always sewn, just finished the curtains for one of the bedrooms..... and can use that money for something else - that I can't do.  So Ting'll get me back on the right track and I'll finish them. 

Make curtains for the green bedroom... turned out great.  A very 40s look, billowing, sheerish, just need the roller shade now.

Finished the first panel of the blue bedroom curtains, but I don't like the two pattern effect like I do in the green bedroom.  So these will be redone again, with just the single fabric - a crisp, Laurenesque striped cotton.

Still have the sinus infection - I think it can claim naturalized citizen status by now.  Yesterday I read an article about a cancer survivor in a charity fashion show... she had thought that she had sinusitis, but it turned out to be stage 4 sinus cancer.  Very rare in women, usually suffered by men who smoke or work in a paint manufactory.  She was diagnosed in time, underwent half a year of chemo and other treatments, and is now cancer-free.  I am susceptibility incarnate - and am now convinced I have stage 4 sinus cancer.... she listed all her symptoms....

I have them all.  I always do. 

I'll be making an appointment, initially because my optometrist said, when examining my eyes a couple of week ago, that I should have my cholesterol checked as there was an indication of it during my examination.  Since patients can only ask on two concerns, I'll do the cholesterol with a sinus chaser.

Seems like this week I'm minoring in hypochondria, majoring in screwed up seamstressery, with an extra credit in suck-up zoning paranoia.

And tomorrow, vino & birthday lunch with 3 bio-sisters, vino & designer pizzas with 3 soul-sisters.  Sunday - I sew.