Warning: this blog post has more exclamation points than I utter during the rest of the entire year.

For those who were living under a rock when this word took the world by storm, hygge (huu-geh) is a Danish word (as is Jul, for Christmas) that means cozy, fun, and satisfying. Vi hygge os means “we are amusing ourselves together” – except it’s opposite of robot-speech. To say something is meget hyggeligt (mile huu-ge-leet, drop the t if it’s plural) is to say “it’s a lot of fun” or “very cute and cozy.”

When I first started writing this blog, I might not have thought I’d be the one to say this, but I love Christmas. If the featured pic of me-as-Mrs.-Claus isn’t proof enough, please indulge my running mania a bit, before I go on to the apologia and the deco-rama of this post.

I usually go on a streak called “The Twelve Runs of Christmas” – every day from the 13th–24th, or any twelve days. It’s to run the remainder of the annual goal, so that any distance done between Christmas and New Year’s is a bonus (or remedial). Some runners do it by running 1, 2, 3, all the way to 12 kms (78 km in total) in any order that they see fit. This year I will surely do the any-twelve-days-1-2-3… series, because I’ve been super-consistent with my training this year. I don’t have any catching-up to do.

One of those runs is the 10K Santa Hat run, which is a route I saved on Strava. You don’t need to know me to use the map, but you can message me if you do want to join us. Conspicuous Santa running is a way to bring joy to the world!

Another run I go on is for the Christmas Bird Count, which is 8-11 kms along the Canal and through Pointe-St.-Charles. The point is to cover a territory and report all the birds I can see. There are a lot of pigeons, especially around the grain terminal, but sometimes I see a black-backed gull or a pair of ravens, or a woodpecker makes an appearance.

The ghosts of Christmas Past (apologia)

I decided not to present this post as a project, because I highly doubt anyone other than me has a garden shed that they’d want to reconfigure. Though if you do, reusing the wood is a good thing, and it can give you a head start on the structure. You can always mix-and-match, so long as it looks good and is functional. Enjoy!

I’ve had the garden shed since I bought the house, and it’s moved around some, such as on the patio (as seen in my wildlife visitors post) and elsewhere. Here it is as it was for years, at the back of the garden.

So after 18 years, it was high time I did something to refurbish the shed. I wanted something a little more appealing with a bit more capacity. I also wanted to reuse the wood, and use some of my stockpile to boot.

This story was originally posted on May 9, 2013. There’s an update down below…

At long last, I finally have a new front fence. I could go digging through my photographs to show you its somewhat ugly predecessor — which I built with limited resources in 2010, just to try to keep my rabbits hemmed in—but no, we don’t need ugly temporary hacks here. It never really worked to corral the rabbits anyway.

The kind of fence I wanted was page wire, a wide-grid braided (wrapped, not welded, at the cross-points) wire fence that you find in farm country, with or without barbed wire to keep people out or critters in (some cattle will knock it down if they really want to, but it isn’t a safe fence for horses). However, when I easily found welded-wire fence at the hardware store, I bought it just to commit to the project. I posted it would look something like this when done, except with nice round cedar fence posts from the country, not square city posts.

For as long as I’ve owned the house, I’ve had an IKEA blackboard in my kitchen. It’s been a source of amusement for many a guest, as you can see.

Eventually it wore out just from regular use, but also by grease aerosolized from cooking, so it really was no good anymore. Nonetheless, don’t toss out nice things if you have the will to repair them – and chalkboards can be resurfaced!

Meanwhile, after being in my kitchen for well over 17 years, I decided to replace the blackboard with this mug rack that I built of my own design. This in turn let me get rid of a certain cupboard off the wall, and open up my kitchen even more.

I read online that you didn’t have to buy chalkboard paint at $16 a spray can or $25 a quart can. You could mix it yourself in whatever colour you wanted. The key ingredient is grout, specifically unsanded grout. So I borrowed a bag of this from a contractor friend, and fortunately I had a small quantity of black paint on hand. Bob Vila’s website has a good, standard guide on how to mix and apply it. Make sure to clean the surface well, and rub it with fine sandpaper, as you won’t be using a primer.

The surface of the blackboard wasn’t very large. For my work, I used a measuring cup to do the mixing, and it was a matter of just a couple of teaspoons of grout. I’d already taped the blackboard edges so work could go quickly. I painted it on using a 1-½” brush.

I waited a day between coats and another before final testing, to make sure it was good and cured. You don’t want to mar it with a permanent chalk mark by writing on it before it’s ready!

The surface was considerably rougher than any board you’d buy new at a store. Here’s a writing test:

After I hung the blackboard in a new location, I inspected the chalk I had on hand. Like the blackboard, they’d been exposed to kitchen grease and dust the entire time. I used an old toothbrush to clean the surface of the chalk sticks:

Since mounting / hanging things is a skill you can use for anything, not just blackboards, I decided to write a DIY project for how to hang anything on a wall. And here is the big reveal!