Things To Do For Two

Cost – $40 – $50 depending on the car and paints you choose. We accidentally bought more paints then we needed, so watch out for that.

With dreams of an exquisite replica of a Shelby Mustang dancing through our heads, we decided to try our hand at building a model car. What seemed like a fun project quickly became our most challenging “Thing To Do” thus far. Although we came close to quitting many times, we soldiered on to create a model that looks great in strategically angled photos with the right lighting conditions.

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SHE SAID:

As I’ve mentioned before, I am a craft geek. I was mistaken when I thought building a model car would be like making a craft. Very mistaken. Don’t get me wrong, seeing all of the plastic pieces transform into a car was slightly rewarding, but the mental anguish we endured while waiting for the rubber cement to dry far outweighed any form of joy.

That being said, if you enjoy detailed tasks and precision movements, this is the activity for you. You will love propping minuscule pieces of plastic against a curved surface and hoping you applied enough glue so that it sticks, but not so much so that your finger becomes a hood fixture.

If you’re still up for trying this activity despite our warnings, consider the following before you begin to ensure a more pleasant experience than ours:

• Don’t pick a car that has decals. This just adds another layer of unnecessary frustration.
• Don’t paint where you will glue. This glue is like acid and eats away at the paint, creating a bubbly mess that resembles rotting flesh.
• Consider competing with your mate and building separate cars.
• Don’t set up on the kitchen table. This isn’t a one sitting activity. You need at least 2 weeks to complete this disaster, I mean, masterpiece.

HE SAID:
When I was a kid I put together a model of a fighter jet with my Dad. I still remember it to this day, mostly due to the fact that it was not the kind of thing myself or Dad would normally do for fun. When I think back on it I have visions of us happily gluing and painting this jet together until a pristine replica emerged.

Sometimes my memories lie.

I think when we were coming up with ideas for this website, making a model car was one of my brilliant ideas. Like I said, my memories of a previous attempt were all positive so why not give it a try? So we ventured out to Maritime Hobbies and Crafts (which is a pretty awesome place by the way) and picked out a Shelby Mustang.

Admittedly, we had no idea what we were doing, so things started going wrong pretty quickly. We would run into these little issues and I’d tell Susan that it didn’t really matter and to just keep going. Well, all those little mistakes added up in the end and made the final assembly very difficult. The mistake that put a stake in the heart of this project for me was gluing the windshield and windows into place. We had already painted the pieces that the windows and windshield attach to so when we applied the glue, the paint started to bubble and melt away. I put the windshield into place and waited the appropriate amount of time for the glue to dry. When I let go it all went downhill. The windshield shifted leaving a gooey mess of paint and glue on its edges. In my infinite wisdom I thought I had time to wipe it off and try again. No such luck. I was so close to dumping the whole mess into the garbage at that point it’s not even funny. Susan jumped in and convinced me that we needed to complete the task for the good of our faithful readers, so we carried on. The process of one of us giving up and almost trashing the car before the other lightened the mood and kept the project on track continued back and forth until the final pictures of the car were taken.

Ok, so now it’s confession time. We didn’t technically finish the car. If you were to pry open the hood you would see the most important pieces, but we didn’t end up getting all of the tiny little detailed parts in place. I feel so much better getting that off my chest…

Would I recommend you try this? Based on our experience, no. But if you already know you enjoy this sort of thing, then you don’t need me to tell you to try it. It may not have been so bad if it hadn’t taken us so long to complete. Our kitchen table became a constant reminder of the work left to finish. If you aren’t sure if this is your kind of thing or not, I think it might be too expensive and too time consuming to recommend. If you’ve ever put together a model car, plane, or anything else and succeeded or failed, we’d love to hear about it.

• Cost - under $10, depending on what you eat and your entertainment.

Nothing can really beat the true picnic experience, sitting out on the grass under the warm sunshine, but when it looks like monsoon season outside, an indoor picnic will do just fine. All that’s needed is a room big enough to spread a blanket out on, a blanket and pillows, your favorite picnic food,  a basket (cheaply obtained from the dollar store) and some form of entertainment (board game, movie, music, etc.).

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SHE SAID:

Since I couldn’t have a traditional picnic, I wanted to laugh in the face of all things wet and cloudy and kick this rainy day’s butt. I wanted to have the best indoor picnic EVER! So, I made my own sun and fluffy, non-rain filled clouds and hung them with fish line and tape above the blanket and pillows Brad set up on our living room floor. I bought a cute little basket from Dollarama that served as our picnic basket and filled it with sandwiches, bananas, and chocolate bars for dessert (also from Dollarama). I also picked up some President’s Choice Italian Soda I recently became obsessed with (the Blood Orange flavour is the best!).

I highly recommend doing something at your picnic, otherwise you’ll just be staring at the same four walls you’ve been staring at for the last 40 rain-filled days. We decided to play Scrabble, but it might also be fun to watch such a fitting old movie as Singing in the Rain. I can beat Brad any day at Word Twist, but Scrabble is another story, most likely because it involves strategy to win.

For those of you whose best Scrabble move has been a three-letter noun, I recommend a strategy I like to use from time to time called the “dignity keeper.” You look in the dictionary to “check” for a word, meanwhile scouring the pages for an actual word to save yourself from falling behind by fifty points. Yes, it’s slightly deceitful, but survival isn’t always pretty.

For the first few rounds I was hanging on and actually managed to get a couple of points ahead of Brad, until I accidentally set him up for a triple word score, and the rest is history.

HE SAID:

Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and do something you’re not convinced will be the most fun thing ever. This was one of those things. I can handle the idea of a regular outdoor picnic, but I wasn’t sure how this indoor picnic idea was going to turn out. I had visions of us sitting in the middle of an empty room, shoving tuna sandwiches into our mouthes in silence as we secretly plotted each others demise. Luckily it didn’t turn out quite that bad.

I enjoyed the fact that it was a simple way to do something new. It didn’t require a lot of preparation in order to have fun. So once the sandwiches were made, we just threw everything into a basket, laid a blanket on the living room floor, pulled out Scrabble from the closet, and we were off to the races.

On a side note, if you plan on making a meal even the teensiest bit more complicated than it has to be, make sure you aren’t so hungry during the preparation that you’re cranky. Lesson learned.

Playing Scrabble was the highlight of the indoor picnic for me. It’s one of my favorite board games, especially when I win…by a lot. We have the official Scrabble dictionary so that we can avoid any arguments over which words are allowed and which ones aren’t.

It may seem like a silly idea, but in the end it turned out to be a memorable experience and I’d say it’s definitely worth trying if you’ve never done it before.

Here are a few simple tips if you’d like to pull off a successful indoor picnic:

1. Don’t wait until you are hungry to start getting things together for you picnic

2. Have a board game, movie, or some other fun thing to do while you eat

3. Don’t worry about everything being perfect, just have fun and enjoy the process

4. If you have a room with a carpeted floor, for the love of all things good and holy, use it!

Day trips are a fun thing to do when you can’t go anywhere too far away, but you want to feel like a tourist nonetheless. You get to escape your own town and return home to your own bed at the end of the day. What could be better? On this particular day we went to Mahone Bay, which is about an hour from Halifax.

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SHE SAID

I love visiting little towns. I love the people, I love the atmosphere, and most of all the unique shops! Mahone Bay is one such town that I keep coming back to for its charming, old fashioned feel. Its cute little shops are filled with everything from antiques to candy. On this particular day we didn’t get to all of the shops, but we did happen upon some great finds.

Find #1 – The Eclectic Garage

Don’t judge this one by its appearance. Though it may look like a run down, converted garage, guess what? It is! If you like antiques and unique gift ideas, you’ll love this place. It is jammed packed full of antique bottles, vinyl records, books, dishes, furniture, and it doesn’t stop there. You’ll also find modern gift items dispersed throughout. Though I didn’t buy any antiques this trip, I did find an antique-ish sign I hung in my kitchen. Check out our Flickr album for more finds.

Find #2 – Jo-Ann’s Deli Market & Bake Shop

Though there are quite a few nice places to dine in Mahone Bay, Jo-Ann’s offers quite a unique experience. Not only can you get fresh, made to order sandwiches and seafood lunches, there is a vast array of fresh baked goods to indulge in afterward that are made daily. If you’re looking for something cooler, you can visit the “I.C.U.”, aka Ice Cream Unit, and choose from one of their 16 flavors (and they have waffle cones!). If that’s not enough, you can buy local produce, a large section being organic, and they also have the largest selection of imported cheeses on the South Shore!

Find #3 – Candy Cravings
My sweet tooth was well fed after this stop. This shop is packed full of old-fashioned and modern candy alike. I was a wide-eyed little kid again gazing at the walls full of sugary delights. Once I got a grip, I ended up buying a “tickle stick” (not sure of the name’s origins), which is a wooden skewer full of gummy candies. We also stopped by their fudge station and picked up some chocolate peanut butter fudge. Yum!

I can’t wait to visit this town again. Maybe I can convince Brad to go to the Great Scarecrow Festival and Antique Fair in October!

HE SAID:

Over the past few years I’ve really grown to like the idea of taking day trips. Not only is it a cheap way to enjoy the nice summer and fall weather, but I’ve also gotten to see some smaller towns around Nova Scotia that I wouldn’t have otherwise.

Let’s be honest. I’m a city boy who married a country girl. So as much as I do enjoy a day trip to a small town, you won’t see me singing in the streets in pure joy like Susan. She really lights up when she’s in a town where people consider driving the speed limit to be too fast, where everyone knows everyone, and there are more trees than people.

Having said that, I can appreciate what a great place we live in. The drive to Mahone Bay is full of beautiful scenery. We even came across a parade along the way and stopped to take a look.

On the day we went to Mahone Bay the temperature was pretty high. So, naturally, certain unnamed members of our group decided it would be a good idea to walk to some of the antique shops we planned to visit. While the exercise was nice, I’m pretty sure I almost died of heat stroke. I kept reminding her that the further we walked, the further the walk back to the car would be.

Thankfully the walk was worth it as we came across some really great shops. One of my favorite spots in Mahone Bay is Candy Cravings. I don’t like it for the same reasons as Susan though. She likes the candy, but I like all the little toys and trinkets you can get. It’s sort of like a more tame version of Freak Lunchbox. There’s superhero lunch boxes, funny action figures, and lots more. I was also really excited to find what was labelled “drawer knobs” at an antique shop that used the same stick figures as we have in our logo. They don’t really serve any purpose, but I couldn’t pass them up.

Day trips are a great way to get out of the house without draining the bank account. It’s also an opportunity to check out the areas around where you live. If you enjoy fun drives and exploring new towns then you should give it a try.

Let us know some of your favorite day trip spots in the comments!