John's Christmas Present

I always have a pretty long list of things that John might want for Christmas (what can I say... I'm pretty good at remembering things he mentions/knowing what he needs). This year I decided to fix up his office for part of his present.

John's office - before

John's office - before

Since it's the smallest bedroom upstairs I'm fairly certain it will remain an office for a while so I figured it was pretty safe to redo. So the last day before his Christmas break I had a friend come over and help me with the project... and we got it all done while he was at work.

Luckily for us I had somehow convinced John that we should FINALLY finish painting the ceilings upstairs... and since we would be emptying out the rooms to paint the ceilings I also convinced him we should paint the walls while we are at it. This meant that the bulk of the hard work was already done.

New furniture wasn't in the budget so I had to work with what he already had in there. This meant that pretty well all the furniture that was already in there was going to stay in there. I did come up with a plan while he was away for work a week in November for how I thought his office could be arranged differently though.

He has a couple of newspaper clippings that he's saved for years... one was in a slightly damaged frame so I bought 2 of the cheapest frames from Michaels (using 50% off coupons of course). They were meant for a certain size of poster and the newspaper clipping didn't fill up the entire frame... but I wasn't going to pay for a mat on it so instead I turned the paper that came with the frame so that the white side was facing outwards to use as a mat... worked pretty well if you ask me!

John also had this slightly 3D picture of a hockey player (it's the middle picture in the line up of 3) that I had to figure out. I went to Michaels to ask about a frame for that but the frames that have enough space in them to accommodate something 3D like this were kind of expensive (and also not quite the right size) so after much contemplation I opted for just putting a nail in the wall and not using a frame for it at all (see the final pictures at the end of the post).

The wall colour. 

Below are some of the options I was debating on to paint one of the walls in his office... in the end I decided to paint all the walls a neutral colour and use some coloured curtains instead.

So I found the nicest curtain rod I could for an inexpensive price ($14 at Canadian Tire) and some inexpensive but still nice curtains from Walmart. Since his favourite team is the Washington Capitals (and he has a bit of stuff to do with that team) I wanted some of the accent colours to be either red or blue (hence me debating on blue as the wall colour). Which is why I opted for blue and white curtains.

The last thing I added to the room was a couple of floating shelves. This way he would have somewhere to show off some of his "toys", somewhere to put pictures, or just extra space to put something one day. I bought them at Jysk a while ago when they were on sale. I really wanted one large one (which is the size I ended up buying) and one that was the size down from this but they were 2 different shades of white which I didn't like so instead I got 2 of the larger sizes.

We also hung up his whiteboard so it's no longer sitting on the floor (and I guess if John wants to put it back on the floor he can).

I must say the finished product... is not too bad... and we got it all done in the span of 4 hours (while John was at work for the morning)

I also decorated his office door to be more present like

John's office - after
New curtains, pictures hung, brown chair added, and switched out his Winnie the Pooh lamp for something smaller and more neutral.

John's office - after. Pennants displayed, floating shelves installed, whiteboard hung (with festive message), Christmas tree added, and desk moved from corner to the longest wall.

$20 Sock Present

My friends and I did this last year where we filled a pair of socks up with some presents (in total it should all cost about $20) and have a white elephant type gift exchange. This year I thought of this an entire year in advance. I figured if I was left with a couple of extra pairs of Christmas socks they would be easily gifted elsewhere. Because of this I got 2 pairs of Christmas socks for about $3 which left me with about $17 to fill the socks with. I had also purchased nearly a year ago (or maybe it was 6 months ago during the summer) during Bath and Body Works semi annual clearance a bath bomb. I've never actually used one before but I was thinking of a specific friend in this group that would REALLY love it... so I got it on the chance that others would also appreciate it. Anyways, at this point I was at about $12 left to spend. I had something that I had bought that could possibly work with this group a year ago but it was too big to fit in a sock (so I'm using that at another $10 gift exchange instead). Then I remembered that I had seen these cute cactus things at Chapters about half a year ago on clearance. The odds were likely not in my favor that they would have any left in the city but then as it turned out they had a bunch of them at the location closest to me... still for the same clearance price unfortunately (shouldn't it have been even cheaper by this point?) and then for the last piece to finish filling up those socks was to buy an actual real cactus (in case the fake one wasn't up someones alley). John and I had a bunch of leftover plastic pots from our wedding favours so I used one of those to put it in a better looking pot.

It wasn't easy this year considering the restrictions that were placed on what we could put inside of the socks. No chocolates (and I had a BUNCH of Lindt chocolates that could have gone inside from our advent calendar). no chapstick. No tea and no coffee... and those are only the restrictions that I could remember. So, I think I did alright all things considering.

I was pretty close to choosing a yellow topped cactus but then I saw this one lonely red looking one and thought that better matched the season.

Luckily, socks are stretchy and will be able to accommodate the larger items... I'll just need to put a tag with a warning on it to roll the sock down instead of just grabbing things out of it so that the cactus stays intact.

The Basement

When people walk into our basement their comments are usually about our carpet, the brick wall, the stove, and the brick arch (we usually have to point out the lovely carpeted bathroom though). We don't have much of a plan for the basement yet... we know the carpet could be of a bit better quality and a less busy look (likely something a little lighter too to help brighten up the basement). We aren't a fan of the brick wall (or the "stage" below it). In fact, the plan is to get rid of that wood burning stove to hopefully make the basement feel a bit bigger. Not sure what the plan is for the bricks though. Originally we thought we would get rid of them then it was recommended to us that we paint them white and keep them (probably a simpler solution but not sure how the bricks are going to look once we get rid of the "stage"... and we are definitely getting rid of that stage!).

The brick wall in all its glory!

So the stove is sitting on what people are deciding is our basement "stage". If you look closely you'll notice that it even has 2 lights pointed at it for "stage lighting".... perfect for concerts, plays, or saying important things while standing on.

Doors from left to right: bathroom, storage, laundry/furnace

A corner perfect for a drum set!

Advent Calendars

How do you even know when Christmas is without an advent calendar to help you count down the days? 

Over the past few years John and I have done a few different versions of these

One year we got the cheap $1 ones (we each needed our own of course so that was actually $2 and the chocolates are hardly worth that price). I also made this advent calendar one year where I counted down to Christmas with reading a bible verse (or 2) every day.

Last year I bought us a Lindt advent calendar right before December so it was discounted... but even then... you're stuck with so many white ones that aren't that good)

This year though I made us this advent calendar

I went to the local Lindt store and got 26 different flavours of their truffles to fill in the slots with (there are 2 in each - one for each of us). I had been collecting toilet paper rolls since the summer (at least!) and I even moved all of those toilet paper rolls from the condo to the new house when we moved. Right before I made this advent calendar I debated on switching it all for something that might look a little more attractive but I don't know... I don't think it looks all that bad. Does it? At the very least we know it will taste delicious! And, there are no plain white truffles inside this advent calendar!

I already have an idea for what I want to do next year... something just has to go on an extreme sale at the end of this Christmas season first so that I can justify purchasing it.

It's Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas

Every year I start setting up Christmas stuff after November 11th. We've already had our Thanksgiving here in Canada a month ago by this point so why not?

Here's a little look at what our place is starting to look like set up for Christmas...

Our Christmas tree has always looked the same... always red and gold. I think because for a long time all I had was red ornaments that an old roommate passed on to me.

Here's a look at our tree from a couple of years ago (I'm sure it looks very similar!)

I'm not sure if you've spied the track set up around the tree... and the one lonely house that is lite up (there are a few more on the other side of the tree near the back too) but John has a lot more room in the new house to spread out his train set this year. 

Did you know that sometimes Michaels (the craft store) offers free classes where they supply the bulk of the supplies? Because they do. I went to one in the fall with my mom and sisters to make a floral pumpkin design (all we had to do was purchase the pumpkin) and returned to make a wreath a couple of weeks ago (all we had to do was buy the wreath base - it was on sale for $8 when I bought it plus I have a teachers discount so it was even less than that!). I wish they would have supplied something red for the wreath but apparently their theme was "gold" or something. I didn't look at the cost of all the things I added on to the wreath but I'm sure it all adds up fairly quickly and I could likely sell this $8 wreath for $50 now (so if you are interested in my wreath I'll give you, my readers, a discount and you'll only pay $45... or you can just watch for the next class at Michaels and maybe you can make your own (but you might have to wait for next year for that).

Would you believe me if I told you the pink was John's idea? Because it was! Well originally he had said red but we already have red on the tree and who says all the different things in the house have to match?!? The flowers were a couple of extra ones from the wreath decorating class I took that I found another use for.

Christmas Wish List 2017

Now that we've got a house coming up with a Christmas Wish list was easy... we've got more than enough space!

An office chair.  I thought I liked one from JYSK then I sat on it and rethought it.... I'm still looking for the perfect one so check back for an update?

Jodi Picoult's newest book... assuming she has one (every year she has had one for me to ask for but I didn't see a newer one than "Small Great Things" when I wrote this... which I've already read).

I really, really, REALLY want a better vacuum and next time they go on sale at The Bay I have every intention of taking every gift card we have for that place and using them all on the vacuum.  So gift card's to The Bay.

Speaking of gift cards we are always spending money at home renovation stores (Rona, Home Depot, Canadian Tire, etc.) so gift cards any of those places would be appreciated

A friend gave me a pair of moccasin slippers a number of years ago and they've worked great (especially the years I only lived in a one story place) but now that I'm going up and down stairs more often I need something that fits me properly and isn't slipping off my feet the first couple of steps I take on the stairs.

Mitts.  I feel like I always ask for mitts for Christmas because I use them well.  This year I'm going to ask for ones that might last me longer and keep my fingers warmer (and still look oh so stylish).

We've got more floors in this house than in the condo that want to be smelling nice and I currently only have one plug for wallflowers at Bath and Body Works.  For now we could use one more probably (I like the more discreet looking ones like this).  I've got a few scents to go inside but I wouldn't say no to more... is it weird to put a different scent on different floors?..  I haven't decided yet so just in case it is maybe 2 of the same scents... I don't recall which ones I like but typically not seasonal ones or food items.  Once I had a blue one that I really liked but I don't recall what the scent was.

Speaking of Bath and Body works... I exclusively use their hand soaps thanks to a certain aunt of mine.  I'm not fussy about what the scent of those is... I like them all!  I also like candles and their perfume... which apparently they don't have a lot of?  This is news to me but I know I like this scent.

Now that we have a laundry room that isn't also a bathroom we've got space to spread out!  I like the idea of a laundry sorter/bin thing for in the laundry room and this one by Neatfreak seems like a good idea.  The individual bags lift out so even if we just keep that hamper upstairs I would only need to carry one bag at a time down to the laundry room.

We could also use another laundry basket.  Now that it isn't about 10 steps from the laundry room to the bed where I sort the clothes I seem to drop a lot of clothes while going up all the steps.  A laundry basket for clean clothes would hopefully keep me from having to back track to find all the missing socks I dropped along the way.

Maybe if I had a clothes drying rack like this one I would keep my clothes off of the deep freeze, washer, and dryer when they are laying flat to dry.

One set of the oh so cool sounding Dragon Cutlery from Ikea

While you're at Ikea picking up some cutlery, and a drying rack you may as well pick up a couple of these boot trays for us (2 please).  Also, while hosting a Thanksgiving dinner at our place I came to realize that we only had 2 trivets and I wouldn't mind more (and these ones are hopefully slightly better quality than the dollar store ones I currently have).  One large trivet and 2 smaller ones  would hopefully be enough!

Not a big fan of plain coffee over here but I am a fan of adding special syrups to my coffee to make it taste SO much better.  I haven't ever tried the sugar free syrups and if they have sucralos in them I'm not sure I want to... so make sure my syrups are packed with that tasty tasty sugar!  You can get them at a lot of places (I've seen packs of 3 or 4 at Winners; Marshals probably also has them which means Home Sense and Home Outfitters likely have them as well) These ones are all from Bed Bath and Beyond (which I've heard has some of the better prices for them).  They didn't have a lot of options online when I made this post and they might have other options now but I know I would like hazelnut, vanilla, and caramel and I'm open to other flavours as well!

This oven mitt.  We only need one as we got this exact one for a shower present as well (it would just be nice to have a mitt for each hand).

I found these canisters at Marshal's about a month ago.

I like both of these designs (there were other ones... but these are the ones I prefer). You could use the prices for size references... I think one of each size would be perfect if you could find them!

Finally, I think Christmas is the perfect time to get new pajamas.  These ones look pretty much perfect and I'm a size medium.  But don't pay their regular price for them... I feel like they are constantly on sale (when I typed this out they were on sale for $29.95)

And that should pretty well do it...

About the Carpet

We've got 5 different colours and kinds of carpets on our 2nd story... and all should really be replaced since I'm sure despite vacuuming them exactly 100 times they likely still have bits of the ceiling we scrapped stuck in them.

Anyways, take a look at our carpets

We've got white in the master bedroom

Across the hall we've got our "brown room"

Next to that is our "pink room"

And across from that is our "blue room"

And yes, because I know you're dying to know that is how we refer to the rooms on the 2nd floor... because why refer to the bedrooms as what we are using them for when we can refer to them based on the colour of the carpet.

I spoke a while ago about how we wanted to replace the carpet prior to moving in but since we didn't end up selling our condo we decided against it (and to be honest, when we were considering quickly putting in carpet we had less than a week before moving in)

The plan is to replace all the bedrooms with the same carpet... I'm not sure how we will refer to the rooms after that... probably according to their old carpet colours so that anyone new coming into our home will be super confused when they can't find our beloved "pink room".

And those 4 carpets aren't the only ones upstairs... we've got one last one for the hallway and stairs...

Can you believe that there is only 2 other types of carpet in our house?  Both of those are in the basement (one you already know is in our basement bathroom)

Our plan for the hallway is to continue whatever flooring we decide to use on our main floor (it won't be carpeted) up the stairs and onto the hallway.  It's a high traffic area and likely to get ruined faster so may as well put something durable down.

The plan is also to get rid of all that wood trim, baseboards, and doors and make it all white.

Extra Pieces

When John and I moved out of the condo I made us move a giant box with extra pieces to our nightstand that I never took out of the box because I didn't like the floor model with this part attached.

We'll a few weeks ago we finally cracked open that old box and looked at what this extra part was actually all about... and I think it's kinda cool.

light up night stand

The piece actually goes on the back of the nightstand and just makes it as tall as the headboard.... I feel it just makes the headboard look way too big.  

But it lights up so therefore it's pretty cool and something that we should take full advantage of... just in a different place.

So how could we DIY this into something else?

I was thinking a tall shelf of some kind for the basement one day... the problem is I would think this part would be the top of the shelf and it's kind of heavy.

And that my friends is pretty much as far as my thought process went.

Any ideas?  

What else could we use this for?

(FYI... there are 2 of them!)

A Ranking of Bathrooms

In case you were wondering we have 4 bathrooms in our new house.

Were we looking for a house with 4 bathrooms?

No

But I'm not going to complain!... one day we might need all those bathrooms.

We haven't altered any of them... yet.  Some might need updating more than others though so today I'm ranking them from the best to the worst (based soley on the way they look... not function).

Enjoy!

1.  Copious counters and cupboards!

main floor half bath

This lovely bathroom is located on our main floor just off the kitchen (if you look close you can spy our oven in the mirror).  It's actually the bathroom with the most counter space which is why I ranked it in the #1 spot.  It's a bit much considering it's a half bath on the main floor.  But since it has all the counter space I'm using it as my "getting ready" bathroom.  My hair stuff, makeup, and at one point even my jewelry is in there.  There is even a spot for a chair if I really wanted (I don't think I need that chair in there yet though)

2.  The Ensuite

Ensuite

Never did I ever think I might have an ensuite.... this is the stuff dreams are made of (although, I don't really care about an ensuite currently since John and I could technically have 2 bathrooms each to ourselves).  It's nice enough and the only updating I would request would for it to one day include a shower... Although I'm not sure how that would work out since there currently isn't room for a shower... so if we are magically getting more room in our ensuite what I really want is a nice soaker tub with a separate shower, 2 sinks, and lots of counter space.  That's the stuff dreams are really made of.  Currently we use this bathroom for brushing our teeth... and that's pretty much it!

3.  Carpeted Commode

basement full bath

I know what you're thinking.... the bathroom has carpet in it?  Our realtors told us that would have been a luxury they paid extra for (along with the sparkles on the ceiling on the 2nd floor apparently).  You can't see the carpet in the bathroom because I put down our bath mat since this is the bathroom we were using to shower in at the time.  If you ignore the carpet and the yellow it's really not too bad though.  So I guess the only part of this bathroom that got it into the #3 spot is the fact that I don't mind the tiling in the tub.  Anywho, this is our basement bathroom.  Personally, I don't think we need a tub in the basement so I think the plans for this bathroom are to get rid of the tub and put a shower in instead and then make the bathroom smaller because it's actually quite large (or well larger than the main 4 piece bathroom upstairs).  John dreams of changing the location of this bathroom to the other side of the wall... we'll have to see the cost of moving basement plumbing before we commit to moving it over though.
Sidenote:  This bathroom also has the hot and cold water mixed up in the bath.  So, if you ever happen to be over and needing to shower in the basement turn it towards the cold water side to make it go hotter!

4.  Everything is Brown(ish)/Pinkish

Upstairs full bath

My cousin insists this is one of the finer bathrooms in the house.  She insists all you would have to do is change out the counter top and put in a few shells and you've got yourself a nice beachy bathroom.  To be honest, changing the counter top would probably do wonders for this bathroom but I'm still ranking it dead last.  Prior to moving in they had a pinkish shower curtain in there too... adding in our white and black one helped too.  As the main 4 piece bathroom (this one is located upstairs) it needs more counter space (we didn't have a whole lot of counter space at the condo but I think it was even more than this!) which I think we could get by switching out the toilet which is a little large and since we are swapping that out for a newer better one we may as well redo the tub too.

And there you have it folks... our bathrooms!

Which do you think is the worst?

Which is the best?

Apple Buns

apple buns!

In case you haven't heard we have an apple tree.  Which means... we've got a fridge full of apples!  We gave a bunch to John's mom shortly before we moved in and she made us some wonderful apple crisp out of them but we still had a full grocery bag left at our house afterwards... so if you are like us... with an abundance of apples at this time of year... might I suggest apple buns!

The recipe linked above recommends resisting the urge to add sugar or cinnamon to your apple mix.  I've made these twice now (the first time was a number of years ago though) but the first time I did add the sugar and cinnamon.  This time John told me to make it liked the recipe suggested... he agrees now that they could be even tastier with the addition of a little cinnamon and sugar for next year though.

We ended up bringing a dozen of our apple buns to our bible study and they were a big hit... we ended up leaving the extras with the host but I think there was only about 2 or 3 left in the end.

We've been cooking up other stuff from our garden already... here is our salsa.

Prior to Renovations Kitchen

John and I had about a month in between purchasing our home and getting possession of it.  This gave us oodles of time to hum and haw about how we might change our kitchen to better suit us.

Currently, our kitchen is an eat in and to be honest functions better than I thought it might.  There is room for all of our stuff (which is surprising because I don't feel like we have much more cupboard space than in the condo).  But it isn't exactly what we want (plus we don't even have a table to put in the space!).  So it's the first bit of major renovations we are planning for.

view from dinning room

dinning room

A few things..

That is a door to the bathroom on our one kitchen wall

We don't currently have a dishwasher

The stove is original to the house (not that you can see it)!.... and I think we have officially learned how to use it!

Yes, that's carpet in the dinning room

Yes, there isn't a whole lot of counter space considering the space that we have.

So, how are we going to change it?

We've drawn diagrams and we've used apps but in the end the best thing we used to help us design our kitchen was to use the Ikea kitchen planner... mostly because I knew the stove and the sizes of everything actually existed (and as a nice bonus the chairs and table that we added to our design are actually the chairs and table that we own!)

Do we plan to actually make an Ikea kitchen?

Probably not

But it is a good tool for planning for right now.

Anyways.... here are 2 options that I've come up with for what might work in our space.

Ikea's kitchen planner

The option on the left has us swapping the current dinning room and kitchen and taking down the wall that separates them.  The 3 white boxes along the bottom would act us our pantry and coffee bar area.  Probably a bit more money than the option on the right but I feel like it is the better option.

Then there is the option on the right.  The kitchen stays relatively the same size as it currently is, however, the wall separating the dinning room and kitchen still comes down to make room for the peninsula.  Not a lot of room for upper cabinets because there are 2 windows that run along the wall where the sink is currently located. 

We don't currently have a backdoor to our house (well we do, you just have to go through the garage) and so with the option on the left it might also give us enough space to add in a backdoor of some kind... eventually.

Of course, we can sit here plopping things into Ikea's kitchen planner all day but it still doesn't tell us what's in the wall we want to take down, how much will it cost to move plumbing or if any of this is even possible.  

BUT... since we are likely not going with an IKEA kitchen I also went to a store in our area to inquire about kitchen designs (and talk to someone who actually designs kitchens daily)

Here's what the girl at the store came up with:

swapping the kitchen and dining room

Pros: lots of counter and cupboard space, big fridge, lots of space in our new dining room

Cons: Those cupboards and counters that line the bottom of the top picture are only 12 inches deep... 12 inches!  That's the length of a ruler people... not too big

keeping the kitchen where it currently is

Pros: We don't have to move plumbing or anything, all cupboards are a regular depth, the kitchen looks very spacious.

Cons: small dining room, smaller fridge, 

I'm still learning towards the swapping of the dining room and kitchen if possible.

BUT, I'll definitely be visiting another store sometime and this time getting them to totally work their magic and come up with something they think would be best for the space we have.

Anyways, it might not be getting done any time soon... but hopefully within the next couple of years we'll have a kitchen that better suits our needs.

Anyone who has gone through a kitchen renovation and wants to chime in with their opinion is welcome to... we aren't married to either of the above 2 options yet.

Homemade Salsa

We've got salsa folks!

We were home this weekend so took a little trip to one of the many local farmer markets to pick up way too many tomatoes (John's sister is making us tomato sauce) and with the extras (and many from our pants) I made some salsa for canning.

Here's the thing... I did this last year (I think I did 2 jars not knowing how much salsa we would use up) and we easily used it all up!  So this year the plan was to do the exact same recipe but perhaps, this time, a full recipe (instead of the half I thought I did last year)

So I figured... I probably posted a link to whatever recipe I used in my blog from last year... the post where I talk about making salsa can be found here and if you read it I only talk about making the salsa and make no mention of the wonderful recipe I had found (also note, the date of that post was December 7th!).

So I searched.  I opened link after link after link.  I could make a number of assumptions about the recipe I used...

1) I felt like maybe it made 5 quarts

2) I don't recall buying chilies for it

3) I would never make salsa that included cilantro 

4) Based on the spices that I currently have in the pantry I assumed I only used the spices I currently have.

5) We don't own a kitchen scale and so I was pretty sure the amounts of veggies in the recipe were measured in cups... not pounds.

In the end I'm fairly confident that I didn't find the exact recipe that I used last year (even though I searched to the 5th page of my google search!)... on to (hopefully) better things! So I ended up going with this recipe.

FUTURE CHRISTINE: WE'VE FIGURED IT OUT FOR NEXT YEAR... CHECK ONE OF YOUR CHURCH COOKBOOKS... THAT'S WHERE YOU'LL FIND THE RECIPE

Ahem... anywho.. It definitely took a looong time to chop up all those veggies (I added extra jalapenos to their suggestion because we weren't sure how spicy ours were - most of them had turned red)

homemade salsa

At this point I left John in charge of the salsa and it got pretty runny so we simmered it for quite a bit longer than the recipe suggested to thicken it up (the recipe I plan to use next year says to add corn starch which we debated on adding this year but didn't)

3 quarts of homemade salsa

You can see that we didn't get close to the 5 and a half quarts the recipe claimed it would make (probably because we simmered it for so long)

John ended up sampling some and said it was spicy... we then looked up when to pick jalapenos and learnt that if picked when just starting to turn red they are at their prime spicy level... whoops.

Backyard

Welcome to our backyard!

Our patio area and shed

We have a decently sized backyard with a garden already in place... which is perfect because if there is one thing John wanted was for there to be space for a big garden (and if this garden space isn't enough for him there are some community gardens that we can rent space from about a 5 minute walk away from us)

What have we changed?

Not much

The day before we moved here there was an estate sale around the corner so we picked up some hose and a rake.  The following week I was at Dollar Tree and saw they had spray nozzles for the end of a hose and picked up one of those (which is actually holding up surprisingly well).

We took out a few bushy plants to transplant our strawberries that we had on our balcony.  Not knowing what exactly our plans are for the garden for next year we just chose a spot at the end and figured since we didn't really know what the plants were we wouldn't miss them.

There are however some plants that do seem more like keepers

This one is hard to see because apparently we are also using it to support a tomato plant that didn't fair too well during the move.  It's a small bushy little tree that I'm assuming will be around next year.

Also not sure what this one is but it had a flower on it (and there were the beginnings of more of them at the top) but it seems to be doing well... is it one that continues to bloom year after year?  I haven't a clue.

There are also a bunch of these in the garden.  I actually bought 2 of these a few years ago to keep on my balcony.  They require next to no work and have survived many a winter.  

One day I want to make a flower garden under our bay window at the front of the house... and maybe just maybe some (or all?) of these plants could be moved there... because although we may not have much planned for the garden I do know that all that space will likely be filled with fruit and veggies.

Psst.. the last couple of Friday's I've been posting about our [new to us] house... it's kind of a thing I'm doing now I guess.  Here is last week's post

Other Wedding Stuff

What seems like eons ago I posted about possibilities we were considering for our wedding guest book.  John ended up making the decision and it was likely the most expensive of the options (especially since we haven't used the camera since).  But here are a couple of pages of the book...

Our wedding guest book

Originally I picked up a large scrapbooking album for Michaels hummed and hawed about the size of it for about a week and decided I likely wanted to go with something else... but what that something else was I wasn't sure.  Then while wandering the aisles at Michaels (on one of my twice weekly Michaels visits... seriously... they basically sponsored our wedding and weren't even aware of it!) I found a small 3 ring binder (the outside of it was a plain white fabric and we never added anything more to it) with a bunch of pages and envelopes included.  It was probably about $10 which was a fraction of the cost of the original album (I don't recall the cost of it.. probably at least $30).  We set it on a table with 2 of our friends manning it to take photos of our guests and left pens, markers, and glue sticks out for them to decorate and write a message.

I don't think I ever shared what we did for our table seating chart either.  We also kept this pretty simple.  In fact, the hardest part of the seating chart was finding a frame that included a bunch of spots for photos... that I actually liked.  I actually just came across this as we were moving (yes, the seating chart came with us... I'm sure we might reuse it for something other than a seating chart sometime!).  Anyways, I found this frame at JYSK for a good price... we decided on the black frame versus the white because the tent and so much of the decor was already white.  The paper was scrapbooking paper from Michaels.  Did you know you can pretty much return anything to Michaels?  A potential guest book that you decide is too large but lost the receipt for and even their open stock scrapbook paper.  

Our wedding seating chart

We hadn't used our engagement photos at all (other than the one that was on our invites) and so we used some of the extra spots to in the seating chart to add some of our engagement pictures... whether people spent time looking for more than their name is beyond me but we did it anyways.

 The venue had an easel we could use so we set this on the easel by the guest book table and everyone seemed to find their spot.

Also, to see some much better quality photos of our wedding click here

Home Renovations - 4 days prior to move in

Last Friday I talked about how we had been scrapping the popcorn ceilings and the mess it was leaving... It's not the best picture (apparently I didn't think to turn on any lights for pictures this day) but here is a shot at the "messy room" (we designated one room as the messy room where we put tools, vacuums, curtains... just anything that was going to make a mess so that the others could be cleaned and this one would be the last to be cleaned).  Anyways, all that white stuff along the wall... that's all ceiling.

Our messy room

Last week I also mentioned how we had an arsenal of vacuums at our place... 

4 vacuums should clean up a room don't you think?

A variety of vacuums

It should be noted that the 2 red ones are both partially broken... they are also the two that John and I actually own.  Maybe the next time Dyson is on Sale at the Bay we'll use up all our wedding gift cards on a fancy new vacuum.

Here is our "messy room" all cleaned up 4 days before we officially move in!

Our clean "messy room"

On this day I also wiped down all the walls and above the doors and the door handles and hopefully everywhere that those little bits of ceiling got.  I'm not so naive that I think the ceiling scrapings are all gone... but I think 90% of them might be.  The other 10% we'll be slowing cleaning up over the next few months probably.

We also painted the master bedroom this week!  We went with Benjamin Moore paint because I knew it would be the best out there but instead of using their very top level of paint I took the guy who worked at Benjamin Moore's advise and went with the Regal level (which I think turned out great!).  The gray colour is called Edgecomb Gray and the turquoise colour is San Jose Blue.  We also used their Waterborne Ceiling paint on our ceiling.  Our plan is to eventually paint or replace the wood around the window, the baseboards, and the door (which you obviously can't see in this picture) but we'll wait until our condo sells and we have a bit more money to do those updates.

Master Bedroom

I've been slowly emptying out the condo... everytime I go to the house I take a few boxes of things with me (and I send John to work with one since he passes the house on the way home to the condo).  When I came back to the condo on this day it was already looking so bare... nothing was left on the living room shelves!

Condo living room

We officially moved out of the condo and into the house a week ago... once our condo sells we have big plans for the house (new kitchen, new bathroom(s), the basement)... changes that will likely take a number of years to finish but slowly the house will be transformed into something that is more our style.