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.

Clear Lake 2017

This almost didn't happen this year!

But we can't mess with tradition and so off we went on our annual excursion to Clear Lake while in the midst of house renovations, condo selling, and packing.

Every September long for who knows how many years (every year since I've been around) we've gone to Clear Lake for a family gathering.

The highlights?

1.  Dinner Boat Cruise

We went on the dinner boat cruise this year!  It was something different and we learned some interesting information about the area while on it (and the weather was perfect to be out on the boat!).  It was however pretty expensive and now that we've done it once I'm not sure we'll need to do it again.

2.  Bald Hill

The top of Bald Hill
Confession: I was almost too scared to hike the fairly short but narrow path to get to this point... I thought the breeze would send me over the edge.

We went on the Bald Hill hike this year.  14km later we got back to the car.  I think someone had figured it out and thought it would be about 10km which seems pretty doable but then we ventured off the main path to get to Bald Hill and didn't park exactly where we maybe should have... by the end I was pretty exhausted and it took me the rest of the weekend for my muscles to re cooperate.

3.  Outdoor Movies

My sister and brother in law borrowed a projector and big screen so that we could watch movies outside after it got dark.  It was the first year we ever did it and I would say it was a big success!  It did get a little chilly though so for the 2nd evening of watching movies outside we built a couple of fires to stay warmer

4.  The Food

The food is always good.  Imagine a couple of picnic tables filled with a variety of foods for dinner.  No one goes hungry at the lake!... in fact it takes a couple of days afterwards for you to actually become hungry again!

The regrets?

Just one...we still haven't gotten our Beavertails!  Come on!

We Bought a House!

As of August 25th we officially had possession of our new house!

As per our lawyers advise we went to the new house at midnight to make sure everything was in order and to take a selfie

Midnight selfie at the house

The first week at the new house was filled with scrapping the popcorn ceilings of our second floor.  It just so happened that this week John was also away for work which meant I was scrapping the ceilings of the house.  Luckily, John has some fabulous sisters that came to help.

Popcorn ceilings no more

For those of you wondering; popcorn ceilings can be difficult to remove if they have been painted over (or so I've been told).  We were lucky (if you could say that... I mean we still have a house full of popcorn ceilings!) and ours were not painted.  All we did was spray the ceiling with some water and scrap away at it and it came off fairly easily.  I searched up what to do after the ceilings were scrapped and got a variety of answers... I ended up just wiping down the ceilings with a damp cloth and hopefully that will be good enough!

Unfortunately, scrapping popcorn off the ceilings made a BIG mess.  We put down sheets of plastic but it still got EVERY WHERE.  We are planning to replace the carpet... eventually so we weren't too concerned about it ruining the carpet but we aren't planning to replace it anytime soon... so we still needed it to not be too messy.  We ended up with a full arsenal of vacuums at our disposal to help with the mess... thank goodness.

I'm posting this a little late... in fact tomorrow is actually our move in day!  Be sure to come back next Friday to see what else we got accomplished prior to moving in though!

PS.  For those of you wondering if scrapping the ceilings was worth it... I say it was.  Am I willing to do it again?  Not likely (other than for our main floor that is... because that still needs to get done).  But I wasn't working that week and was more than capable of doing it myself so I saved us the money of hiring someone to do it (which we probably wouldn't have done anyways.... we would have just left the ceilings the way they were then)

Wedding Pictures!

It hasn't quite been a year yet...

Despite it being in October the weather was pretty decent (yes, our guests had to wear their jackets but I don't think anyone froze and we certainly didn't boil in the heat!)

All of these photos were taken at the venue (in fact, it was the only place other than where my maid of honour and myself got our hair done that pictures were taken).

Our wedding album

We've had our wedding album for a few months now.  We (ahemIahem) made it on Shutterfly and then waited for a really good deal to order it! I opted for the more expensive layflat option because then you could put a large picture across 2 pages and have it still look perfect along the spine.

Fun fact: Did you know that by signing up on Shutterfly they give you 50 free prints?  Because they do... or at least they used to!  We made our parents a smaller version of our wedding album for Christmas (I had a fabulous friend give me a code to get one of those for free too) and when we ordered our parents albums we ordered our 50 free prints (because they were still going to charge shipping on those prints)... all with the exact same photo.  We used them as our thank you's.  I think I printed about 10 to 20 others at London Drugs because 50 wasn't enough.

Anyways, enjoy some pictures from our wedding!

Our wedding ceremony

One of my favourite shots!

Why wear fancy heels when I can wear comfortable flats all day!?!

My wedding shoes (and earrings and ring)

My sister made our wedding cake

Our wedding cake

John cut some trees down at the lake to make our centerpieces (or maybe he used trees that had already fallen over?  I don't recall).  Then he burnt the tables numbers onto the wood.

Our wedding centerpieces

Our reception was in a semi permanent tent on the property (if it was too cold or rainy we were going to have the ceremony in here as well).  They had options to pump in heat in case it got too cold... not sure if they had to or not though.

Our wedding reception

Our favours were succulents.  I loved the idea but hardly anyones them made it through the winter!

Our wedding favours

Also, because purchasing and dreaming about changes (and making changes) to the new home has occupied much of our time we have't figured out a single thing to do for our first year anniversary!  Give us some ideas in the comments!