The Inner Workings of a House

It's interesting how when you use the same appliances, television, car, front door, they become part of your life.

We're going to be going on an exciting trip soon, and while we're gone we have a friend who's graciously accepted the job of house sitting. Last night after she said yes, I got excited about buying her favourite snacks, making our house easy and a happy place for her to be. I started up writing a note for her: Wi Fi password, Netflix access, car arrangements, how to work the stove. I hadn't realized how intense this note was going to be until I was at 2 pages and had hardly covered anything.

Now I'm definitely being more than thorough, but we won't have phones on and I don't want her to be here the first day and realize she doesn't know how to work our old school microwave. No popcorn for 10 days!

Anyway, just appreciating the special things my house is filled with, their tricks, weird quirks, and interesting features. I love anticipating a trip and this is a fun part of it...next up, packing!

The Kitchen Colour Conflict

Philip & I have been constructively arguing about the cabinetry we'd like to go with for probably a year now. For those who aren't in the loop, I work in the kitchen business so it can be tough every day selling beautiful kitchens while ours remains dishwasher-less with a fridge in the living room. We're really hoping to renovate the kitchen this year, depending on cash flow, so we started to choose some of the decor aspects to make a more accurate budget. This week we made some great strides towards envisioning the kitchen we'll be putting in:

1. We're looking into redoing the entire main floor flooring...it's a bit of a crazy addition to the budget, but the floor needs refinishing anyway and this way we could have the same floor throughout the kitchen and living room. We'll likely do carpet in the bedrooms, and then we're going to do engineered natural maple throughout the remaining main floor. We're looking into installing it ourselves to save a couple thousand dollars, but we have to think that through a little more.

2. Two tone cabinetry is going to be the look we're going for, and we chose my favourite grey-ish stain from my work, Slate, for the bottoms while the uppers will be a painted soft white. 

3. As far as countertops, we're hoping to put in a new quartz product in a white tone, it's a laminated quartz - a thin layer of quartz with a manufactured core making it really light weight - and affordable. It's a brand new product so we'll see what the limitations are and if it will work for us over the next month or two. 

4. This is a big one...we plan to take down a number of walls. All of the walls we can. When we're done you'll be able to see from the living room all the way to the back door, and the kitchen layout will  be drastically changed.

Take a peek at some 3D renderings I did at work the other day! Let us know if you have any ideas we should try to incorporate? We've been brainstorming but it's a big project to undertake!

2014

I'm a week late on this, but Happy New Year!

I'm a big resolution person, but to tell you the truth I didn't feel very Christmas-y or New Years-y this season. I'm just starting to get the hang of writing 2014 at the end of dates, so I'm just not there yet!

I'll definitely still be thinking over some goals, which started with Philip & I exercising every day. We spent the last half of our Christmas break setting up an exercise room in our guest room. We bought a TV on kijiji a few months back, got our day bed set up (for collapsing onto after a good workout), and on Boxing Day we headed to Ikea for an expedit to be used as a TV stand. We started up January 1st, full of gusto. We both worked out! January 2nd rolled around, Philip worked out, and when it came time to do mine the TV turned on, and just as quickly turned off - so we got 2 good uses out of our kijiji television and we were off to Best Buy. Last Saturday seemed like a spontaneous spending kind of day, we decided to get a new TV because the one we bought was going to cost a couple hundred dollars to fix, much more than we paid originally, and we just weren't in for the hassle. We got in and out of Best Buy in a matter of minutes, we had chosen the TV before we went so it was nice and quick. We ended up with a Smart TV just for options later, and so we can watch Netflix in a second room if we want to, or if we ever have a guest who wants to. After that we stopped in at Superstore because a headband had broken earlier in the day and I wanted some new ones, they didn't have any but somehow I walked out with 2 new pairs of glasses. Ay caramba. Budget is off to a great start in 2014. Anyways, since then we've each exercised everyday, and no desserts for us either - till our cruise that is. 

Some other things we're looking forward to this year: our family vacation, hopefully doing our kitchen and finishing up our main floor (I'm not going to say for sure because renovations have their ways of throwing wrenches into plans!), and who knows what else. 

Let's hope it's a good one! Speaking of hope, I think that's my word for 2014. 2013 seemed like a waiting period - working our bathroom constantly, things not going our way - that sounds very Eeyore-like, but there were definitely good parts too. This year, I'm going to try and be positive and hopeful, God has a plan and this year is part of it!

Food...yummm

I've been waiting to post about a new experience we've embarked on, but haven't had a chance! Today's post is extra special because it includes a discount that you can use to make your life easier!

We started using eMeals a few weeks ago and have really liked it so far! It's an online meal planning service. Basically you pay a small fee and have meal plans with recipes and a grocery list sent to you each week. You can choose from 13 different meal plans, ranging from your everyday Classic to more specialized like Paleo and Clean Eating. You can change your meal plan once a month, so if you want to try a few that's a great option. We started out signed up for "Low Fat", but I didn't find it a lot healthier than the way we already eat, so we changed to "Clean Eating". So far we've really enjoyed it! My favourite things:

• The grocery list makes shopping so easy! It's divided by department so going through the store is pretty quick. If you're in a rush it's as quick as printing it our or accessing from your phone and you can get all your groceries done in one trip. (We only opted into dinner plans as we usually just eat leftovers for lunch and cereal or toast for breakfast - but you can have your meals complete which would make the grocery list even more handy!)
• We've tried a lot of new meats and foods. I'm mostly a chicken and fish kind of gal, and before this had only bought red meat I think once not counting hamburgers...so it's been an interesting change eating sausage, pork, steak, etc. Definitely adding some interest to our meals. 
• I find that it makes it a lot easier to remember to take out meat to defrost, and to get started cooking right when I get home. Sometimes thinking of a plan is so hard, and then even when I make one by the time I get home I don't feel like making that particular dish. Ay ay ay. Anyway, now I get home, open my binder where I have the recipe print outs and just start following the instructions. I know that I have all of the ingredients so it's just as easy as following the step-by-step guide. 

If you think this sounds as heavenly as I do, give it a try! eMeals is offering 30% off for Cyber Monday, so hop over to their website at emeals.com and start eating delicious meals with less effort :).

Disclaimer: I wasn't paid to write this post, I'm part of their blogging network and believe in their product so I was happy to write about it and share a great service with people I know and like! I am in the process of being approved as an eMeals affiliate in which case I could make money if you visit their site through a link on my page, but as of right now this post is written with no money in mind!

Do you have trouble thinking of meal ideas too? I hope I'm not the only one who comes home starving at 5:30 to a freezer full of rock hard meat that will take way too long to defrost so I dig into some scrambled eggs...

4 Saturdays

It's official, there are 4 Saturday's until Christmas. That is exciting, but also makes me nervous about all of the shopping we have to do! 

Has anyone started shopping? I've completed 10 out of 19 gifts so far, plus whatever gift exchanges and parties come out of the woodwork. Ay caramba. 

Philip & I have already distributed our Christmas lists which are sometimes fun to put together. Since sending it I've seen a few other things in stores that I'd love, so I've been keeping notes for my July birthday. Not trying to be selfish, I think because we've been putting most money into our house it's just exciting to get to have some of the things that I wouldn't buy for myself right now with all that we have going on. 

I love Christmas! We have 2 gatherings already planned for the 14th & 15th (one at our house!) followed by countless more right around Christmas. 

My goal was to finish all Christmas prep before the end of November, so that in December we can take some time to relax as we both have 2 weeks off. We have less than one week to go so I'm going to be furiously shopping online, doing my Christmas baking, and organizing our plans for the holidays. This past weekend we put up our tree and decorations and we've been playing Christmas music non-stop so we're well on our way to the Christmas spirit! The other thing we've been trying to do in preparation is to finish as many of our house projects so that we can relax guilt free when Christmas break comes around.

What have you done to prepare for the holidays? I'm hoping that all of our preparation means a calm and jolly holiday season!

Christmas Projects

- Decorate
- Bake
- Shop
- Wrap
- Bathroom
- Guest Room
- Office
- Cleaning
- Basement
- Host
- Celebrate