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

Double Vision

We currently have 2 TVs in our living room. Ay caramba. If anyone's wondering why our bathroom takes so long, it's partially because we've jumped between projects a lot - that and we have a busy schedule, and we are learning as we go. Anyway, we're close to a reveal on the bathroom, but in the mean time I thought I'd share our plan for the guest room/eventual nursery/potential foosball room/exercise studio (I decided to use the word studio because it makes our exercising sound much more glamorous than it actually looked when we do it). 

So hopefully one day the 3rd bedroom will be a baby room, but until then, we don't want a room sitting there and being of no use to us. We painted it "Quiet Nest", so when the day comes we won't need to repaint, but it's a soft enough colour that it works as a guest room too. Our original plan was just to put the day bed and vanity in there and use the closet for seasonal storage and the occasional guest. This was a little silly because we will probably never have an overnight guest. Perhaps a friend who is too tired to drive, or a babysat kiddo needing a nap, but both of these seem pretty unlikely. Almost all of our friends live here, as well as our family, so we've never had a guest. 

The next plan for this room came about by Philip's cousin generously gifting us their foosball table. We thought that room could work for it since our basement isn't finished and it's just off the living room. We have the table set up in their now, but I think it's about to move into the basement. 

Poor foosball, being kicked back downstairs. We'll probably try and buy a cheaper rug for the basement and set it up down there for the time being. It can still be used and stay nice, but just not upstairs because we came up with yet another plan! Plus this one we sank money into so it's likely to stick.

Our exercise regime is a Wii program called EA Active, it's awesome but since moving we've both fallen out of the habit. We're really hoping to get back into it, but the problem is that our living room is not a great set up. Any time we need to exercise we have to move our coffee table, which is too heavy for one person to move. This means that if I decide to exercise on a day off and the table is there it isn't so easy for me, or else it means that we keep our table off to the side for weeks making our living room look less than presentable. After thinking it through, we decided that a great option would be a TV in the guest room with all the gaming consoles set up in there. We can exercise out of the way, keep our living room weight free, and have a separate room for playing games too with friends. The day bed works as a great couch so it should be a fun space.

Right now our guest room is being used as an interior door construction zone, so we haven't set it all up yet, which means the TV we bought off Kijiji is hanging out next to our other TV. It makes us look very tech-savvy. I can't wait to have it all set up and maybe do a video showing how our house is looking these days! 

Warm & Toasty

While we've been keeping pretty busy with our bathroom, we've jumped around a little bit and finished some other projects too - that would be easy to skim over because they aren't so thrilling.

As you might remember, when we gutted our bathroom and took down the ceiling, the insulation fell down on us. This is when it was revealed that we had 3 layers of insulation: saw dust, batts, and blown fibre glass. Too many layers. It was time to clean that all out and start fresh.  

If you're handier than we are, I know that you can rent the machine from Home Depot or other places, but we just aren't that skilled. I would rather pay to have someone else vacuum it all out and blow it back in than pay for repair on a Philip sized hole in our ceiling. Just not worth the risk, and it's a gross job. 

We got a few quotes, and ended up going with a company recommended by my cousin, Airborne Insulation. 

The journey of having our cellulose insulation blown in was a little trickier than we, and the insulation company, had anticipated. They had a crazy summer and we had a lot of delays waiting for them, but eventually it got done. The first day they came in and realized that the scope of the project was a lot larger than they thought. They had planned on spending the morning vacuuming and the afternoon blowing in, this turned into 2 and a half days vacuuming and half a day blowing back in. We were pleased to see that they didn't change the price on us though, the guy that quoted saw the attic and we didn't hide anything so it was their mistake and they took the hit on the extra labour. 

It was a gross job, the attic is messy and dusty, I felt so bad for the guy who had to be up there all day vacuum in hand. I told him he has a terrible job (was that rude? I'm not normally that blunt :S). He has done it for 25 years and he's good at it! I'm glad he can still be happy while stuck in a dingy attic.

Anyway, now hopefully our home is more energy efficient. Since we've moved in we've replaced the windows, replaced the exterior doors, the furnace, air conditioning, hot water tank, and attic insulation. I think we're well on our way to low heating bills! 

Progress...Determination...Swimmers!

I don't know how much Philip's childhood swimming lessons inspirational motto will help us, but we've made a lot of progress, had a lot of determination, and done a lot less swimming this summer than we would have liked due to being busy with the house.

It's hard to believe it's been 2 months since we've updated this blog, we definitely didn't mean to give up on it, but life just got away from us! It's interesting reading the last bathroom update, and about our front doors, because that feels like it was a while ago. This might be a long one, but I'm going to try and bring everyone up to date!

- We can officially go to the bathroom upstairs, which is handy, but we don't have a door...so unless you feel like being really public with your bathroom needs you might still want to use the basement. Let's just say that having no bathroom door isn't my favourite part of our so far. 
- We installed the floor all by ourselves which was exciting! For the most part, Philip & I work as a pretty great renovation squad, we don't normally lash out at each other or disagree too much while trying to get things done...but the floor was definitely trying to challenge that. It was tricky because you have to put the glue on, and then try to position the tile perfectly, and it was just stressful as we got close and tiles were having to be put in so exactly and I was getting emotionally distressed. It looks beautiful though and in the grand scheme of things I'm glad we could DIY that portion of the bathroom. 
- Our lighting and electrical were all completed, our light is so bright and beautiful! It kind of makes the bathroom. I can't decide what my favourite part is yet, but the light definitely helps me see it all!
- We installed our Ikea vanity, medicine cabinet, and tower...as well as bringing in a drawer unit from Kitchens 2 Go to replace the old linen closet. All of the installations went well, and we're so happy with how much storage we were able to cram into such a small bathroom. My favourite part are the Ikea drawers, they're maple and can fit so much! Plus I bought lucite organizers for them which make me really happy. Organizing those drawers was the highlight of my weekend #renolife. 

We're drawing near to the finish line, our plumber will be coming back this week to finish up in the shower, and other than that the major things are having our linen cabinet top sprayed at my work, installing our mirror, and buying and installing a door. After that it's just the pretty touches!

After finding a method soap that coordinates beautifully with our bathroom scheme, we've affectionately themed our bathroom "Silver Birch". 

So that's where we're at bathroom wise! As soon as it's complete I'm planning to do a quick video tour since it's kind of small for picture taking!

Now for a couple of questions for you!

1. We've been debating on interior door options. Philip would love to do frosted glass interior doors, I've seen them at Home Depot and they're beautiful! Plus they don't show much through so privacy isn't too much of a concern. Cons: They are more expensive, breakable with kiddos, and might make people feel less private? Pros: They're interesting and unique, spread light through the house, and look super stunning. What do you think we should do? Also, have you installed an interior slab door (as in, not pre-hung) before? We don't really know what we're doing.

2. We're planning a bathroom launch party when our bathroom is done. Anything that takes this long deserves celebration. Any bathroom themed foods you can suggest?