101 in 1001 Update #4!

Wow, that month flew by!

I started thinking that I didn't really accomplish much on my list this month, but in reality I actually managed to get quite a bit done, although a few things really slipped. Running 4 times a month certainly has slipped since after work all I want to do is go home and take a nap. I only managed to squeeze in two runs this month, so I'll basically have to start over when I go for my next run. I battled a cold this past week, which has been the one week where I felt I had the energy to go to the gym. Ugh.. I guess I'll try and make up for it next month while doing my year-end balancing at work, busy days ahead!

That said, Jeff and I got a lot done in regards to our wedding and we got some important stuff done on our house! Which makes me very very happy :) We started off the month by booking a photographer, followed that up by booking a decorator, and painted our spare bedroom (finally). Only two of those things are on my list, but I'm getting excited!!

Completed Goals:
63. Book a photographer - the lovely Heather at HRM Photography will be taking all our shots!
76. Paint spare bedroom - I'll post photos once I get it decorated... this may take a while...

Goals I'm Working On:
6. Go for a run every week, weather permitting (12/143) - ugh, this number is not where it needs to be
13. Eat a vegetarian meal once a week for 3 months (1/12)
29. Read 10 classical novels such as 'Pride and Prejudice' or 'Wuthering Heights' (1/10) - thank you Sherlock Holmes!
34. Try 8 new foods (5/8) - I tried brussel sprouts..I still don't like them. Yuck!
48. Go on one date night a month (5/32) - we ate in, but Jeff cooked and set the table all fancy

49. Take a picture of Jeff and I once a month (4/32)

65. Create our centerpieces and wedding favours - the decorator is going to do the centerpieces so all I have to do is the favours now!
77. Organize and decorate the office - it'll get finished eventually...

Completed Goals: 12/101

Christmas Decor

I love winter in general. Call me crazy, but I think that there is something incredibly beautiful and peaceful about watching the snow fall when you're inside, holding a cup of hot chocolate. When I was in school and stressing out over a paper or studying for exams, I would look out the window and see the snow falling and it would calm me down. An overwhelming feeling of peace would come over me, and I would think, 'I'm OK'.

I have always LOVED Christmas. Absolutely loved it. From the earliest time I can remember, Christmas has always been my hands-down favorite time of year. It has less to do with the whole presents thing and more to do with snow, Christmas music, the smell of Christmas trees, decorating, the baking, the meaning behind it, the food, yummy hot beverages like hot chocolate and apple cider, wrapping presents, and getting together and spending time with people I love. And that's only the beginning of why I think this time of year is awesome. I used to wake up around 5:00 in the morning on Christmas morning, just so excited to get my favorite day of the year started. I actually only stopped doing this when I was in university and slept in a little bit on Christmas morning, not because I wasn't excited anymore but mainly because I was just always overtired then. So get ready Jeff, I may be up at 5am this year on Christmas Day!

Thus, given my feelings regarding this season, I have been extremely happy the past few days getting all of my Christmas decorations together. I'm so excited to spend my first Christmas with Jeff in our own home, and I think that feeling of love, and creating traditions for ourselves has really pushed me into action. I got super inspired and created my own Christmas artwork, which turned out fairly well, so I thought I'd share my decor ideas here.

My countdown to Christmas is on!

My Charles Dickens village 

My "mantle" 

I painted this design based off of a greeting card I found

I found the idea for this candle on Pinterest

The inspiration for this display also came from Pinterest - love that website 

My table decor - I picked up a huge box of ornaments at Liquidation World for around $10!! I ended up using them in my table decor, decor for my mantle, and on my tree!

First Christmas tree in our house :) 

A look at the living room

Home Update #2

Unbelievably, Jeff and I have lived in our house for exactly two months now, so I thought it would be fitting to blog about the progress we've been making, just as I did a month ago. I have some pictures of the master bedroom and the basement to share here today. Just two rooms, which may seem so inconsequential, but completing jobs like this seems to take forever!

Still to do on my list is to finally paint the hallways (I keep putting that one off), finish painting the stair railings, decorate and organize the office and the guest bedroom, and to finish hanging up our artwork throughout the house. Our list of outside jobs is much longer - we have to do some things to our deck, seal up some bricks, clean out the eaves-troughs, plant some bulbs, and re-silicone the windows and doors. We did complete a major project in our side yard - we dug out a trench leading from the side of the house out through the garden in an attempt to drain water away from our house, since we had a small leak in our basement a few weeks ago. It was a LOT of work, and I want to say thanks to Jeff's dad and to Jeff's friend Jay for helping us dig!! We couldn't have done it without your help!

As usual, I'll provide before and after pictures of the progress made. The biggest thing we've really done besides paint is to re-drywall one of the walls in the bedroom, so I'll include a picture which should explain why we decided to do that. Jeff also built me a custom closet organizer, which I'm extremely happy with, so I will share a photo of that as well. I'm loving home ownership so far, even though it's a lot of work!

In other news, Jeff and I have set a wedding date. :) We have decided to 'make it official' on August 2, 2014! It's probably the most concrete wedding-planning type of thing we have done thus far, other than me nailing down my bridal party. A lot of people have asked me why we're waiting so long, and the answer to that question is both really simple and also a very long story to tell. We're taking two years to reduce stress, be ok financially (since we sort of made a really big purchase already this year haha), be sentimental, and to give ourselves lots of time to plan. The planning part sort of goes hand-in-hand with reducing stress. And so far it's true - the wedding hasn't stressed me out at all so far! Sentimentally, the date is really important to us. Because that day will mark exactly five years that Jeff and I have been together! We had our first date on August 2, 2009 and I'm super excited to marry him exactly five years from that amazing first date!

Bedroom - before

Textured wall - this wall was to the right of the window, and it was the only one  textured like this, so we fixed it 

During renovations

After - my finished closet! I have two bars, and plenty of shelves to  use! Good job Jeff!

After - textured wall

After - we painted, dry-walled, and decorated this space, and I still have a little decorating to do!

Basement - before 

Basement - after: we painted the walls and window trim (it was wood-colored), put up new blinds, and decorated.

My new wall collage :) 

  I still have a little more decorating to do!

One Month In...

It has been exactly one month since Jeff and I have moved into our house!! (And also exactly one month since we got engaged, I'm not sure which event is more exciting.) With that said, I thought it was about time that I posted a few pictures of the progress we've been making. I'm only going to post pictures of the first floor and the exterior today though. I was hoping to post some photos of the basement, the bathroom, and master bedroom as well, but a minor flood in the basement, some funky bathroom wiring, and a mostly (but not completely) finished closet customization job in the master bedroom are preventing me from fully completing these rooms.  I'm hoping these jobs will be finished this week, so I'll try and have some pictures of these rooms up soon. I'll share some of my 'before' pictures today too, which I took the day we moved in so I can look back and compare what was originally here to the changes we have made and will make in the future.

We have made amazing progress in four weeks - as mentioned in the last post, we've painted almost the entire house, mudded, taped, and dry-walled in the bedroom, Jeff built me some custom storage in the closet in the master bedroom, and we have now cleaned out all our downspouts. I still have to paint the hallways and some trim, both of which will hopefully be completed this week as well!

With that said, let me introduce you to our house!

Our house :) 

Living Room - before

Kitchen/Dining Room - before

Kitchen - before

Backyard

Kitchen/Dining Room - after - we painted, hung a photo, and added new curtains 

Kitchen - after - we painted, and changed out the light fixture

Wall across from kitchen window - we added these cool dragonflies

Living room - after - we painted, put up a wall sticker, and put up new curtains (still have more art to hang)

Living Room - we decorated the built-ins (still have to hang the photo that's on the bookcase)

Dinner Parties

We're finally making progress on our house! After almost three weeks, we have finished the entire main floor, and are just about finished in the basement. By finished I mean painted, trim up, all outlets on the walls, decorated, and not a cardboard box in sight!! I still have to decorate the basement and put up the trim I painted, so it's almost there. It's truly a wonderful feeling to just look around and know that you put your own work into a room, and watch it evolve from a concept in your mind to a put-together space.

We're working on finishing the master bedroom, which has taken a lot longer than the other spaces. There was one textured wall, which neither Jeff or I was very fond of, so we removed it and had to drywall, tape, mud, sand, prime, and now paint it. Whew! We are just about finished painting, and I'm so excited to see how it looks when it's done. I also have to finish the bathroom and the hallways, and some of the trim needs to be painted still. I will be posting pictures soon so I can proudly share what I've been spending so much time and effort on in these past few weeks, I'm just not sure when that will be.

So far, being engaged has been a lot of work!!!

Now that we have our 'grown-up' table all set up, we've been having a lot of people over to share some food and conversation. Which I love :) I LOVE to cook and entertain, and since the table at our apartment barely fit just the two of us, it's really nice to have space where people can comfortably enjoy a meal I've prepared.

That being said, I'm going to do something here that I've never done before - and that's share a few of my treasured recipes. I've been pretty adventurous lately in the kitchen, and I'm excited to share my latest creations here!

Recently, I've made pulled pork, waffle brownies with homemade caramel sauce, crab dip, peach crisp, homemade lemonade, and grilled pineapple.

The recipe for my much-loved pulled pork is extremely simple and amazingly delicious. I got it from Jeff's dad and stepmother, so I can't take credit! :) I did make some modifications based on what I tend to carry in my spice cabinet to reduce the cost. This recipe is a true crowd-pleaser and I'm always surprised when there's rarely any left for later, even though I always make it thinking "well, Jeff can always easily take it to work and eat the rest for lunch".

Slow-Cooked BBQ Pulled Pork:

1 boneless pork shoulder
1 and 1/2 tbsp paprika
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 small/medium onion, chopped
3 cloves minced garlic
3 to 4 cups of water
BBQ sauce, use as much as desired

Directions -

1. First you need to mix the dry spices (paprika, thyme, etc.) together in a small bowl. Unwrap the pork shoulder, remove any strings, and cut off any excess fat from it. Place it on a cutting board, take the bowl of dry spices, and evenly rub them on every side of the pork shoulder. After it's been evenly coated with all of the spice mixture, place the shoulder in the slow-cooker.

2. Chop the onion, mince the garlic, and add these ingredients with the water to the slow-cooker, and set it on low heat.

3. Cover with lid, and allow to cook for 6 hours, or until the meat will fall apart with a fork. I like to turn mine over at least once if I'm able to, and on days when I'm really ambitious, I turn it every hour to ensure that the pork gets cooked evenly and that the top doesn't dry out (as the water doesn't quite cover a larger shoulder).

4. After 6 hours, remove pork from the slow cooker, cut off any fat, and shred it with a fork. Pour out the water and onion mixture from the slow-cooker. You can keep the onions if you want to eat them with the pork, but I choose not to.

5. Place shredded pork back into the slow cooker and mix in as much bbq sauce as desired. When I'm feeling particularly motivated, I'll make my own bbq sauce, but that usually doesn't happen (oh well!). Set slow-cooker to warm, and serve!

I meant to take a picture, but I've been so busy I forgot! Oops!

Goodbye Apt. #909...

Well, it's t-minus seven days until we get possession of our house, so the countdown is officially on! I will definitely miss our apartment here, and I'm actually really sad when I think about leaving. As much as I am beyond excited for Jeff and I to move to a new house and start making new memories, I'm so attached to this building and its location. Everyone is so nice here, our apartment is really comfortable, and it's just minutes to everything here in London. I know that this sort of attachment is pretty normal, but I've never been attached to any place that wasn't my parents' house before. Not residence, or the first apartment that I lived in (although it was very nice) held very sentimental memories for me, so this is a pretty bittersweet feeling.

Things I will miss: not having to pay for utilities (I was able to run the A/C as much as I wanted at any time of the year), being a 5-minute walk away from the grocery store, being close to Western, the public pool in the summer, underground parking (I will now have to shovel snow off my car!), less stress/bills, our extremely large master bedroom, the view from our balcony at night, and probably just how comfortable we are here.

Things I will not miss: not having any storage space, not being able to control the temperature (they run the heat until mid-May here), not having a yard or a bbq, the tiny fridge, having to pay to do my laundry, being pretty far away from our families, and not really being able to paint anything (although I did paint some walls anyway).

I finally got around to taking my 'glamour shots' of our apartment here, and I'm really glad that I did. Years down the road I can look at them and remember the first place that Jeff and I lived in together, and I thought I would share a few of them here.

Goodbye #909! Thanks for being so good to us!

Apt. #909! 

Living room

Lovely balcony view - I saw some great sunsets from here

Kissing salt shakers

Jeff's John Deere piggy bank and my Dutch Shoe piggy bank

Bathroom

Our massive master bedroom

Sadly, this is 'clean' - it really will be nice to have storage at our house

Cluttered kitchen - again, yay for gaining storage! 

We'll miss you! 

Living Room/Bedroom Redecorating

As my boyfriend Jeff and I move on from our distinct "college/university" collection of eclectic and unmatching pieces of furniture we've collected, to something a little more classy (and something that isn't green leather from the nineties!), we also decided to do a little painting. We live in a high-rise apartment where everything - the walls, the floor, the cabinets, the doors - is beige. A really bland, boring, beige. They even painted all the trim and baseboards the same colour. I guess there must have been a sale on that particular colour of paint! To really shake things up a bit, we decided to go really bold. Chocolate brown kind of bold. It actually looks like we melted a bowl of chocolate and smeared it all over the walls with a paintbrush. I guess it's a good thing we're only doing the one wall since it's a dark colour and because we're just renting at this point. A person just gets tired of beige after a while. I sure hope it all turns out! I decided to post some 'before' pictures... so no judging us by the mess!

Living room wall. 

An apartment in shambles. Definitely a 'before' shot. 

The bedroom - before. It's just a feature wall....for now! Soon to be painted. 

Wall painted - first coat. And my boyfriend :)