2 weeks in!

It has been exactly 2 weeks since our moving day! And let me tell you, we are so happy with our new neighbourhood. Moving day was a fluke-thundery-humid-downpour kind of day, but everything went smoothly thanks to our friends and family who helped out. We are so grateful to them.

Our new home is exactly what we wanted. Our neighbours are very friendly, and there are often kids playing in the street (and even sometimes in our backyards!) One of our neighbours described it as a “front-porch community”, and it is so true. Everyone is visible which makes it easier to meet and get to know your neighbours. 

We even had one neighbour who made us a welcome gift using rocks and driftwood she collected at Lake Erie. It is Joe, Henry and I! It was so thoughtful, and I love it! 

Speaking of front-porch communities, we have definitely been spending all of our meals and down time on our front porch. It is the best.

There is a definite difference from our last home. While we did have friends in our last neighbourhood and people were nice for the most part, something just didn’t sit right after we moved in (I know, I mentioned that before when I explained why we were moving). Our new home, however, feels perfect. I can definitely foresee us here for the long run, and that is exciting! No more quick turnarounds on houses for us. We’re sick of paying lawyers, realtors, land transfers and address changes (etcetera, etcetera) anyway!

Lucky for us, we have been able to unpack and organize everything since we are both of for the summer. We’ve even made a few day trips to the beach and visiting friends and family! And we hope to do a little more of that before Joe returns to work.

I will be posting our new house tour soon. 

New House: A Few Highlights

One of the best things about this new house deal is how SOON we are moving! It is only 6 weeks away! I need to wrap my head around this (and everything that needs doing before then!) since my last two house purchases had long closing dates - about 5 or so months. It's so exciting moving into a new place, and even better when the wait is short. 

I thought I would post a few photos of the new place that I took with my iPhone during our home inspection. I don't want to show TOO much since the house is obviously still filled with someone else's stuff, which seems wrong to post for some reason. I will just show a few things that I am excited about. 

1. The Outside: The outside is lovely. I love that the gardens are really low-maintenance. When I used to landscape for my summer job, I swore I would never live in a home with hedges or shrubs that needed pruning. Well... I remembered why when I moved into our current place. Shrubs/hedges galore! Needless to say, I'm excited to live somewhere where I will have little use for my pruning shears.

The backyard is quite nice, and bigger than it looks in this picture. It has a gas fire-pit, which I am so excited about. Our campfire pit at our first house is the one of the things I miss the most. Many great times will be had here.

2. The front porch: Ah-mazing. 

3. The kitchen: When I read on the listing that the kitchen was updated (before seeing the place), I was a bit worried. I am very particular in what I like in a kitchen, and have seen some pretty low-quality "upgraded" kitchens during previous house tours. I was relieved and excited to find that the cabinets are shaker-style, and a quality maple. I love it. It is in a cherry stain. While I have always loved a white kitchen, the stain looks nice and will likely stay. 

4. The original details: There are quite a few original details in the house, including stained-glass windows, beautiful wood floors throughout, and even a pocket door!

5. The upstairs bathroom: Again, I have seen a few 'updated' bathrooms before that were not at all my style. Everything about this bathroom, however, is my dream bathroom - glass shower, beautiful tile floors and walls, heated floors, a low-flow toilet, storage... heaven. I wish I had a better photo, but you get the idea.

Of course, the biggest highlight is this house's location. It is a short walk to almost everything for us. I will be giving a more detailed tour in 6 weeks or so when we move in! I can't wait! For now I guess I should go and prune the hedges...

Downtown, Here We Come!

Great News!
In a crazy whirlwind of events, Joe and I bought this gem!

(Sorry about the bad quality photo... I borrowed it from the listing.)

Just a few days ago I was posting about how we were likely going to need to live in an apartment for a while during our search for a home. I wasn't really excited about this, but as I have said before, we were NOT willing to settle on just any home. It had to be perfect, or at least almost perfect (with potential to become perfect). So, I had spent some time searching for available 2 bedroom rentals near where we want to live.

Then, two days after the "Sold" sign was up on our house, we got an excited call from our realtor in the evening. A house was coming up right in our dream neighborhood, on one of our preferred streets. And, in a price range that showed us it was likely not a dump. We quickly drove by to take a look, and from the outside it looked perfect. I almost wanted to put the offer in then and there! But alas, we had to see it first. The next day we went to see it. It is a home with 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms that was built in 1920. It is completely updated. It has a detached garage and a lovely yard. It even has a partially finished basement and a finished attic. Amazing.

When a house like that goes up downtown, we have learned, there are usually multiple offers. And they usually sell for over asking price. We knew we had to act fast! Our realtor wrote up an offer that same night and we signed it. Then the waiting game began. There was a 24 hour window where someone else could have put in an offer and started a bidding war. I don't think I slept.

The next afternoon, we got a call from our realtor. They had accepted our offer! And the closing date is even the same as the sale of our home! Too good to be true. But it IS true! I am still having a hard time believing we have had such luck.

We did the home inspection and, of course, there are a few things that need some work (I mean... it IS almost 100 years old!) We decided we are okay with that since we plan on spending many years here, and can fix as we go.

I will definitely follow up with more about the house soon.

Why we plan on moving. Again.

Wait... What?!
Yep, you read it right. We are planning on moving again.
We have been spending the past few weeks doing a few little things that needed doing in order to list our home. And Monday, we are having a realtor in to take a look. Considering we just moved in a year ago, and probably paid a high price... we are hoping the news is good. Especially after giving the entire house a facelift.

What caused this, you might ask?

Well, let's go back to the beginning.
Back when we decided to move last time, what we really wanted was a home that we could raise a family in. As in, not a home with killer steep stairs and a scary basement like our first house (which we loved for so many reasons...but those two were a bit less child-friendly). Since we knew we were eventually going to try for a baby, I feel like we rushed into purchasing our current home. This, of course, is all in hindsight, since we fell in LOVE with this house. We just had to have it!

To be honest, this house has everything a family would want. It is solidly built, has large bedrooms, lots of storage, a finished basement, is great for entertaining, is on a quiet crescent, has a garage and two sheds, has a huge, private, beautiful backyard (with a pool! And a hot tub!) and feeds into a great French Immersion school. And of course, it is in a good location. Well, according to MOST people.

Yes, location. What we didn't realize when we bought the house (but which we really did realize deep down) is that to us, location is everything. (If only I had listened to my own wise words, here.) Probably our favourite thing about our first house was it's location. Downtown. Walking distance to EVERYthing. Yes, I say everything. Except for some family members. However, our entire existence basically takes place downtown. It is where we work. It is where we go to the market. It is where we go out for food, it is where we like to walk, some of our family lives there. And to top it all off, Joe's parents are going to be Henry's care providers when I go back to work. We used to walk everywhere and loved it.


A few months ago, Joe and I had to have that honest conversation. We both admitted that we missed being downtown. It is like something was missing. (I felt a HUGE sigh of relief when I learned that Joe felt the same way!) Fingers crossed that everything works out in our favour!

Let The Blogging (re-)Begin!

Hello everyone!

After months of anticipation, we are FINALLY in our new place!
And for the most part... it is great!
The first few days involved living in a pile of boxes and a disorganized mess. Last weekend we put our butts into gear and unpacked almost everything (except for one spare bedroom, which is still a pile of boxes...that we will ignore for now.)

After a whirlwind of a week, things are starting to look a little more organized around here. (I will try to get a house tour up sometime in the next couple of days!

Let me re-cap our lives since the move. We have gotten around to a few little things on our to-do lists, but nothing major yet.
For example, we changed the yellowy-orange lights that lit up the front of the house:

And replaced them with bright, white lights. (This seems like a small change, yes, but you have no idea the change it made in person!)

We bought planters for the front and back yards...9 in total! We got a good deal at the local market. Getting them home in the Rav4 was...interesting!

We also put in an automatic garage door opener, and installed a few new register covers. So, nothing too exciting, but stuff that just needed to be done.

Of course, we've taken some time to enjoy our new place, too :) Look at the poppies that began to appear the first morning we were here! We have been LOVing the backyard, the pool, the hot tub, the privacy. It is awesome.

And Mira seems to be adjusting alright, too. She even found a way to get on the roof so that she could meow at us through our window at 5:45 am. That little....

However...we have a *little* problem. We need new furniture. ASAP.
The only existing couch we had was the blue one that used to look really cute in our old place. We had plans of putting it in the basement here and to get new (at least to us) furniture for the fireplace room. But, the couch doesn't go down the narrow stairway. Back to the drawing board!

I've also been putting my creative juices to work and trying to pick out paint colours! It's exciting...but I can't seem to make up my mind. The people at Lowe's must have thought I was a crazy lady hoarding all of the paint guides and paint chips in sight!

On a completely unrelated note... did I mention it is report card season?
And did I mention that my Mum got married on Tuesday? It was a great day! Married in style :)
My Mum and Rick looked amazing and happy, and dinner was a blast. Thanks, guys!

Needless to say, it has been one busy week. I'm excited to get thinking about the projects we will take on over the next months!

Easter Time!

The end of our 4-day Easter weekend is fast approaching.
Joe and I did the usual: Visiting family and friends, dying easter eggs, eating way too much sweets, and enjoying the springtime weather.

A few other exciting things happened this weekend (along with one NOT so exciting thing).

1. Joe turned 29! His birthday fell on Easter Sunday this year. Next year he'll be 30...whoa!

2. I started running again. I plan on doing a 5k race in June with Joe's family and thought I should train a bit. My legs hurt.

3. We officially started packing for our move! We have the basement almost emptied out, and both spare bedrooms packed up. One of them is now serving as a storage room:

4. While going through things and packing, we pulled out a lot of things that we could sell or donate. So far, we sold Joe's old guitar and made $150, and sold a bunch of old books and made $36. Not bad! Also, while we were dropping off our many boxes of donations, I picked up this chandelier that I hope to do something fun with in the future :) It was free!

5. And the not-so-exciting. This weekend we said goodbye to one of our furry friends, Beau. Yes, the sweet kitty that loved to make appearances on my blog, like this:

When Joe and I came home from work on Thursday, he had been sick and was straining to pee (and going wherever he was). We brought him into the emergency vet expecting to need to buy him some medication, but things were much more serious than we thought. It ends up he had a blockage that would have cost about $2000 to fix and there was no guarantee that the surgery would work! He had medical problems that would last his entire life and he would need a special diet and potentially further surgeries. It was an extremely difficult (and sad!) decision to have to make but we had to give him up. It was too much for us to take on. He was a great cat, and handsome, and very loving and I will miss him.