Reno - Hardwood

Now that our house is sold, it's time to focus on our new house and getting it ready for move in.  Currently, the house has carpet everywhere!  I am not a fan of carpet.  It stains easily (we have two small kids) and I much prefer the look of hardwood.  I have been dreaming of dark oak floors and I was worried that find the right hardwood would be a challenge.

A good friend of mine suggested I visit www.bramptonhardware.com in surprise, suprise Brampton.  Brett and I walked in and I immediatly saw the hardwood of my dreams.  Literally the first sample I saw was the one.  I fell in love.

Despite my instant love, I methodically went through the whole store to make sure I would not have buyers remorse.  There was nothing else that caught my eye so we purchased the Red Oak Chocolate Brown hardwood with wide planks.  I have a sample of it here and yes, I do look at it daily.  I am a little bit obsessed but clearly please with our purchase. 

This first big purchase for the new house is pretty exciting and I can't wait to see the finished product.  I have this vision of what our house will be and I can't wait to see it become a reality.

Our House is Sold!

As you know we just got back from vacation.  We took advantage of this vacation to sell our house!  Our timing couldn't have been more perfect.  We bought our new house in early March which gave us two weeks to get our current house in Open House shape.  We took on the challenge as we knew we knew it would be MUCH easier to list while we were away.

I am SO glad we did it the way we did.  From the day we listed our house on mls.ca to the day we sold, we have approximately 5 showings each day.  These showings tended to be in the afternoons and into the evenings.  I could only imagine how brutal it would have been to keep the girls out of the house during this time.  Not to mention the effort it would have taken to keep the house in pristine condition with my two tazmanian devils in residence.

So luckily, we sold our house on our offer date a week later!  I was a total wreck on offer night and am so glad the deal is done.  Now I can focus on our new house and getting it ready for us to move in.

Ahhhh...Vacation!

After many months of working super hard, my family and I were finally able to take a vacation. After much planning, we decided to head down to Florida and take the girls to Disney World and after that have a relaxing week on Sanibel Island.

We had a wonderful vacation. It was great to relax as a family and not have to worry about work or anything else. It took a few days to get in the swing of things, especially as we were at Disney World. Disney World in my opinion, is not really a vacation. I went into it with the attitude that this part of the vacation was for the girls and so apart from booking character dinners and the Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, I left it up to the girls to tell us what we were going to be doing that day.



The girls had a wonderful time at Disney. Visiting with their favourite characters and just enjoying the awesomeness that is Disney. It blew my mind how busy Disney was. We went to Magic Kingdom, Epcot and the Animal Kingdom. Our favourite was definitely the Magic kingdom. Although I was beyond excited to see a real live Manatee!!!! I have always wanted to see one and was pretty stoked to finally be able to. The Finding Nemo ride was definitely worth the 40 minute wait just to see the manatee.













Brett and I definitely enjoyed Sanibel Island the most. I was a bit hesitant about holidaying in Florida as there are so many other places I want to go but as soon as I saw the island I was hooked! I totally get why people buy condos in Florida. If we could afford a condo on Sanibel, I would buy in a second!!

After a stress free week of only having to decided whether to swim in the pool or ocean, we headed home. It was sad to go and I can't wait now to plan our next holiday!!!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter weekend!

Here's the link to a cute little video of kids doing an Easter Egg taste test. Two of the littlest munchkins are my very own.

http://www.thestar.com/videozone/1157188

The girls were also in the Good Friday Paper with a cute write up about their reactions to the eggs. Here's the full article: http://www.thestar.com/living/article/1157529--the-dish-chocolate-easter-eggs#article

Kitchen Reno - First Steps

As you know we have currently bought a house. And it needs ALOT of work. On Saturday we allotted a bit of time to do some research on kitchen cabinets. We headed over to our local http://www.ayakitchens.com/ showroom to checkout cabinets. They had some lovely options, however, the cabinet cover we liked best, it is pretty similar to one I recently saw in Ikea.

Ikea Cabinet Lindingo White

I love the white cabinets and the detail is pretty. The price can't be beat! Here's another picture of the kitchen at Ikea.

I am thinking that since the price difference between the two places are HUGE, that perhaps the best route to go would be to do an IKEA kitchen and dress it up with nice hardware, appliances, back splash and countertop. You also can't beat the warranty IKEA has on their cabinets.

I was wondering if any of our readers have IKEA kitchens. Do you like them? What's the quality like?

When will things slow down?

I finally have a moment to sit down and write a bit about what's going on at home and on the business front. It has been a VERY busy few weeks! Especially with a few major things happening.

1. We have been searching for a new house for 6 months. It has been an extremely emotional and frustrating search. For those of you who are NOT familiar with the Toronto market, please believe me when I say that It. Is. Insane. I'm not sure if you've check out my new favourite blogger http://fmlistings.tumblr.com/rss but her blog is all about the market here and she is excellent at describing the insanity. Anyways, after putting in three offers that were rejected (one was lost by only $1000) we finally won!!! So after months of taking time each week to view house after house, the agony of waiting for the offer date, multiple trips to the bank we finally have our weekend back!! Only to realise that we now have to sell our house...

2. It's time to sell. So for the past week and a half we have been cleaning, organizing and purging like mad getting our house ready to list on Monday! When you have two children whose goal in life is to make a mess, this is definitely the easier way. So in this sense, the timing couldn't be better because we are going away on Monday for two weeks. However, at the same time we are packing up the house and getting it showing ready, we also have to plan and get everything ready for our trip. There is no time to be excited about the trip right now. All we can focus on is getting the house ready.

3. And of course, we now have a new house that needs a lot of work! It is a 1960's backsplit and was sold by the original owners. Enough said. There is a kitchen to gut, bathrooms to plan, wallpaper to hopefully steam off, and wood panelling to get rid of. So to add to all that is going on, we now need to figure out what we can do on our budget, find a contractor, source materials and try to get our house move in ready by the time we close on our current house.

4. Our trip. We are going to Disney. The girls are super excited. I am looking forward to it but have to admit that I am more looking forward to our trip to Sanibel Island AFTER Disney. I really need a Vacation! Not the waiting in lines, crowed kind. I need the sit on the beech with a drink and soak up the sun kind.

Sigh......

5. So enough about our personal craziness...There are exciting things happening on the business front! I can't say too much yet, but we will hopefully be able to share our great news in the next couple of months! But for now, these exciting things are keeping me SUPER busy! Why is it that all things seem to hit at the same time?

PS. - Our Organized Family Calendar was in Better Homes and Gardens this month!!!

Should I? Or Shouldn't I?

I have recently gotten into a fitness craze. It all started with my New Year's Resolution and this year I plan to stick to it! I started going to the West End Y again and tried a gravity class thanks to the urgings of a friend who goes with me. I have never liked exercising. In fact, on my list of things I hate, exercising was at the top. For some reason though, I LOVE my gravity class. On the days I don't go, I think about it. A lot. I am a bit obsessed. I have no idea why this particular class has peaked my interest. But it has. I've been going now every week for two months and I have yet to get bored (my usual complaint about exercising).

So the question I am trying to answer is, Should I try spinning as well? I'm a little scared of spinning. Bike riding as a general rule is not my fave because it hurts my butt. So the thought of doing an hour long class with a sore butt does not appeal to me. However, I have spoken with a few people who swear by their spinning class (and swear that the sore butt goes away). I am starting to muster up the courage to do my first class but would love to hear from you to see if doing this class would be a good thing or if it would halt my recent success with exercise and have me run screaming from the gym?