“Your wife’s not crazy”

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

This is what my husband was being told over the phone by a guy located inside the Orillia Opera House, as his scared pantless wife was standing in the middle of the kitchen trying to decide if she should run outside or put the bird in the cage and THEN run outside. You see friends, Ontario had a 5.5 magnitude EARTHQUAKE!
So due to never experiencing one before I was a little confused on how to act. One correct answer is to stand in a door way and kiss your butt goodbye (according to a disaster movie I own). Have you ever had to deal with an earthquake before? What was your response??? Now that I’ve calmed down and have determined the earth is not going to open up and swallow our house whole anytime soon I’m going to get back to painting some trim in our bedroom. Pictures to come soon!

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3 Post’s in One Day?

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

You’d think I have a ton of time on my hands (I really don’t)! As I’m sitting here trying to encourage Justin to go to bed I decided to write about another program I’ve become involved with. First though, I have to tell you.. besides the first few years of my life, I’ve grown up in the country-type area and since moving to Barrie I’ve discovered what it means to be in/part of a community! All these wonderful programs and events that are put together by the city just never cease to amaze me!
So this other program I’ve got us involved in is called “The  Barrie Good Food Box” cheesy name but you get the gist of it. basically a couple times a month you pre-order and you choose a small box for 10$ or a large box for 15$. Then roughly a week or so later you go and pick up a box of fresh food containing mainly whatever is in season. The point of the program is to insure and to help people get fresh fruit/veggies! So in our first box that we just got we had potatoes, spinach, parsnip (recipe ideas anyone?), strawberries, banana’s, snow peas, grapes, tomato, and onions! I’m excited to continue in this fabulous fresh food!

Thank you City of Barrie for making things like this possible!

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Dining Room before/after

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

Alright so moving on here’s a shot of our dining area BEFORE!

and the best part.. the AFTER shot!

So basically we divided the living room in two using an Ikea Expedit book shelf laid on it’s side. We’ve used it to store all our dvd’s, cd’s, and records! So a break down of what we’ve done: Painted the far wall the medium gray “dark ash”, painted my grandparents old consol black (still need to reupholster the speakers), found an old brass chandelier and painted it red, bought the table at a thrift store (still need chairs) and separated the two rooms with the book shelf! (shown below)

and just for a keep update heres our hallways progress, we still need to finish painting the moulding and the last couple of walls!

Hallway BEFORE

Hallway AFTER

Tags: before/after, dining room, hallway
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Communities in Bloom

Wednesday, June 16th, 2010

I entered our front garden in Barrie’s Communities in Bloom a little while back at Celebrate Barrie and today it was made official!  I most definitely don’t expect our little garden to win but its fun all the same! They arrived this morning to put a sign in our lawn (to my horror I realize that the lawn wasn’t cut!) and handed us a cute cloth bag that had the flyer, some sunflower seeds, a Coupon for some compost, a discount card, magazine, and new gardening gloves!

The point of Communities in Bloom is (and I quote from the flyer you are given) “Communities in Bloom is a national municipal contest with a focus on beautification, flowers, landscaping and environmental awareness.”

Cute right? I’ll have to include a before and after shot of our front lawn to show you why I’m so proud of it! Don’t worry I’ll mow the lawn first!

Tags: community, garden, lawn
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Where to start.. again.

Saturday, June 12th, 2010

So Justin and I started slacking on writing post’s and just saving them away until the blog was ready. However now that the blog is semi up and running I suppose I should get a move on! The question is where do I start? Most of our rooms have been heavily upgraded since the last post so I guess what I’ll do is kinda of go room by room on the progress. Some of them are still not complete but most are pretty near! Let’s start with front entry/living room shall we? So let’s grab a picture to show what we started with!

Front Door

Living Room

Now thankfully the living room actually didn’t have that much stuff left here when we moved in but that yellow couch was!
So that was then and here’s now

AFTER front Door

So what we’ve done with this area is painted it a light gray (which you’ll see in the living room), added some mirrors, new light fixture, and a fresh coat of trim paint. Couple thing’s we’d still like to do is get  a new front door and some new closet doors.

Living Room

Living Room

So the living room has had HUGE changes. First the curtains got switched out for some mesh-type curtains we had left over from our wedding which still give us the same amount of privacy but still let a decent amount of sunshine in.

The next thing that we did which gave us the most improvement was painting the walls. It really is amazing how just a can of paint can dramatically change a room! You’ll notice the walls are of different grays, the bay window wall is the darkest, the wall that runs behind the couch is the lightest gray and we have one more medium gray behind the dining room table which you’ll soon see! Other then that there are still a few things needed to be done. One being the molding getting painted white, and getting a new pot light for the empty hole in the ceiling.

So there you have it! Our living room/ Front Entry!

Tags: before/after, entry, living room
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The Work has Begun!

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

It’s begun and we’re already feeling the massive stress, but this will end up being a good learning experience and will hopefully strengthen our relationship has we are learning to deal with one another.

So let’s see.. A lot has  actually already been accomplished.

First:
We changed all the locks on the door

Second:
Justin began ripping out the gross, nasty, and moldy tiles off the wall around the tub

Third:
In the midst of “bathroom-gutation” aka gutting, Sare, Kerry and I began the wonderful process of spray painting some rather gaudy or retro furniture. We painted two chandeliers, some shadow boxes, a 70’s dresser, a mirror, my grandparents old turn table, and put the first coat on the new vanity. Still left to do  would be three bookshelves that we decided can’t be sprayed, and a few frames.

You may notice that we didn’t care about paint getting onto the floor. This would be due to the fact that the floors are already so unbelievable disgusting that we don’t intend to salvage them. The moment I have finished painting the walls we plan to rip up the carpet.

Fourth: Part of the kitchen wall gets torn out, bathtub is removed, the toilet is removed, as is the vanity and the closet in our bedroom. Leaving us with a strange empty room.

Since all this has happened the downstairs bathroom has had the old toilet from upstairs installed, the sink we got from the re-store, two walls drywalled, shower walls installed, shower base installed, and electrical done. The Basement it’self has all the electrical nearly completed thanks to our amazing friend Dave Beaton.

The Living rooms walls, excluding the big window wall, including the hallway, has been painted, and the kitchen cabinet doors have been removed for cleaning and painting. It feels like we are making progress! YAY!

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Home

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

It’s January 15th 2010 at 12:21 am and we are in our new house!

Justin just couldn’t wait to make his first expresso in the new house so here we are! We plan to do some cleaning and possible start attacking the bedroom and then campout in the living room! Justin is currently using one of our new christmas gifts already – a snow shovel – as we are technically not allowed to park on the road be tween the hours of 12-6 due to snowplows and such.

We are so ridiculously excited to get started with our new home! It’s so weird to look around and think “this is where we are going to live.. this huge space is ours!” well it’s huge to me anyways!

That’s all for now! We’re off to Walmart to grab some cleaning supplies that we already need!

God Bless!

Tracey

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Even More Thrift Store Goodness!

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

I absolutely LOVE a day of thrift store shopping! Especially when one is successful!
The latest finds came from the Re-Store off of Anne St. The Re-Store is a part of Habitat for Humanity meaning all the profits go towards to organization which gives one all the more reason to shop there!
So Today’s finds included a nearly full can of red Krylon paint which is perfect for the Chandelier we picked up off of Kijiji (Pictured below),

also Picked up a second chandelier for the bedroom! Only problem that I didn’t clue into was how on earth we are going to hang it! Ah well, we’ll have fun figuring it out.

Lastly was a industrial type pendant lamp originally  from Ikea for 10 bucks!!

We haven’t quite figured out where the pendant light will go but for ten bucks we knew we would find a home for it! Possible the office? Hmm..

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Thrift Store Goodness

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

I LOVE a good thrift store find! Especially when they are 50% off their already low thrifty price! It makes my day complete!
Our find’s today included TWO Salvador Dali Prints from goodwill and a brand new fume hood including an extra filter still in packaging from Value Village for 13$!
I’m still ecstatic over the Salvador Dali prints! There’s some blatant boobies is the one but it’s all in the name of art
Thought I would include some photo’s below :

This Print is titled “Temptation of St. Anthony”

My apologies for the bad picture quality. This second print is titled “The Metamorphosis of Narcissus”

Oh, that book on top? It’s just the second in a series I’m getting into by Kelley Armstrong The prints are self explanatory, we both love art. But a fume hood? The previous tenants at the house we just purchased were big fans of cooking in grease. In fact, flies were actually stuck to the filter. We decided that the 13 bucks for this identical (and new!) one was definitely worth it for not having to clean the old one!

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Ringing in the New Year

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

Howdy!
So I thought I’d ring in the new year by starting with an updating post (even though as I’m writing this it is not yet the new year but shh…)
Let’s see.. since Justin and I’ve gotten married we have..
1.    Bought a spanking new fancy camera
2.    gotten me convinced to buy a macbook
3.    bought a house
4.    bought a car
5.    discovered our huge love for steak
6.    my love for man movies has grown hugely
7.    Pippi our eldest and most cuddly bird past away boxing day
8.    we have discovered Justin’s fantastic breakfast cooking abilities
9.    I relented and we bought ridiculously expensive (in my opinion) watches.
10.    My best friend Sare and I were in a car collision (hence the new car)

That’s about all I can think of right now however I’m sure theres more. Looking forward to all that comes our way in the new year and also looking forward to documenting our ventures into our marriage.

Until another time,

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