When no place feels like home

It feels like Tuesday to me, but I just realized it's Wednesday. I'm definitely looking forward to this weekend and having a long weekend with a short week next week. I could use a break! We went and saw two houses last night but neither of them felt like home. They were actually on the same street, both big corner houses and were essentially the same, but they had different areas where they had spent money. The second house was marginally more expensive, but had put a lot of detail into their home. Even the bedroom doors were beautiful. They both had massive kitchens, but the second home had this huge amount of pantry space (which is my dream) and nice potlights in the kitchen. Still, it didn't feel like home. There was enough that we liked, but having things we didn't like made it hard to imagine spending so much $$, when we'd have to turn around and put more in. For example, neither home had a finished basement, which would require several thousands of work. The cheaper homes we looked at on the weekend had finished basements. It's all such a mystery to me. Either way, the hunt continues. We are slowly closing in on not having our house for Christmas, but at least I know we will have it for next year. The important thing to me is just getting out of the condo (especially before the maintenance fees are jacked up again in January).

Last night, with curtain steaming and house hunting taking up a considerable amount of time, we resorted to breakfast for dinner. Always easy, and always delicious! Tonight I'm working late again (the Fall is just packed with evening events), so husband is in charge of starting dinner. I also desperately need to grocery shop, but have no time to do so. I'm actually contemplating just ordering my groceries, produce and all, from grocery gateway. Otherwise we will have to manage until Friday. It's already so difficult to find time to grocery shop now, that I have no clue how I will find time once I have kids.

In other no-time news, I am slacking so badly on the gym and running and need to just accept that morning workouts will be what I need to do in order to get it done while we have the house hunting going on. My first goal is to get back to my 6am swim classes this week. They started two weeks ago, and the last two Fridays I knew it wouldn't be possible, but this week I am hoping to get enough sleep Thursday night so that I can swim Friday morning! Fingers crossed. At least now there's some accountability out there.

Well, that's it for now! Have the best Wednesday!

Painting, running and crockpots

 Well, yesterday was a whirlwind of a day, as all my days seem to be lately. I painted the bathroom after work. A task I assumed would be easy but oh gosh was it ever not. This is why I have always hired painters and will continue to. I am not cut out for that work! Now I have to repaint parts of the ceiling and baseboards where the painters tape either ripped off the paint (isn't that what it's supposed to prevent?) or failed me. Good times. The good news is that the bathroom looks way better now. The colour we had looked terrible with our new shower (bad planning on our part) and this new colour brings everything together nicely. I found a cute little roller that reaches behind the toilet which I ended up using for the entire room because it worked so nicely. Dollar store for the win!
We are also meeting with a realtor this week (thank goodness I was able to convince husband that his working full time, starting a side business AND doing comfree for our home was taking on a bit much). Things are finally happening!! I can't wait to get out of there and into a house. I'm so tired of living in a condo. It was nice initially just to own a home, but it sucks having someone determine when you can rip up your floor, when you can receive deliveries, how loud you can be (and when you can be loud), how many pets you can have, what pets you can/can't have, the colour of your curtains... It drives me mad. The day after we got possession, we went in and tore up the carpets (because they were disgusting and soaked with cat pee -- wish I was kidding) -- the following day we were threatened with a lawsuit for not asking permission. Granted, that property manager was a bit of a dictator but seriously. He broke a bunch of his own rules by entering our unit without permission and leaving a threatening note on our wall. So we have mostly asked for permission since then to avoid the drama.

Ah the moving debacle continues!
On the up side, my zoo race is coming up this weekend and I think I feel ready. I went for an 8k run after work on Monday and aside from some knee tightness around 7k, it felt good. My speed increased km by km, which I've missed lately and by the end I wasn't breathless or exhausted. I was tired, but that's normal. It was a good feeling. The run didn't feel as long as I expected it would. You know how sometimes you're just thinking - "Am I really only at 2k?". I did an out and back route and it felt like I was turning around before I was even nearing tired-ness. I'm probably going to try and squeeze a shorter run in on Thursday and maybe just do upper body at the gym on Friday. That way I'll be ready to go for Saturday. I'm kind of annoyed at how early they request people to be there. I think I'll have to leave around 6am. I'm not a morning person, so that sucks. The nice part is that I won't be there all day. I'm really excited for the medal - it's a panda bear. I'm all about medals!

Can't wait to add this baby to my collection!

 

 It's funny that as I was getting ready for my run, I felt as antsy and nervous as I used to before setting out on my 20k+ runs. I guess it's all about perspective. I used to run 8k and then go to a pilates class on weekdays. Then I moved cities, wasn't close to my favourite pilates class (which was now about 45 minutes away) and wasn't familiar with the area. I joined a running room group which definitely amped up my running but now I'm back to running (mostly) solo and slowly finding my groove. I loved running in my parent's neighbourhood and that made it easy. Where I live now is basically just hills and inclines, stoplights, highways and crazy drivers. Another score for moving! I'm glad that I'm starting to enjoy running again, because there's nothing quite like getting out there and running to sort out your mind. I'm trying to register for more races to keep me motivated as well. Nothing like my own money on the line to keep me going :)

Oh and my Monday crockpot meal turned out great! I was worried that the potatoes would go gross overnight, but they didn't (maybe the olive oil helped?) and aside from not setting the warming function properly, it worked out perfectly!  Now I'm just paranoid that when I set it today, I set it for 8 hours on high. I hope not. Might have some scorched chili to content with. My goal is to use the crockpot twice a week for dinners. Seems manageable and definitely makes evenings easier! Tonight we have Rosh Hashanah dinner, so I didn't actually need to cook, but I figured I can freeze some and use the other half for lunches.

Well, that's all for now. I'll be back Friday for some of my favourite things!

Need more hours in the day

 

Time has not been on my side lately! Work has been crazy busy, as has life! We *may* actually be able to list next week. This weekend should finish everything off and then we wanted to have a cleaner in to do a deep scrubbing before the photos and everything.
Yesterday I had a volunteer meeting in the evening and very little time in between work and getting there. I had also had a fairly sedentary day with back to back meetings and was not even close to my needed steps for the day. So I made the decision to run a short run instead of no run at all. It was great because not only did I hit my steps, but I also felt better getting out there! My sinuses are still kind of blocked up and I still have a cough, but otherwise I'm definitely on the road to recovery, and getting back to the fitness is a good way to get there. Also, new running shoes always make things more exciting!
I'm heading to the gym tonight. Not sure yet what I plan to do, but I'll have a plan before I get there.
This step bet is really keeping me on track. It's much harder than I thought it would be. We have already lost 35 participants and it's only the second week (and last week, as the warm up, didn't count).

Tomorrow is our very last CSA delivery (as I mentioned in Monday's post). Go figure this is the week they remember to send out the info as to what's in the order. No surprise veggies this time! Thankfully, we aren't getting carrots. Still have 2.5 bags left. Sigh.

Tonight I am making Bruschetta Spaghetta from Daily Dose of Pepper's website. It looks and sounds delicious, so I'm pretty excited! I will try to remember to take a picture and post it tomorrow. I (of course) failed to take a picture of our dinner on Monday when I made the Autumn skillet (link in Mondays post), but I will say that it was delicious, incredibly easy and definitely is something I'll make again. I also made a Cajun spice sauce to go with it (because I need sauce for everything) and that just took it over the top. My husband did a snapchat of it, so I'll post his silly photo here. Ignore the text. Also, it's blurry because it was a video. Ah well.
I realize it isn't actually very pretty, so you'll just have to make it and believe me that it's worth it. I used sausage, potato, carrots, yellow squash, green squash, mushrooms and Cajun spice. I sautéed the sausage first in a bit of olive oil, then added the veggies, another good drizzle of olive oil and covered it up and just let it cook for about 30 mins. Easy peasy. Also smelled so good! These recipe websites are keeping me motivated

 

 

Oh and in VERY exciting news, I FINALLY found a set of curtains that works in our second bedroom (still with the sheer for added bulk in the middle). It only took 4 (5?) different sets, lots of swearing and dropping curtains rods, some marks on the wall that will need to be painted over and too many trips to BB&B than I'd care to admit. Now, our building has a very strict rule that curtains have to have a white backing ... these do not. I do not care. Fingers crossed no one notices before we move. I'll take my blue-backed DKNY curtains with me if I have to, but they're staying up for now. No photo. Maybe tomorrow.
Yes, curtains are incredibly exciting to me right now.

Happy Thursday. Tomorrow I will be back for Friday favourites - lots to share this week!

Monday, we meet again

Well, what a whirlwind of a weekend. Saturday I had a planned open water swim and let me tell you -- if there wasn't any accountability, I would have stayed in bed. Mornings are always hard for me - 4 hours of sleep is even harder to get up from. However, I know myself, and so I had people that were waiting on me and that got my butt out the door. It was only 9.5 degrees when we arrived and we quickly put our wetsuits on just for the warmth. I don't think any of us were keen on actually getting into the water. Thankfully the water was significantly warmer than the air and it was just gorgeous to swim in. Mary and I did a 1km loop together, and our friend Krista did 2 loops in preparation for her half ironman coming up. Then we met up with our 3x Ironman Cathy and went for breakfast where we all talked about past races, upcoming races and what 2018 holds. Even though they ran out of gluten free pancakes, we still had a great time! There's not much time left for open water swims, so we will definitely be going this week and that might be it. Then it'll be back to the pool.

 

 

Would have missed this gorgeous view if I slept in

 

 

After I was home and changed I packed up a few more boxes and husband and I headed to my parents house where we had a wake for Molly. My dad spread her ashes around the backyard that morning. The backyard was her favourite place to chase rabbits and squirrels, bird watch and just be nutty, so it was the perfect place to let her go. We talked about some funny/happy memories and how sad we all were that she is gone. I brought over some pictures that I'd taken over the years and my dad took one to keep in his locker at work. We all miss her terribly. My dad has decided to wait until January to get another dog - in his words "2017 is Molly's year". Can't argue with that.

Sunday was a productive day. I volunteered in the morning while husband worked and then we got into full "gotta get out of this condo" mode. He finally finished putting the bed together (which is too big -- sigh) and I cleared out our bedroom, and vacuumed in places that I'm fairly certain have never seen the vacuum since we moved in. So much dust! Our room just needs the curtains to be changed (which means I need to iron the new ones) and for me to wash and put the new bedding on and it's ready to go. The second bedroom will be a little more work. With the bigger bed, we need to re-evaluate the furniture choices so it doesn't appear too cramped, and I need to iron those curtains as well. I wish they just came flat.

While I was clearing out our room, I used the doTERRA easy air in my diffuser and it was such a pleasant smell (and really kept it smelling fresh and clean. Obsessed friends -- Obsessed!! I'm putting in an order this month for a few more scents (that I've been dying to get) -- can't wait!

 

 

Today I'm going to go on a run after work (and after picking up some necessities) and see what my knee feels like doing. That 10k is looming closer and closer and I've heard it's a hilly one!

 

One day closer to the long weekend! It's going to be a busy one, but I'm ear-marking that Monday as a (hopefully) big ol' day of NOTHING. I can't even imagine the delicious-ness of a "nothing" day. Fingers crossed!

 

Tuesday Talk

 I am linking up today with some of my favourite bloggers for Tuesday Talk where we can talk about anything we want!

 

Anything? Well then I'm going to talk about moving, because that's what is on my mind all the time as we prepare to list our home.

 

First things first though, dinner last night! I'm not the most creative with recipes (in terms of cooking -- baking skills are something I do have!) but this is still a tried and true favourite.

 

Last night we had pasta with a homemade Bolognese sauce. I didn't take any pictures, because I'm still forgetting to document stuff. Anyways, it's super easy to make, incredibly versatile and can be tweaked to fit most any allergy.

I start out by sautéing onions, garlic (loads of garlic) and mushrooms, then I add in ground beef and brown that with the onions, garlic and mushrooms and once that's ready I drain all of the fat and add in tomato sauce, 2 fresh cut tomatoes and some basil, oregano, parsley, onion powder and garlic powder. Then I just cook that on a low hear until the flavours come together. I used to cook everything separately and add it all together, but who wants to do all those dishes? Plus, cooking the meat into the onions, garlic and mushrooms gives them some of the flavour of the fat without actually having to leave any extra in there for flavour.

 

Picture from here

For pasta I used barilla gluten free rotini. I love their gluten free noodles - they have such a great flavour. Gfree noodles have really come a long way, but some of them are still not so great and go mushy or clumpy. I mainly rotate between Catelli and Barilla depending on what's available and what's on sale.

Picture from here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to moving. We have decided to attempt to list on comfree first because the fees that realtors are paid is just ridiculous and if we can avoid that, why not. My husband does a lot of research before he decides to do something, so we will see if this works. We have a time limit after which point we will just switch to a realtor. Our last experience with a real estate agent was TERRIBLE. He was the agent for the sellers of the condo we ended up buying and he was friends with them as well. He talked us out of all of the other homes we went to look at and encouraged us to buy the condo his friends were selling (for more than it was worth I should add).
I'm not saying we didn't make mistakes -- we did. We should have hired another realtor, we should have looked around on our own and we shouldn't have thought that he would have even been capable of being impartial. We bought a condo that should have been condemned for the condition it was in and had to spend 2 months (and a lot of $$) renovating it enough to be livable. Our plan had been to live there for a year and then sell, but of course we were young and employed in "starter" jobs, so in reality we had to wait for financial stability to be able to finish the rest of it and get out. We made the decision back in June that this was it so we booked in the last of the renovations and started making plans for what else needs to be done.

We had our backsplash done (the cabinets and counter were finished back in the Fall and we just had this awful battered wall. Sometimes we are lazy). My brothers friend does this as his career, so he helps out friends/family on the side when he has free time. He did all of our tiled floors when we moved into the condo as well.

 

Before and After. Not sure who though red cabinets would be a good idea, and those tiles? Same as the ones in the shower. Yup. The shower.

 

The appliances have since changed, but this picture is a nice before and after. I will have to do some fully updated photos of the condo soon! This picture was from back in July before our shiny new appliances came.

Two weeks ago we had bathfitter come in and cover our hideous shower and bathtub. We actually had this work done while we were on vacation and it was amazing coming home to that! We were a bit unsure of having it done initially -- we were concerned it might look cheap or like a hotel, but with one bathroom we couldn't exactly go with any other option that would have put it out of commission for at least a week. I have to tell you -- we were so pleased with our choice! For starters, it looks fantastic, but it also feels amazing. The floor has this grooved anti-slip thing going on, but it's also soft. It's not as hard as a regular bathtub. We also went with an arced shower curtain rail so there's so much more room inside.
There's something to be said for using a contractor for a bathroom, but for us, this option was the most sensible and I'm so glad it worked out well!

Our "second bedroom" (as it was sold to us) was not really a bedroom because it didn't have a closet. We had toyed with the idea since the beginning of breaking down the wall and putting one in, but we finally made that a reality when my dad came over and cut a hole In the wall. By the end of the week we had a closet. We were fortunate to have a storage closet directly behind it to cut into and so we took about half of that for the second bedroom. Then we had to order a bed to make the second bedroom actually look like a bedroom. It should arrive on Monday.

Left for an appointment, came back to a hole in the wall and my dad drawing out his plan for the closet. Can you tell we were using this room as storage? It's empty now except for a bookcase and desk.

Right before it was painted and the clothing rack was added

 

 

 

The door. Looks like it was always there, right?

 A few weeks ago we received the last of our new appliances so now everything is done in stainless steel. I am in love with our new dishwasher btw -- will need to buy it for our new home, lol

Now we are just putting on the finishing touches. We need to buy new curtains because the ones we have are all just so bulky and don't look very nice, and we need to continue to de-clutter so our place is nice and neutral. It's such a process. I'm wishing I had the interior designer gene because that would really make this a lot easier. Pinterest is my best friend right now!

That's all for me right now!