We've got big News!

I bet that at least half if not more clicked on my link expecting to see the words "we're pregnant!". Sorry, but no.  we have other big news:

Several months before our wedding, My then fiance and I were looking for a place to call our own after our wedding. We searched high and low and several times felt like giving up on finding a house and having to rent an apartment instead. However, a month before our wedding we purchased our first house. A quaint cottagey like war home on the Hamilton mountain.  A 729 sq ft home with a spacious backyard, a park in the back. We put work into this house, fixing all the major problems and safety hazards that came with this old home. 

We knew that this would not be a permanent home, probably 5 or 7 years. Almost three years have passed  since this "big" purchase and now we have decided to put our first home up for sale. 

We have been talking for a while about what we would want in our second house, a more permanent house.  and one of the things is one or two more bedrooms and a garage, and a quieter street.  When we looked for these things here in Hamilton, all the houses were either too shabby or our of our budget. So we looked over in Brantford, the next city over. There we found a house with all the features that we are looking for. We have not made the official purchase there yet, as we need to deal with our house on this end. So two nights ago, we had the sign put into our front yard. It was a sad momnet as we didn't think that this time would come so soon, but yet all we can think about is the possibilities and opportunities with the next house ( if we get...knock on wood)

Let me tell you a bit about the "new house" as we call it. the main floor is 1000 sq ft. which is only a tiny bit bigger than ours, however there is more than just a main floor. There is a very spacious loft bedroom which could...if we absolutely had to,  be turned into two rooms. underneath the house is a spacious basement, partially finished with a recroom, storage and laundry facilities, around which we would put up interior walls to create a finished room. In the back yard is a detached garage and underneath it, get this...there is a bomb shelter! how cool is that?? Whats also nice about this place is that not only is the main floor set up in almost the same layout as our current house, but there is a fireplace with a nice mantel in the living room. This house also sits on the corner lot of a dead end street in a quiet neighbourhood and it's only a 20 minute commute to Hamilton so Fritz can keep his job and we can stay at our church

Now let me tell you about the company that is helping us sell our current  home. We are using Comfree to market our place. The come in and take pictures, and advertise the house on their website and magazine and for a small additional price they add it onto realtor.ca  they do not receive commission for this. They receive a payment any where between $300 and $1200 depending on the package you pick. Then you do the appointment bookings, viewings and open houses. They even have a lawyer on their team so that if any legal concerns arise you can utilize him/her a no extra charge. ( this does not include the selling procedures lawyer stuff, though that can be done at a discounted price). If we would have gone with another brokerage, it could cost us upwards of $10,000 in commission, taxes etc. The marketer has a sit down with you and explains everything very clearly. It's a fantastic way to sell your home, and it saves you quite a bit of money. The site is very much like a social network where you can see how many people have viewed your home, how many of those views were by the same person it doesn't tell you who viewed of course)  and there are discussion boards and many other helpful features. I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to sell there home to consider comfree.( comfree.com )

So I will post a link here to our home. If you know anyone who is looking for a great little house close to hospitals, parks, splashpads and pools, then please pass this on.

http://comfree.com/home-for-sale-hamilton-ontario-310435

This is "sew" cute

What a terribly lame joke. No On e can help themselves from making puns, and yet I'm sure we all shudder at the lameness anytime one is spoken. (And I'm sure many of us secretly laugh on the inside...I know I just did...and I was the one to make the lame joke!)

This past Christmas, instead of regular Christmas cards ( which seem to cost a fortune by the way!) we did the family photo (myself, my husband and our pup). We not only had the photo's taken for the card but we wanted them to be slightly awkward. So I went to the good ol' value village and purchased two really ugly Christmas sweaters and also one for the dog.

Merry Christmas!
Even Olive had an awkward pose!

It took Ollie a while to get used to wearing her ugly Christmas sweater. I put it on her and she wouldn't budge. I even left the room for about 15 minutes and upon my return, she was still standing in the exact position...not a whisker had moved!
I always this it's really cute when dogs ( whether macho bulldogs or fragile little teacup pooches) wear a sweater or a coat. I know many people out there think it's ridiculous. "dogs have fur for a reason" blah blah blah. I know, they technically don't need it, but come on now, it's cute, or sometimes just funny.
So after seeing a really sweet dog at Petsmart, in a little tweed jacket, I went out and bought some fabric. I then went online and looked up free dog coat patterns, printed it out, enlarged in onto newspaper, and cut my fabric using my pattern.
I used two layers of pink jersey and the top layer is a regular cotton blend with a tweed-ish plaid, brown ans fine pink lines.
After I sewed it all together, I decided that it needed a little hood, just because it would jazz it up a little, plus dogs are really cute when they have hoods on their jackets! Lastly I added a heart decal, off centre on the bum end and added buttons to keep it on.

what a good little model she was!

When I come home

For the last week and a bit we have been house sitting, manily to take care of my in-laws dog, Kiba. So Olive was there also, and she was entertained during the day, while we were away at work or on outings. Today was the first day in a week or so that Olive was by herself for maybe 5 hours. She has toys, a bed, a warm corn stove to sit in front of and large windows to peek into the park behind our house. We place a self constructed baby gate ( not suitable for kids, but good enough for the dog) so that she can not destroy things in the living room, take down the Christmas tree, eat parts of the Nativity scene, the toilet paper in the bathroom or chew apart our rug/couch/cushions/shoes/ and any thing else that might make its way into her mouth.

This morning, before I left for work I removed an envelope filled with old receipts, coupons and other papery items that was weighing down my purse. I placed it on the centre of the coffee table as I rushed out the door so that I wouldn't be late. 

When I came home today I found Olive greeting me at the door. She had busted down her gate, pulled the envelope off the table, and shred everything in it to bits...including a package of instant oatmeal! there was rolled oats all over the rug, under the rug under the couches, and bits of paper everywhere. 

After I had her all settled down, out the door to play in the back yard, I cleaned up the mess, and invited her back in. 

She looked sad for some time after so I thought I would cheer her up by giving her half a "dentastix" (she normally gets half of one each day) As she was busy enjoying that I went into the kitchen to make myself some lunch, and then in the living room I heard plastic being crunched. Up to no good Olive has three whole dentastix in her mouth...sneaky dog!

Oh and last night we woke up to Olive puking. Sometimes dogs get upset stomachs if their dog food gets switched, but Olive had been eating the same food for quite a while. It turns out she had puked up a part of Kiba's toy. :\

So yeah, the post has nothing to do with Thrifting or DIY projects, but sometimes....okay many times, Olive does things that just needs to be shared. 

Costs: high vs low...vs affordable

I did it again...

While many young women leaf through the latest gossip in Cosmo, People, etc, I'm leafing through the latest trends in Style at Home. I love this magazine. But I don't have a subscription since I just read it in the Grocery store at the check out. Or I just go online and read the parts I can without getting the online subscription. You should check it out (styleathome.com).

My favourite section is High and Low where they show a beautiful room with some priceless items in it, then they replace the key items in that room with very similar items at a lower cost. They do a great job with this, however, the only problem I find with their low cost rooms is that I would still not spend that much on one room. I'm sure some people would and it's not a heart stopping price, but for the cost of the room they show, I would have assumed that EVERYTHING displayed in the picture is included in that price. I'm talking about the paint/wallpaper, the smaller items such as all the vases etc. 

What I have done is taken the lower cost room, and found the items on line, either on kijiji, ikea, ebay etc and create the same/similar room for a fraction of the price. (Other items that are similar/possibly even less expensive are out there, so don't limit yourself to just those two or three resources)

 So here goes: 

The high cost room:

HIGH $12,965

Hooker Furniture leather-topped Seven Seas DRESSING TABLE, $1,360, Stoney Creek furniture, stoneycreekfurniture.com. Fruitwood 18th-century CHAIR, $1,875 per set of 2, Convex Dorian MIRROR, 24", $685, Ribbehege & Azevedo, ribbehegeandazevedo.com. Redford House white alder wood Swedish DRESSER, $2,877, restored vintage Liat CHANDELIER in Antique White, $835, Au Lit Fine Linens, aulitfinelinens.com. Wool/silk Dorothy RUG in Blue/Grey, 9' x 12', $3,785, Elte, elte.com. Thai Silk DRAPERY PANEL in Optic White, 50" x 96", $259, large Estate Silver ROD, 6', $95, large Ball FINIAL, $89 per pair, RINGS, $54 per pack of 7, Restoration Hardware, restorationhardware.com. Teal grosgrain 8900 RIBBON (on drapery), $14 per metre, Mokuba, 416-364-5144. Ceramic Antique-Finish garden STOOL in Apple Green, $375, Teatro Verde, teatroverde.com. SCARF, $130, Winners, winners.ca. Vintage Coach Heritage HANDBAG, $450, REmix Clothing, remix.ca.

The low cost room:

LOW $5,040

Solid pine Edland DRESSING TABLE with clear lacquered finish, $249, IKEA, ikea.ca. Josephine CHAIR upholstered in Charlene Wedgewood, $1,164, Ethan Allen, ethanallen.com. Round Soleil MIRROR, 27", $49, President’s Choice Home Collection, pc.ca.Boudoir DRESSER in Country White, $949, Urban Barn, urbanbarn.ca. Hampton Bay Heritage 6-lightCHANDELIER in Antique White, $189, The Home Depot, homedepot.ca. Wool Mia Wallace RUG in Blue/Light Grey, 9' x 12', $1,745, Elte, elte.com. Polyester PT Milano DRAPERY PANEL in Winter White, 50" x 96", $190, pewter Connections ROD, 6', $45, silver Connections Mozart Ball FINIAL, $45 per pair, silver Connections RINGS, $13 per pack of 10, inVU Drapery Co., invudraperyco.com. Teal Herringbone 5700 RIBBON (on drapery), $8 per metre, Mokuba, 416-364-5144. Green ceramic garden STOOL, $150, Pier 1 Imports, pier1.ca. SCARF, $15, Winners, winners.ca. Vintage Kate Spade HANDBAG, $200, REmix Clothing, remix.ca.




the affordable room:

Okay so again there is not pic of the actual room becuase I would have to purchase all these items, paint my walls and take a pic. I don't want to do that every time I do this blog. So once again, take note of the items in the room above and replace with the once below.

dressing table. $49 at Ikea. 

remove the legs from one side of  the  dressing
 table and replace with this. $50  Ikea

chandelier. $35 kijiji

old dresser, add a couple coats of white paint and
 find some old knobs $50 kijiji

upholstered antique chair. $60 kijiji 

mirror. $30 kijiji

fabric for curtains. $20 +10 for rings=$30 Ikea
(seems like a fairly pointless picture to copy and paste!)

curtain rod. $20 kijiji

large  rug. $200 kijiji

green handbag $25 kijiji

scarf$10 Meetups (?) in Scarborough (I found the link on kijiji)

large turquoise vase $40 I could not find anything like that green ceramic stool.
That  in an item that is not often  duplicated So I replaced it with this. Kijiji

Grand total: $600 

One of the key items in both images seems to be that dress form/mannequin, and yet it doesn't have a price. However I found one of those on Kijiji too, though it is black I think it could still look really great in this room. 

dress form $80 kijiji. Although you might find one on the
 side of the road like I did

Also, not included is the wall (paint? or paper?) either way, Rona, has recycled paint, which I think is fantastic, unfortunately it only comes in 16 different shades. However, I'm sure you could find it in a blueish colour and some kind of white and they cost $17 per can so that makes another $35. And you can use this paint for the dresser too. 

All thats left to do is to place some old books ( owned or thrift)  and a storage box or blue/green basket on top of the dresser. And Voila, you have a new room for about $715 that someone else paid over $12, 000 for!

So lets review the costs of all three rooms:

High: $12, 965

Low: $5, 040

Affordable: $600 (or$ 715 if you add the dress form and paint)

My dog had surgery...so I shopped

Olive finally  had her surgery yesterday, after months of cancellations, it is now complete. She wears a cone  most of the time, and really hates it. Because she is a hunting dog, her nose is pressed to the ground about 80% of the time. This, mixed with the wearing of the cone of shame, can cause some difficulties in this house. A lot of the time her cone gets caught on floor boards, couch corners, chairs, etc. and instead of backing up and trying again, she stands there and waits for someone to help her out and fix her situation. However now we don't need to worry about Olive getting pregnant at the dog park, all though she will probably still pin down the neighbours cat to have her way with it.

cone of shame

resting with her monkey

So while Olive was under the knife, I decided to do a little shopping to see what kind of savings there are this time of year.
On my little outing, I bought 2 bras,yes 2, a pair of skinny jeans, and a cute white knit top, all for $15. I think that was a pretty good deal.

Knit top...FREE

skinny jeans. $5. I really need
to make my bed!

You didn't actually think I would post a picture of my bras
did you? They are really pretty though and only cost $4.99 each!

The other day I was doing some thrift shopping and I stumbled across a pair of grey ankle boots, originally $7 but with my discount, only $3.50, and another pair of gladiator stilettos originally $12, but with my discount only $6. I also got a really nice black and grey wool poncho type thing for only $3.50.

ankle boots: $3.50

Stilettos: $6

Wrap/poncho thing: $3.50

If I were to buy these things brand new/ at regular price ( cause my underwear does not come from a thrift store!) this would roughly be the price:

cute ankle boots: $24.99

really nice stilettos: $35.00 

poncho/wrap thing: $60.00

2 bras: $40

skinny jeans: $36.90

knit top: $34.90

Total: $ 231. 79

note: (If items were not with original price I found similar items at places like walmart, payless, ebay etc. )

So lets review these purchases shall we?
cute ankle boots: $3.50
really nice stilettos: $6
poncho/wrap thing: $3.50
2 bras: $10 (that's together...not each!.. and not cheap quality either, I got them at La Vie En Rose)
skinny jeans: $5
knit top: FREE!

Total:  $28.00   

Total savings: 203.79


Good deal? I think so!

if you're going to do it cheaply...at least do it well.

When we bought our house, our kitchen wasn't in terrible shape. I mean, sure I did need to move the dishwasher from one side of the kitchen to the other, plug it into the tap and block all access to the back of the house. The pantries and cabinets were filled with fake birds, santa clauses and mismatched mugs. There were blinds on the windows, a ceiling fan and lamp that hung too low and a washing machine that sat in the corner.
It only took some removal of junk, a couple renovations of what is now the dining room + laundry closet and adding a permanent place for the tiny dish washer to make things look a lot better.  Not too long after did we install a second counter/breakfast nook, a real pantry and over-the-fridge storage and replace the blinds with cute curtains. Later Fritz and I would replace the linoleum tiled floor with a faux marble laminate, which we found on sale.

Funny related story: we measured out exactly how many boxes of laminate we would need for our tiny kitchen, and realized we only needed 3 extra boards. so we went to different home depots and acted interested in the product so that they would let us take a sample board home.

The past couple of months, I was really bothered by our back splash. It was a white glossy tile, probably from 1992 ish, poorly installed and uneven. it had a pinkish brown strip of tiles that ran along the counters edge. I'm sure in 1992 it looked great, but I wanted to update. Fritz and I went to several builder stores and others to find back splashes, and each time we calculated out about $100 to $200 dollars to redo our back splash. Not to mention the pain-in-the-butt of removing the existing one.

I eventually gave up on the back splash as being a near-future reno project. However, and this is where the cheapness part comes in, I was in the Dollarama the other day, and they have rather nice looking tiles there. Sure they were linoleum and they were also self adhesive, but they matched our colours and our faux marble floor.
I brought home a pack of tiles and my husband I I started cutting tiles and sticking them onto the wall, right on top of the existing back splash. It looked fantastic even though it is linoleum! Then at night, we heard thumping in our house and of course I immediately assume we are being robbed or that there is a raccoon in our house (same difference). It turns out that because our house is so cold at night ( and because I'm cheap) the tiles were all dropping off the wall one by one!

I really disliked the old backsplash so I went to Rona, and had to explain to the builder people there, how cheap I am and what I had done. They shook their heads in shame at me and then offered me a tube of construction adhesive for $5.

End of the story is that our Dollarama back splash is now secured to our wall and the total cost was about $20.

notice the old back splash

complete

If you are going to do it cheaply...at least do it well. 

ALSO...

Last Friday, I was asked by a co worker of my husbands, if I could make a shirt ugly. I guess she was given a shirt last year and now she is returning it as a re-gift. However she wanted it to be ugly.

"Sure" I said.  I got out my sewing machine, scissors, scrap fabric, buttons and of course...the glue gun. 

Voila:

Olive, my 4 legged toddler.

The culprit 

I first want to tell you 2 somethings fun...fun for me anyways:
1.The fair
So I did another show in the beginning of November. It was a two day event and I did okay. Unfortunately many of the vendors lost out due to a major increase in the entrance fee. Despite that, for a beginner, I think things went fairly well.
While I was there, i did some walking around too and left Fritz to mind the booth. There was some really fabulous stuff there, and some tacky things too. But what do you expect, I mean it is a craft fair. Last spring when I was there for the first time, I knew as soon as the customers started coming through the doors that I was among the wrong crowd. So this time around I added some kitschy pillows and they went like hot cakes. I don't even know what a hot cake is but I know they go fast.
Near the end of day two of the fair,  I was approached by another vendor who sells pottery. He told me that his friend owns a consignment shop and is looking for a pillow lady. so I got her information and now my pillows are being sold in a great little shop called Humblepie on James street here in Hamilton. It's a great little store with some really cool items. If you are in Hamilton, you should check out the shop, just click on the link and you can get location info, or if you are going to the art crawl which happens every 2nd Friday of the month (so that means December 9th) you should stop by the shop.
and 2. My birthday
 So I have had some interesting moments in the last couple of days. I celebrated my birthday on the 21st, and since I took the day off work, I decided to spend the day in the mall. I received some money for my birthday, and so I thought I would treat my self for the day. I ended up going to three different malls to find a pair of flat brown boots. I'm a big time thrift shopper so before my birthday I was already keeping my eye out for any that came into the store, but the odd time I do like to buy some brand new things. But not expensive things. So I skipped all those big brand shoe stores, even though they have beautiful footwear, I am not willing to spend that much. I know  many people don't have a problem spending $100-$150 on a nice pair of shoes or boots, but the most I ever spent was $60...and that's when I was in school and had some OSAP money. I think that my shoes average about $15.  Anyways I found a great pair of brown "leather" knee high flat boots for under $45 

The actual blog entry:
Olive, my four legged toddler.
Olive sometimes really makes my week interesting. especially the last four weeks...no, make that 2 months. I'm not entirely sure what has gotten into her. Olive was supposed to get fixed back in September, however, the surgeon was unable to come in for the day that we booked and so we rescheduled for two weeks later on October 6th. On October 5th she went into heat. Olive also has a lot of male friends, some of whom are fully intact. On Tuesdays, Olive spends the day at the in-laws, and they have a fully intact male golden retriever. So she cant go there for three weeks. I had to change my work schedule to accommodate her which wasn't too much of hassle, but if she just held off for a couple more days, we wouldn't have to deal with this fiasco. And now the surgery will likely cost more. But maybe not. lets hope for that at least.
After the whole ordeal was over we started hanging out with the neighbours dogs, Kya and Phoenix and with Kiba the golden retriever. While at their houses, Olive of course ate all food there including Milo the cat's kibbles. However, during that week and the following, Olive started puking up a storm and I would come home to the kitchen floor being covered in...well.... liquidized number 2. This happened for several days. I eventually called the vet and we fed her boiled chicken and rice for a weeks... even though you really shouldn't feed your dog grains, it was what we had to do to clean out her system. then I was at the pet store to pick up dog food, I asked about different dog brands and the girl said not to change brands because that causes diarrhea and vomiting due to their short digestive tracts...that explains why she was so sick.

Then about two weeks ago or so Olive and I went to the dog park with my my neighbour, and phoenix and Kya. Phoenix is a black lab who is one day older than Olive. He also thinks he is the same size as Olive, but is in fact at least 6 times her size. So we were all at the park when Olive decides to follow Phoenix into the long burr filled grass. Of course Phoenix who has short black hair is not really affected by the one burr attached to his side. Olive on the other hand has long curly fur. After a run through the long grass, Phoenix, the black short haired lab, makes a run for the muddy cold creek. Olive, the long/curly haired WHITE spaniel, follows him.  I had to go home with a brown, muddy, wet and soggy dog that had burrs stuck in her paws and belly and ears. I had to use almost half a bottle of doggy shampoo to tidy it all up.

This week was a whole other story. Our house is heated by a corn stove, which is amazing and amazingly cheap by the way. At night, we turn it off and the house goes down to about 13 *C at which point our baseboards kick in to make sure it doesn't dip below that. So Fritz and I were watching an episode of some show and we were enjoying some alphabet shaped pretzels. At about 10 pm our house was starting to get a bit cold so we figured we would crawl under the covers and finish the episode there.  I started to hear some funny noises coming from our living room. Fritz didn't think much of it but I was convinced that Olive was up to no good again. Sure enough as we peeked around the corner, Olive , with front paws on our coffee table,  carefully making sure not to touch the bag itself was eating our pretzels by the mouth full.!

Later that week,I bought myself a 1000 piece puzzle. It took me about one hour to get the boarder done while watching Beethoven with Olive, when I realized that Olive was chewing on two puzzle pieces!!! I managed to save one, kind of, but the other was unrecognizable, so my 1000 piece puzzle was now a 998.5 piece puzzle. At that time I was running late for an appointment so I went to the bathroom and when I came out ( which was only maybe two minutes later)  Olive had taken the entire border of the puzzle ( an hour or more of work) off the table, shook it apart and was running off to the kitchen with a chain of puzzle pieces hanging out of her mouth!!! All In could say was "Dammit Olive!" as she ran into her crate. I guess I need to start my puzzle over. Which  I did. I got all the pieces back together and some more over the next day. I would say I had about 1/3 of the puzzle done.

olive chewing my puzzle

my puzzle.

these are the seeds that I
have removed from the pods

Yesterday I decided, that since I had the afternoon off, that I would plant my tulip bulbs and clean out the front garden. (I have been harvesting my marigolds for all the seeds and I have a tonne of them so if you want to grow marigolds, you can have some of my seeds cause I have enough for an entire acre if not more)

I still have half a pail of pods
left to un-seed

it's hard to be mad

I spent maybe 30 minutes in the garden, and when I came in  I found my puzzle on the floor again in a 1000 pieces...oh wait, 998.5 pieces. But this time she chewed up some more pieces...and they were chewed to complete mush...little balls of mush cardboard! I had to throw my puzzle out :(

in the trash. There's no point now.

my tree this year

And just a while ago, right before I started writing this entry, Olive is playing with one of the Christmas balls that came from the tree! How on earth did she get that? Our tree ( a small 3ft tree) stand on top of a table/trunk thing. I looked down at my computer and then when I looked at the tree, Olive has her two front paws up on the trunk and she is reaching for another Christmas ball with her teeth! that little sneak is un-decorating my tree!