Bar Stool Bench

I'm pretty excited to share this with you, Jordan and I finally found the perfect bar stools - a two person bench!!

It took us a solid six weeks before we came across this gem.  The colours are right and it fits perfectly at our island.


I'm looking forward to enjoying a glass of wine and watching my husband cook!

This was a steal at about $250 on a boxing day special.  I'm hoping to find/make a couple of red throw pillows for it and then it will be complete.

DIY - Stairs

One of the options that Jordan and I didn't want to pay our home builder for was stairs in the back.  We're intending on building a deck in the spring, so really didn't see the value in paying to install stairs that we would just tear out.

It's been about six weeks in the new house now and we were both finding that we would really like to use the back entrance to the house.  The front entrance has been getting sooo messy with muddy dog paws!

Today, while I'm in BC visiting my family, Jordan built us some stairs - for a pretty decent price!

It cost $74.48 to build these stairs and took an hour and a  half!  It's such a good 'temporary set' that Jordan things we may be able to incorporate them into the deck too! I'm so excited and he did such a good job, I can't wait to test them out.

Income Tax

Who's excited to file their income taxes this year?

I am!

In fact, I've already done a 'dry run' and come up with a net return of about $1,000 (just for me, not including J).  Now I just have to wait for my T4 to get it done properly.

Question for you all - do you use online tax return software or do you do your taxes by hand and mail it in?

Thank You!

Both my mom and Jordan's grandma gave us cash this year for Christmas. Traditionally I haven't always appreciated that sort of gift, but it was truly spot on with what we wanted this year.

Jordan and I have been really itching fr a new kitchen table. We bought and refinished the one we have about three years ago for $50. It's done the job and while the table is in decent shape the chairs are getting really wobbly.

I wanted a table that would could extend to 90 inches in length so that we could host a really big family dinner and everyone could sit at the table, together.

We the cash gifts from our family and returning one of the gifts from another we were able to get exactly what we wanted!

Below are pics both extended and without the leaf - its a beut and fits in perfectly!

Thank you do much to Momma and Baba!

Property Taxes

Up until today, we have been going on the assumption that our property taxes would be about $2,000/year - this is based on what our builder had been telling as about property in the area - so our budget has reflected a monthly amount of $167.  Thinking about it, this was probably a good guess based on the house before upgrades and on the 2010 tax rate.

I had some time to call the City's tax office today and learned quite a bit about how the taxes are calculated/adjusted.

When a new home is built, the taxes are based on purchase price of the home (including GST, down payments, and upgrades - not including CMHC insurance) - that would make our approximate tax bill for 2011 $2,104 - that divided by 12 gives us monthly payments of $175. I'm not sure what the 2012 tax rates will be, so this is the value we've used to sign up for monthly payments to the city.

Because we only owned our home for 6.57% of the year, we we owe approximately $138 for the 2011 year - the payments above are for 2012 while we wait for the adjustment notification that we and our home builder will have to sort out. 

When the new property assessments come out in the spring, we'll find out the City's assessment of our homes value and adjustments will be made for payments from June through to December.  That could mean that for the remainder of the year our tax bill goes up, or down, depending on if we over or under guessed when signing up for the monthly billing cycle.

You might asked why we signed up for the monthly payments instead of paying annually.  Unlike vehicle insurance, there is no interest charged for setting up a monthly payment program vs paying in a lump sum - the only drawback is that we lose out on a very slight amount of interest if we had been putting the money away in a savings account when the annual bill came due.  For us - with home ownership being so new, we thought the monthly plan suited us best.

If you are a homeowner, do you pay your property taxes annually or monthly?  Why?