Time Away

I've spent the last week and a bit at my mom's with my brother, his significant other, and my husband. They are heading back to the big city in the next day and I will be staying here for another week.  I find myself at a loss with what to write. 

I've started and stopped quite a few times.  I'll write a few sentences and then delete them.  There is a lot of personal stuff going on and everything seems so trivial...so unimportant.

We've been distracting ourselves quite a bit.  We helped mom take a load of stuff to the dump, and have been re-organizing her office a bit.  We did notice that mom pays a heck of a lot more for her internet/tv/phone services then we do - so might try to take on her small town service provider to see if we get get a bit of a better deal.  She pays about $150/month for fairly basic services.  When I asked her for an idea on something to write about - she suggested that.

On a positive note, I had applied through my companies community support program for funding for a family-initiated granting program and was award a significant lump sum.  It's very personal, so I don't write much about it here - but we're a bit better than 80% of goal #1 now.

On another positive note - it's performance review time for both Jordan and I over the next couple of months.  We should both see increases in pay when looking to the market and our performance as well as some educational pieces that add to our profiles.

Also - my photographer sent me higher resolution wedding photo images...super happy about that. 

~Jessie

Our Dogs

I'm spending a lot of time with my family for the next little while and might not be writing as much about $$.

Here are our dogs:

You might recognize Aries and Baxter - the smallest one is Conan. They don't always get along, but a you can see, it's getting better.

February ReCap

My brother was watching me go through February's spending, and said, make a pie chart - i like pie.

Here it is:

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!