Wine Making

I haven't written about it a lot, but some of you may know that I've been making wine for a couple of years now. I took a bit of a hiatus while I was pregnant, but over the last month I've been getting back into the swing of things. I have two kits going - a Gewurztraminer and a Shiraz. The kits have everything I need in them except for bottles.

Those wines take a little while to age to get good - so while they are doing there thing I'm starting a third batch.

This quick drinker is called Dragon's Blood and is Danger Dave's of the winemaking talk forums evolution of Lon's Skeeter Pee. It's a fruit wine with a lemon back that is ready in 2-3 weeks start to finish. It peaks at three months old so making it now will mean it's ready just in time for summer!

You'll find a link to the forum and original recipe above if you're interested in the original. I'm making a Tropical Coconut Variation. It's heavy on the strawberry and has mango and peach along with lime and coconut.

If anyone's interested I'll share the recipe, but for now here is the cost breakdown:


You can see that the cost is under $3.50 a bottle!! If my town had a bulk store I could probably get it down to $2.50-$3.00 which is what the original blend cost me as frozen fruits the biggest expense second to the wine bottles themselves. 

I've included the bottles here - but am working on a bottle collection, soon, even that will be eliminated from the cost breakdown.



Including this fruit wine, I have about 90 bottles that I'm going to need, so it's probably time to take an inventory on that.

Conditions....

So, we've put in an offer and it's been accepted buy the seller.  Now we need to work through the conditions to see if we're going to close on the sale.  They are:

1. Insurance
2. Financing
3. Home Inspection

We had a hiccup with Insurance already that's been worked through.  The house is zoned for both commercial and residential.  At first, the insurance office told us that if we had a total loss on the home we would have to rebuild a commercial enterprise.  After reading the bylaws and a meeting with the town planner, we discovered that the Insurance office was not correct.  We're going ahead with quotes from that, and the other office in town (there are only two).  We have a big list of questions about the house to see about insurance - age of hot water tank, roof, etc.  Hopefully the home owners can get some of that for us and we don't have to wait for the inspectors opinion for that piece.

Next up is financing.  We're pre-approved for the mortgage, but we're also after a renovation loan of about $25,000 for the kitchen and main bathroom.  They need work!  The kitchen is a series of four bargain basement Ikea sections with no upper cabinets in a tight Gally flow.  The bathroom has a curtain for a cupboard under the sink.

Last is the home inspection, which will run us about $900.  There are no current inspectors in town, so part of this fee is travel to bring someone in from out of town.  That is scheduled for about a week and a half from now - just days before we have to waive conditions (the 22nd).

Cross your fingers for us!

We're trying to not get our hopes up, and are anticipating some issues with the inspection - we just hope they don't find any deal breakers.

Tax Refunds

It took some time, but I finally got our tax returns prepped and submitted.  This year was a bit more complicated than others because we were able to make a claim for moving expenses.

The tricky part though, is that Jordan moved for work in 2015, but the house didn't sell until 2016 - so we have to split the expenses across two tax years.  I'm using TurboTax again this year, but needed to spend some time on the phone with the CRA before I felt comfortable going forward.

I have a sizeable spreadsheet and a pile of receipts that document things as much as possible.  Fingers crossed I did it correctly as I've read that moving expenses often prompt CRA to ask for more information or even to audit.

We're looking at a refund of around $4,000!  Woohoo!

Do you have a refund coming your way?  Have you already received it?

Offer Accepted!

Well, here goes nothing.

We just put an offer in on a house in our new little town that was accepted after much back and forth.  

We now have three weeks to sort out conditions, cross your fingers for us. 

Monthly Spend Report

In all the years that I've been tracking our spending, this month has been our lowest spend.  Incredible!

I've included our March spend, and the average for 2016 so far.

You can see that not only did we spend nothing in eating out we spent very little comparably in gas as well.

We spent pretty much the same on groceries as we usually do.  I think a change for this past month though was that we were watching for sales as much as possible.

The vehicle maintenance cost was from repairing our front bumper of the Escape which I had mentioned a few weeks or so ago about needed to do.

Emergency Vet Trip

Over Easter, my aunt was in town visiting and took our larger dog out for a walk.  While she was out with him, another large dog ran from his backyard which had the gate left open, and charged our pup.  There was quite a scuffle but after a few minutes, the other dog's owner came and pulled his dog away.  Jordan and I weren't there, and I'm actually glad I wasn't with Little Man.

Our pup seemed fine at first, but a day later we notice she was a bit lethargic and limping a bit.  We combed over her and found that she had been bitten!  Her hair is so long that we missed it at first.

There is no vet in the town where we live, but I called the emergency line in the next town over and made a plan to drive her in the next morning first thing.

The vet shaved her shoulder, cleaned her wound, and gave me a week's worth of antibiotics.  Here she is sitting in the back of the Escape waiting to go home.

I felt so awful for her, but she's already feeling much better.

One of the best things though, about that trip. Is when I went to pay ($115), I grabbed my credit card...and then paused.  Then I pulled out my debit card.  I didn't need to take money from our emergency fund, or use our credit card.  That felt so good.  That we had money in our day to day that I could use to take care of my dog without worrying about it one little bit.

March Eating Out Ban

Guys!

Our eating out ban was so super successful!  We spend nothing, notta, zero, ziltch in restaurants in March!  We have $800 left over in the day to day right now, and are feeling so good about how this went.  So good in fact, that we have decided that while we won't say no if a friend or family member invites us out, we're going to continue on the ban if it's just the two of us.

Woohoo!