Mmmm Homemade Bread

 Guys!  I love bread, I love not spending money, making my own bread is pretty great as it serves both.  The trick is, it takes patience to do it well.  My mom ran through everything with me, and adjusted the recipe to fit my KitchenAid when we made buns for Christmas.  Now...

Soup Stock

  There is nothing like a cold winter day to have me wanting for soup!  I haven't done it on my own before, but I've had my mom's home made soup a lot and watched her make it too.  So today (well, I started yesterday), I'm making my own! Starting with the stock, I pulled out a bag...

Electric Heat Woes

Guys, electric baseboard heat is expensive where I live :( Billing is every 60 days - from October 20th to today, the cost is $773 for 6,582kWHs! November wasn't even that cold! BCHydro breaks the rate down into a step 1 and step 2 rates. It's meant to encourage conservation, which might work for homes...

November Spend Report

We went to Alberta twice in November, but split the gas, so that's why eating out is quite a bit higher than normal.  Gas, groceries, and the rest are all pretty average - though we'll do an annual review in January sometime. Gifts represents that for about 12 people, plus each other.  I...

This and That

Guys, I am so, so tired. Baby sleep is a big deal, momma not getting her sleep is a big deal.  Daddy too - but he's not writing this.  Kiddo slept in his crib for the entire night last night for the first time.  While he was sleeping that is.  The rest of the time he was crying,...

Paint, paint, paint

We're doing so much painting!  You know, after all the scrape, scrape, scraping. We're using General Paint primarily for our paint and paint supplies, with a few specialty items from Benjamin Moore from time to time. We decided to go with a blue/grey theme in our bathroom and the main part...

Cabinets are in

 Thanks to everyone who weight in on my cabinet handles request for help a few weeks back.  We decided to go with the handle pictured here.  WE LOVE IT!  It looks so good!  It's sold, you can get your whole hand around it, and it's 8 inches long - so it doesn't fade away on...

Each Peach Pear Plum

Guys, you need to try the Food Network, Paula Dean Peach Cobbler recipe. I'm not going to write it all back out, but just take my word for it, click the link, and get baking! http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/peach-cobbler-recipe.htm...

Duraceramic - Tile not Tile

Duraceramic is a vinyl tile product that is super durable, and looks like tile when it's finished.  It's not as cold, or hard as a a traditional tile either. We are super happy with how this turned out.  It looks great, feels great, and not a single scratch from dog paws!   Here's...

Shower Tile

Love, love this tile! We were inspired by some pinterest boards that had the tile running vertically instead of horizontally.  We knew we wanted a shampoo cubby, but my cousin who works at the local flooring shop upsold us on the double box.  He said that one is good for one person,...

Sweet Heat

We debated quite a bit about in-floor heating.  Well, it was more of an internal debate.  Jordan really wanted it, and I had to decide if I did before deciding if it was a debate.  Adding in floor heat, added about $1,000 to the flooring bill.  That's for both the installers, and...

Wallpaper, it hides many a sin.

If you're ever doing renovations, please, please do not put wall paper on unprimed drywall.  It's just not kind, and primer is cheap. This wallpaper is everywhere in this house.  EVERYWHERE.  We knew it when we bought it, but didn't really think about the work involved in getting...

My Money, My Choices - Level 5, 6, & 7 Done

In January of this year, I mentioned that we needed to get our wills and powers of attorney etc. updated now that we were moving to BC.  We also needed to name a guardian for Little Man.  We finally took care of the updating, and were able to move along in the My Money, My Choices program. I...

More Drywall

Oh Drywall! So!  You know that we had a drywaller come in and do the walls that were rebuilt in the bathroom and master bedroom.  The shots in this post are in my dining room and living room.  You can see under the large window, in our peeling wallpaper efforts (which is bloody everywhere...

Sexy Kitchen Sink and Sexy Savings

That's right. I said it. My kitchen sink is sexy. This is a 9 inch deep, cast iron, 130 pound beauty! I bought it online from Lowes for $344.  A bit of a splurge however; we felt like this was a really excellent statement piece for the space. It get's better though.  Jordan and...

Drip, Drip, Drip

We're on to plumbing!  The list was long, but there were not nearly the surprises that we had with the electrical.  With plumbing we needed to move the sink drains/water lines in the kitchen, add in for a dishwasher and a refrigerator.  In the bathroom we moved the sink - added lines/drains...

Kitchen Cabinet (Doors)

One of the ways that we are saving money in our renovations is tackling painting all of our kitchen cabinet doors.  We did look at buying stock cabinets from IKEA and a few other big box stores, but we found the cost difference between that and a custom fit solution to be pretty negligible...

Electrical Smetrical

Have you ever lived somewhere that didn't have an exterior plug outlet?  I haven't.  Neither had Jordan.  Neither of us thought to look for one when we bought the house.  So of course, there wasn't one. Of course, our lawn mower is electric. Sigh. So another add on...you know,...

Structure & Drywall

Perhaps the biggest structural change that we made was to the wall in between the bathroom and master bedroom.  There was this little one foot by one foot cubby in the master bedroom.   We took that space for the bathroom and had the wall rebuilt.  This gave us the space we needed...

Sub Floor Woes

Pretty, pretty sub-floor. Not only did we find a lot of random holes in the original sub-floor, we also found an electrical outlet that had been covered up by old flooring.  Whenever you undertake renovations of this size, you're always expecting some unexpected finds...but the outlet...that...

August Spend Report

This one is a bit of a doozy!  I paid most of the bills for the house this month, we had deposits in June and then a reprieve in July - but this is the big hit. Gas and eating out were higher then normal because we had a couple of trips to the city to shop for things for the house - lighting,...

First things first...

DEMO! We did so much demo!  I know I posted about this before, but then I kind of fell of the face of the blogosphere so I wanted to start over with posting this journey.  We saved about $2,000 in labour etc. by demoing the bathroom, kitchen and floors ourselves. The first picture is from...

The Kitchen...

This is what the kitchen looked like when we bought the place.   Two windows that don't open, and are not in functional positions, a dishwasher that was the tenants (sink connect style), a sink and electric stove/oven that were apartment sized.  A very skinny and tall fridge in a...

The Bathroom....

This is what we started with: Right?  Right? This is awful. That shower is so dark it's like a cave.  The vanity has this curtain hiding storage, not shelves, just empty storage space.  Light fixtures that don't work together and a ceiling fan that was vented into the attic.  The...

Appliance Rebate

Before moving in, we are doing some pretty extensive renovations.  Namely our kitchen and bathroom.  The kitchen was pretty dismal.  It had a poor layout, no dishwasher, a pocket fridge and an apartment size stove/oven in an IKEA plug and play counter. We decided to upgrade all of...

Managing Electricity Usage

Managing our electric bill is a priority for both Jordan and I.  To start, Jordan and I have upgrade appliances to energy efficient ones.  During this summer and our renovation phase, the breaker for all of the baseboard heaters has been turned off - and we plan on managing which are turned...

Annual Utilities

I've never lived anywhere before that had annual utility bills. It's interesting.  Also, it was a bit of a surprise.  After taking possession of our new house, we paid for the year (pro-rated).  Here's the breakdown: Garbage - $125.04 Recycling - $31.08 Water - $246.60 Sewer - $313.20 Hydro (electricity) is billed every other month, so time will tell what we can expect there.  |The...

Coffee Cake

Guys!  You need to try this cake. For my birthday this year, I was craving coffee cake.  No, no, no.  Not the cake that you have with coffee, cake that tasted like. Not sure where or why I got this idea, but it stuck.  I googled, and googled, and googled and eventually found...

Vacation! Yay!

A little slice of lovely.  My mom has a cabin an hour or so from home, and we have enjoyed time at the beach with this little go...

Employment Insurance...Coming to an End

It's hard to believe it's been almost a year since I started my Maternity Leave.  I had left work two weeks before my due date, and went two weeks over due.  So my leave ends with Little Man is just shy of 11 months old.  When I say left work, most of you know that it wasn't a mutual separation.  I was advised when my leave was starting that my department was shutting down and...

July Spend Report

Here it is! Groceries was higher than I expected but the previous month it was less...it all averages out eventually. Most other categories are on track for what we typically spend. This month has kept us busy with renovations.  I'm excited to start posting some before and after shots now...

Kitchen Cabinet Handles Help

Okay, so we have our kitchen cabinet handles narrowed down to these two - what do you guys think? I really wanted the one on the right, until Jordan found the one on the left, and now he likes the one on the right and I'm more partial to the other.... There is a $2 price difference, and we need about...