Although the first 9 individually aren't super ambitious, all combined together to make goal # 10...yeah, it's a big month. But we're ready for it. I think. No, no, we are. I hope.
What's on your monthly goal list?
Wait a second--August's over...ALREADY?!?! That's totally insane and I feel soooo old, but I feel like I blinked and it was over. C-razy.
Because of that and a fairly busy month that made it seem even quicker, I just don't think many goals will be met this month. Let's see:
Well, alright! I guess I did much better than I'd anticipated. I guess I did make it pretty easy on myself. But for the last month of summer, I think that's more than fine with me.
How'd you do?
And hubs...well, hubs is getting very good at this gift thing. He pays a lot more attention than I give him credit for, I'll say that much. So he had originally bought some lovely metal bookends (almost identical to the ones in my wish list) and a car cell phone charger. Apparently I let my phone die constantly and forget to charge it...and apparently this is a problem :P However, since sis already got me bookends, which I opened Sunday at our family dinner, he had an errand to run and instead got me this:
A bread maker, which I initiated last night. Seriously. Phenomenal. How have I not had one of these in my life before? With less than a minute of effort and a little bit of patience (3 hours for last night's loaf) I had fresh baked homemade bread. Although I was a little eager and didn't really plan too well (wanted to get it going as soon as I was home), the bread was still very soft and fresh this morning, and last night at around 3 am when I was up for a bathroom break, our house smelled ah-mazing! I can't wait to try some other recipes, like cinnamon rolls, cheddar jalapeno bread, banana bread, etc etc. Yum yum--good work hubs!
And I can't forget my parents early birthday gift, which we use almost daily. Our wonderful BBQ! They also gave me some restaurant and store gift certificates which will be put to very good use.
And a similar idea from my in-laws-they got us central vac back in February that covered a whole lotta gifts and occasions.
And you can never underestimate the appeal of money and gift cards. Some birthday money from my Oma got me my very first item of lululemon clothing, the groove pants (which are definitely as amazing as everyone says, but also ridiculously overpriced, which is why they were my first purchase)-thanks Oms!
Also, a HomeSense gift card from my bro & his gf will be welcoming some fab accessories either to this home or our next one if I can wait that long. And a Pier 1 gift card from hubs aunt which will also bring in some lovelies. A cheque from my other in laws as well as some booze from several friends are all such great, appreciated gifts.
Wow--isn't that ridiculous?!?! When you list it all out like that, I feel like a spoiled little brat. Which, apparently I am. Thanks everyone---love you all!
How about you? Any birthdays or occasions lately that make you feel so blessed and maybe even a little guilty?
I liked the purple I'd used for the birthday party cakes & cupcakes, so I decided to go purple again. Plus, we had to make the little border flowers a few days in advance so they could set and I still had some icing leftover, so it worked out nicely. And here's my cake:
Unfortunately, the cake carrying case I got for the course, although multi-purpose, is a little shallow. So when I went to put the lid on to leave class, it smushed the top rose.
Whon Whon. But I made a few extra roses, so if I cared, I could swap it out for a new, un-smushed one. I haven't yet decided if I care or if hubs and I are going to be the ones eating it. Overall, I'm pretty pleased and had a great time in the course. We even signed up for level 2, which doesn't start until November. 
So I'm pretty certain I can check off both goals this month with confidence. I'm definitely enjoying the classes, and I did put a lot of effort into Saturday's celebration. Plus---if you consider the coincidences of matching plastic table ware thanks to Dollarama, as well as my co-birthday girl and I both wearing white bottoms and purple shirt, which happen to (unintentially, I swear) coordinate with the cupcakes & cake...it's pretty flippin' creative :) 
Naturally, they make the room SO much brighter. But not in an annoying way-it's just very nice. And the 2 over the fireplace really do make it seem showcase-y, or, dare I say-model home-esque.
And, if you much know...had hubs and I made our current home our forever home, the closet would have looked something like this (sorry it's so small):
With lots of space for shoes, bags, and everything else in there. Ah well...one day!
The market conditions are pretty good right now to sell it, and we'd make a good few dollars of it and the work we've put into it the last 7.5 months (has it really only been that long??). We both love this house, but if we eventually want to be mortgage free (or close to it) at an age younger than 85, we've got to keep moving on and building our capital.I'm sure there's oodles we're missing on there, but that's the bare minimum. I have a write-up done and we'd need to take pics of course once the above list is done.
Since we're waiting until after we sell to buy a new place, there's not technically a rush. If for some reason, there aren't any bites, or we're not getting what we're looking for, we can reconsider since we haven't already bought a place. Do you think that's smart, or are we shooting ourselves in the foot either way?
Therein lies one of the big problems I'm wrestling with today. There's NOTHING out there to buy! Seriously, no wonder it's a sellers market---there's no inventory!
I've been on MLS and Grapevine (the local FSBO authority) very regularly lately, and there's nothing. nada. zilch. Not a thing that appeals to us. Remember-a potential new place has stiff competition in our current home.
Well, let me correct that. There's nothing in our target price range, in our target area and with our target criteria out there currently.
In order to make money off the next house, it needs to be cheaper than this one sells for and have room for improvement (hubs is quite handy, have I mentioned that?). Plus, we like the area near and around where we live right now, and we don't really want to live downtown or much more East than we do now. Does that mean we have to move to the boonies? Kemptville? Manotick? Munster? Arnprior? Carleton Place? How far is too far? Clearly a personal decision and one we've been wrestling with a lot in the past couple weeks.
Another problem? We're cheap. Cheap, cheap, cheap. So we'll be FSBOing it again. No problem-I'm pretty sure our house shows very well and I can handle some open houses. This time though, the cats are staying. Their stuff can be put away, but we're not dealing with that BS again now that there's plenty of room for them to hide in the meantime.
However, with a potentially rushed purchase, do I enlist a realtor? Is that shady---selling it ourselves but then getting someone to help us buy a new place? They may know of better ways to search, better questions to ask us to determine our ideal home, not to mention make the process a lot easier. We've never bought an 'old' house before, only new construction, so a realtor could really help there.
Anyways, there are clearly a lot of decisions we'll be making in the very (very!) near future and, hopefully a lot of progress I'll remember to photograph to post here.
It's totally girly and juvenile, but meh. You don't have much choice at this point. Our options were to make a rainbow cake, a character cake, or bring a cookie cutter and use that as the shape. Fairly limiting to how modern and cool you could make a cake. For me, anyway. 
Which, I realize is part of the course curriculum, and perhaps one day I'll need to make a clown cake for my or someone else's child. At this point, though, I'd rather learn how to make more practical designs. Aren't most kids scared of clowns anyways?
Please note 2 different throws flanking the bed. Although they match each other fairly well, they are certainly different (1 fleece, 1 cotton) and certainly not drapes. You will also note 1 (one) set of drapes hung on 2 (two) separate large windows, clearly way too short to even attempt to pass as actual drapes. All 4 of these coverings were being held up with miscellaneous nails and tacks. Lovely, non?
Unfortunately you can't tell with these photos, but the lighting is phenomenal with no drapes, or if we had been able-open drapes. Seriously it's so open and light in there we had to just sit back for a moment to enjoy what we had no idea we were missing.
Which, unlike our nailed-in-place, ghetto previous coverings, can be opened to let all that gorgeous light in (when it's not raining during this crummy "summer"):
Honestly, though once they were up I was kinda disappointed. Obviously INFINITELY better than the before, but they just weren't what I was hoping for. I guess I was so stuck on getting drapes with grommets/eyelets, I didn't consider that I may have preferred something a little softer, like these (which, of course, happen to be significantly cheaper): 
Also, I love him, but hubs hung the rods so we couldn't have the drapes wider than the window frame. I'm going to play around with them tonight to see if I can put a grommet on either side of the support to remedy that rather than have him re-do them all though.
Which isn't working for me. So, I'll have to get in there tonight and re-hem them and measure them each individually...ugh. Oh well, better to get it right in 2 nights than adjust to another set of blinds that don't measure up (pun intended).
