Update?

So I was looking at our blog today and thought it has been a while since I last posted... wow am I bad at blogging! At any rate, life has been pretty quiet for us, but is about to get less quiet as on Friday we get our new puppy, Brooke.

She's a pure bred Silver Lab, and oh-so-cute!  We love her already! We're not too sure what Nova will think about her, but she doesn't really have a choice... lol.

I'll post pictures of both of them over the weekend.

Other than that, not too much news.  We are looking forward to our summer vacation this year, and the plan so far is to spend a full week (maybe more) in Creston with family.  I'm soo looking forward to it as I am long overdue for some vacation time.

More updates to come shortly.  Let Summer begin! (Someone tell the weather man.)

Best of 2011

2011 has been a great year for us! Here are some of my top picks:

January: Welcomed our niece, Calida, into the world!

January/February-ish: Jordy got a promotion/new position at work. No more working as a teller, time to put that education to good use!

March: We decided to stop renting and started looking for our first home. Found our first home and closed the sale. Waited 3 months to be able to move into said home.

June: Moved into new home! No sooner had we moved all the boxes into our house, then we brought home our puppy, Nova.

June: House-trained Nova.

August: Went for our annual August long weekend trip to Creston - first time with Nova in a tent.

August: Bought a new, bigger tent.

September: Van died. Bought a new truck.

September: Went on our first camping trip with Nova. Glad we bought a bigger tent. Note to self - need bigger air mattress.

October: Had our annual pumpkin carving night. Some turned out great!

October: Built Nova a dog house. Discovered that she could climb onto the shed from dog house. Moved dog house. Found she could jump over neighbor's fence from top of dog house. Moved dog house. Found she could climb into the pear tree and jump to the top of the shed using dog house. Moved dog house.

November: Got Nova fixed. Was super stressed about leaving her at the vet overnight. When we went to pick her up, found she probably didn't even notice she wasn't at home. Silly dog.

November: 3rd Wedding Anniversary!! Wow - 3 years already? Didn't go anywhere due to Nova's recovery. Went out for a nice dinner.

December: Had a great Christmas time with family. Enjoyed not traveling farther than Taber this year and had a blast playing a billion games of Pandemic.

December: Got snowshoes for Christmas. First Christmas with no snow in my memory and haven't used the snowshoes yet.

December: Had a great New Year's Eve. We went out for sushi, went to the movie called New Year's Eve (very funny) and by the time we got out it was 11:40 pm. Raced home to welcome in the New Year!

As for this coming year, we made a few resolutions. I'd love to paint the house, as its still the same color the previous owners had painted - yellow-green. Gross. We would also enjoy an outside patio/deck. No really big plans for this year so far. I'll keep you posted if that changes!

Happy New Year and all the best in 2012. If its anything like 2011, then we have a lot to look forward to!

Uh... Can you say random?

I don't really have much news, but I'm at home, bored while Jordy is at work and I thought I would write a random blog post.

Jordy started his new shift rotation that has mostly 10 hour (10-8) shifts at work. The plus side is that he gets paid more and has 3 days off a week (although with the exception of Sunday, which he always has off, those other 2 days off vary depending on the week). This means that sometimes, ex. August long weekend, he will have 5 days off in a row! So I'm prepared to put up with eating a few dinners by myself. Learning how to cook for one again - I'm not so good at. (Any helpful meal ideas or tips?)

ALSO - I don't know what to do with my free time now! Jordy and I are one of those couples that does everything together, we are attached at the hip. That means that for the last almost 3 years, I haven't had to entertain myself, and I find that since Jordy started his new shift rotation, I've read a lot of books, worked out more (although not as much as I should be for all this free time I have) and been overall lazy.

MY EXCUSE? Recently - I'm putting everything off until we move into our new house. I know, my excuse isn't a very good one for most things. However, as we've been packing as much up as we can, I'm pretty sure Jordy packed up my at home workout dvds, most of the video games, and we have a ton of boxes all over our house which makes working out very difficult (and if not difficult then we'll say inconvenient). Half of our kitchen is in boxes already which leaves us a hand full of plates, bowls, glasses and utensils which definitely puts a damper on actually cooking anything. So my motivation to do anything productive is at an all time low, and my excuse seems to be working well enough. On the plus side I did finally put the time into cleaning up our yard, and I could probably get a good workout mowing the grass since we have a motor-less rotating blade push type lawn mower.

Did I tell you I had nothing really news worthy to report...?

I am at the point where I just want to be moved into our new house! I've got tons of decorating ideas (minus the money to do it however) and can't wait to get all our furniture in the new house. We bought a new couch, love seat and chair set on sale for the upstairs living room which we pick up on May 30, and a steal of a deal washer and dryer set that we splurged our income tax return on... I am sooo looking forward to May 30!

I can't wait for the weather here to get nice and hot. We've been lucky with +15-20 degree weather, but the wind is still cold, and makes being outside not so fun. How long have we been waiting for summer now... more than a year with the weather last summer... yikes! Its about time we got some hot weather!

As I am now feeling like I've just been rambling on for a good 5-10 minutes, I will graciously end this post and hope that I can either get lost in a book, or do something productive to prevent another random, useless post this evening.

At least when I eventually have kids I can put a cute picture of them up and hope it would make for a less random post, but alas, no kids yet (and no this is not an announcement), and thus a dull blog post... haha.

Till next time,

Cassandra

So we bought a house...

I guess technically I should write "we are buying a house..." But everything is near complete, all our ducks are in a row, and now we play the waiting game...

Here, let me back up a little bit:

So you all know that Jordy started his new job as a teller at 1st Choice Savings back in November. Well obviously he did not go to school for 4 years to be a teller. We were both hoping for a better position to come along. What we didn't expect was for it to happen so soon! After working there for 4 months, Jordy got a new job as an FSO - or Financial Service Officer at the call center for the same bank. It comes with full time hours, a nice big raise and more days off. We were stoked! Now we've been dreaming about buying our own home for a while now. We were tired of paying rent, and seemingly just throwing the money away instead of investing it into something that was ours. SO we had hoped that by saving a lot, we could afford a house maybe Fall of 2011 possibly Spring of 2012. Keep in mind we were not expecting his new job so soon...

Now come to just about a month ago and we find out that Jordy gets a nice raise with this position, I get a raise at my work (with promises of raises to come this summer) and bang - we are suddenly in the running for getting approved for a mortgage... YAY!

HOUSE HUNTING

Well we really didn't spend long in this department. We've been keeping an eye on the market here in Lethbridge for the past few months and finally something in our price range caught our eye. A cute little fixer-upper for $237,500.00 listing price. Well we called up a friend of ours from church who is a realtor and went to go see the house. We loved the layout!!! It had so much character in the exposed beams and open floor plan of the upstairs, and we already had plans for renovating the down stairs! We fell in love with the possibilities of the place - oh and HUGE backyard! We decided to put an offer in. We decided that with the comparables we had also gone to see, $220,000 would be a pretty good starting offer. Well the seller only countered at $232,500 only coming down $4,000. We were bummed! Well Mark, our realtor, told us that the house wasn't worth $237,000 and we felt it had a lot of renos to do, so we only came up to $225,000. No dice. The seller only came down to $232,000 and was pretty solidly stuck there. We were talking about countering again when Mark calls us up and told us that before we counter, we need to see this other place that had just come back on the market that day. So off we go.

SECOND HOUSE

We walked into the house and thought "We can't afford this..." "Mark is crazy!" The entire house has been renovated already with nice laminate floors and modern white base boards and tiled kitchen. The paint is even nice enough to stay! We go downstairs and there is some room for renos, but its even got a second brand new half bath downstairs. We loved it. It had all the room of the first house but without the need to do the renovations. It was move in ready! It has 3 bedrooms up and 1 bedroom down. Full bath upstairs with a bathtub and half bath downstairs with room for making it a full bath. The storage room in the basement was the size of a bedroom! So much room for food storage! The back yard is big enough to add a garage and still have a large backyard for future kidlets. Like I said, we thought it was too good to be true. But the listing price was only $235,000.00! We jumped on it and put an offer in of $227,000

Unfortunately we got into a bidding war...

We found out that there was a second offer on the table with a 3rd offer coming on the same night! I was devastated... I did not want to be in a bidding war, but I didn't want to lose the house! We decided we would go back at full price and hopefully get the house over the other bids since we had no idea what their offers were.

They accepted our offer of $235,000!

So we arranged for a home inspection and started to set up financing.

The home inspection went great - the only things that came up were things we already knew or suspected. New roof in the next year, new furnace and water tank in the next 5 years. Being a 38 year old house, we could deal with that. Especially when the price was already with a new roof in mind. Everything else checked out great. No water, or other leaks, no problematic cracks or anything.

FINANCING

We were approved for the amount of the mortgage. It went so quickly I thought it was still to good to be true. Where was the glitch?!

CREDIT CHECK

My credit check came back bad. Which was ridiculous. I had 100% good credit as far as I knew. It turns out that my Alberta Student Loans had put a collection on my account for failure to pay. I was ticked! We had paid off my little AB student loan in January! It turns out that there was a "clerical error" by AB SL and they didn't recognize the payment. So I had to call and get angry at them, again and again and again. Then get my lawyer to send them a letter, then call them again before they would fax us a letter to meet our financing conditions date - the day before the deadliine!!! It was soo stressful especially since it wasn't my fault! It was their error that put the collection on my credit report. It made for a very stressful week!

EVERYTHING IS APPROVED

Well - after that very stressful happenstance, we are finally able to remove the financing and home inspection conditions and move the sale forward!

We are super excited to move into our house. The possession date is May 30 which still seems sooo far away. BUT we love the house, we're excited to grow into it over the years and we're glad that we don't HAVE to do any renovations right away... not that we'd have money to!

We've stayed in our price range and we will not be house-poor. That was very important to us as we like our lifestyle and we look forward to having kids and going on trips and vacations still. I didn't want to sacrifice me being a stay-at-home mom or spending time with my husband just so we could own a house.

Anyways, that has been our excitement for the last few weeks and I'll post a few of the pictures from their listing page. (the pictures really don't do it justice) I wish we had possession already and could take our own pictures for you but oh well. There will be lots of pictures to come.

We've already bought a new couch, love-seat, and chair set for the upstairs living room... I'm already dreaming of decorating it! :) Here are the pictures:

Outside Front

Upstairs Living Room

Kitchen - Professionally tiled!

An actual Dining Room - you would not believe how few houses in this price range have a dining room!

Sorry its the wrong way - But the bathroom was soo cute, plus they are putting in a new sink before we move in. (it needs a new shower curtain though... eww...)

Master bedroom - This is the only bedroom they show a picture of online. There are two more upstairs and one down. All with nice size closets!

And my favourite part - the huge backyard with nice trees!!

There is so much we are excited about with this house... I think the biggest part is just to be homeowners! Hopefully the next 8 weeks will go by quickly and then we'll be moving in and I'll be posting more pictures!

2 Years and Fairmont Trip and More

Well as the title states, we've recently had our 2 year anniversary! Its been very exciting. One one hand if feels like it has been much longer, on the other hand the time has just flown by! At any rate we still thoroughly enjoy being married, and look forward to many more years of it. To celebrate our anniversary we did two things this year, first we decided to have a nice homemade dinner instead of spending a ton at a fancy restaurant. We had Asparagus Stuffed Chicken, with Butternut Squash and Salad, along with some sparkling fruit juice. It tasted sooo good. We both agreed that we enjoyed our homemade meal more than we would have enjoyed a steak or something from a restaurant.

Here's a picture of it:

(yes it really does look like that when you make it at home!)

And here's the recipe if any of you want to try it at home: http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Asparagus-Stuffed-Chicken-Rolls

The second thing we did to celebrate our anniversary was we took a short trip up to Fairmont Hot Springs. It was a great trip, we had work off on Thursday and Friday of that week so we booked a night at the Fairmont Lodge and drove up to relax at the hot springs. I had forgotten how much I LOVE sitting in the springs when its cold outside. It was so relaxing. We treated ourselves to dinner at the lodge and watched Knight and Day. Its a pretty good movie with Cameron Diaz and Tom Cruise. I recommend it. We drove home on Friday, and on the way we stopped for lunch at this little diner called the Fire Valley Restaurant in Canal Flatts. It was such a "movie type" small town restaurant. A little old lady was in the kitchen making all of our food, and there were lumberjacks wearing plaid and hunters wearing their cameo eating lunch. I enjoyed it. So it was a fun little trip to Fairmont, and I look forward to doing it again sometime soon!

Another exciting thing that is recent - Jordy got a job! We are so excited. He got a job at 1st Choice Savings and Credit Union, Fairmont Branch in Lethbridge. He starts on Monday, Nov. 22/10. It is such a huge relief. We didn't know where we would be living in the next little while, we were starting to think we would have to move to Calgary or Edmonton for him to find work, but our prayers were answered and we get to stay in Lethbridge! I'm especially excited because that means I get to keep my job, which I still LOVE. And we're happy we get to stay in our ward. Just knowing that this is where we'll be for the next few years is such a relief. I am so proud of him for working hard and getting this job. I know he'll do well at it!

So those are our life updates for now. We are excited counting down the days till we fly down to Florida for Christmas (and leave behind this hideous cold winter weather for a few days). Over the last few days we've been hit with about a foot and a half of snow. With snow, Christmas shopping, and it being the middle of November, its sure beginning to feel a lot like the Christmas season is starting. We'll be putting up our tree soon! I already have decorations up around the house - can you tell I love this time of the year?

Anyways, I've posted a picture from our wedding day for fun - I love this picture!

Till next time.

Happy Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

To celebrate this spooky occasion, our family always gets together to carve pumpkins, and let me tell you, some get pretty fancy... You'll see...

Sandy gets very excited every year. He loves to carve pumpkins. It took him forever just to pick out a design.

Here's all of them...

Mine is supposed to be a monster from Monsters Inc. I like my pumpkin to look cute scary, not creepy scary. lol.

This is Clint's and Christopher's pumpkin. Igor. This was their first pumpkin carving ever. Did pretty good if you ask me!

Tyler has been reading the Harry Potter books all the way through for the first time this year. And well, I give you the three headed dog from Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

This is Jordy's pumpkin. Very creepy...

And finally Sandy's pumpkin. It looks like its moving! He did such a great job. This is a character from one of the Scooby Doo movies. Like I said, he loves carving pumpkins.

And the group of them once again, just because I think they are all so great.

I hope your Halloween is spooky and fun. Safe Trick-Or-Treating to all!

An update with pictures...

Hello again. Yes, I know its been a few months since my last post, but until now I really didn't have a lot going on that was very interesting. I hope this post makes up for it. There are a few new things to report on.

Here we go:Jordy Graduates!

That's right. We are officially no longer students (either of us). Jordy was technically finished school at the end of August, but he didn't convocate until October 16, 2010. I am so proud of him and how he was able to stick with it. It can't have been the easiest and he worked hard to finish. I can't even begin to imagine what it would have been like if we had a little one running around too. Hats off you all you mums and dads out there finishing school.

Here are a few pictures from his Convocation Ceremony:

(If you want to see more pictures - go to my Facebook Album)

We renovate our bathroom:

We started this bathroom renovation at the beginning of the summer. We had Jordy's brother, Bryan, come up and help us demo, drywall, and tile the tub surround. The rest of it stayed undone until this last week and a half. In about 4 days, we mudded, sanded, primed, textured, and painted the entire bathroom.

So you get an idea of the transformation here are the before pictures:

(sorry, we didn't take any before we ripped out the old tub surround.)

The bathroom used to be this nasty yellow (from previous renters smoking). So we had to use some very heavy primer.

The difference after it was all white was amazing. I can't believe we left it yellow for so long.

We also decided that because there were so many inperfections in the walls (old house) we were going to "texture" the walls. So we bought a bucket of ceiling spackle, and Bryan painted it on the walls, I went along about 5 mins later (while it was still wet) and with a trowel flattened it all out. So we ended up with this really nice, textured look. Very easy to do, but a little messy. The spackle doesn't go onto the walls very nicely.

I believe this was after the first coat of blue. Yes, I also painted the cabinet brown. It makes such a difference and was way cheaper than buying a new cabinet. It made the counter top look like new.

Here are some after pictures:

This is not the mirror we are leaving in there, we actually used to have this huge plane glass mirror in there, we got it cut to a slightly smaller dimension for free, bought some cheap trim from Home Depot, painted the trim brown, and will frame the mirror with it. (Once we have time to.) Then that will replace the temporary mirror in this picture.

All of the pictures (3) in our bathroom I found at Walmart for pretty cheap. 2 of them were $15, and one was $30. They match the paint and scheme perfectly!

In this picture you can see the tile job we did in the bathtub surround. It is much better than the old yellowed plastic surround that used to be there.

We traded lights with Jordy's mom, as hers was too powerful for her bathroom (and melted the ceiling tiles) and it has a frosted glass on the front, so to make it match, we bought a can of spray on glass frosting and frosted the glass on that medicine cabinet on the left.

All in all it was a very cheap, do-it-yourself, but very nice bathroom reno. It has made a yucky old bathroom look almost brand new all for under $700!! I love it!

That's all for this post. I've got another one going up today too. Stay tuned!