Mommy Needs a Nap!!

Well, sorry for being M.I.A yesterday, it was a crazy busy day, that I hoped would end earlier then it did, or start later then it did, or maybe include a nap for everyone involved, but that was not in the plans. But you'll hear all about my truly manic monday shortly....

To start off my weekend recap right Friday night I worked on some beading projects for an upcoming shower (on Monday), and ran some errands, getting groceries etc. Went to bed nice and early as we had to get up super early Saturday morning thanks in part to my genius hubby....

Saturday morning got up at 7am to head to town to get our brand new Dodge Journey serviced, it felt like it was always pulling to the right, so hubby felt it needed an alignment, and with only 1500km on it, it needed to be taken care of... So we headed into town, and my mom met us at the car dealership so we could do some shopping (again for the Monday shower). We went out for an amazing breakfast at Cora's (where Hannah LOVED french toast, so I can find a way to get some eggs into her...), and then got a crazy thunderstorm, and headed to the mall to check out the bride's registry's and secretly look for a dress to the wedding for me. I had found one I liked at Sears, but it's strapless, and I'm not loving that idea with a two year old, who is also the flower girl in the wedding, so I was looking for something equally nice, but not as high maintenance we'll say. So after checking out the bride's registry and discovering soo many things were discontinued on it, I decided to make up my own gift including some of my favorite household things. So I got her a Pizza Stone set, and a Starfrit Rotato (because they are AMAZING and really do peel a potato perfectly in 10 seconds), and a can opener I also love. I also made her an anklet for her wedding day that is made out of the same beads I am using to make her bridal parties jewelry. Then we hit up the dress stores. Le Chateau had amazing, gorgeous short(er) dresses, but they were sooo ridiculously priced I walked right out. I mean come on $179.95 for a knee length dress is a bit much. I had a budget of $50. We walked around the mall a little more and decided to head out to Winner's and Homesense to check out there selection, and as we were walking back to the exit door we stumbled upon an amazing sale at Suzy Shier. I managed to find not one but two dresses, and one was 40% off the regular price of $40.00 (the one I am wearing to the wedding - I so wish their website had a picture of it on it so I could show you all, you'll just have to stay tuned for the wedding), and the other one was 50% off 40.00, so for the price of the one dress I ordered from Sears I have two. The one I chose for the wedding fits me perfectly, and it's purple (the color of Hannah's sash on her flower girl dress so we'll look cute in pictures, afterall who knows if she'll ever be a flower girl again), and the other one is grey but it has sleeves, so it would be nice for a fall occasion or something, but I liked it and the price was right so I bought it too!! Eric enjoyed a movie while mom, Hannah and I shopped, we then went and picked up our new aligned car and headed home. Eric went over to the neighbours to help tile his backsplash and I hung out with Hannah.

Sunday Eric got called into work in the morning so we had a quick trip up there, and then came home and got ready for my dad's 59th birthday party that was happening here (and my camera died so I have no pics...). I BBQ'd ribs and made caesar salad and caesar potatoes and we had a really nice time. After supper Hannah wanted to walk down and see the ducks so we went for a short walk and fed them some bread. Hannah was so excited to show off her duckies, it was soo cute.

And then Monday happened... To start the day off I went to the wrong dr's apt, I thought I had physio, when I was supposed to be at massage (and I had my hair down not up so massage was going to ruin that). Then I had to quickly find Hannah some white sandals to wear to the bridal shower to go with her dress. Luckily Payless had some super cute ones, and I managed to get myself some cute ones for the wedding and a new purse soo, I suck at BOGO (buy one get one half off ). You see it didn't make sense to me to just by my $44.99 pair of shoes and then get half off Hannah's $12.99 pair of shoes when there was this gorgeous white purse calling my name and it was $39.99, so well worth the half off. So I buy all three... yep I went in for a $12.99 pair of shoes and left with $80 worth... I already said it I suck. Then I headed home to finish up the jewelry and get myself ready for the shower, and Ash and I attempted to head to the shower and then her car tire decided it wanted to unattach itself, so we ended up having to wait to get a tow and then headed to the shower. We met up with our mom first at Jack Astor's for a delicious dinner (we ordered sirloin steak off the kids menu... loldr's apt, I thought I had physio, when I was supposed to be at massage (and I had my hair down not up so massage was going to ruin that). Then I had to quickly find Hannah some white sandals to wear to the bridal shower to go with her dress. Luckily Payless had some super cute ones, and I managed to get myself some cute ones for the wedding and a new purse soo, I suck at BOGO (buy one get one half off ). You see it didn't make sense to me to just by my $44.99 pair of shoes and then get half off Hannah's $12.99 pair of shoes when there was this gorgeous white purse calling my name and it was $39.99, so well worth the half off. So I buy all three... yep I went in for a $12.99 pair of shoes and left with $80 worth... I already said it I suck. Then I headed home to finish up the jewelry and get myself ready for the shower, and Ash and I attempted to head to the shower and then her car tire decided it wanted to unattach itself, so we ended up having to wait to get a tow and then headed to the shower. We met up with our mom first at Jack Astor's for a delicious dinner (we ordered sirloin steak off the kids menu... lol). It was perfect. Then hit the shower after some last minute gift scrambling of Ash's behalf. Then we drove Ash home and got home and got home ourselves at 10pm, much later then anticipated and much later then a little girls 7:30 - 8:00 bedtime, and she wasn't sleeping on the way home but rather loudly talking. So I got changed, put on some laundry and attempted to start watching The Bachelorette, but was getting really pissy with Bentley, so I headed to bed. And that was my truly manic monday.

To add insult to injury I had a terrible night of sleep. My allergies were ridiculous and then we got a really bad and long thunderstorm just as I finally got to sleep, which woke Hannah up, with cries of "Mommy I scared". It was a super intense storm, but man could I ever use a nap...

Hope your weekend was less eventful

Amy

Manic Monday!!

So, I'm linking up again with Ash, from Life As I Know It, for another round of Manic Mondays

So, Friday evening, I hung out at home with Hannah, as Eric was on afternoon shift. Once she was in bed I sorted some beads, and watched the movie "What Happens in Vegas"... pretty funny movie...

Saturday, we headed into town to get groceries, and then Eric headed to his grandparents to help them install a shower while Hannah napped (and we waited for the nicer weather to appear), and I took on a little reno project of my own much to my hubbies surprise (more details on that to come). He got home just as Hannah was waking up and they went out to cut the grass (Hannah's new favorite thing to do is "ride daddy's tractor". My neighbor got some cute photos of the two of them. We also got to meet our new neighbours who are super nice, and have three children, a son who is Hannah's age, so that will be fun. Hannah enjoyed playing with them for a little while before bed time. Saturday night we just relaxed at home.

Sunday morning Eric had to go to the fire hall and do Sunday duty (where they check over all the trucks). Hannah woke up and wondered where daddy went, so I told her he was washing the firetrucks, and she wanted to go see the "woo -woos", so we ate our breakfast, and got dressed, and headed for a short walk to the fire hall. She loved seeing daddy, but was a little indifferent on the whole firetrucks situation. But she looked super cute in the dress I bought her last week from Super Kmart (when we went shopping in the States). Then we came home and got some more yard work done around our place (and loved the nice weather). We even managed to help the neighbours out by cutting their grass (as it had been a few weeks since it had been done as the old owners had moved out then). Hannah enjoyed her tractor ride again. Then we cleaned up and headed over to his parents place to get some flowers for our yard and enjoyed a delicious steak dinner. Came home in the midst of an amazing thunderstorm, there's something about a good storm that reminds you just how human you are, and how tiny you are in comparison to this whole world. Hannah had her bath, and off to bed for her, and R&R time for mommy and daddy.

Hannah, clearly not sure about this thing....

.... Hannah driving.. lol.. she looks so little...

Discovered the seat belt and thinking maybe this could be fun, she loves seat belts right now, after all our car shopping...

Daddy looks happy at least...

she picked up a bug, and handed it to me.... thanks...

LOVE this new dress, and all her cuteness...

So, that was our weekend in a nutshell, and I have to say it was a pretty good one, I love being able to get outside.

Hope you had a great weekend too

Amy

Manic Monday!!

As I always do on Monday mornings I am linking up with Ashley at Life As I Know It for Manic Monday, a great way to recap what we did this weekend!!

Friday night Eric was working late, so I enjoyed a quiet night in, reading and worked on making some jewelry.

Saturday morning, we headed up to London for a quick appointment, and then stopped in the hospital to see my Grandma, whose is been in the hospital for over a week now. She was sleeping so we didn't get much of a visit, but I feel better after seeing her. Hopefully they spring her out of there soon, she's getting restless, but on the other hand, she's getting much needed medical attention, so it's kind of a double edged sword. Then we went to Costco, we were running low on chicken and milk and that's my go to place for those things. So, as usual $295.00 later our truck was full of goodies. We got our chicken and various other groceries, I got a new spring jacket (the zipper went out of my old new one last year at the end of the season so I had to return it), we got Hannah one of these bad boys:

It was a great prive $47.99, and Hannah LOVES it. Eric set it up on our deck once we got home and Hannah played with it as soon as she got up from her nap. Eric and I got to work outside on Saturday (it was a beautiful day here in Ontario - which it had pretty much rained for a week straight so we had been looking forward to Saturday's forecast). So, Eric and I were working in the side garden outside while Hannah was napping inside (we had the baby monitor with us), and I just said to Eric "Someone's awake", as I could hear her on the monitor, and we looked up and this is what we saw....

The little bum had climbed on her chair, pulled back the curtains, lifted the blinds and was screaming "Mommy, OUTSIDE", it was soo funny, and I had just been taking pics with the camera of our dog kennel, to post an add on Kijiji to sell it, so I did what any mom would do and snapped photos (and then dashed in the house to get her down...). We BBQ'd a nice dinner steak dinner on Saturday night, and then it was early to bed for Hannah, as she was a bear. I decided to have a nice relaxing bath, and watched the movie Eat Pray Love (more on that later once I have finished posting my reviews of the book).

Sunday morning we decided to go shopping to finish the list for our insurance claim (that was started back November - when our basement flooded see this post). We got most of the stuff crossed off our list, and so hopefully I can submit that later this week. I also managed to get myself a shower curtain for the main floor bathroom (I was asking for opinions in this post, again more on that as more details emerge - like paint color selection etc). Then we headed to Mike and Ash's for a delicious rib dinner, that may have included Hannah torturing their cats. But the cats took it like champs. It was a lot of fun. Then home to bath Hannah, and some laundry folding and R&R for mom and dad. (On a side note I was enjoying my favorite Sunday night show "Brother's and Sisters", and it was pre-empted for the news of Osama's death and it never came back on). So I went to bed and read for a bit.

How was your weekend? Stay tuned later this afternoon for my very first 30 Day Challenge blog post!!

Amy

Manic Mondays and Meet Me on Monday!!

I'm doing two bloghops this week. Starting first with Meet Me on Monday, link up yourself by clicking here and following the instructions....

This weeks Meet Me On Monday questions are:

1.  Caesar Salad or Garden Salad?

-Caesar Salad is my favorite, especially with hard boiled eggs... mhhmm I could eat one right now...

2.  Will you be watching the Royal Wedding on April 29th?

- nope I gotta admit I haven't been following it at all

3.  Last thing you spent lots of money on?

-all our home reno's as of late, not that they were super costly, but that's where our money's been going, stayed tuned for a budget busters post coming in the next week or so

4.  Window seat or aisle seat?

- window seat, because a) I'm flying with a two year old that needs containment b) I like to look out the window

5.  Do you know your blood type?

- O- universal donor....

Now onto my favorite way to recap my weekend, with Manic Mondays a fun bloghop hosted by Ashley at Life As I Know It, head on over here to link up....

So, what happened this weekend around our place... hmmm, lets see.... a whole lotta nothing and it was wonderful. Glorious. After the last three weekends of intense reno's we (well Hannah and I especially R&R'd) we played hours of Mickey, and had tons of fun.

Friday night, Eric worked until 11pm, so I watched the movie Charlie St Cloud, after reading the book, I have to say I liked the book better but the movie was a good adaptation. I wasn't sure how it was going to be but I must admit I really enjoyed it.

Saturday, unfortunately Eric had to work all day (7-3), so Hannah and I just played around the house. It was soo nice spending time with her, but she was definitely missing her Dadda. Eric got off work early, very surprisingly (2:30, but hey every little bit counts), and came home in time to wake Hannah up from her nap. She loved seeing him, it was soo cute. Then Eric set to work in the garage, cleaning it up from last weekend. I had a roast in the slow-cooker, and dinner was smelling delicious, and low and behold, Eric gets a firecall, to a house fire. He will be gone the entire duration of the evening, until 11pm :(. That was sucky, because we were headed over to friends after supper, but luckily they are our neighbours, so Hannah and I still got to go. They had just got their daughter, Hannah's best friend (she is three months older then Hannah), a mini trampoline, and Hannah was loving it. We watched the girls play and watched "The Time Traveller's Wife" movie, which seemed pretty good, but not a great movie to watch when you can't devote your whole attention to it. I'm looking forward to reading the book.

Sunday morning, Eric had to run back to the firehall to gas up the fire trucks from the night before, then we headed into town for groceries. We came home and I worked in the office, gathering our income tax papers (yep we sucks we like to leave it to the last minute...). Then Eric's parents came over for chicken dinner, and we watched the movie, "The Story of Us", such a great movie, I love it everytime I see it.

So, that was my weekend in a nutshell, uneventful and fabulous....

Amy

Rustoleum Cabinet Transformations!! How we did it!! and Manic Monday!!

So, this Manic Monday's post should be sponsored by Rustoleum, seeing as my weekend recap is all about one of their products, but it's not, but I will still give you the lowdown on how my weekend reno's went, and stay tuned tomorrow for After Pics!! Be sure to head on over to Life As I Know It, and link up for Manic Monday's....

So, we pretty much pulled it off again this weekend, although the after pics won't be up until tomorrow, as I have yet to even take them. But at this very moment my kitchen is put back together. So here's a breakdown of how our weekend worked out:

• Friday 5pm - Eric gets home from work, and finishes taking the cabinet doors off the hinges(we started doing this Thursday night and taping off the areas we didn't want paint to get as we knew it would be time consuming and it definitely was - all in all cabinet door removal and taping took over 5hrs). We first drew a diagram of the cabinets assembled in our kitchen numbering each cabinet door on the back with painters tape (so there was no guess work when it was time to put it all back together). I bought paper cups to put the corresponding hinges in, also numbered with the corresponding door (Rustoleum's diagram pretty much layed out how to do it so check out there web page for the specific hows to's)

• Friday 7pm - start deglossing the cabinets - this step is labour intensive, but I kept reminding myself much easier then sanding all the cabinets - you are supposed to degloss everything then wipe it all down and let it dry for an hr - but by the time I was done wiping everything down, it had been an hour
• Friday - 8:30pm - First coat of the bond coat....loving the color - need to let it dry 2-3 hrs (which is pretty much how long it took to paint all our cabinets, the cabinet frames, two vanity cabinets and two vanity doors).
• Saturday - 12:30 am - Apply Second coat of the bond coat to the backs of the doors and cabinet frames
• Saturday - 2:30 am - Apply the first coat of the bond coat to the fronts of the cabinet doors (which Eric did on his own as I had fallen asleep, what can I say I need my sleep...)
• Saturday - 9am - Apply second coat of the bond coat to the fronts of the cabinets, and start decorative glazing the cabinet frames (this step we only applied two the front of the cabinet doors and frames, and it definitely helped define the wood grain, and made the cabinets less flat). The decorative glaze needs 8 hrs to dry. So during those 8 hours we did all of the above steps to a pantry, two wooden chests, two dressers, two nightstands, a massive headboard - minus the door fronts as we ran out of workspace (so that's the 90% finished part as we still have to do the door fronts, the drawers are all done just not the fronts of the doors)
• Saturday 9pm - Apply Protective Top Coat to the backs of the doors and cabinet frames, let dry over night (or 12 hrs)
• Sunday 9am - Apply Protective Top Coat to the front of the doors and let dry 12 hrs, which we only did 10hrs before rehanging the cabinet doors (as they felt dry to the touch as seemingly were as there's no sign of smudges or fingerprints on the doors)
• Sunday - 7pm - rehang cabinet doors, and install new hardware - loving it!! Looks soooo good, our kitchen was made to be this dark.
• Monday Morning - Hubby is putting some molding underneath the cabinets to hide our new under-cabinet lighting

So, all in all I LOVE LOVE LOVE the look of my new cabinets, I was worried it would make my counter tops look super ugly, as they have a lot of green in them, but I like the counter tops a lot better now, and the new handles look amazing. So stay tuned tomorrow for the after pics.... Hope everyone had a great weekend!!!

Amy

After Pics!! Great Room and Hallway!! Manic Monday!!

So, yet again, we pulled it off!! We refloored our entire main floor in just two short weekends!! And better yet I couldn't be happier with the results!! We started off the weekend by emptying the pantry and my (SUPER FRIGGEN HEAVY) china cabinet, relocating these items throughout the house (if you wanted pantry food you had to go to the office... good fun... lol....not so much... but hey like I said it looks amazing!!

Saturday morning Ash and Mike came over and helped take up the old laminate flooring (as they are going to reuse it in there master bedroom as its still in great shape (only three years old). Then Eric got cracking on the floor, starting around 3pm (by the time all the prep work was done), and floored straight through until 10pm, when we could finally start moving some furniture (namely said SUPER HEAVY china cabinet) back into the great room, so we could go to bed (as all the china was chillin on our bed).

Sunday morning we got up and Eric started putting down all the quarter round I tediously painted Saturday afternoon. Then he went to work on the shelving for our pantry. We used to just have two shelves sitting inside the closet that for some odd reason had a hanging bar (despite not being close to the front door), which was a huge pain in the butt, as stuff always fell behind the shelves and was never seen again (until Friday night ...). We made the discovery I had purchased the wrong kind of track(with the guidance of a Home Depot associate), so we had to head back to the store to buy the right one (with only an hour to spare before the store closed). This is the point in the story to note that it was 8 degrees celcius out all weekend (quite nice), so we literally grabbed Hannah and the track and ran out the door. We got about 15 minutes from home and noticed it the sky looked dark behind us, and Eric commented that he hoped it didn't rain as the saw we had been using to cut all the flooring was still outside on the deck (waiting to be used to cut the pantry shelves...). Que the rain, not even a minute later rain drops splashed on our windshield. We decided it was going to be a super quick trip into Home Depot, so we went in got the right stuff (all of which took maybe 15 minutes), walked out of Home Depot and we are in a freaking blizzard. It was now snowing hard. GREAT!! We drove home as quickly as the weather would allow, and rescued our soaking wet saw, and we wondered if it was going to work, as it was clearly wet. So Eric blew it out with his air compressor, and fired it up. AND IT WORKED!!! YAY!! Thank goodness. So he finished up the pantry, we moved the rest of the furniture back in and Eric was supposed to relax as I reorganized the pantry. But someone had other plans for him, he'd just sat down on the couch and put his feet up, and BEEP!!BEEP!!!BEEP!!, his fire pager went off, car crash on the 401, out he goes, is gone about an hour comes home, says he's going to take a shower, is in the bedroom getting his stuff ready and BEEP!!!!BEEP!!!BEEP!!! (again...ugh), another car accident. Off he goes, out for another hour, finally home and really hoping for a good nights rest. Lucklily, no more calls for the night, we had a hydro outage, due a to a freak thunderstorm?? (sun, rain, snow and thunder all in one day WHAT?!!). But here are my beautiful floors!! I love them.... although Hannah has wiped out on them a few times this morning....

Looking down the hall... probably my favorite view....

dining area

can't wait to see these cabinets expresso next weekend....

New shelves in the pantry

now filled up

much better!!!

So, that's my reno weekend, so thrilled that it is done, only one more reno to go, we saved the best for last!! Stay tuned later this week for the before pics of the kitchen!! I'm linking up with Ashley at Life As I Know It for her Manic Mondays, so head on over here and link up and tell her what you did this weekend!!

Amy

Manic Mondays Blog Hop

I'm linking up with Ashley at Life As I Know It on her Manic Mondays, because I can't think of a better way to recap my weekend then to share it with everyone and maybe get some new followers.

So here's my first edition of Manic Mondays. This weekend was a very busy one, it consisted of doing a little bit of this:

And A LOT of this:

And not enough of this:

My little shopper

So as you can see from the pictures we spent a lot of time at the arena this weekend. Saturday morning we had a nice breakfast together hung my new medicine cabinet (which you can see pics and read about here) and then headed off to the arena to watch my best friends sons last hockey game of the season. Hannah is obsessed with him, so she very much enjoyed it and it set the stage nicely for the hockey game on Sunday. We then did our groceries and errands in town (as we live about 20 mins from town). Which Hannah was quite fond of being able to push a "just her size shopping cart". She was a girl on a mission, until she got to the cookies aisle where she proceeded to stop and fill the entire cart heaping with boxes of cookies. It was soo cute!! The meltdown after she realized that mommy was putting them back on the shelf I could have done without but she really wanted those cookies!! LOL!! Then we went home and had a nice* (edit* - totally disgusting) roast beef dinner for supper. I still don't understand what happened there. It's always been roast + crock pot = delicious, tender meat - but not Saturday. It was tough and gross, we actually threw it out. Saturday night I enjoyed some peace and quiet, reading as Hannah slept through the night from start to finish (WHAT??? - yep it happened, now can we go for two nights - FAIL).

Sunday - We had a quiet morning at home, and then headed out for Ry's 3rd Annual Memorial Hockey Game (my best friends brother was killed three years ago tragically and his family and friends host a hockey game every year in his memory). It's always a good time watching the hockey game and they have a free skate for 30 mins after the game. So we took Hannah out for her first skating, she enjoyed laying on the ice as opposed to standing on it, but all in all she did really well and I think it's something we will try to do more often. Then we headed back to my best friends parents place for a BBQ, and then came home and did our normal Sunday night routine of laundry, baths and garbage round up. Soo all in all a busy but low key weekend, gearing up for the next weekends ahead that will be full of lots of sweat and hard work reno-ing our house. So stay tuned for that!!

Hope you all had a great weekend. Can't wait to read about what kept you busy. Remember to head over here and link up. 
                       -   Amy