THE SIMPLE LIFE

Super-old blog that somehow never got posted until now.

Owning a home is hard work. Not only do you have to clean more rooms than ever before, the sucky part is that majority of the space you don't even use! Other than cleaning, there's the outside: Alex has been good with mowing the lawn but we've failed a watering the grass/plants and our poor garden has fallen by the wayside since the previous owners left.

Another thing that we've been trying to do is accomplish the list of things that our home inspector pointed out to us. We've already scheduled our roof to be done, although it's been delayed because of the rain. It was suppose to start this past Monday but when I left the house this morning, all the materials were lying around and not a worker was seen. I sincerely hope they will be done before everyone comes to visit this weekend. Another thing on the list was to replace our bathroom fans.

Now this doesn't sound that complicated. We picked up a new fan "easy to install in just 3 steps". Yeah...we kind of rean into some problems. Since our home is older, the fan that was originally there happens to be in dimensions that are no longer made. We ended up with a smaller fan - which we figured was fine as long as the grill covered the ugliness. We didn't take into the fact that the insulation from the attic would be falling down from the excess space nor could we figure out how to adhere the fan so that it would not fall through the hole. After 2 labour-intensive days, we gave up and hired a handyman. The poor guy spent 2 hours installing the fan and only got paid 50 bucks for all his hard work.

As with all lessons, it doesn't matter how often ppl tell you, you have to experience them yourself to really learn. In this case, Gord & Steph once told me that throwing money at problems will make things go away. It took us two very frustrating days before we were willing to submit to the fact that we will no longer attempt to fix things up on our own and simply hire ppl's expertise.






Oh and btw, we're having a lady come help with our garden this saturday.

My mom left Waterloo yesterday after staying for a week. It was great to have her come - hopefully she felt at home since everything inside was essentially hers. I accomplished more in the few days that she was here than my entire 2 months. Of course, I also spent a lot more too.

Filling a home is expensive! We bought a papasan chair for, what I think, was an obscene amount. Simply because it's totally not practical - cushion will get flat from use and I keep worrying that it'll break under my weight. Plus the fact that it's an odd piece to have in the living room because of it's so casual (aren't living rooms meant to be for formal sitting?). With all that being said, I love it. I love curling up in it to read by our window. It's just comfy, I almost feel like I'm in a crib! =P I've been keeping an eye out for used ones cuz we have 30 days to return. For some odd reason, they're very popular in London but I haven't seen anything that looks like ours yet.

I've spent so much time going back and forth between the different Home Sense locations I feel like I know their entire inventory. Plus, I forgot that I got a gift card for it from our wedding so I had to go back. They have this really stupid policy where you can't just bring your receipt. I had to bring back all my merchandise, refund it and then re-purchase it with the gift card. Have you ever tried carrying 10 pillows? Ridiculous!

Of course, it's my own fault. I'm not a designer. I can't just see things in my head. So, being an idiot I buy everything and then return things that don't work. Which ends up creating more work for myself - not to mention gas. I was so exhausted by the time my mom's vacation ended, I felt like I needed another vacation! But it was definitely great girl time. Alex was smart enough to schedule 2 on-calls back to back so he was never home. Otherwise, I think it would've been too much estrogen for him.

Now, we're back to our regular routine. I start working 3x/week starting next Monday. Excited and nervous at the same time because the specialties will be something completely different from what I'm doing right now. And I was just starting to get comfortable with where I'm at. We'll see...!