Our first weekend in our new home is coming to an end, so I thought it was about time I posted some photos. There is not much here and I have the same ones over on facebook, but it’s a start. Not much say at this point, still taking it all in. The cat has found many hidey holes and has ventured out into the backyard with us a couple times (but she won’t step on the grass). The couch and chair in our basement room were left by the previous home owner and we are very happy about that. They work so well with the room and our couch would have clashed horribly! The last two photos are of the “cottage” (as I’ve been calling it). It’s just a little room in the basement, but it has a weird old cottagey feel to it. Part of it has to do with the decor and part of it is the door to the cold storage I think.

I have found many treasures left behind, one being a white shelving unit (you can see it beside the stove in the “cottage”) that I was really hoping would stay behind. There was a table too, but they took that out. the other things are just little things left in cupboards and drawers. There will most likely be a post about that in the future.

Now I just need to get over my fear of the super old oven and everything will be fine lol.

It’s been a good weekend. Yesterday I went to the Butterdome craft fair. It’s pretty big and there were some very cool booths. Being on my own I didn’t spend a whole lot of time there, I’m not into jewellery or clothes or most of the decorative stuff. I normally don’t pay too much attention to the food either, but I found a tea booth. Once I saw it I couldn’t leave without some. I got Hawaiian Pineapple (red tea) and Blackberry (black tea). So far I’ve only tried the pineapple and it was very good. They came in nice little tins too. Then, after finishing my wander through everything, I went back to the food section and decided to get some flavoured honey. I’m not a huge honey person (I don’t remember ever liking it before) but I do like to use it in my tea occasionally. And I figured, if I’m going to try some why not get the pack of little jars. I have yet to try any of them.

Today we went bed shopping. After six months of sleeping on an air mattress we are very much ready to get a real bed again. I think the mattress has been chosen, we’ll get it ordered this week and hopefully get it delivered next weekend. The bed frame we haven’t actually decided on yet, but we know what kind we want and where to get it (IKEA :D) so that will be a simple matter to deal with. All the utilities are set up and Shaw is coming Saturday to hook up our cable/internet/phone. Oh yea, and it’s only five days until we get our keys!!

How was everyone’s weekend?

It has taken me forever to write this post (and it’s going to be very short) but it’s finally over, we are buying a house! All the paperwork is done and now all there is to do is wait. We get our keys on May 11th. I think the next two weeks are going to go by excruciatingly slow.

I think that this may inspire some house/decor/gardening/DIY posts in the future. I’ve already bought my first ever issue of Canadian House & Home and I’ve had the IKEA catalogue out. The page in the photo above shows the how I would like to plant some herbs and hang them on my wall somewhere. Or like this:

Kind of leaning towards the latter now, need to see if I have a wide enough window sill maybe… Anyone know where I can get some cool old tea tins??

That’s about all I have to say on the matter right now. My excitement is growing as the day gets closer. This will probably be my last post before the move and the next will most likely just be photos. My hope is that once we are settled my energy level will start to get back to a normal level and I will start sleeping more (because we are going to finally get a bed!) which should help me get back into a blogging groove, and photography for that matter.

Well, life seems to have thrown me a bit lately. More so then normal anyways. Having super PMS might be the reason I’m ready to just give up and go sit in a corner for the next few months. (Should there have been a TMI warning before that?). Lack of sleep and stress with the house hunt (which won’t be updated tonight as I just don’t have the energy) are probably the big reasons I’ve been so worn out. And the long work days and the fact that we haven’t had time to eat proper dinners for the last couple weeks. And now we find out they have to spray for bedbugs next week so we have to pack our house up. That set off a mood swing that brought a lot of anger and tears. By the time the Canucks game was over (which was about half an hour ago) I was just too tired to even be mad anymore.

I feel like I’ve been a miserable person to be around and that I’ve neglected a lot of people I care about. It’s really starting to get to me. I’m worried all the time that I’ve angered or upset people or that I’m screwing up at work (even though I know how to do my job and I even got this weeks staff appreciation giftcard). Everything I do right now is wrong. I’m hoping that in another month and a half or so things will be back to a relatively normal state… fingers are crossed.

And to artify this post, a creepy window self portrait…I would totally use this as my avatar on site, if not for the fact that I had my eye open and it looks a bit disturbing…

I apologize to and thank anyone who made it to the end of this post.

As some of you may have noticed, either from facebook or twitter updates (and I’ve probably mentioned it in a previous post somewhere) we’ve been looking for a house. Part of the reason we chose Edmonton as our city to move to was because it has affordable housing, meaning we can get something better then a run down, tiny piece of crap for what we can afford. So, though we’d been occasionally checking the MLS site before, a few months ago we decided to start seriously looking. Last month we met with a realtor (why does my spell check not like that word??) and the hunt got more serious.

So far we have viewed about a dozen houses. One of them is close to where we live now, which is a bit too close to the low rent housing. Normally that wouldn’t be an issue, but there’s a lot of problems in our neighbourhood and it’s really not a nice area. But it is close to the river, which is a huge plus. We’ve thought it over a few times and one of the cons is that though putting some money into the house would definitely raise the worth, we would still most likely only get our money back if we decided to sell in the future. That is based on other places in the same neighbourhood. That is the house we’ve been comparing everything else too.

On Monday we viewed a place in a nice neighbourhood (no where near the river though). It was a split level which I loved because there were larger windows in the basement. It was nicely laid out, except for an odd kitchen and it didn’t have very many windows. It also had a bowed beam in the basement that was making a dip in the floor above. We did really like the house and decided to put in an offer below the asking price. They didn’t take the offer, so we counter offered and again it was rejected. We decided to let it go, because it was going to need some work and their bottom line was above what we wanted to pay. Oddly enough they sent back another counter offer which we turned down.

So we are still looking. There’s been some place that were just in unfortunate areas. I am of the mind that I will give up some of my wants in a house to have one in a nice area. We would like a place that needs some work. We would like a place near the river, or a ravine (somewhere I could go for walks and he could ride his bike). Though I’m a bit disappointed in a few of the houses I wanted to look at already being taken and a couple others being located in areas I’d rather not live for the next five years I am confident that we will find something. Eventually.

To be continued…