Shop until I drop...

Today we went shopping. We wanted to check out a few more furniture stores in the city so we set out at about noon and got home at around 4:15pm. First we went to Ashley Furniture and found a couple of nice couches and chairs that we like, one is leather and one is microfibre. I think I like the easy cleanability of leather and when you get up you don't leave a butt print behind. The leather is definitely more expensive, but if it is furniture we will have for 20 years I think it'll be worth it. We didn't see anything else too thrilling there, so we moved on to Uncle Ed's. That stop was a waste of time. I am glad we didn't have to go out of our way for that one. Not much that was of interest to us, and as a side note they were still carrying our table and chairs that we currently have...and Jason bought that 6 years ago. Of course it's now $200 more expensive. After that we tried going to Furniture World (despite their annoying tv and radio ad jingle) but were unable to get in because of about six stairs. Again we moved on, this time to Home Depot to check out some blinds. My sister recommended them because she said they were able to cut them to size right there, but that is only if you want white ones and we don't, so they were a little pricey. Honestly though, I have never bought blinds before and I don't know what a good price is for a custom fitted faux wood horizontal blind. They do have some nice ones there though and if we don't find a better price somewhere else, we may go back. After all of those stops we went back to Leon's to check out some mattresses and to put a deposit down on the headboard, dresser and kitchen table and chairs that we liked from last week. On second inspection I definitely really like the headboard and table and chairs. This furniture shopping business is fun :) We also found a fairly reasonably priced mattress set at Leon's that we might pick up, but Jay would possibly like to go try laying on it before we shell out the big bucks. Though they do have a 90 day comfort policy.

I am the type of person that when I am shopping I like to browse and if I need help or have a question I will track down a salesperson to ask. I don't really like to be hounded or feel like I am being hovered over. I thought it was kind of funny at Ashley that the salesman that we talked to a little bit said he would let us browse and to just give him a shout if we needed anything. So we started walking away from him and he followed (not too close, but a little too close to let us talk to each other without being overheard). So we tried to walk a little faster to see if we could 'ditch' him, but nope he followed us around. Then we thought, hey, maybe we should take the elevator upstairs and look around up there. So we went up, and the coast was clear.....for about TWO seconds, he took the escalator up :P He was a nice enough guy, and I didn't feel that he was pressuring us, but I think he was a little annoying. It didn't bother me enough that I felt turned off of buying from them, but it gave me a good chuckle.

Here kitty kitty

Yesterday on the news there was another report of a cougar sighting. This time it was at the Wildwood Golf Course, which happens to be right next door to us. Just for interest sake I looked up cougars on Wikipedia to find out how big they are, and what to do if they attack. I found out that they are quite the jumpers. They have reportedly lept up to 18 feet in the air and are able to leap between 20-40 feet horizontally. It got me to wondering how high our balcony is...though Wikipedia also said that they are excellent climbers....I think if anything knocks at our balcony door I won't be answering.

Getting ready

We (well mostly Jason) have been making a lot of phone calls lately to get ready to sell our condo. We are planning to list with Sask Houses next Thursday (July 5th) already! We have been working on taking our pictures for our listing and have all the info typed out and ready to be entered into Sask Houses form. We have thought out when we would like to have our open houses and they will likely be July 7, 8 and 11.

We have debated a little bit about how to take our offers....whether we should do a sealed envelope offer system, or if we should look at them and if someone asks what the highest bid is, so they can beat it, tell them. I want to do this in a way that is fully ethical, obviously if someone asks for our highest offer we wouldn't give them false information, but I think having a sealed envelope system would keep everyone on even ground who puts in an offer. I am not sure which way would give us our best chance of making the most money. I would think that if people are taking a shot in the dark trying to be our highest bid they may try to bid higher than if they knew the highest bid and only bid a hundred or a so more than the current highest.

We also weren't totally sure what is a good deposit amount to ask for with an offer. Anyone have any suggestions? I saw something that said anywhere from $2,000-$10,000 is a fair amount. Any thoughts? I imagine we could talk to our lawyer about that because she was very knowledgeable and was able to give us lots of good information already.

Our house, as of Friday June 22nd

The back of our house. There is a lot of roof there....looks like more from the back than the front.

Good to know that the bank is doing their job...

When we got home today there was a message on the phone from President's Choice Financial to let us know that there had been some 'suspicious' activity on our Mastercard today. I called them back and they asked what we had used our Mastercard for today. I told them, we went out for supper to Earls. Oh yeah and we went to Sears and bought a new fridge, dishwasher and range hood for our new house. After I told him that, he said that was what they were concerned about and he let me go.

I am pretty excited that we bought our new fridge and dishwasher. I know it'll still be a while until we can use them, but I think they will be good ones to have. Today we also went Leon's and likely found our new bedroom furniture and kitchen table and chairs. They also had some nice living room furniture, but I would like to keep looking for that. I had never been to Leon's, but they have quite the selection for fairly reasonable prices. I was a little disappointed with the sales person's lack of knowledge about the appliances, but now we just need to go to Saskatoon Appliance to buy our stove. This is fun :)

I ended up having the better part of the day off of work today and I didn't feel like just sitting around at home so we started tidying up so we could take some pictures for our sask houses listing. So basically we just put all the stuff from the kitchen in the living room, then all the stuff from the living room in the kitchen to take the pictures. However, when it came to our spare room, well that is where we stick all the stuff we don't want in the kitchen or the living room. I spent at least an hour in there tidying up, and well there is still a bit of stuff on the bed. I managed to pack a tote full of picture frames and other trinket-y things to make the bookshelf in the spare room look less cluttered. I did do some purging, but I was able to organize some things into places that make more sense.

We are planning to list our place around July 4 or 5th. I spent some time yesterday writing up some highlights of our condo for the listing. I am very excited to move into our new house but I do feel a little anxious about packing and the actual process of moving. I am sure it will be fine and all, but I just have never done it before. It seems like when you need to pack all your stuff you suddenly have more than you realized.

I still have a soft spot in my heart for some country music. Not all of it, but some songs are just so nice. I am not sure where I first heard this song, but I have sure fallen in love with it. It has kind of a melancholic tone to it. It's called Remember When by Alan Jackson. I found the video on You Tube if you want to check it out, here it is. I have always appreciated Alan Jackson. He is one of the few music artists who has managed to stay married to his high school sweetheart throughout his career. This song was written about their life together up to this point and into the future. The video makes me a little teary eyed, but I am a sentimental girl :)

Someone down the hall from us is cooking something that smells SO good. It makes me so hungry! I am sure there is nothing in our place that I could cook that would taste half as good as that smells....

Busy Week

It has been an eventful week!

I had 13 appointments at work this week, which is substantially better than my last few weeks so that we encouraging. I had one client who was a 27 year old woman who was also a mother of FOUR (ages 5, 3, 2 and 6 months). I can't imagine!

Our house is pretty well finished being framed. We now have a roof and doors and windows (I love our bay window and our big dining room window!). Wednesday evening we got a call from the electrician wondering if we could meet with him Thursday evening to do a walk through of the house to determine where we wanted our plug-ins, phone and cable jacks, light switches and some of our light fixtures. We weren't sure if Jay would be able to get into the house as we hadn't heard anything about someone setting up a ramp for him to use to get into the house. When we got there last night, the electrician was just finishing up building a pretty sturdy little ramp. I don't know if it will stay there during construction but maybe they will tuck it away somewhere for other times that Jay needs to get into the house. (I have to say I was pretty thrilled to walk around in our house with Jay!) The walk through took about an hour and a half but we got the whole house worked out and it was pretty neat! I thought it was cool the way that the electrician just went around drawing on the studs and the floor :) So exciting to see the progress! It sounded like he would be doing all the wiring for the house on Tuesday of next week. So I assume by then there will be some shingles on the roof to keep out the rain.

I got a call yesterday at work from my mom to let me know that she FINALLY has a surgery date (she has a problem with a disc in her back and it needs to be removed and the vertebrae fused, and she has been in a lot of pain and on a LOT of strong narcotic pain killers). She had talked to the surgeon's office earlier in the week and it sounded pretty much like it would be for sure September for her surgery, but she got a call yesterday offering her one on July 3rd because of a cancellation. She has been waiting for this surgery since last September and they kept putting it off on her. At first we thought it might be done around Christmas time, then March, then May, now it's for sure on July 3rd. It is quite an invasive and complex surgery that will take about 8 hours and my mom will be in the hospital for probably 10-14 days after the surgery. Then after that it will be at least a few months until she recovers to a fairly normal level of functioning, but she sure needs to get off of all of those pain killers!

Jay is going in for his LASIK surgery tomorrow. I can't believe how quickly the last month has flown by since he booked his appointment. I am excited to see how it goes and excited for Jay to be able to see without his thick glasses. Tonight we are going to put the driver's seat in the van and I am going to try to use the tie downs so I know how to do it for tomorrow when we drive to his appointment. Then he has a post-op appointment on Sunday that I will have to drive him to. I am kind of looking forward to driving him around. It will be the first time I have ever done that! I still want him to get into my car sometime and take him cruising around for an afternoon.

If you were in the market for a new stove and had the option of choosing a conventional oven or a convection oven, which would you choose and why?

I was not familiar with the difference between them until yesterday when we started doing a bit of shopping for our new appliances for our house. There was one stove that was a bit cheaper and is a conventional oven, but Jason didn't like the setup of the knobs as much as another one that cost a bit more, but was a convection oven. The guy at the store didn't really give us an explanation about the differences that was adequate for me so I have been doing a bit of research to see the differences. I think we did however find the perfect fridge for us! It has a water and an ice dispenser. I think that it will be nice to have a ready supply of cold water and ice all the time :)

Oh, and yesterday evening we drove by our house and I decided to go take a closer look. I actually got to go inside and it was really cool. I was sort of sad that I couldn't share it with Jay, but I took our camera and took a few pictures of it. He will probably be posting them up on his house construction website sometime soon.

Finkbeiner Residence

This picture was taken Tuesday evening around 6pm.


This picture was taken around 2pm today. Wow! It's so exciting to see my bay window and where our front door will be and our garage. I can't wait to see this house come together :)

I have had this song stuck in my head for at least 3 or 4 days now. It is so catchy, and it doesn't really annoy me, except when I keep singing it over and over again instead of falling asleep at night.

Pull over already!

Last night on the way home from mom and dad's we were on the freeway. There was a truck pulling a livestock trailer that had a couple of cows in it. I noticed at first that he was moving quite slowly and thinking that we should change lanes, but as we got a little bit closer, we saw that he had blown out a tire. And not that he had a flat tire, he had NO tire. His rim was dragging along on the pavement throwing quite a number of sparks and smoke. To me it didn't even look like he was trying to pull over, just going about 20 or 30km/hr down the freeway. I am sure his cattle were quite unsettled about the bumpy ride and I am sure it was quite noisy.

On a happier note, they have now officially started framing our house. I drove by on Tuesday and there was a plywood floor over the foundation and I took a picture but not much to see. Last night, however, when we drove by there were at least 4 or 5 walls. We could see the outlines of our bedroom, kitchen and living room windows. I was quite thrilled to see it and I imagine we will be driving by MUCH more often in the next 2 weeks because Len (construction manager) said they will likely be done framing by the end of next week. Then we will have to stop by and actually go inside to see the changes happening. It sounds like they are right on time for finishing because they told Jay on Tuesday that we need to have our dishwasher and any gas appliances (not having any) to them by August 20th, which is about 2 1/2 weeks before we move in. Very exciting!

Grrrr

At a time when my appointments at work are already at a minimum, I was supposed to have two appointments today. I had my 2pm appointment, then my next one wasn't until 5:30pm. I managed to fill those 2 1/2 hours with some reading, a brief trip to the mall and a phone call to Jason. Five thirty rolled around and my client didn't show up, she had been late before so I thought I would give her some time before assuming she wasn't going to show up. Around 5:45pm when I had decided that she probably wasn't coming and that I should try calling her to see what the deal was, she called me, from home. She said she had showed up at 5:30pm but that the front door of the building was locked and she couldn't get in, so she went home. I apologized and said that to my knowledge they weren't supposed to lock the front door until 6:30pm but she rebooked for next week (thankfully).

I was feeling a little annoyed wondering why the cleaning ladies had locked the door an hour early, so I tracked one down and asked her why the door was locked. She said that building manager had recently asked them to start locking the door at 5:30pm instead. I am not quite sure why the building manager did not let us in on that little tidbit because our business is the only one in the building that is open past 5pm. Usually we will take appointments up until 6:30pm. I will call my coworker tomorrow morning and let her know about this development. I am sure she will be on the phone to the building manager to get this straightened out. I do realize that locking the door earlier may prevent unfriendly visitors from coming in after hours, but at least tell us about it so we can adjust our schedules so we can let clients into the building after the door is locked.

Yee Haw!

Last weekend I got to try out my father-in-law's new toy. I would have to admit that it wasn't quite as fun as the quad two summers ago, but definitely more practical. I am sure that Jason's dad will get much more use out of this. I felt a little like Forrest Gump...

Disappointing Pizza

We ordered pizza from Pizza Hut for supper tonight. I was really looking forward to what we ordered, and it arrived after only about 30 minutes (even though they told us it would be 45-55 minutes). I opened up the first pizza, and it looked like the chicken pizza we had ordered except there was a LOT of crust. I would say that a good 1/3 to 1/2 of each piece of pizza was crust. It wasn't until we ate some that we realized that it was a stuffed crust pizza, which we did not order. Then we thought they had maybe just mixed up the stuffed crust part of the order. Then when we opened up our second box it was definitely not a Canadian pizza. There was green pepper, onion, beef topping and pepperoni and it also had a stuffed crust. I was really looking forward to having pizza, but after eating that I feel pretty bloated and yucky. *sigh* That may be the last time we order from Pizza Hut. I think we need to find a smaller pizza place with a more home made taste. Or maybe just stick to making home made pizza. I sure enjoy our pizza when we make it at home. Well here's hoping that our shish kabob tomorrow compares to the first stuff we made last summer.

Know what bothers me? In the news this week there was a story out of a Swift Current nursing home where a woman was scalded to death in a bathtub. I just don't quite understand how this could happen. How long does it take to do a temperature check on a bathtub before dumping someone into it? I hope that if a time comes where I need to placed in a nursing home my family won't need to worry about such neglect befalling me.