Meatless Monday

On Monday night I made Britt's delicious Mushroom Lasagna. I am always intrigued about feeding my meat loving husband some veggie meals to see how it goes.  This lasagna was SO good and he also didn't believe me that there was no meat in it. Way to go Meatless Monday! The only thing I would have changed it using baby spinach instead of normal spinach, but that is a personal choice. This has been added to my recipe box and will go into our meal planning rotation.

Dognapper

 

My mother in law is a big fan of Brooklyn (who can blame her, she is just that awesome)  She jokes all the time about stealing her and running away...well...yesterday she came and got her and brought her home to be spoiled for a few days!  This is the picture she sent me yesterday...my puppy in her car heading to her place!  I wonder what will happen when its real grandkids and not just the furry ones!

4 months down

4 months down and we are:

• Marathoning 24


• Eating our words after bragging about Brooklyn being house trained


• Organizing our upstairs! Closet is nearly finished and I am loving all the storage space options we have!!!


• Making Christmas presents for next year--nerd alert--this is totally something I am doing not so much G


• Cuddling for warmth cause our house is FREEZING


• Training Brooklyn to stop peeing in the house *still


• Learning how to be good puppy parents *still


• Planning Garret's annual birthday bonanza


• Laughing  at the weirdo positions we keep finding B sleeping in


• Surprising my brother for his 30th birthday


• Discovering how to use our digital SLR better and loving it

Contest #14-Chatelaine's make every day extraordinary

A shoutout to my Mother in Law who sent me this link.  You can enter every day to win some awesome prizes...I would love a top of the line kitchen, or a week somewhere warm (Especially with how chilly it was this morning!)

Contest #13-- for those on twitter

Follow @piewoodpizza and if you're the 1,000 follower you (and I cause you better say I referred ya) win a $100 gift card for amazing delicious pizza!

This Dog's Life

If I look at my instagram feed it would appear that all I do with my life now is take photos of my puppy.  But I can't help it she is just so crazy cute (to us at least)  Here are some recent ones that I have to share...although I don't know what tops her all snuggled up in bed with G this weekend!

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="487"] Our girl at puppy class....this lady will work it for treats![/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="487"] Warming her goodies on the heat vent. She beelines here as soon as we come in from walks.[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="487"] We let her up on the bed for a snuggle the other night and she crawled right under the covers. She made her disgruntled old man noise when we grabbed her to go in her crate...poor thing. If she wasn't such an insane snorer we would most likely consider letting her stay some nights.[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="487"] Last night we were having some family time watching a movie and she fell asleep like this. We were crying from laughing so hard. The bonus of this position is that she doesn't really snore...although we can't figure out how it could be comfortable.[/caption][caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="487"] Another view of the Zombie dog's sleep preferences.[/caption]

Weekend mornings 'round here

Contest #12-- $10,000 trip to Australia (for Facebook users)

On Facebook "Like" Flight Centre Canada for a chance to win a trip to Australia....I would love to win a nice Aussie getaway with G!

The January Cure: all the other days

I don't want to seem like this is just another resolution gone the wayside, but based on the state of my house, this Cure just isn't quite working for me.  I think things started going downhill when one of the challenges this past weekend was to buy flowers for my house. I LOVE that idea.  But then we went to Lowes because we needed Carbon Monoxide detectors and $100 + later, I thought, sorry flowers..I treated my house to the gift of safety instead of beauty.  Practicality wins out again. boo.  This approach is really going to work for some people but since our home needs a crazy blitz I need to work at a faster pace.  I am going to keep reading the emails cause there are some good ideas in there, but the next few weekends are dedicated to us getting our house crazy in order and some of the lingering reno work done. I dont have time to plan for a party to show off all our hard work, we just need to get to the hard work!

The One With the Books

I have a sickness.  It manifests itself through the purchase of many many books from places like Chapters.  Garret hates this particular sickness as my vast accumulation of books are heavy and since he is the heavy lifter in the house...he is the one who has to move them.  (at least this is what he complains about, but we have really only moved twice so I fail to see why this is such a big deal)  I have always loved reading and buying books. In fact, my bestie and I go on dates to Chapters, where we grab a Starbucks and read book covers to our hearts content. Yup...watch yo'self....super crazy party animal over here!  In our quest to be frugal debt repayers in 2013 one of the decisions I begrudgingly made is that I will not buy any books. (That does not mean I will not accept gifts of books...please note this those who buy me presents!)  This probably sounds silly to most people, but this is so hard for me to do!  We were killing time before G's cousin's surprise party on Saturday so we hit the mall (GREAT place to go by the way when you are trying not to spend any money)  G browsed some magazines at Coles while I wandered around manhandling books I want.  The sheer willpower it took for me to leave empty handed was immense and therefore I am blog patting myself on the back.  I am going to join the local library soon and so I took some pictures of some of the books that will be on my "to read" list.  They all sounded really interesting and I can't wait to get cracking with the reading!  If you have read any of these or have opinions on something else to add to my list let me know!

I wake up in the morning feeling like P Diddy

I have never been one of those "spring out of bed ready to face the day" type of people.  I enjoy the snooze button and tend to dozily come up with reasons to not get up yet.  In fact most mornings I would lay there and sleep in until the last possible second--giving me just enough time to brush my teeth, get dressed, slap on some makeup and be out the door.  More accurately I would think I was giving myself enough time, but I would frequently be cursing as I was running out the door late to meet my carpool. (Apparently 7 minutes isn't enough time to get ready to leave the house in the morning...who knew?)  This, coupled with my darling husbands inability to know where ANYTHING of his migrated to from the night before, (car keys, wallet, sunglasses, etc) frequently lead to stressy mornings with terse exchanges between us. --not the ideal was to start out our mornings!  When we got Brooklyn I knew that we would have to start getting up earlier.  I was pretty good about it in the fall, but after all the time we spent together over the holidays I realized that in order to be fair to B I would have to get up even earlier.  For the past two weeks I have been getting up at 5:45am (old Julia scoffs from under the warmth of her cozy duvet) I can honestly say I am still not springing out of bed joyfully, but I am loving opening up B's crate and seeing her smooshy face all excited to see me, and us having time to play together before the reality of the working day sets in.  We go out for a pee, and I have a tea while I feed her and get myself organized for the day--it is nice not to rush.  Having an hour to play together and snuggle before I have to leave is making me feel less guilty about leaving her in her crate all day.  I really love watching her learn new things.  She recently realized that when the heat kick on she can get a nice warm tummy standing over one of the vents.  She will cease all snuggles and games of fetch as soon as she hears the furnace go!

Contest # 10- $100 to HomeSav

Gemma from The Sweetest Digs has  been given $100 giveaway from HomeSav   to hand out!  Several ways to enter check it out here 

Contest #9-PC Insurance 10,000 towards a home renovation

"Like" PC Insurance on Facebook for a chance to win 10,000 towards a home renovation (ends Feb 28th 2013)

Contest #8- coping with Frugality's Shabby Apple giveaway

Coping with Frugality links to several blogs with other contests. You can enter by commenting on some of the other blog posts. Have a looksee while over there, she has an interesting blog with some great money saving ideas. Good luck to you!

The January Cure Day 2: Set up your Outbox

This one was easy for me.  We always have what we call "The outreach pile" which is a pile of stuff that we are planning on taking out of the house and donating to Salvation Army/Goodwill etc.  The pile has been sitting on our dining room table for a good two weeks (pretty please give me a SLIGHT break since we were not home for most of the holidays) Garret got some new clothes before Christmas and the deal was that he had to go through his current clothes and get rid of some T-shirts (the man is a wee bit of a clothes hoarder)  Last night we had friends in for dinner and they went through the pile and took a few pairs of shorts so yay stuff left the house.  I found a box in the basement and we will be using that and storing it in our backroom (where we store everything at the moment...but that brings me back to Day 1 so it gets organized sometime this month)  So far we have the clothes we went through, and some books.  I'm pretty sure that those things will not come out of the outbox. woot woot on an organizational tear people!

Happy New Year (a few days in)

[caption id="attachment_1258" align="aligncenter" width="388"] Smoochin' like we do[/caption]

Last year I complained about missing out on our New Years kiss. (all the guys were distracted by the hockey game and we missed midnight. Extremely anti climactic) So this year Garret made sure we had a bit of an epic midnight kiss and even took a photo. Come to think of it maybe that is a bit weird? Anyway, New Years was fun--we went to a house party ate really yummy snacks and supper played board games and caught up. The older I get I find I tend to enjoy more low key celebrations...requires less recuperation the next day!

On our way home we discussed our plans for 2013.  I know its so cheesy but I always feel so hopefully optimistic this time of year. Not that one needs a new year to make changes, but it really does seem encouraging to start a fresh outlook each January.  I think that most of our resolutions seem to be similar to the ones we have made in previous years.  I am somehow feeling like we are both in a better place this year and maybe they will work out better?  Someone remind me to do a check in post in March and see where we are at with all of it.

Our Family Resolutions

* Say no more.  This one seems selfish, but we realize that we both love to socialize and hang out with our friends and family, but we need to make more time for us and our home.  We have roughly 500 X infinity things we need/want to do around the house and we need to give ourselves more time to do it.--maybe just make plans for one day on the weekend instead of the whole weekend.

* Find more activities we like to do together. Snow shoeing is one but that will be over in a few months and we want to keep active together! (and I have no interest in his MMA workouts. People kicking at me would inspire tears (mine) and embarrassment (his)

*Decide need vs want when it comes to redoing the house (what areas to focus on)

*And the usual--stick to a budget, pay down some debt, focus on packing lunches and not going out for dinner

Personal Resolutions

*Get organized the night before and get up earlier so that the mornings aren't so much of a rush (done this the past two mornings and it has been awesome. I have time to chase Brooklyn around and get ready and still have time to spare)  It definitely blows when the alarm goes off, but if I jump right out of bed and into some coffee I am good to go

*Take more photos (not just with my phone) and learn how to use my camera better --I have already signed up for a course on Jan 19th (yeah motivated wooooot wooooot)

* Write lists to keep organized (and to help G keep organized)

*Keep up with my scrapbooking  I am obsessed with project life  and have been doing it weekly since the wedding

*Make my shower quilt and attempt to get two quilts done for my girlfriend who is expecting twins in the late spring. She finds out gender next month so that will give me 5 months to make 2 quilts.  (definitely calling on my Mum to help me get that going!)

* Write more letters. I adore getting snail mail and used to send lots of it...so I want to do that more

*Dress nicer at work. People will stop mistaking me for a student and take me seriously. (maybe?)  I love that I look like I am in my early 20s most days, but it can be a pain at work. This ties in to getting organized the night before--if I plan my outfit I am less likely to wear jeans and a random top

*Keep on keeping on and then blogging about it!

January Cure Day 1: Make a list of projects

*I should make a side note that since we are still experiencing some construction related insanity upstairs I think that focusing on the main floor for now would make the biggest impact. Although once the closets are finished boy howdy am I going to nerd out with some serious organization. #nerdalert

Entryway: fix light--new fixture? Fix hole in ceiling,
Dining Room: touch up paint behind the hung mirror, remove the full length mirror, paint the trim on doorway heading into living room, organize and purge items in the buffet.
Living Room: Go through DVDs donate the unwanted ones, finish painting the spaces that were patched, clear off all random paper from the tray on the ottoman
Kitchen: fix hole in ceiling, organize drawers and cupboards, finally choose a backsplash, hang a small shelf over the stove, throw out expired condiments in the fridge, make a list of the food we have in the freezer
Backroom: Make a pile for the outreach and garbage, put hooks up to hang skis, snowshoes etc, make a list of the food we have in the deep freeze
Basement: Hang a corkboard over my craft table, get G to go through his tools, organize my scrapbooking stuff, organize the file cabinet so it can actually be used

"Santa" (cough, Mum, cough) put a really cool note pad in our stocking this year. It has a shopping list on one side and a daily breakdown on the other. It is meant to be used as a weekly meal planning tool, but I think I am going to also use it as an organizational guide. G and I tend to get rather squirrelly when our place is a mess and I want to strive for more zen in 2013.

Apartment Therapy's January Cure

Apartment Therapy is offering a free monthly home organization follow along.  My Mum found this and knowing how badly we need to get our home organized sent it along.  You get an email sent to you each day from now until February 1st helping you get your home where you want it to be.  I have decided to follow along and attempt to tackle the insanity that is Casa Walsh!  This will be the third year in a row that organization features heavily on our New Year Resolutions so I'll take any help and offered motivation I can find  If you are interested check it out here

Contest #7-Plunged in Debt (for those on twitter)

Plunged in Debt is offering another $100 cash or Amazon gift card if you follow them on Twitter  see here and follow.