Life with my iPhone (or a photo essay of what's up)

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="482" caption="Mining in the basement"][/caption]

Today my friend Annie commented that I hadn't posted in a while. I realized it is because it was getting to the point of too many things to post about...so I went through my iPhone and have posted a few photos of what has been going on and I can catch you up!

Garret and Kevin (his Dad) spent some serious quality time in our basement a few weeks ago, insulating the crawl space under the kitchen. It is like an  oubliette down there complete with spiders and dirt and general grossness. The two of them dug  it out and insulated underneath to help make it a more efficient space.  Above is a pic of Garret showing off all his hard work to my Mum.  I threw the miners light on her that my brother Elliott got me for Christmas--useful in many applications that light!

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="482" caption="testing new fixtures"][/caption]

We spent several hours  looking for new lighting. I hated our old fixtures  so we installed these snazzy new ones. yay.  They look great and really add a nice somewhat industrial feel to the living room. So everything was going great! We painted, put up new lighting...then this happened:

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="482" caption="G and Kevin changed over some plumbing...which I originally thought would be one small hole. This is them taping up the sheet so dust didnt go everywhere (totally didnt work by the way)"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="482" caption="Ok, this is kinda scary, but totally fixable right? (also, how nice is our new paint?! way snazzier than gross beige right?)"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="482" caption="Clearly it get's worse before it gets better. sigh"][/caption]

It's not the end of the world, but DEFINITELY not what I was expecting!  Hoping that we can work on getting that fixed soon. yikes. [ Side note: that show on the TV is "Happy Endings" I think its on ABC? We have become obsessed with it and marathoned through the first season recently. To sum it up in one word? Amah-zing.]

Garret and I have also been really lax with getting wedding stuff off the ground.  My Mum called and nicely yelled at me telling us to get on it since my shower is coming up. So I dragged Garret to The Bay thinking we would have a fun date night.....Wrong

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="Wishing the zapper thing was a gun as this kind of shopping is apparently not the relationship builder I thought it would be."][/caption]

It seems we strongly disagree on our vision for the house. I want pretty things and he wants boring things. And I can say that since he never blogs on here so can't defend himself (HA!) I remind him I am the designer but he never goes along with it. crap.  I was complaining to a friend and she pointed out her philosophy is "she who washes the sheets can pick the sheets" and since a month ago Garret had to ask me where the detergent goes....I think that that means I WIN!  If that also stands true for she who cooks gets to pick everything for the kitchen, then my life is complete.

Moving on....Easter weekend we were the Travelling Wilburys. Barrie to North Bay to Meaford.  The Shwalsh's have adopted the Walsh tradition of always stopping at Webers when we are on HWY 11 north. And south too actually. In fact anytime we pass by we must stop in....10:00am is no match for our love of burgers. Gross? Maybe, but don't you judge us! We had our first stop of the season on Saturday, and also hit it up on the way back down on Sunday. (This is not a friend of the operation Wedding Dress diet. shhhhh)

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="It's that time of year again!"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="481" caption="While in North Bay we stopped in with Charlene to see Garret's Grandma. We wore bunny ears into her nursing home which was a big hit. I also won a free coffee on that Timmies cup I am tightly gripping there."][/caption]

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="480" caption="Crazy cool Jello dessert"][/caption]

We left North Bay mid day Sunday and headed to Meaford for my side's family dinner.  It was a long drive, but 100% worth it to get to spend some time together!  We have done our holiday dinners with close friends (who are at this point really just extended family) for the past 7 years or so. It's so nice to have a crowd of people you adore sitting around one table.  I didn't take any other photos with my iPhone of Easter dinner so for now this dessert pic represents an insane amount of delicious food, great laughs and the greatest people I know!

Birthday Letter/let us all eat cake

Dearest Garret, Gadge, G$*insert various other nicknames, future husband,

[caption id="attachment_464" align="aligncenter" width="225" caption="Making my heart skip beats since 2007"][/caption]

Happy Happy birthday babe. I hope that 28 is your best year yet. We have some pretty awesome things on the horizon, so I think this should be a year to remember! Thank you for always getting up to check what makes bumps in the night, for making me breakfast smoothies and for taking care of what I have deemed "boy" jobs. Thank you for always laughing with me and never saying no when I ask you to dance. You make me so happy and you make me so crazy but I wouldn't have it any other way. I am so glad that we have got to spend your past 4 birthdays together....here's to a million more.

Thank you for being born.

Love you foreva eva,

Julia, Julz, Babers, *other various cheesy nicknames, almost Walsh, Future Wife

I'm gona steal this one

Ashley stopped by briefly last night with her little monkey. See below for a pic of my two fave guys:

Peace out

Your days are numbered Sneakers. I suggest you rethink your living arrangements

Every little bit counts

Our friends Nat and Mike got us a really cool house warming present back in October...Aaand it took us a good month and a bit to hang it up. But it looks awesome (and I super love it as all of my school friends have them in their homes) It also saves us from going crazy with the daily "where are my keys" quest





And I also love it because it shows off my new keychain that my friend Kelly gave me in our carpool secret Santa. It says "Julia *heart* Garret". Yeah you betcha!

Do-Si-Do

We have no garage and a narrow driveway. This wasn't a big issue when we just had the truck. Now we have the 2 vehicles so we have to do some planning. Prior to November 1st we could park on the street over night so often one of us would take advantage of that. Now by city ordinances we can get a ticket (boo) so we figure out the night before who is leaving first. Usually it's G, but the other morning we were both running behind and it turned into a spazzy mini fight trying to get us both out of the driveway. What a silly thing to fight about first thing in the morning, but sometimes we both struggle with civility before we've had coffee!

Where's Waldo

Can you spot the little critter who was eating walnuts and dropping them on my head while I was raking below?

Slow cooker chicken tortilla soup

Nothing exciting happened around the house last night as we were at the gym. So in keeping with the whole posting every day thing I'm going to share a slow cooker recipe I made Sunday that we had for dinner last night!
Chicken Tortilla Soup
(Crock pot edition)

*chicken breasts cut into bite size pieces (I was lazy and just ripped the meat off a BBQ chicken from Zehrs)
*jar of salsa (as spicy as you like)
*tin of black beans
*carton of chicken stock (but since I'm working on my Suzy Homemaker merit badge I used homemade stock)
*a few handfuls of frozen corn
*tin of green chilies (optional)
*tin of diced tomatoes

--Throw all this into slowcooker...top with chips, shredded cheese and cilantro (could also top with guacamole, sour cream etc)

I cooked it on high for the day...and served it with some crushed up nacho chips, chopped cilantro and shredded light cheese on top. Super yummy! I love this recipe because you could throw pretty much anything in with it and it would be delicious.

Weekend Review

I'm extremely proud of our progress this weekend! We incorporated the correct ratio of work to fun for Sat and Sunday so it worked out!
We:

*Fought a losing battle against the leaves in the back and side yard. We were out there for a few hours, filled up 4 bags and then G mulched a pile. But then this morning I noticed a bunch more had fallen! Urgh...

*switched the light in the kitchen and dining room to dimmers...glorious mood lighting for cooking. I love it

*we took turns yesterday sanding the storm doors and I'm excited to say they are finally (almost) done. We just need to stain 'em and hang 'em back up and we are in business. Next time I'm going to convince G we should just buy doors cause this was a project I HATED. Once they are hung up I'll post a pic.

*we went to the Brick and bought a new mattress...it is like sleeping in heaven (or somewhere else heavenly) we've had an ikea mattress for the past 4 years and while G can easily sleep on a rock, or sitting up etc, my sleeping tastes are a bit more discerning so I'm extremely excited

We also caught up on laundry and made some meals for the week. I love the sense of accomplishment I get when it's Sunday night and i feel like we are ready to face the week ahead! What did everyone get up to this weekend?

NaBloPoMo...also it feels like winter in my house

November is a big month...has a lot going on I should say. It is write a novel in a month month, grow a mustache in support of men's cancers, and it's also national blog posting month. I think you get bragging rights and some form of nerdy street cred for blogging every day. I'm thinking that I could use this in a motivating way to get stuff done!!! If I have to write every day I will probably feel compelled to get something done each day (as I don't want to bore you good folks with nonsense) So, 30 posts should probably reflect 30 home related accomplishments...is that even possible? Oooh competitive up for a challenge Julia....ready...set...go!

***

As luck would have it, when the furnace guy was checking things out on Wednesday, he noticed that our sensor was on the fritz.  So, he removed it and  is replacing it today (hopefully this helps with some of the heating issues we have been having.  The unfortunate issue is that he had to remove it to fix it. So we haven't had heat since Wed afternoon.  This morning was brutal. Our noses were frozen and they were the only things peeking out from our sea of blankets.  Thankfully furnace guy is coming back today to put the sensor back in...because I really don't think I could have handled having it any colder. (and I dont think G could have handled listening to me say "...but I'm freeeeeeeezzzzziiiiiing" much longer)  I have been reading some frugal living blogs lately and they talk about not turning the furnace on until Nov 1st.  I am thinking maybe we should try that next year and save some moolah, however, I think I will need to insist on some sort of fuzzy rug on my side of the bed and a heat lamp in the upstairs bathroom!

Party people

If there is one thing G and I have learned about ourselves it is that we don't want our friends to know how messy/unorganized we can sometimes be! So whenever we have company coming we somehow pull it together and get our space in order. When we lived in the apartment this was easy---we would throw random stuff into our bedroom, shut the door, and there you go...clean as a whistle! Having the house now it isn't so easy...way more surfaces to clean! We had a Halloween party on Saturday night and cleaned our place like crazy people all day Sat. G built all the ikea furniture my mum and I had brought home earlier in the week.(direct quote "while I appreciate you surprising me with ikea stuff it would be an even better surprise if you built it yourself") I don't have the brute force strength or the patience for it...although I blamed him by saying that his tools were in the truck so I couldn't do it anyway (ha!) He assembled and I tidied and we finally got around to tackling the piles of paper that had been building for ages and dishes and laundry were sorted and cleaned. For an added bonus G's mom Char had
come for a visit on Thursday and hung up our decorations! We were party ready way before guests even showed up...we've since discussed that we should have a party every weekend...think of all we'd get done. I hope everyone had a fun as safe Halloween.

Festivities

We carved pumpkins last night!!!! Well, more like Ashley and I carved pumpkins last night while G and my brother Elliott watched The Unit on the couch...their contribution was more so just putting a dent in our Halloween candy stash...but let's just pretend it was festive togetherness!

Evidence: