Moved!

Praise the heavens! We are no longer living in our yucky curry-scented apartment building!
For the past five months we have been checking Kijiji every single day hoping to stumble across the perfect place to move.
a. It had to be within our price range
b. It had to be close to the college
c. It had to be bigger than our current place so we wouldn't have to move if kiddos come around in the next few years.
d. We really had our hearts set on staying in the same ward for church.

....This is why it took us SO long to get out of that miserable building!!

Our new duplex is about...50 feet from our old building, just right around the corner! So right there we met part b. and c. of our requirements! The ad said it was 2 bedrooms, but when we took a walk through...there was 3...plus a whole big area in the basement that wasn't even finished yet! I was a little nervous how much it would be, but actually it was in our price range! Our new landlord seems like the nicest guy and he was willing to drop the price for us if we (Travis) did some handy work while living here. All of our requirements were met and we moved! The move went great! We had tons of help and since we don't have kids, we don't have tons of stuff!

I can't even begin to tell you how excited I am not to be woken up to the smell of curry at 5am, not to be followed in the hallway by scary asian grandmothers and not have to hear foreign languages being screamed across the halls. I am also pretty happy about all of the space, carport, 2 bathrooms...the list goes on! We really got lucky!

I hesitate to tell this next story because my parents made fun of me for about a week after I told them...but I feel like we can all have a good laugh about it now!!
About 4 days before we moved, I went down my hallway in the apartment building because I needed to check the mail. When I got to the mailboxes there was 4-5 asian people standing around a box in front of the mailboxes...so I kindly made my way through the people and got my mail...when all of the sudden I hear a "cluck-cluck". I'm sure my face was priceless at this moment. So I look down at the box by feet and there are feathers poking out of the box. Yup. Live chickens. GROSS! I was pretty glad at that moment that I only had a few more days left in that miserable place. The worst thing is my landlord would have been to old and senile to even comprehend the whole situation.

Anyways...enough ranting! We are are just super thrilled to be in our new "home"! Here are some pictures! (keep in mind...they aren't the best!!)

Bedroom: Still looking for cute throw pillows (or to make them) and still needing to
hang a couple things on the wall.

Other side of the bedroom: Travis actually ran into that wall yesterday in the middle of the night and broke my J...

Bathroom: Loving the blue toilet and tub...who even!?

Office: Need curtains or blinds (I took these sunday right after church...hence the tie!)

Living room: Kinda squishy! and our fish are in the corner out of the picture...

Christmas Tree!!! Pink pink pink!! (And a christmas J)

Living room wall: My attempt to be artistic and hang an arrangement of frames.

Looking down at the front door. (Ps having a carport is great!!)

Christmas shelf

Craft room: Disaster. Need to organize.

Storage room in basement

More storage and view of unfinished room in the basement

Kitchen table (with freshly baked banana bread...YUM)

Kitchen: SO nice having a full sized fridge.

Kitchen: Disaster. At least Travis was kind enough to do the dishes!! Bonus!

So that is our new little place! A big step up from our dingy apartment!! We are so blessed!

Speaking of blessed...I got a temporary part time position in the Operating room at the hospital!! Yay! (Except waking up before 6am is a real killer!!) Hopefully I don't mess things up too bad in there!

Thanks for creeping on my living space, I'll try to keep you all updated more!

Latest Creations

I like to make things...a lot. Here are some of my latest creations:

*We had some friends move away, so I made this sign:

Just ignore the horrible picture, it was in the
process of drying!

*I made this cork board for my sister-in-law who just moved out of home:

*I made this garbage can for the car: 

I literally have zero sewing skills, so I am quite impressed with this. You can find the
tutorial HERE. 

*I made this delicious meal: 

This was super yummy! Just make sure your chicken is mostly cooked/cooked before you begin. You can find the recipe
HERE.

My husband and I also did a little rearranging of our apartment! 

BEFORE: 

AFTER:

Just cleaned up a little bit! 

Oh look! We have acquired another
couch that matches our current
 couch & chair!(But you probably
don't want to know where
we "got" it.)

That's about it! Thanks for reading!

Latest Pinterest Creations.

Here are the latest things I have done all thanks to Pinterest! 

1.

These were super yummy! You can find the recipe HERE. 

**I added extra banana! Yum! 

2.

Delicious homemade garlicky/cayenne fries. You can find the 

recipe HERE.

**I used sweet potatoes instead. 

3.

Yummy Honey Chicken Kabobs! You can find the recipe HERE.

**I used shrimp, meatballs, chicken, pineapple, tomatoes & peppers.

I also added chili flakes to the marinade. Oh yeah...and I don't have a BBQ,

 so I broiled in in my oven. So good!!

4.

Remove heat stains!! After a sad cupcake fiasco, my kitchen

table was left with awful stains. Then I found this sweet VIDEO

on Pinterest. Seriously magical. 

"Staycation" & big purchases!

This past week, Travis and I got to house sit for my parents while they were in Vegas! It was SO great to have a week to relax and do nothing! (Plus the week off work was especially nice!!) We were so grateful to spend so much time with our friends in Lethbridge...and we wish we could hang out all the time!!

Travis spent most of the week laying low, playing xbox and looking at cars. (More on that in a minute)
I spent the week watching movies (including a girls night watching "Cabin in the Woods"! And going to Titanic in 3D for my third time!!), being dragged around to look at cars, getting my hair done and dragging my husband out to take some 1-year anniversary pictures! (Can you believe we have almost been married a year?!)
We also spent lots of time with friends and lots of time babysitting my cousins, and our nieces and nephews!

Travis and I decided the time had come when we should start looking at buying a car. I came into the marriage with a 2005 Honda Civic which ran fantastically, however only was a 2 door car. We know eventually we are going to have kids, and that squishy ride would just not cut it! (Funny story-When we were showing our new car to Travis's Dad...he automatically checked the backseat and said "Just checking to see if there was a car seat back there") Travis had a really old VW Golf (that I was afraid to drive, in fear of it falling apart) that he recently sold to a friend for practically nothing! We figured now was the time to get a car, because we aren't weighed down with house payments, our rent is cheap and I'm working lots...why not now? (plus we had some friends get pregnant and it wasnt exactly planned...so I think that freaked us out a little and made us realize we need to be prepared for whatever may come our way!!)
Thanks to a really good deal and a delightful tax return, this is our new car!

It is a 2010 Ford Focus, with hardly any KM's, leather seats, sun roof...fully loaded! (including a lot of unnecessary features that are pretty sweet!) We are in love! It is very fancy and we hope to have it 100% payed off by the end of the summer! I am SO glad we don't have to look at cars again for a looong time!! 

Take a look at our latest addition to our apartment....

Words cannot describe my excitement for this little deep freeze! For so long we have had to squish a very tiny amount of food in a very tiny freezer on our very tiny fridge! Now we can actually buy Costco-sized quantities of food and not have to worry about where to put it! I am also excited because this means less trips to the grocery store because we have a stocked freezer! Travis is happy because we now have the space for a whole lot of ice cream!!

I think that is all for now...stay tuned for some pictures from our 1-year photoshoot! 

P.S. In the spirit of everyone asking us when we are going to have kids, here is a little something I came across whilst reading a magazine:

I think that sums it up!

Oh hey...We moved!

This is my "We are so cramped in this tiny apartment, lets get out" face. 

If you have been following my blog, you'll know that when we came to medicine hat to find an apartment, we only had one day to accomplish this. All that we were concerned about how close it was to the College and how cheap it was. (At the time I did not know how long it would be until I was working.) The apartment we were living in was alright, it was little and cheap...all we needed. The problem with the place, was that since it was only a one-bedroom apartment, if Travis needed to study I either confined myself to the bedroom or bathroom so I wouldn't distract him. Plus I have pretty much been working more than the full timers at work, so that has been great! Cannot complain about the money! I also just got hired on as a casual worker in the OR...I'm pretty excited because I worked in the OR in Lethbridge and was really sad to leave!! Hopefully I continue to work lots so I can continue to put my man through school!

Anyways...since we live in the ghetto (not really) half of our building is empty! (Probably because there are no kids allowed...) So we checked out a few places and chose a 2 bedroom place down the hall! Its only $100 more a month and literally twice the size. I have no idea how we lived in that cramped space before!! Here are some pictures!  

Check out those peach blinds. Thanks previous tenants!  

These are our fancy new Martha Stewart shelving units.

Look at all this empty space! What are we supposed to do!  I can finally get my bigger Ralph Lauren table out to Medicine Hat!!

These are our "New" couches. Travis loooves the recliner! 

Kitchen is still small...but a little bigger than the other place!

We have an office! SO much more space!! 

Tiny bedroom! 

Nice big closet and our storage room is THREE times bigger than the other place!! 

Happy camper!

Skor trifle to end off the move! :) 

Sooo our apartment isn't the fanciest...but it is still cheap and close to the College! We are so very happy with all this extra space!! 

New(ish) Chairs!

Before we got married, we looked and looked and looked for cheap furniture that would make due in our basement suite years. I found an awesome table on kijiji for $30, however finding chairs that were cheap, not pieces of crap and not ugly was near impossible. Travis' parents have tons of old furniture lying around and we were welcome to look and take something if we wanted. Time was running out, and we needed kitchen chairs, so we got these old torn up chairs. With a little duct tape fix, they worked.

If you were at our wedding you might have noticed the black and white damask pattern everywhere. I am IN LOVE with this pattern. Not sure why, but we have many things in our place this pattern! Picture frames, bedding, pillows...etc! Anyways, for our wedding we found a bunch of vinyl of THE pattern and we used it in various locations around our reception. After the wedding was done, there were piles and piles of this unused vinyl...so my darling husband was kind enough to pull out his tools (not too hard for this guy!) and recovered the chairs! I think it is a huge improvement! And I love this pattern!