Preparing for Christmas

Time: 9:10pm
Mood: Exhausted from a long work week
Song of the moment: Boys Like Girls - Love Drunk

Who would have thought I would have to prepare for Christmas one month prior to the day? I'm finding as you get older, there are more Christmas things you need to do. The only thing I used to worry about was "what gift should I get so-and-so?". Now its thinking of gift ideas, putting up the Christmas tree, making the house look festive, planning Christmas parties, attending Christmas parties, baking cookies... and I'm adding a new one this year - planning Christmas Day dinner. That's just an extra added stress to my already stressful month! This year Jimmy's family is coming over for Christmas dinner. I have a few problems that I have to overcome:

• My dining room table isn't very spacious. That's because my dining room is not very big. So fitting everyone in there plus fitting all the food on my not-so-big table is going to take some creativity.
• What to cook. I have never prepared a Christmas dinner before, and if I was to, I would only know how to make (pardon my lack of racial sensitivity) "white people" Christmas food. You know - like turkey, stuffing, mash potatoes... stuff my mom makes. My inlaws are not big on that kind of food. I'm thinking I might just end up picking up something from a Chinese restaurant and leaving it at that.

Something new that I'm doing this year - instead of making gingerbread cookies I've decided to make small little chocolate dipped shortbread cookies. I made a "dry-run" batch because I haven't made shortbread cookies in a really long time, and I wanted to make sure the receipe I was using actually tastes good. Well thank God I did a dry run - I ended up overbaking the first batch I put into the oven. Smaller cookies = less bake time. Lesson learned!!

Home Renos and a Delicious NZ Lamb Burger!

Time: 7:53pm
Mood: Glad it's Friday!
Song of the moment: Taylor Swift - You Belong With Me

So the home renos over the long weekend went well, but boy was painting a pain in the arse! I finally understand why no one offered to help us with painting that weekend. I did get a pity-offer from my sister, and I think it was because I was complaining about how no one offered to help. LoL :D But after all the hard work it turned out really good! I'm in love with chair rails now after doing our living room! Photos to come (I did take photos but it was when the room was still a mess. Now that we have moved the furniture back to it's original position I will take another photo). We also got the California blinds we had ordered mid-August and they are looking good too! Our next project - kitchen backsplash! I brought back some tile samples today - really loving the tumbled marble look! LoL we're really trying to take advantage of the home reno tax credit the Canadian gov't is offering. Why not right?

So earlier this month I was invited out for dinner with two of my coworkers. Apparently they go out every year to celebrate each other's birthdays, and they always pick a restaurant listed in the top 10 new Toronto restaurants. After being invited for some strange reason I felt like I had entered into this exclusive club - I was IN!! It felt really nice to be included though. On Tuesday we went to this French restaurant called Loire on Harbord St. While I was there I had what I consider the best New Zealand lamb burger I've ever had in my entire life. I am still thinking about how delicious it was! It just melted in my mouth. I suppose anything that contains brie cheese is a good thing! Must definitely go back to have that delicious burger!

Boy am I glad it's Friday! This has been... for a lack of a better word.. a strange one. It felt off and apparently I'm not the only one that felt this way. I felt like I was doing a puzzle and I kept trying to fit the wrong pieces together. Nothing sat right this week! And frustrations hit a high for me. I need to relax! On a good note, I had put together a report that, according to the CEO of the company I work for, was a f**king good report :D Glad I was able to do something right this week!!

Blogging iPod

So I've installed this blogging app on my iPod touch and I figured since I'm having trouble sleeping I might as well try it out!

The long weekend is coming up and I must say I am getting pretty excited! I am finally taking the big leap and going to finally start painting the house! Only 2 rooms though (technically it's 3 but the kitchen and family room are essentially one room). I chose the colours this weekend after spending $40 on paint sample pots. Really glad I did it though as it really gave me a good idea what colours looked good. Let's just say if I didn't buy painter pots I would have been stuck with a wall that was more blue than gray, and a wall too pale in contrast with my creme couches!

I've never painted before - maybe that's why I am excited about it! Everyone is telling me I'm going to get sick of it really fast. Let's hope not! I've got lots of painting to do!

Photos - Nepal, Tibet & India (May 2009)

Neighbourly Gifts

Time: 7:17pm
Mood: Laughing-kinda-mood
Song of the moment: Lady Gaga - Paparazzi

Hello blogging world! It's been a while! I still have to blog about Jimmy and I's trip to Nepal, Tibet & India and the fact that I've lived up to my New Year's resolution this year and applied for my P.Eng designation :D But that can wait - esp. since I'm still compiling my photos from my trip!

So ever since Jimmy and I have moved into our house, we've noticed we have some rather strange neighbours with behaviour I can't quite understand. Before we had our fence, we noticed our neighbour would leave food outside in their yard. We once found a half eaten sub tossed out into their yard... another time we found they had set out an aluminum tray with food bits. I found this behaviour a little odd considering you usually try to avoid attracting animals onto your property. Unfortunately we were the ones that suffered for this weird behaviour - the food attracted a rabbits and they left a half a grocery bag full of rabbit shit all over our lawn. Poor Jimmy had to pick it all up. It screwed up our grass as well - where the rabbit craps were, we had patches of grass missing. We're still trying to fix the patches!

So after our fence came up we thought the situation would improve. In fact, it has gotten stranger...

A few months ago Jimmy was mowing the lawn when he found something that was just made us scratch our heads. He found a half raw chicken wing. wtf?! And it was near the side of the fence we share with our strange neighbour. Since then, we've found random plastic bags, and just today we found a empty dirty styrofoam container.

So I've decided starting today, I am going to keep track of what ridiculous things I find in my yard courtesy of my neighbour.