It's off to work I go!

Today was my first day back at work.

I will be working a shift or two per week at a local children's boutique called Jack Rabbits. We sell the most amazing clothes, but also so many other awesome gadgets and gear (e.g. diaper bags, infant carriers, character hats + matching mittens, the sweetest little shoes that squeak when walked in, and so much more). I will be HARD pressed not to spend every cent I make in that store!

It was a great day, working and being trained by two wonderful souls - and getting to meet and help everyone who came into the store. Although my dogs are barking (translation: my feet hurt), it felt good to be face-to-face with customers, helping them in a hands-on manner. It's something I haven't done in many, many years and I forgot how good it makes my heart feel to do it.

On the home front, tomorrow I hope we can tackle some more Ikea assembly (ugh) - specifically two of these fellas who will be housing the giant pile of shoes, ranging from giant to super-mini, that is currently situated at the front door!

Sixteen pairs of shoes will be housed in two of these Hemnes shoe cabinets at our front door. HEAVENLY!

Farewell to the T Dot

We said our good-byes to our Toronto house this past weekend when we went to give the place a final clean-up, and I feel a bit conflicted about the whole thing. We brought Emmy home from the Hospital to that house, and it was our dream to own a house in that neighbourhood - so I definitely have bittersweet emotions swirling around in my heart after seeing it empty and knowing someone else will live there shortly.

However...I am SOOOO happy in our new home and our new city. I love the space we have here, I adore the proximity to Grama and Grampa and how easy it was to meet my Dad for lunch today. I love that the other night I woke up and thought there was a light on in the back yard, but it just turned out to be the moon and the big dipper (or little dipper...I didn't put my glasses on to make sure). I love how friendly and helpful and kind people are here.

I love how happy my little Lemon is. I love how happy and comfortable the hubs seems to be.

We are starting a new chapter. It doesn't mean that we have to forget about the chapter we just finished - it's all part of the Story of Us and I can't wait to see what happens next.

So long Toronto! We had fun while it lasted!

Be there or be SQUARE!

The Expidit shelving from Ikea that we assembled today is basically a big fat square with a bunch of smaller squares inside of it that create a giant wall of squares (hence the title of this post)!

We combined two of the 5x5 units with a smaller one row unit for a grand total of 55 squares to create an entire wall of organizational heaven!! It actually won't be hard to fill all of those squares since Emmy's toys are plentiful and Mummy has an absolute ton of books and accessories!

I quickly dumped a few tubs of books and Emmy's toys on the first shelf, but need to spread out and take my time styling these shelves nicely!

That brown sofa is about to get an ambush makeover and go RED!! Stay tuned for that!

We also managed to assemble the two Lack sofa tables that came in our giant Ikea delivery earlier this week and butted them up together to hopefully give the look of one long console table for a fraction of the price. I threw a few items on top to get a very rough idea of the type of item I'll want to accessorize with, just for some fun. 

Quick styled to get an idea of how it might look with some pretty books/items on display!

Two Lack sofa tables fit perfectly behind our new sectional sofa!

Things are finally starting to come together and the house is really starting to feel like "home".

Dinner is served

Well, I didn't burn the castle down, and the end result was edible...I'd even go as far as saying it was yummy! However, I did need help from the regular chef in our house.

My main issue is timing. I'm not familiar with the cook time on anything, therefore the beans and potatoes were done about 15 minutes before the fish. Whoops. The hubs says it just takes practice. Fingers crossed. Here's what we had:

> green beans
> baby potatoes
> salmon with a pine nut/pesto and parmesan cheese crust

Everything was going well until I checked the fish 20 minutes in. It wasn't done, even though I was going to take it out and serve it. The hubs gave me some pointers on how to check to see if it's cooked for sure and also about cooking at higher temp for a shorter period of time. 

The Sofa has landed!

Yippie Skippie - we have a sectional sofa! Please forgive the poor quality, night time iPhone 3 camera photos, but you get the idea! We chose the Karlstad sectional sofa from Ikea because of the ridiculously affordable price, and because we already have one and know it's comfy (once the stiff cushions get worked in!). We also like it because down the road we can change out the look/feel of the room by purchasing a different cover for it if we want! The other plus is that you can tweak the layout of the sofa if you choose to move it to a different room. Because you assemble it yourself, you can move the long end of the "L" shape to either the right or the left, depending on your room configuration!! So cool!!

You can also see the beginning stages of our plan to line the tv wall with bookshelves - we will also add an MDF counter to the top of seven of them that will span from wall-to-wall to make them feel a little less Ikea and a little more built-in. Hopefully we will also add a bit of molding to the top and bottom to make them feel even more like furniture.

Apparently the hubs already has dibs on the corner seat on the sofa (lucky duck, it's pretty comfy!)!

Our existing ottoman matches perfectly! YAY!

Six out of seven of the shelves aren't put together yet, but we did get the tv up!

Slowly, but surely things are starting to come together.