March 31, 2014

Spring Cleaning!



Maybe I should be calling it More Winter cleaning cause Spring is just not coming here!

Every year I like to do a good spring clean around here, I mean who doesnt! I usually like to follow an online blogger or two on recommendations or lists of what to do but Im finding since we're moving a lot of the stuff is already done during the process of painting and cleaning up for listing our house! Right now Im really in a maintenance stage, but I do have some stuff left to do like cleaning under the sinks and cleaning out cupboards and such.

One big thing I like to do and feels really rewarding afterwards is cleaning out the fridge! I do it a couple times a year and yet I always manage to find a surprise in there. For example I just cleaned out my fridge and found that we had 2 mustard in there, both were expired for some time (we rarely use mustard)... who knew :S

Im glad I set out to do this before grocery day! Man was it ever dirty in there! Its funny how fast you can let it go in there! But I got it all nice and clean and now every time I open the door to get something I think how nice it looks! And Im sure anyone coming in to view the house is going to open the fridge to see inside since its included in the price.

Here's my after since I forgot to take a before! (Ignore the lack of food, its grocery day and we have a storm so I can't get out!)

Next up on my list is our laundry/storage room... and OY! Its a doozy in there... Stay tuned...

In the meantime I thought I'd share my favorite spring cleaning blogs:



March 26, 2014

Dairy Free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins!



One of my kids favorite foods is muffins! In fact as I type this my daughter is laying on the floor beside me crying for another muffin (yes I had to cut them off!).

Yesterday I decided to try out a new recipe and alter it to make it dairy free for my youngest two. I tried out a couple recipes together and ended up with these! They turned out great and they are loving them!


Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins

1&1/2 cups of oatmeal
2&2/3 cups of flour
2/3 cup of sugar
4 tsp. of baking powder
1/2 tsp. of salt
2 eggs beaten, can be sub. with applesauce if desired
1&1/2 cups milk or in our case Almond milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup of Chocolate Chips (in our case we use Enjoy Life Dairy free mini chocolate chips)


Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare muffin tins with liners.
1. Combine all the dry ingredients
2. Create a well in the center of the dry ingredients.
3. In another bowl combine wet ingredients
4. Add the wet mixture to the dry in the well and stir until it is all moistened.
5. Add the chocolate chips and stir well
6. Place in muffin tins and bake for 15-16 minutes (I always check after 12 and go from there!)

They look to be a bit dense to me. I find when I use almond milk in baking things turn out a bit more dense. But the kids love them and go through them in 2-3 days :S

March 20, 2014

Fancy New Lawn Ornament!

So we got ourselves a fancy new lawn ornament today!



Yeah!! Our house is officially on the market!! Such an exciting day for us! We're really looking forward to the new journey we're on! Bigger and better home, cant wait for the boys to have their own space again!

Wanted to share a few pictures taken for our sale!

Front of our home


Livingroom:

Eat in Kitchen:


Boys room:

Lemon's room:

Master Bedroom

Backyard (so hard to get a good shot when we have sooo much snow still!). Its large and fenced in and the snow just doesnt help us give it credit.



We havent finished cleaning out the basement yet, so no pictures yet of the family room down there. And no shots of the bathrooms as our agent doesn't post bathroom pics.

So thats it! We're on this journey, like it or not! lol Button actually cried when we got home and he saw the sign on the lawn. I think the whole process is confusing to him. I think once we find a place and can take them to show them they will be more excited and better able to understand.

So here we go! Lets hope this isnt too long of a journey!

March 14, 2014

Home Improvement: A little bit of paint!

Something I've really discovered lately while renovating is wow can a little bit of paint go a long way!

My style has changed a lot over the years but I really haven't changed much in our home to reflect this change. Main reason is probably because since becoming a stay at home mother we haven't had the money for many upgrades in style. But now in retrospect I had $30 here and there for paint! And what a difference a little paint could make!

I started the renovations with the boys room. Not much needed to be changed in there, but when we moved in the room was a light blue and it was perfect for our little boy once we knew he was a he ;) So its never changed. Lots of wear and tear on the room, including a few spots coloured by 2 year old London and 2.5 year old Lincoln.


So I went to Home Depot and looked for a similar colour to what they had, but a little darker. Ended up getting this really nice blue for them.



Took an afternoon and because it was only a little darker it only took 1 coat to finish their room! They were at camp that day and came home to a newly painted room! They enjoyed it a lot.


Best I could get of a before and after. Has made a big difference!

Now that it's done I wonder, why did this take me so long! I used money as an excuse but this nice little upgrade cost me $35 max... amazing!

March 13, 2014

Home Improvements: The Stairs.

Hello all! Its been a while but I'm finally back to blogging!

Been a busy few months around here but we are now in the final stages of fixing up our house to get it on the market this week so lots of exciting projects on the go! We had a list to tackle and I've been chipping away at the list for 2 months now. I have lots of before and afters to share, today Im going to share our journey with your stairs!

When we moved in (9 years ago) we had nice carpeted stairs leading to our upstairs. It started out all nice like this:


Now fast forward to 4 cats and 3 children later and its turned into this mess...

So I started out one day and wanted to see what was under the carpet. Was it a rounded step or not? To our surprise I discovered the floor was round and could be salvaged! I took 2 days (hey I have 3 kids!) to rip all the carpet on the stairs and take all the staples out. What a job it was! But I was left with this beauty!


So I spent a few days cleaning them up, Sanding them and getting them ready to stain. Once ready I started out. Again this was a few days worth of project become of drying time and our bedrooms being upstairs ;) I decided to do every other stair so we could at least still get up when we needed.



Another project I had to do was fill in the space between the stairs and the wall, so prior to staining I had to put Poly fill in and sand it down once it was dry. LONG job! lol But worth it, you can see the white here when I did it.

After the staining was done I was able to paint the risers white, as well as the handrail and balusters.



Once this was all done I was able to finish the painting. Painted the area Grey like the rest of the livingroom. And here is our finished product... (we're obviously still finishing the Newel Post, will be fixed this weekend, so ignore that!)