Hello Home Ownership!

Yay, we own a home!! Now it's time to start all the renovations. Lots more pictures to follow I'm sure. We got the key Friday night and popped on by the house to do a little surveillance before the weekend. We tore up a little bit of the carpet Friday night just to see what we were dealing with. Luckily most of the wood floors underneath are in pretty good shape. Unfortunately there's also a lot of patched up places where walls used to be and such. One of the bedrooms also have the original old floors so they don't match all the rest of the floors. We'll find out when all the walls are down what's really going on with the floors though. We should be able just to patch up a few places and sand them down and refinish them for some nice wood floors!

Saturday we went back to the house to get started with some work. We tore up all of the carpet and stuck it out on the back porch for now. Hopefully next weekend we'll have a dumpster that we can start throwing things in as we tear things down. We were also sticking around the house in order to receive all our kitchen shipments. They finally showed up around 4 in the afternoon and took a while to get everything into the house. They delivered everything other than the countertop and sink which we'll order from another place. So now we have a lot of appliances and even more flat pack boxes in our living room awaiting assembly and installation into our brand new kitchen! 

This coming week some of the construction crew should be coming by to start reinforcing the ceiling from above so we'll be able to tear down all the interior walls. Then we can start rebuilding everything. We'll have lots more progress in the next few weeks and I can't wait to see it all finished!

 [living room without all the carpet...ready to tear down the kitchen]

 [trying to get the new fridge up the steps]

[our kitchen all boxed up]

On a little less positive note, Friday I took the day off of work mostly to take Tara to the vet to have them take a look at her little toe issues. The vet didn't seem to think it was as serious as cancer which needed toe amputation like last time, but they did think it was necessary to remove the toenail surgically to prevent infection which could result in a need for tow amputation. They were able to get her in the same day and remove the nail and bandage her back up and she got to come home with a cute little red cast on her foot that looks like a little Christmas stocking...how festive! She's doing really well with it and seems to be recovering fairly well. Everyone at the vet clinic kept raving about how sweet she was and how well she did with everything ;) I'll take her back on Monday to have the bandages removed and hopefully she'll be able to recover completely in the next week or two. The vet kept telling me to make sure she doesn't go on long walks or be too active. I had to laugh at that and remind them that she's 13 years old and making it once around the block is a pretty big feat for her these days. I don't think making sure she's resting will be an issue!

A few more fun recipes to mention while I'm at the whole blogging thing. Last week after we had eaten supper I had a craving for cupcakes. I really didn't want to make a whole batch or go walk somewhere to get them, so I found this awesome recipe that makes just TWO cupcakes! What a great idea and perfect for a random craving in the middle of the week! The recipe can be found here. I just whipped up some chocolate buttercream to go with it and a strawberry to top it off! I think I'll definitely be trying different versions of this recipe to make it other flavors but still in a tiny little batch! Definitely satisfied my cupcake cravings for the night!

Another recent craving...or constant craving of mine is for rhubarb! I made some delicious strawberry rhubarb scones a few nights ago that made a perfect easy on the go breakfast for both of us for the rest of the week. I love rhubarb and it was so easy to bake it into a little treat that I could enjoy the every morning with my cup of coffee ;) The recipe that I used to make them can be found here. Enjoy the deliciousness!