Golf Tournament

Yesterday, I went to the annual golf tournament put on my our Satellite provider, Shaw Tracking.
It's always an excellent tournament with lots of prizes and food. Yesterday was no exception. In past years, we were given a golf club (rescue club), poker set, golf rain gear... This year the gift for coming was a jacket made of that "neoprene" type material. You know the kind? It's not neoprene, but feels like it. It's an expensive jacket, and really nice! They've been trying to turn the tournament into a fund raiser for Juvenile Diabetes the last couple of years too, so in order to win prizes and be eligible for the prize holes, you had to donate $20. So I did, because you never know when a good golf shot is around the corner...
Anyway, I'm usually in contention for the long drive holes, and occasionally the closet to the pin holes - but those usually are less than 1 or 2 feet that end up winning. About half way through the day for us, we came up to the hole-in-one/closest to the pin hole. The prizes were a 2 year lease on an Acura MDX for a hole in one, and 4gb iPod Nano for closest to the pin. I didn't win the car... But I did win the iPod! I was 4-5 feet from the car, but the shot was good enough the rest of the day and I won! First time I've ever won for a closest to the pin, as I have won the long drive in the past. My drive's were garbage yesterday, and didn't come close to having a chance at those.

Anyway, I'd like to sell it and get the MP3 player that I want, but I think Marn wants to keep it.... so, Happy Birthday, Marn!! ;)

Deck is washed

I washed the deck this weekend in preparation for staining, and it really came up clean and bright. I might actually lightly sand it down a bit before staining, but by the end of this weekend I'm hoping to have it done. Again, we're still kicking ourselves for not staining right away after building it. What a pain this has become - I've easily tripled my work!

Garage Sale Success

Our first garage sale ever turned out to be a pretty good success. We made about $250, most of which from about 3 or 4 "big ticket" items. We sold our old Canon digital camera, my old 25" TV, Golf clubs, and video camera that we bought from Adrienne and Dennis a while ago - that was the biggest deal for whoever bought it. I only asked for $60, but thinking about it after it was gone, I should have asked for more considering that I bought a brand new extended-life battery for at least $60 when I got it. Anyway, we barely used it, and we are trying to clear out clutter. We can't believe it, but dad's old couch and chair also sold - for $15! We are really happy about that as we didn't want to lug it to the dump/charity. I just wish the old entertainment unit also sold. The thing weighs a ton. I'm sure a lot of the stuff was under priced, but we just wanted to see it gone.
So the $15 spent on advertising really paid off. I didn't think we'd get many people, but we were fairly busy all day right up until about 2pm (the couch and chair were the last things to go, to our relief) when we started packing up.
The things that didn't sell are going to charity, or the dump - whatever the charity doesn't want, will be dumped. For our other "bigger ticket" items (TV, monitors, printer...) I may advertise on kijiji.ca or something, but mostly we just want rid of it.

Our neighbours ended up being some of our biggest customers, actually. The guy next door bought my old clubs, TV, Mom's old kitchen light, and a superman lunch box! Another neighbour came twice and bought a power washer (that doesn't work), kids carpet, some other toys and games. He wanted one of the TV's for his garage too, but his wife told him otherwise.

2nd Year Anniversary

Today is our 2nd anniversary!

I surprised Marn this year by purchasing tickets to the Cirque Du Soliel (Kooza) in Toronto on Saturday afternoon. It was a great surprise because I kept it from everyone until Thursday. I told her Thursday night.
The show was AMAZING! We totally want to go again - to the same show - at least see some of the stunts again in slow motion! It kept us on the edge of our seats for most of it. Our favorites were the contortionists and the spinning wheels, but generally every performance was top notch. We'll definitely be watching for more shows in the future.

I'm sitting here wondering why I haven't ever gone in the past?

First Garage Sale

Well, we are finally having a garage sale after much discussion in the past. This Saturday at 7:30am we're hoping to get rid of some of the furniture and crap that we've gathered over the past 3 years at the house. Couches, tables, electronics, tv's, monitors, etc, etc. Mom is coming over with a bunch of her stuff too. What ever isn't sold will be given away or taken to the dump on Sunday, and we'll feel good about getting rid of the clutter!
I put an ad in the Record for it, so hopefully we'll get a few people. I also said that it's a "multi-house" sale... so far only one other house on the court "might" have some stuff, but with Mom's stuff it technically IS multi-home. Oh well.
We'll just be glad to get rid of some stuff, and if we make back the $15 rip off to advertise it, I'll be happy.
This week will be spent preparing and sorting through our basement which is unbelievably filled with crap.

Deck Staining

We are finally ready to stain our deck, and I finished power washing it last night. The first step is to "clean it" with a brightener/cleaner, then let it dry 2-3 days, then stain it. We're going to use a penetrating semi-transparent stain because we want to try and prevent the greying that occurs with the cedar we used. Apparently clear stains, protect it from water, but not greying.
The cleaner should make it REALLY clean, because with just the power washer I'm amazed at how much crud came off. It almost looks new right now. The cleaner has a bleach in it, so it'll whiten and clean with no brushing.

We're a little ticked that we didn't stain when it was brand new because we were told two different things at the same store by two different sales men. One told us to wait a year, the other said, to do it right away. Well we waited, and a month later it was grey - exactly what we didn't want. Hopefully we can find a stain that will not peel and flake off in a year. There's a lot of money in that deck, and we want to do it right!

House Prices

Can you believe that we've been in our House now for almost 3 years, and coming this weekend, we've been married for 2?
crazy!
Last weekend we were out at the neighbours house and they were talking about how much the houses around us have gone up in price, so we decided to check it out for ourselves. We went to our builder's model home in the newer part of Baden and caught up a little bit with Debbie, our real estate agent when we bought. BASE PRICE of our home selling right now has gone up over $70k! In 3 years!! That's not including any upgrades to your lot or house. Well, actually, it does a little bit; They have a promotion right now that includes $7000 in upgrades (A/C, Ceramics, and Granite counter tops). But considering that we're on a court, have a deep lot, big cedar deck, and have a few upgrades in the kitchen (and want to do a few more soon), we're looking at probably over $90k increase. Mind you, this is nothing from what my sister has experienced in BC.
But still! We are amazed (shocked, really), and it's gotten Marnie back on the "I want to move" kick... I'm in the "let's wait longer and then build our final home" kick, because what I want to build is probably still a little out of our price range.

Whatever happens, you gotta love that free equity!

As a coincidence yesterday, we got a mail from our house insurance company and they have also noticed the increased prices in building costs, etc, and our premiums have gone up as well. buggers! So far, the property taxes haven't. I guess that "free" equity really isn't "free"....

updated cottage pics

for some reason, Blogger doesn't take well to uploading many pics at the same time. Anyway, my cottage post didn't have a few, so I put them back in.
check them out here

deck light pics updated

See the pics below!

New Camera / Vacation / Guitar / New Baby!

New Camera
What a busy week we've had. We recently decided to save our Air Miles for travel instead of "merchandise". We had planned to purchase a Digital SLR camera with the miles we've been saving for the last few years. But the site didn't offer the exact model that we wanted so we decided to wait for a good sale and purchase it instead. Our current Canon is 5 years old (bought it before our OZ trip) and it's showing it's age - half the time it freezes or doesn't power on, and occasionally displays E18 on the screen - searching that error results in nothing good. That sale came just before our vacation, so we jumped on it and purchased a Nikon D40x. It's basically an entry-level D-SLR with 10 mega-pixel sensor - very similar in size and function to the Canon XTI which we were saving to buy with Air Miles. It has the same lens and mostly the same features.. to be honest, the XTI might be a slightly better camera as far as features go, but since we won't be using most of those features, we won't miss them. It has the standard 18-55 lens, same as Canon as well. The 2 things that made us sway towards the Nikon were, price and warranty. Price was about $150-200 cheaper (without the sale), and the warranty blows Canon's away - 2 years on the body and 5 years on all lens's, vs. 1 year for everything with Canon. Because we didn't have other SLR lens's, the Nikon just made sense to us. One feature that might have been a turning point was Canon's has 9 focus points and faster lenses (according to the sales person), where the Nikon has 3 - but those 3 are larger focal areas... It was really a toss up as to which to get, but price and warranty really tipped the scales instead of feature sets.
We purchased it on Saturday before our Vacation so that we'd have it for the week at the cottage. I'd say we used it quite a bit - 300+ pictures later!
Here it is!




Vacation:
We spent (most of) the week with Chris, Carey and Cora at his parent's cottage, south of Grand Bend. I'll get into the "most of" part of that sentence later! It's a great little cottage feel, lake front with a sunset view. It's the type of place we wish we had to get away on the weekends as it's only 1.5 hours away and opposite the direction of Toronto. The only thing about it the water levels have retreated unbelievably over the years. Chris said that they used to swim, jump and dive right off the sea wall. Now, you have to climb down about 10 feet, and walk out about 10-15 feet to the water! And even then, you can walk out a few hundred metres before you can dunk down far enough to get wet. I was out there a few times with Echo and I bet we were out 200 metres, no problem, and it was at most thigh high.
It was a great and relaxing weekend, and I did manage to start learning to play guitar as I planned. I borrowed one that Carey had to get me going while I look for a used one around here. We didn't do much all week, which is what we planned. We did manage to go to Grand Bend once, golf once, and tour around Bayfield (not much to see). The best way to describe the week is in pictures, so here you go;
Sorry about the picture sizes - I didn't shrink them, so you're getting full 10mpix resolution...




PS: Also, I'm not sure where Marnie disappeared to - she's not in any of the photos we have, and she wasn't taking ALL of them :/ ....

Guitar

Yes this is me learning to play guitar, something that I've wanted to do since high school - even if it's just enough to play a few songs. My playing isn't as bad as Echo's look would have you believe, at least I hope!
It's a lot of fun right now, even if I'm struggling to change between cords smoothly and learning to read "real" music (as opposed to Tab Style). I'm currently waiting to hear back from 2 people on the website kijiji selling their guitars. They are beginner Yamaha models, which is exactly what I am!

New Baby!
Candace had a baby girl, Sadie Elizabeth Barnes, born Wednesday afternoon, at around 1:30pm. She weighed 8 lbs, 3 oz. and was almost 3 weeks early! Cell phone coverage is pretty crappy at the cottage, so we didn't get the message that she was in labour until about 10am that morning, but the call came at 1:45AM from Marn's Mom who was heading over to their house to watch Braeden - I just happened to check the phone before breakfast. So we quickly ate and headed back to KW so that Marnie could be in the birthing room with them. We just made it by about 30 minutes - perfect timing, really.
So we hung out and took some pictures, and then headed back to the cottage that evening for the rest of the week.

And here she is: