Author Archives: Sherry

Improve the value of your home by remodeling

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If you are considering remodeling your home, the concerns are always the same. Will it increase the value of the home? Can I afford it? Will it look as good in my home as it does in the magazine? These are just a few of the questions you’re probably asking yourself.

Remodeling isn’t an easy task, it’s time consuming, noisy and inconvenient. Once you make the decision to go for it, it’s time to jump in feet first, but before you do, here are a few tips to help you get started.

Does it Make Sense Financially?

Currently, about 1 in 4 homeowners in America are underwater on their mortgages, which means they owe more on their house than its current market value. If you are anywhere near being underwater on your mortgage, then a remodel will definitely not help. Ideally, you want to be sitting on at least 20% equity in your home in order for a remodel to make sense financially.

Which Room?

Different rooms tend to have different payoffs. The kitchen tends to be the most popular remodel option for most people, and HGTV estimates that homeowners tend to recoup 60% to 120% of their investment on a kitchen remodel. Now, this, of course, is quite a wide range. The amount of money you are able to recoup from your remodeling project depends on how long you stay in the home after the remodel. Of course, the longer you stay, the more you can leverage the remodel as the value of the home rises over time.

Cash may be a deciding factor when choosing which room to remodel. The kitchen will generally be twice as much, or more, expensive than a bathroom remodel. Therefore, if your home only has one bathroom, adding a second is a great way to recoup your investment, since a second bathroom is typically a common demand for new homebuyers. Applying for a home equity line is often a better decision than using credit card services.

Saving Money on the Job

If you will be living in your home for an extended period of time after the remodel, you may want to consider making the remodel a project. If you are not pressed for time, you may want to buy a few tools, pull up Youtube, and give it a go yourself. If you have any measure of carpentry skills, you can save thousands of dollars by doing the project yourself. Unless you are doing a complete renovation job, you may be able to handle much of the work yourself.

We are also in the midst of the greatest employment crisis in modern history, so there are scores of talented carpenters out of work, and finding quality work is cheaper now than it usually is. In fact, while searching for plane tickets and information on airports to fly out of, I ran across a mechanic using Google Ads to make his pitch to hire him. While you probably aren’t in need of a mechanic to update your home, it shows just how far people are going to find employment in these times.

Remember, you do often get what you pay for, but if you negotiate wisely and get several estimates, you can save yourself money. You can also use a Crate and Barrel coupon code to save some cash, because let’s be honest, a coupon can push just about anyone over the edge when it comes to shopping at Crate and Barrel.

Remodeling your home is a big decision. Never rush into a big decision. Take your time, make sure the finances are in order, and you will soon be enjoying a new home!

Exploring the neighborhood

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This weekend ended up being quite beautiful. The weather was sunny and delightful and while still a wee bit chilly, it was really nice if you were on the move. I had done some High Intensity Interval Training workouts in the late morning and was full of energy so when my sister came over to visit we decided to take the kids for a walk out in the fresh air.

Although we’ve lived here since July, we haven’t really explored that much of our neighborhood on foot so it was nice to get out there and move around.

We were pretty cold by the time we got home so Amanda and I had a cup of tea while we warmed up and hung out a bit longer, then they went home for supper. It was a nice, active way to spend a Saturday.

After we had our own supper (pizza in the oven), I filmed Hayley demonstrating her violin skills. She’s been playing since late November and is doing such a great job. Here she is playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

I also have a fitness video to share (speaking of being active and all that) but I’ll save that for another day.

How was your weekend?

Moments on a Sunday

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Today ended up being a relatively pleasant day considering the fact that we had no great plans in store and that Sundays are often low-key anyway what with easing back into school and work. Moments that contributed to my Sunday:

  • I did my third day in a row of the current BexLife challenge, doing ten burpees followed by a two-minute plank. Day one was easy. Day two and three were a bit harder now that soreness has helped me identify the exact location of every single abdominal muscle in my body. Ow.
  • I went to my favourite thrift shop and bought myself a tank top (to wear under low-cut shirts), five shirts, a pair of name-brand jeans, and two My Little Ponies for the kids. Grand total? Just over $28. Yes, I do love thrifting, thank you very much.
  • I finally found kale at a semi-decent price. I don’t know if there’s a better season for kale but every time I wanted to get some it was a tiny little wad of green leaves, often somewhat limp, and cost close to four bucks. Today it was still a bit on the pricey side at $3.49 but at least it was a HUGE bunch and it looked perfect.
  • Related to the above, I therefore was able to FINALLY try kale after hearing its benefits sung from the rooftops from most of the health blogging population. I sauteed half of my bunch with some onion and garlic, and it was quite tasty. I need to find more recipes to try out, so please feel free to share. I’m planning to use the other half tomorrow after work to try out kale chips.
  • Along with the kale – which was a HUGE hit with Hayley, by the way, and she even had two servings and asked for some with her lunch tomorrow – I made chili that I served on brown rice, and I cooked up a small pot of quinoa to take with the leftover chili for my supper tomorrow.
  • I saw a robin today. A robin! In February! That’s insane and practically unheard of. I wonder if that means an early spring after all or if a flock of robins are going to get screwed over.
  • After putting the kids to bed I enjoyed a fairly terrifying episode of The Walking Dead. While I always love this show, it’s been awhile since I’ve had to fight off the urge to climb up onto the back of my couch and hide my eyes. Good stuff!
  • After having taken Friday off, I’ve enjoyed a nice long three-day weekend. Much needed, oh yes.

How was your weekend?

My attempt at the 7-day BexLife Burpee & Plank challenge:

And apropos of nothing in particular, last week I took my favourite of George’s cover songs, Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry” and I put it up on YouTube. It’s been years since he recorded it and I still love it.

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, let me know what you did!

11 things, 11 questions

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One of my favourite fitness people is Bex and she did this post and challenged others to do the same. I have a bit of time to pass until the kids need to go to bed, at which point George and I will watch a movie, so I figured I’d go ahead and do this so as to stop seeing that depressing post I wrote last week every time I open my blog.

The way it works: I have to post 11 random things about myself, then answer 11 questions asked by the blogger I got this from, and then write up 11 questions for others. Whew. Here goes!

11 random things about me:

1. I am insanely competitive. I can be happily lazy or indifferent to something right up until the moment that I’m challenged in a competitive way and then I will lose my ever loving mind trying to meet and/or exceed it. I’m even competitive with myself.

2. Despite the fact that I REALLY WANT TO WIN at things, I’m not a sore loser in any way.

3. In my first year of high school I was so bummed by my first term grade in Ecology (I believe it was 83%) that I went up to my teacher and asked him how I could improve for the next term. He mumbled something about staying engaged and studying harder, but later told my dad at parent-teacher night that he had only answered that way because he was taken aback; no student had ever asked him how to do better after getting a grade in the 80-something range.

4. I failed Advanced Chemistry in a spectacular going-up-in-flames kind of way, getting grades around 35 and 40%. I never meant to take the class. I had chosen Advanced Biology so they decided to just throw me into Advanced Chem too. To this day I haven’t got a single clue as to what we were supposedly learning in that class. Thank God I did much better in Bio!

5. I am fully bilingual having started in French Immersion in elementary school and then Advanced French in high school. By the end of high school, when I was in grade 10 and 11 I was taking the exact same French curriculum as kids in French high schools. I even have a certificate, all formal and stuff.

6. I didn’t learn too much in the way of useful French as far as having actual conversations until after high school when I worked in environments where I needed to use it and dated a couple of French guys. Like many things that you learn in a classroom, actually applying it in life requires a bit of immersed modification.

7. Although I love the hell out of yoga, am pretty good at some of it, and enjoy certain fitness workouts I was not an athlete type in high school. I was very active outdoors, including biking and TONS of cross-country skiing, but I sucked at organized sports.

8. It’s kind of the same thing with the fact that I have a strong sense of spirituality but suck at trying to involve myself in organized religion.

9. I like living in a place where things are convenient – grocery stores close by, bus lines (when the union isn’t on strike – STILL!), parks, etc – but I really would prefer living in a nice house in the woods.

10. The ocean brings me peace. I haven’t been to the ocean in far too long, I can’t wait for warm weather so I can throw on my bathing suit (goal for this year: bikini!) and go back to Crystal Crescent Beach.

11. I love Halifax but frequently wish I still lived back home.

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The quiet unspoken truth

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I love it here. Halifax is a beautiful city, it’s right on the ocean, and in the summer I can be at the beach in about 20 minutes or less. Swimming in the Atlantic, being on the coast, it’s all a wonderful and amazing thing. Also, the people in the Maritimes are generally just as nice and friendly as the stereotypes claim them to be.

You know there’s a “but” coming though, right?

But.

Photo via montreallimo.ca

I miss home sometimes. I miss our families, I miss our friends, I miss the old school and the community I had there, I miss being at home with my kids, I miss the dog we had to leave behind, and I even miss the silly “should be inconsequential” things like Chinatown, the Biodome, and good poutine.

I know that sometimes it takes time to get settled and feel at home and for awhile I thought I had, but lately I have an ache that won’t go away no matter how much I love it here.

I’m homesick and there’s very little I can do about it except breathe and wait for it to pass.

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Coconut bread

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Here’s the thing; George and I are both creative people and we will always find an outlet for that creativity in some form or another just like anyone else. For me it once came out in writing and lately it’s in using my phone to take pictures while I’m out and about. George primarily lets his creativity out with music (did you know you can buy the album he did with his friend James over here?) but in recent weeks he’s been channeling it into food.

He makes delicious suppers, many of them in the crockpot, which is something I appreciate since it then translates into a supper for me the next day at work. He’s been making good use of the bread machine too, baking up fresh bread a couple of times a week. However, his latest endeavor has been to make coconut bread like his mother makes and it’s just as delicious as it sounds.

Here’s the tasty recipe:

Coconut Bread

  • 2 cups of flour
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/4 cup of butter or shortening
  • 1 cup grated coconut
  • 1/2 cup milk (you can add up to 1/4 of a cup more if it’s too dry)
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp cinnamon

Sift flour and baking powder, and combine with sugar, coconut, and spices. Add in the butter or shortening, and use two knives or a pastry blender to combine. Add milk and mix gently.

Pour into a greased and floured loaf pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for one hour.

Curried Sweet Potato and Carrot soup

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My shift at work is somewhat awkward as far as meal times are concerned. I leave at a few minutes past 11 each morning to catch a bus that gets me downtown roughly 45 minutes before I’m due to start. Because of this I eat my breakfast – usually two pieces of toast with peanut butter – at 10 am.

The problem is I then don’t get a break until about 2:30 or so, and that’s too long to wait before eating lunch. If I tried that I’d be shaking and having a low blood sugar crisis. On top of that, I only have 15 minutes for my break, not giving me time for more than a quick snack.

(We don’t discuss the fact that I eat “supper” at 4 or 4:30, which means I am then a raging, starving stomach on legs by the time I arrive home at 9:30.)

To avoid the hunger crash due to my lack of a proper lunch time, I take advantage of the fact that I’m so early for my shift by heading to the lunch room and eating before work starts. I’ve brought sandwiches and I’ve brought cheese and crackers, but my absolute favourite is to bring hearty, filling soups with some bread or crackers on the side.

The best soup of all is the one George has made for me a few times. It’s filling, it’s the perfect winter soup because it warms you from the inside out, and it’s absolutely delicious.

soup

Curried Sweet Potato Soup

  • 2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and diced
  • 2 cups baby carrots
  • 1 small chopped onion
  • 1/4 tsp curry powder
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp ground ginger
  • 4 cups chicken broth
  • 1 tbsp maple syrup
  • 3/4 cup half-and-half

Place the sweet potatoes, carrots, onion, curry, salt, pepper, cinnamon, and ginger into a crock pot. Add the broth. Stir carefully to mix well. Cover and cook it on low for 7 to 8 hours.

After that time frame, puree the soup one cup at a time in a blender and return to the crock pot. You can also use an immersion blender but I think the blender works better. Add the maple syrup (the real deal, not the CRAP imitation stuff) and half-and-half. You can add extra salt and pepper now to taste as well. Stir, cover, and cook on high for an additional 15 minutes to heat through.

It is so very good. It’s not ridiculously spicy but when you eat it the curry really warms you up quickly. It’s my favourite lunch to have after a cold or rainy commute to work.

Enjoy!

Getting out there

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For a variety of reasons my headspace has not been at its best lately. One of the best things to do in a case like that is to take your head and move it somewhere else. Today would have been a good time to head to the beach or even Point Pleasant Park just to see the ocean but it wasn’t in the cards so I did the next best thing and got the kids, some of their toys, and we headed to the park for an hour.

It was a little above freezing, technically, but when you factored in the wind chill it was a little, er, brisk out there (-2C or 28F). Still, it just seemed like we hadn’t been spending enough time outside and even the kids had been stuck indoors for recess at school a fair amount because of rain. An hour was all I could handle but it was good enough to give the three of us some fresh air, a little sunshine, and some exercise.

I took my camera and two lenses with the full intention of taking pictures and then spending some time this evening editing them while watching the SAG awards, but when we arrived I discovered that thing that annoys me to no end – I turned my camera on and got the dreaded “no card” message. I HATE when I forget that my memory card is sitting in my laptop’s card reader. Boo! Luckily cell phones have some pretty decent cameras these days so I captured some photos anyway, courtesy of my wee HTC phone.

They brought their doll strollers with them. I love that Hayley is 9 and still loves dolls. Too many kids her age grow up way too fast.

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It was cold but it was fun and it was exactly what we all needed. Too bad the fresh air didn’t completely help since it’s now almost 10 pm and yet they haven’t fallen asleep yet. Sigh. Tomorrow should be fun when it’s time to drag them out of bed for school.

As for me, I have high hopes for this week. I came down with the flu back on January 20th and even stayed home that day, even though I hate calling in sick on Friday or Monday (because I worry people will assume I’m just stretching out my weekend). I just felt completely run down and unable to function. By the time I went back to work on Monday I was mostly fine but I had a very annoying cough. On Friday I all but completely lost by voice and by the end of the day I was pretty much just squeaking at everyone. Not my idea of fun, that’s for sure.

Luckily my voice seems to have returned and so I’m hoping the week will go well for all of us.

I hope you had a great weekend! Stay tuned – tomorrow I’m going to post a recipe for my favourite thing to take for lunch before my shift starts!

The hardest thing to get used to

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I enjoy my job. I do. I’ve mentioned it many times. This week I’ve been working on some development things and it’s made me enjoy it even more.

That doesn’t mean that going from working as a freelance writer to a full time out-of-the-house employee has been all easy. There have been adjustments galore and one of my hardest moments came today.

Breanna had a terrible stomach ache and after she cried that she couldn’t go to school, we decided to have her stay home since George was able to be home with her. Breanna loves school like nobody’s business and looks forward to it constantly so I knew that if she didn’t want to go she wasn’t kidding about not feeling well. I remembered Hayley having a bad stomach ache before Christmas, staying home, and then throwing up and how relieved I was that we had kept her home, so I thought we’d err on the side of caution. Luckily it didn’t end up going that far but Breanna was in pain and I was glad she could stay home.

I got myself ready for work, snuggled her on the couch for a bit, and then left for work. As is my usual habit, once I got downtown and reached my building I called George to tell him I had arrived and also to check on Breanna. He said she was okay but wanted to say hi to me.

When she got on the phone, she burst into tears. “I want you to come back and stay at home with me,” she wailed. I took a deep breath, told her I had a meeting today and couldn’t stay home but that Daddy was there and that the next time she was sick I would take a turn staying home with her. I told her I loved her and would talk to her later, and asked her to pass the phone back to George. After saying she loved me too, she passed the phone off and George came back on the line.

Well. It’s a ton of fun being in the middle of a very busy area with people bustling back and forth, blubbering into a phone, crying because I wanted to be immediately transported à la Star Trek back to my home so I could take care of Breanna. I knew George was more than capable – she was in good hands with her father, not a random babysitter, so she was fine. But I just really wished in that moment that I could be there.

That’s the hard part. Loving where I work and missing what’s at home all at the same time.

Once I got up to my own office I saw one of my co-workers, a great girl who is also a mother and I told her what had just happened, tears filling up in my eyes yet again. She smiled with understanding, having been there herself too, and she joked, “what were you thinking? You never call home! Never EVER call home, then they can’t break your heart!”

I told her I’ve only been doing this whole working out of the home thing since July and I just haven’t gotten used to this yet. She smiled again and said, “I don’t think you ever do. I haven’t.”

I probably never will. I’ll keep reaching for that balance and most of the time it works, but as I’ve learned from doing yoga for two years, sometimes you balance topples and you’ll never ever control that 100%.

I guess I’ll just have to get used to THAT instead.