Moved in and unpacking

The move is finally over and we've arrived at the unpacking phase. The move went smoothly and we had great help from friends and family (Thanks everyone!)

Things that are new or different:

• Stairs! I lived in a first floor apartment for the past 2 years, so having to go up/down stairs to various parts of the house is new. And with my forgettful mind, I'll get lots of exercise running up and down.
• Flower beds! Living in an apartment doesn't exactly give you a lot of that. Our backyard has 3 large flowerbeds that seem to have flowers and shrubs popping up already. (less work for me!) I'm concerned with the plants 'lives' since the last 3 house plants I've had (bamboo, cactus, tree thing) have all died. I will definately try to keep them living. (which reminds me I need to water them tonight)
• Garage! And no it's not a place to store random junk. The car and motorbike will actually be parked in there.
• Lawn! Yes, we now have a lawn. Apartment living really isn't condusive to being outdoors, especially on the main floor facing the parking lot. I don't think we ever sat on our patio. Not only do we have to cut our own lawn now, (by we I mean my boyfriend), we can get outside and do things outdoors.
• Basement! Our living room is now only a living room. All of our workout equipment is in the basement. We basically have a weight gym/dance studio down there and our cardio will be done in the park that is a block from us (yippee!)
• Pantry! The pantry in the kitchen is HUGE! Either we need to go grocery shopping, or it's just that massive because at the moment it looks quite empty. Not that I'm going to go and buy stuff to put in it, but the option is there. At least now I can see all my baking stuff and it's readily available.

On the green side of things, I'm much more conscious of using less utilities. Our utilities were included in the rent price, but now it's seperate. The curbside recycling is a huge deal too. No more storing it all in different bins and driving it down the road. Everything goes in one large bin and gets picked up on garbage day. YEAH!!

I'm sure there will be a lot more stuff to come that I find 'really cool' but for now, only being in there for a few days, those are the top things on my list.

Last week in the apartment

My head just did a 360. I cannot believe that I am only in this apartment for 1 more week!!!
We've started on the kitchen now. Packing up all the tools we won't be using for the next few days. My bathroom is almost completely done. I'll be living out of a suitcase and makeup bag for the next week. I can't bear to take down my computer yet though. My baby has to stick around until the end!

I'm so very excited to be out of this place. I will have a place to dance that doesn't have a dining room table in it, we'll have an entire workout set in the basement, so no more complaining I can't do my workouts at home due to lack of equipment. We'll have a yard to work on, and I'm sure the novelty of that will fade quickly, but it will be nice to be able to get outside and actually sit out there without people walking by and looking at you. (We are on the bottom floor of our place right now, and face the parking lot.) I can poke holes in the walls for pictures. I can paint if I so choose. I know that with a larger place, comes more cleaning, and far more responsibility, but it's worth it!

I can't tell you how fast this week is going to go by. I'm already thinking Saturday when we get home from visiting people we'll be packing up the rest of our crap. Sunday morning will be an early one getting all those last minute things put together. It came much faster than I thought. When we first signed or papers, I was sure it was going to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get here. And now it is and I'm not ready yet. I suppose blogging in my free time doesn't really help that cause though. Enough 'chit-chat' I'm off to the land of boxes and useless things.

Avoiding packing? Check!

Even though this is the only weekend we have to pack, our heads aren't in it. 3 boxes done yesterday was enough. Haven't even started packing boxes today, but managed to get through purging a lot of papers that aren't needed any longer. That's something I guess. The less we have to pack, the better!

Instead of packing this morning, my boyfriend and I headed out of the city about an hour to a place called Elbow Falls. I had forgotten it was the long weekend, and we found lots of people had the same idea as us. We did the trip on our motorcycle, which is always a blast. We wandered around the falls for a while, which isn't a big place, and sat down for a picnic. We took a picnic blanket we got for christmas from my sister and used it to find a place to sit by the rivers edge. It was a well spent afternoon.

Here are some pictures of the falls.

Frustrated with sickness

Since last Thursday, I have been feeling under the weather. I took a few days from work this week to get better. Resting is usually a good idea. Unfortunately, it hasn't improved my cold at all. I'm still sick! I'm at the point of frustration now. I haven't been to the gym in over a week, which is very frustrating to me. I don't like taking unplanned weeks off from weight training, as it throws off my schedule.

TonightI finally got around to moving some filled boxes into the spare room as a storage area until we move. I can now see the space around my pole in order to dance. I took a few spins last night, and felt a little better to exercise. Being me, I decided to drag out my crash mat and try some inverts since I felt slightly better. I attempted one invert and got a splitting headache. I crashed on the mat and scolded myself. Why would flipping myself upside down be a good idea, when I can barely breathe out of my nose? So much for dancing tonight...

I won't have much time for exercise this weekend anyways, but I'm planning to do a little bit if I can. Perhaps a jog today with my boyfriend to get rid of some stress and get outside. We are supposed to have wonderful weather for the weekend... finally! I'm very tired of snow one day, sun the next. It's May!! Enough with the cold weather!! This weekend is Canada's long weekend in May. Most people will get Monday off this weekend as a stat holiday. Rather than spend this weekend camping with the rest of Canada (seems to be what most people do this weekend), I will be packing. This is the only weekend we are both here for the entire duration of it. The next two prior to our move are away with family. I'm not complaining we are using this weekend to pack, I'm actually glad we have the entire 3 days to do this. We're certainly taking time to enjoy the weekend outside of cardboard and packing tape. Motorcycle ride one day, bbq with family another, going to a movie or two at night.

I'm starting to feel the stress of moving. I look around and see that even though our spare room is already full of packed boxes, we haven't even scratched the surface yet. Moving is a big deal, and I am insistant that since we will not be moving again for a long time, we purge all things we haven't used/didn't know we had/thought we'd use it more from our belongings. There will be many, many garbage bags taken from the apartment so we don't have to drag the stuff with us to our house.

Let May long begin... with this box beside my feet. Happy weekend everyone!

Craziness ensues

Since being back from vacation everything was still slow and relaxing.

This morning I got up and realized that we have now bought a house and need to get prepared. That means a ton of financial stuff (which is my least favorite thing so I won't go there) and packing.

My problem is that I don't know where to start. Since moving to the this city two years ago, I've moved 3 times. That means that once a year, I get to purge my belongings of unwanted clutter. Everyone that is a home-owner that I know keeps telling me they hate moving because they have to move all the stuff they have accumulated. I use the word 'stuff' because that's what it is. Stuff that you probably haven't seen since it went into the box and hav no idea it's still around.

I know already that we have that stuff in our apartment like that. I really, really don't want to move it with us into our house. I have this sneaking suspicion that that stuff will somehow make it's way into our basement and never see the light of day again.

I know that packing shouldn't be too difficult. I'm just in the purging mode. I don't want to keep anything that really isn't needed. That's the part that's causing me so much stress.
I need to manage my time to a particular part of each room and work on that.
Ack craziness!