I’m currently home sick from work. It’s been building for a few weeks and I finally forced myself to stay home, rest and try to take care of myself. Not so easy to do when you are a workaholic like me. I went and did a lot yesterday so I don’t feel completely bad about not going to work today. Plus, all the other people in my department took time off over he holidays. I deserve a little time off too.

Speaking of time off, I asked my boss for the day we get our keys off. Hard to believe it’s Friday the 13th when we are getting our new house. I’ve never felt nervous about that day and if anything it seems to be a lucky one. Here’s hoping it’s a lucky day for us. I’m undecided if I want to go and stay over the night we get the keys. I’m tempted to bring pillows and our sleeping bags and camp out on the floor. I have to be there at 7am the next day anyhow as our fridge is getting delivered and hopefully our stove.

Yes we bought a fridge. No we have not had our second visit to measure the space.

I know what you are thinking “Are you nuts?! what if the fridge doesn’t fit???”
The truth is we went with a pretty standard size fridge – 17.6 cu. ft. The deal was excellent and by James and his knowledge of price matching, we ended up getting a brand new fridge for less than we’d pay for a scratch and dent model. Also – they’ll deliver the fridge to us when we need it. No need to take it now as was my fear. I mean – who wants to store and then move a fridge?

James and I had a few things that were criteria, but not overly huge ones. the main thing is that we wanted stainless steel. I’d be happy with white, or even black, but James really wanted stainless steel. Since our wedding we’ve been trying to make our kitchen schnazzier and are leaning to more of a red, black and stainless steel look. We used to debate over colours as James wanted blue and brown together and I wanted blue red and yellow. I’m a fan of primary colours. More and more though we’ve realized how much we both really like red. And I don’t mean that yellow red that is like a poppy colour. We like a good rich blue red. With our kitchen things, it’s a chili red and it really warms my heart. We do have some orange thrown in for good measure, as a bunch of the things we got from the wedding are fall colours. I think we’ll save those for the autumn.

Anyhow – back to the fridge.

We really didn’t care if we had a freezer bottom or top fridge – although I know the world is trying to go in that direction. To be horribly honest, we really don’t use our fridge that much. We use our freezers all the time though. Yes, I said Freezers. We eat out too much and forget about the food in our fridge with the kitchen being on the other end of the house. We spend most of our time in the living room. We eat there and we socialize there. We love it as it’s truly the coziest room in the house. If we didn’t have to eat and therefore cook, we probably would never go to the kitchen at all. I know with the new house the kitchen is right in the centre of everything. I can see us spending much more time there. Also, we love our new table and I really look forward to sitting there eating dinner and looking outside. How wonderful will it be to sit at your kitchen table and see the sun!

James was really looking forward to getting a deal with the fridge. He’s a huge bargain hunter – something that I’m sure most people wouldn’t really believe. But he analyzes big purchases and will not buy something unless he feels that he’s getting a great price. Thus the deal with our appliances and dining table. We both agreed that the price would win out over minor scratches and dents. But with Boxing Day Sales on all over the area, he really wanted to get looking for a great deal. Every day for over a week we were in and out of stores at least three at a time. He was obsessed with a deal. Amazingly, he found a fantastic deal in Kitchener when he went out without me. I had found the ad for the fridge in the K-W Record and told him about it. He wanted to get shaking first thing in the morning. I trust his judgement – he is the cook in our relationship. So I stayed home. The price amazed me as it was lower than many of the scratch and dent deals we had found at other places. He ended up coming back to Sears in Cambridge, they price matched it – gave him 10% off and we had bought a fridge.

I’m glad that it’s cooled him a little bit, as we are hoping to go and see our house again this weekend with our parents. That will be the true time when they give the stamp of approval. I want to measure everything and get a feel for where the outlets are and such. Also, I’m dying to see it again!

I’ve had HGTV on all day. Yes, I’m a fanatic. It was on when I had a three hour nap so even in my sleep I was watching. On HGTV, I’ve loved watching House Hunters and Property Virgins. They remind me how it was going through the houses we went through. How we went through so many houses but after finding the one we ended up buying we were done. It was so satisfying. We both didn’t want to love it so much, but in the end it was perfect for us. People predicted it – and it’s funny how when watching these shows you can predict it too. There is a certain look the people get in their eye and a certain way of debating use of space that lets you know which one they are going to choose. I know for us, the only area really up for debate is the spare bedroom, but I’m sure we can find some sort of use for it until we have kids in a few years.

I’m so bloody excited to get in. My boxes are piled on two corners of the living room, in the office and in the bedroom. Even with that, we have so much still left to do! Moving is not that easy!