Hello Gorgeous!

Meet Aubrey!

This is our smiley, thriving, almost 9 month old daughter!  She's our whole world! Along with our fur babies of course!
After a longgg pregnancy with morning sickness (they really should call it morning, noon, and night sickness if you ask me!), sciatic nerve pain, swollen feet and ankles (well, kankles if I'm being honest), mood swings, multipule "problems" with  my placenta, Aubreys kidneys ext.(they didn't amount to anything (thank god!)) and just being uncomfortable all of the time!
I did not enjoy being pregnant what so ever and I really wish I did! But to be honest, I never really gave it a chance... Jason and I got pregnant and ended up having a complicated pregnancy and we lost it.... To say the least I needed a break from trying... For a while. During this time our beautiful niece was born! I couldn't help but get baby fever again! (and a little jealousy was in there to too be honest. And I did have a few "why not me" moments...) After a few months of trying again, we got pregnant! I was so excited, but I felt like I couldn't celebrate because I was still grieving our first loss, and the loss of our newborn neice. It was trying times and details I do not wish to get into, but I do feel like I didn't experiance my pregnancy with Aubrey as I would have liked too!

Skipping to labour and delivery:
After over 24 hours of labour, three of those hours pushing, one failed epidural and a spinal tap later, I had Aubrey via cesarean! We welcomed her to the world on April 16th! All 8lbs 10 oz, and 22 inches of her!

So that's my birth and pregnancy story for you!
I am currently on mat leave and working with Aubrey, helping her learn to crawl! She wants to so bad! Here are a few milestones she's reached and where she's at!

- she can say "mumma" and "bubba"
- she can stand with assistance
- is sitting on her own
- experiencing new whole foods every week! (blueberry waffles were on the menu today! )
- she has two teeth
- loves animals especially Murphy our cat, and Winston our Victorian Bulldog

She has excellent motor skills and an awesome sence of humor, she's always laughing! When she was first born people often said she looked like Jason, more and more now people are saying she looks like me! Thank god! All that work for nothing! 😋

And that's that.

We just had our first Christmas with her and it was amazing! She was so spoiled and i am still going through all our stuff! haha We need to find places for everything! Tomorrow will be the day I tackle the rest of it! And put away most of our Christmas decorations (well at least the tree) if Aubrey will allow me too!
 Now adays  its hard to even get a relaxing shower in, and that's the truth! Good thingI have such a supportive fiance and not doing it all on my own! (single mom's and dad's kudos!)

Well that's it for now!


Talk soon,

TLD

The Half Bath

You Gotta Start Somewhere...


Welcome back!

So for those of you who know us, Jason and I don't really know anything about renovating, but we like to consider ourselves pretty handy people. I for one have a love for interior design! And more often then not find myself spending money on house stuff rather then anything else lol.
We also have got a lot of "handy help" from Jason's parents... Thank you Ron and Shelley! They have bailed us out of a water leak or two in the past year and a half lol.

Dirty sink... held up by metal poles... weird right?




Here she is ---->



Our very first house project! We descided to do this first, due to the fact it was our smallest space. So if we messed up... (fingers crossed) then we wouldn't be out of pocket by too much.

We messed up... well sorry, Jason messed up! lol



Here's the story behind it....

We wanted to save as much money as possible doing this reno. And I mean who doesn't right!? So for our first Christmas in our house we asked for gift cards instead of presents and managed to get $300.00 in gift cards alone! (Thank you to our wonderfull family for them!)



This is our lovely toilet before...

 Here's what the $300.00 got us....
- Vanity with granet counter tops
$120.00 from Lowes, we got it on sale!
(SCORE!)

- Wall paper and wall papering tools: Trough, sponges and a flat edged spatula thingy lol (to adhese the wall paper to the wall and get the bubbles out) No glue was nessisary because it is self adhesive wall paper.
$60.00
- Flooring crap (lol): morter, grout, putty tools and a floater to lay the morter. As well as a few buckets to mix in.
$75.00
- Tile boarder: The tiles I wanted weren't enough to cover the main peice of flooring in the 1/2 bath but it was leaving a noticable gap around the edges. That's when I thought it would look cool to do a boarder! Jason wasn't sure about it, but now he loves the idea! : )
$25.00
*All of these things weren't even prices, with taxes and everthing we payed out of pocket only $52.29!

So that's what we got for our $300.00. But we still need to disguss our flooring...
So again, to save money, we went to our local reuse store! If you haven't been you need to go! I got 6 18x18 tiles for $10.00!
So, if you've been keeping track we have only spent $62.29 out of pocket so far! Oh! And I forgot to say we got two new toilets as a house warming from a friend of Jason's and mine! HAHA Thanks for the throwns Tony!

So that flooring I was telling you about... the one we got from the reuse store that was only $10.00... ya Jason cut too much off of it for the toilet hole, so there is a big gap between the toilet and the tile : (
And the thing with reuse stores is they don't have the same tile in stock... they just have what they have. So, unfortunitally, we could not get any more of that tile!

So now our 1/2 is sitting and sitting until Jason desides he wants to try again! (it's been a year now... LOL) Jason's dad says "it really is a water closet now!" lol.

Summary - Half bath is sitting as "storage" for now.
                 - We have to decide and buy more tile to put down.
                 - Still have to buy bead board and trim (this is         going half way up the wall, I didn't mention this yet appox. $40.00)
                - Most of all the tools we need/needed we had already or we borrowed from his parents. This has saved us big $$$!

And that's it! We are waiting for it to be finished! (I am waiting for Jason to get a fire lit under his bum lol)

House Rule #2: Give a man space... but not too much! Other wise things like this happen... lol
TLD

Ps. Will post progress soon!



Oh hi there!

This is us after dirt track racing!

Hey everyone!

It's been a while since my first post about Winston in Potty Training 101.

For those of you who don't know us, my name is Tiffany and my boyfriends name is Jason. You can read about us in our bio! But the just of it is, we are a young couple who have been together for over 5 years now! We have a dog Winston, whom we both adore! (most of the time... lol) And I'm sure I will be talking about him more then once on this blog... (proud mom! lol)

We have alot of stories and gaining alot of experiances along with our trials and tirbulations, that we always love to share with our friends and family, and we wanted somewhere where we can have keepsakes of all of them! So... what better way then a blog!

So I hope you guys enjoy this! And I hope that it brings all of our family and friends along our renovation journey with us! All though anyone welcome! :)

House Rule #1: The women is always right! (In our house, this is the way! (lol) What about you guys?)

TLD

Potty Training 101

After a couple of encounters with Fiona and her puppies were learnt that Fiona’s mom had trained them on pee pads. Pee pads are layers of paper bound together to form a mat. They puppy-training pads have a sent that attracts the puppies to them. And once they have peed there they get the drift… or so they said.

We bought the pads at Petsmart for something like $20.00. We found out afterward that these pads are the same thing as the “senior pads” for beds, and they’re a lot bigger and way cheaper. You can pick these up at a shoppers drug mart near you. The only difference was they didn’t have a sent to them. If you are having trouble with the puppy not knowing wear to go then take the mat and dab it in one of the puppies accidents. They will pick up on the pee sent and then know to go there for the next time. You can also pick the puppy up as soon as you notice any of the accident sign I.e. squatting, smelling around for longer periods of time or after eating or drinking, playing or chewing. Once your puppy gets the hang off it move the pad closer and closer to your door (the door in which you want your puppy to go to when they want out) and eventually move the pad away, this will let the puppy know they need to go to the door if they have to go to the bathroom.

Unfortunately this method didn’t work for us. Winston would think it was a funny game and shred or drag the mat all over our apartment K. We couldn’t help but laugh it off, but it was a serious matter we needed to get him potty-trained quick, because we had carpet all over our apartment! (Ps. If you make lists (like I doJ) make sure to write down puppy stain remover or resolve (this is what we liked the best), and a lot of paper towel. We buy ours in bulk at Costco).

So after the whole potty training mat fiasco, we had to figure something else out… So what we decided to do, and is recommended by many vets and trainers, was to put him on a schedule. He was already eating on schedule so it wasn’t really a huge change for us. We were feeding him three times a day, breakfast, lunch and super (which has stopped now) but the vet recommended doing this in his puppy stages, so we did. 10 minutes after Winnie ate we would take him out for a walk (unfortunately our apartment doesn’t have a backyard). He would pooh and pee, and we did this every time after he ate. *Remember bring some treats with you so after they pee or pooh outside they know they did the right thing. It didn’t take him long to get him in to the hang of it. We took him outside roughly 10 to 15 minutes after he was chewing or playing as well. We liked the idea of also rewarding him inside, so he knew to come in right away after he was done with his business, and not taking his time.

We were also told to not rube his nose it, or scolded him if we found an accident we didn’t notice until later. You should never leave your puppy unattended for any amount of time unless in a crate or caged off anyways, for the safety of your puppy, and all household items (lol).
Winston still had a accident here or there until recently actually, and he is almost a year old. Which is primarily our fault because we gave him too much too soon and were leaving him out of his crate unattended.

The main thing is stick to a schedule once you have one. I know that some things come up and can’t be helped, but after he or she is done eating make sure they go outside, and find a schedule that not only works for your dog, but works for you. If you work nights, get them on a schedule that works for you.

Well that’s all for now,


Happy following, training and good luck!


TLD