Last week we finally got two of the items we ordered for our entrance! We ordered them before christmas by Pier1 and Crate & Barel. Leigh the coat tree was easy to set up and was mounted in 5 minutes, the unpacking took longer. But the mirror was a bit more difficult since it’s a really heavy mirror. But I also mentioned to hook it up to our dry wall, I’m surprised how much these walls can hold.

I also got a very nice present form Danielle, our 8th Monopoly set. This time it’s a special 80th anniversary edition which she found at the Toys “R” Us across the street.

After enhancing our home on Friday night we decided to do something active to start the weekend. We started with a visit to another Dutch Store/lunchroom on Holland Street East in Bradford. It’s called Dutch Treats and here we had some Frikandellen and Kroketten.

Early afternoon we continued our way to Barrie. Barrie is located on the Kempfenbelt Bay from Lake Simcoe. We wandered through Heritage Park, got some Hot Chocolate before we decided to take a closer look at the ice-fishing which took place in the bay. It was extremely cold due to the wind and the ice but it was well worth it. We stood on the lake for about an hour before we decided to go back to our car and drive home.

Sunday we relaxed a bit and Danielle baked some delicious cupcakes. I’ve to say the Red Velvet’s are getting better and better each time she bakes them and I’m officially addicted. The other ones are the Pim’s editions which is a chocolate-orange cupcake with orange frosting, also delicious.

We also started working our again, but due to the cold weather this is not possible outside. Lucky for us our condominium has a fitness center included. We both started last week for the first time. In the evenings it’s quite busy but so far I’ve been lucky 3 times and found a free treadmill. The first time was quite difficult it was warm there was no air to cool and I was sweating extremely. But after a couple of times you seem to get used to it. Let’s hope my knee holds out a long time this year.

During the week we visited Absolute Comedy together, every Wednesday it’s the so-called Am/Pro night which means that there 5 Amateurs, 1 Professional MC and a Professional. This time 2 of the Amateurs’ performances were funnier as the professional. Overall it was a bit less than the other couple times we went but we still ad a great evening.

And finally Amazon.ca got the stock problems sorted out and we were able to finish our big project related to our movie collections. We collected about 860 different DVD and Blu-Ray boxes (over 1000 discs) over the last 10 years and we always had these sorted in some kind of library. Unfortunately this is very space consuming and in our Condo there is just not enough wall space. So we have decided to change the storage concept from this (12 Ikea Benny’s:

Into 5 Media Binders:

It was a lot of work but it saved so much space, we’ve still enough place in the binders since every binder holds up to 272 discs and we’ve a 6th binder as spare. And now I feel like getting a coffee…

And it didn’t look as good as we hoped. The place looked really empty after our beautiful Christmas tree was gone…

Needless to say we went shopping in furniture stores on this clouded Saturday morning to look for possible solutions for this gap in our living room. We had some ideas but we wanted to see them for real instead of online pictures. We are in general in-store shoppers instead of online shoppers except for electronics and media. After we checked out the first the Restoration Hardware Outlet Store in the Toronto Premium Outlets in Halton Hills, we saw some nice things but nothing for that empty spot so we left soon while it started to snow a little bit.

On the way towards the outlets we had checked out Pier1 and Urban Barn before it started to snow for real. We decided to have a warm lunch instead of a dinner and went to Montana’s Cookhouse. It’s a nice restaurant with a lot of theming inside and a nice and cozy fireplace. Danielle had a dish with chicken, mushroom sauce and rice but I tried something new… It’s called the Chicken Waffle Club Sandwich it’s described in the following way: “Between two flame-grilled Belgian sugar waffles, we sandwich our southern fried chicken breast with maple sriracha, lettuce, tomato, mayo and 2 strips of double-smoked bacon, and serve it with your choice of fries. Why waffles? Because bread needs a lunch break too. I can tell you the first half was delicious, but the second half was just too much. I didn’t finish my plate and wasn’t hungry for the rest of the day…


Danielle drove back home to practice her snow-driving skills by driving through this snowstorm and it went well, although there was some slow-traffic we were back home in 30 minutes (3 minutes delay).

On sunday the weather was beautiful and we still hadn’t found the perfect solution for our living room so we decided towards Lawrence and Avenue to visit the Royal Lighting store, on the way their we walked into my boss which is quite funny in a city of over 2.6 million people about 4km from your place. After we came back Danielle did her magic in the kitchen as more nights during the first workweek of 2015.

During the week the temperature dropped towards -19 degrees Celsius and I can tell you that ain’t fun, especially not when it feels like -27 due to the windchill. And off course I needed to get gas on the coldest evening of the week. Lucky for me the gas price gave me a warm feeling and I had fun paying with only 0.919$/liter (0.66 EUR). Later that week prices dropped another 2 cents.

Friday evening we went to dinner at the Against the Grain Tavern about 4 km from our place, we both had a delicious burger and I even had a German Style Weizen. The first one since we left Germany and from a new brewery and it tasted great.

During the week we came to the conclusion that a planter would be the perfect solution for the empty space and I found something nice near Mississauga, the Lechuza Store. It is a German brand with a very unique solution which means you only need to water your plants once every 12 weeks, I believe that’s perfect for us since we never had a plant in our house before.

Saturday morning early we first picked up the still missing nightstand lamp from Crate & Barrel, we checked out the Tommy Hilfiger store since they are starting to get the nicer European Collection in the store for this season (previously they only had the Outlet & Macy’s collection). And after a coffee stop at the Starbucks we drove to the Lechuza store.

After looking around at this combined Playmobil and Lechuza Store. Yes they sell both and maybe a fun fact is, all the Lechuza products are produced in Zirndorf, a town in Franconia about 30 minutes away from our former home. We found the perfect planter, the Rondo 40 and it was on sale. But the planter only wasn’t everything we needed a plant 2 which we found at the Home Depot in Brampton.

Close to that Home Depot we found a Applebee’s, which we didn’t knew that it existed in Canada. You can guess our lunch was covered. Afterwards we drove back home. Here we installed the new stuff, I tested out or I had green fingers. Doesn’t it look professional in the kitchen?

And then we started on the next project, a new storage solution for our more than 900 DVDs. Due to multiple messed up deliveries from Amazon we couldn’t start this project earlier (our first time ordering was in November) and now after the 5th shipment we finally got a part of the correct items.

Still waiting for one other and then I’m ordering the rest to finish this project, hopefully it’s finished next weekend because that would mean that everything is unpacked.  But now it’s time for a movie…and it’s hard to pick one if you just had 900 going through your hands…