Because we are still at the point of decorating our condo our weekends mostly exists of shopping. Plus Christmas is coming, so now it also includes Christmas shopping. The already started to install the Christmas lights on our building and the streets, so our condo needs to be christmassy to.

On Wednesday we went to Absolute Comedy together with Martin and Sabrina. It was Pro-Am night, so there was stand-up comedy from both professionals as amateurs and it was really fun, some comedians more than others but it was a great night. We also ordered a so-called “Stein” which its 1 liter of beer and you can keep the “Stein” where the beer is in. And it is just so cool that tis was only a five-minute walk from our condo.

On Thursday I went together with Martin to the Canadian Tire Christmas Showroom which is not far from our place to look at all the Christmas stuff. You did not hear me say that our Christmas tree is not beautiful, but as we are in Canada now we to “canadianize” it. And this showroom is just the place to do that. So much Christmas stuff in all different colors. I could not decide what to buy so I will go back here together with Sander to buy some more stuff.

On Friday I decided I wanted to try and bake some chewy chocolate chip cookies. But when you wanna do that, you need chocolate chip and I did not have those. So after I went for a run in the morning I decided to walk to my favourite shop in Canada so far, which is the Bulk Barn. They sell everything you need to bake, so you can call it baking heaven. I used a recipe from marthastewart.com and it was really fun baking them and according to Sander they tasted good to. So I think I am going to bake some more of these cookies in the future. As Sander arrived home after work he picked me up at our condo and we drove tighter to the Canadian Tire Christmas Showroom and we bought stuff to “canadianize” our tree. As most of you know our tree is now filled with white and glass ornaments, we now decided to add the color red to the tree, so we bought “some” new stuff int his great store.

finally it was weekend and we continued the Christmas Shopping and we drove to the Yorkdale Mall to buy some more ornaments at Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel. We also we going to create something at the wall which leads to our bedroom and therefore we needed some shelves and picture frames. On Saturday evening we made it a lazy evening with movies and relaxing on our sofa.

On Sunday we went shopping again, but I already told Sander this week that I wanted to go somewhere we were not before and maybe also not only furniture shopping, so Sander found a shopping mall a bit further away in Burlington, the Mapleview Mall. The only condition was that I would drive there. So we left our condo and I drove to Burlington, which is like 45-50 minutes. We got something to eat there and did some relax-shopping at Victoria’s Secret, Roots and some other shops. After a couple of hours we drove back to Toronto and also stopped at Staples, the Beer Store and  Bulk Barn. Also this evening we could make our “Wall of Memories” ready because we found a place nearby to print the photos we wanted in the frames.

A new week had begun on Monday and this was the day our dining chairs we ordered a Crate & Barrel arrived. So finally we have some decent chairs to sit on at our dining table and when we have guests over at our place they do not have to bring their own chairs. While I was waiting for the chairs being delivered I had the idea to bake so-called “kruidnoten”. In the Netherlands now is the time Sinterklaas and with go the kruidnoten. I found a recipe online and they were not that bad, but I don’t think I am going to bake them again. I liked the chocolate chip cookies more…

Tuesday, my last day off 😉 Tomorrow I will start an English course across the street at Hansa Language Centre. So today I enjoyed the last day of really good weather (16 degrees and a lot of sun) by going for a run and in the afternoon I baked pizza. I needed to go in bed on time, because school starts at 09:00 am. I am joining the English Intensive Program, 4 hours a day for 16 weeks following grammar, reading, speaking and vocabulary classes. ope it is going to improve my English skills.

My first blog post since I started working! After my business trip to Germany I didn’t really had a jet lag, I only woke up a bit earlier as usual the first days but that was it.

On Wednesday I brought the first cupcakes to the office and going with the comments and the time they were all gone I think my colleagues liked them. On Wednesday another piece of furniture arrived, the Rochelle apartment sofa! And the sofa is perfect for our condo both size- and color-wise. After the sofa arrived Danielle went to Eaton Center for shopping and ended up at the Bulk Barn which is a something like a supermarket for baking products. And off course new stuff needs to be used as soon as possible so I brought the delicious orange cupcakes with lime frosting to the office on Thursday.

Thursday evening Danielle and I wanted to look for floor lamp to create some more light in the living room, so we made a shopping date in Yorkdale to look at a lamp I found online at the Crate & Barrel website. We expected a delivery time of multiple weeks or that the lamp wasn’t as beautiful in real as online but the opposite was true, we ordered the lamp and took it with us right away. Also we ordered 4 side chairs which will be delivered not he 10th of November. Furthermore we asked John for some ideas for a Rug, Curtains and an Ottoman. And I can tell you the ideas we got are really cool but we first ordered some swatch to check or the colours fit to our condo’s interior. The same evening I setup the floor lamp as Danielle prepared some Halloween cookies for in the office…

On Halloween I went to work dressed up as a Bavarian and I worked the whole day in Lederhosen. Defiantly not the best contestant in the Halloween contest but at least I can say that I participated. In the evening I drove back from the office together with Martin and although it was raining there were some families Trick-or-treating on the streets. We had something else planned, Martin and Sabrina came to our place for Nasi Goreng with peanut butter sauce. And Danielle did a great job, the most delicious peanut butter sauce I’ve ever eaten in my life…

The weekend we spent mainly on shopping at furniture stores where we ordered a nice glass desk for our guest suite / home office bought a nested ottoman for the hallway to have place to sit when we take off our shoes. On the way back home we went to Lowes and bought some simple hooks to hang the painting of New York and the cupcake sign on the wall. Here I found out that these hooks are available in a version where you do not need any tools. You just push the hook in the drywall and you’re done even I could do that. And not to forget we bought 800 christmas lights for our christmas tree…

Since the mounting of the hooks was so easy I started looking into a wall clock, we found something online at the Urban Barn but when we saw it in the store it was to large and not as nice. We decided to give up on that and search again on the internet when we were back home until we found the perfect clock at the Pottery Barn in the Yorkdale mall. Too bad we missed the promotion from yesterday which said 20% discount on one single item today only, until I found a sign which they forgot to remove from the store! Only minutes later we walked out of the store with a new clock.

But hey, I wrote something about Christmas lights! Yes since Halloween is over I felt like christmas and I decided to set up our christmas tree which we took with us. And so it happened that I was setting up the tree while we listened to a christmas playlist on Spotify everything seemed to be perfect until..I ran out of christmas lights! Lucky for me the Lowes is open on Sundays till 8pm which left me with 2 hours, I also decided to order a Belkin Wemo Insight Switch to remote control the christmas tree lights at the Futureshop 2 blocks up north from us. After I got 300 additional lights and the switch we finished our tree at around 9pm, although finished? I think we might bring some color in the tree this year since there are so many beautiful ornaments at the Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel.

Unfortunately our brand new clock was broken and so I went back to the store today to get a new clock. This was no problem at all and ever since I put the battery in the clock it’s ticking fine.