First Houseguest

Yesterday we starting moving into the house after giving the house a couple of extra days to air out after the fumigation. We had a surprising first houseguest that Jai discovered in the front planter box. It was either a giant mouse or a small rat, but either way, it was gross! Here's a picture of Jai bravely pulling it out to throw away. I was expecting to see some dead bugs, but that was actually the only dead thing we saw...

Our second guest was much more welcome. Betty, the sweet old lady across the street came over to give us some cookies. :) She bakes cookies for the neighbours every Friday and we're privileged enough to be on her VIP list.

A few contractors came by the house to check out the renovation situation. Every single one has told us to get rid of the huge stone fireplace in the family room. I get the feeling that the neighbours really admired it when the former house owner put it in, so we'll probably break a couple of hearts when it gets chiseled to pieces and put in a dumpster. Oh well, I'd rather have a big screen TV, thank you very much!

After a short afternoon nap we were back in action checking out paint at Restoration Hardware at Valley Fair. Our realtor, Tim Dang (who is awesome...free plug!), suggested we start looking at paint at that store, if we want a contemporary look and high quality paint. Jai's gonna be sorry he suggested that because I saw a thousand other awesome (but expensive) things there. I picked up some moisturizing hand soap from Bath and Body Works (4 for $10 right now) since my hands have been developing a rough, manish quality since this moving/renovating project started. :S Interestingly, we're learning that giving our textured and rough walls a "smooth" finish is going to be a pricey and difficult job. I hope the same won't be true of my hands in a year. :)