Let's Talk Turkey

External Turkey Roaster via Life.com

Starting tomorrow (and actually, a little bit tonight) your grocery store is going to be a madhouse. Haven't got your wine cellar stocked yet? The parking lot at the liquor store will need traffic police. Sharpen your knives, break out the pie dish, dust off the extra leaves for your dining table, it's Thanksgiving weekend and it's time to whip up the big feast.

Except not for me. 

Don't get me wrong. Thanksgiving is my favourite holiday of the year. I love turkey dinners and I love having a big bunch of family and friends over at my place to celebrate.

With moving only 6 weeks ago, looking after little B. full-time and both of us working, The Do-tique just isn't quite ready for a big holiday production yet. 

That's why we're choosing not to do-it-ourselves this year and opting to leave dinner to the experts instead. You'll find us trying out the Thanksgiving buffet at the Hotel Saskatchewan with another young family that just moved here about the same time that we did. 

Hotel Saskatchewan

No shopping, no prep or cooking or clean up. Lots of time to take naps and walks and have friends over for dessert and maybe even unpack a few boxes.

The other upside? Works out to be considerably less expensive than DIY (especially when you consider labour). The only downside is that you'll be the only one in the office not having a turkey sandwich next Wednesday since leftovers aren't usually included!

Missing all our far-away friends and wishing all my dear readers a Happy Thanksgiving! 

DIY Rating: 0 Sometimes, you just have to choose your DIY battles

When life gets way too hectic, no shame in leaving 

the hard work to the experts and heading 

out to a hotel or restaurant for a holiday meal. 

Most places have special event menus and seating times 

and though things get tight closer to the date, we've always managed 

to find a last-minute reservation when we've needed to.

White, but not quite right...

Have you ever tried looking up advice online about picking paint colours? Let me tell you, there are a lot of tips out there! However, it's fairly well-accepted that this is one of the most difficult steps in decorating and you really have to be in the exact space with the exact chips/samples to make a final call.

This time, I thought I'd try out the new(ish) line of Sarah Richardson paint colours offered through Para. If you're a newbie to this sort of marketing, the plan is that the famous designer picks out their top colours from a paint line and they are sold sort of as a feature set. So, if you like a particular person's style, you can get their look by choosing their top colour picks from the line fairly easily. It can make the job of looking at a full range of tints much more approachable.

Here is a clip of SR talking about her line and the process of picking colours:

Did anyone else catch the Christie Mansion in the 

background for the Tommy Smythe comments here?

The truth is that most people get paint colours wrong and that includes even the real super-star designers. (I don't have the clip, but there are even scenes on TV where the illustrious Sarah Richardson realizes she's got a miss!)

Our goal was to pick out a creamy white for the office. Something like this: 

I may also mention that Benjamin Moore alone has 160+ shades of white, so it's not an easy colour to get right!

This is what I picked out:

• Sunbeam
• 
• SR45
• 
• Sunbeam is a toasty white that can be used to warm a cooler palette.
  
  
  
  

And this is how it turned out on my wall:

(The photos are quite dark, but you can hopefully see how golden yellow this turned out!)

Quite a bit more yellow than expected. 

What went wrong here? I mis-judged my own instinct to go with something that looked paler and muddier on the chip and took this one at the suggestion of the paint rep at Lowes - who did also admit that she herself had never worked with these colours. (Mistake #1! Never take product advice from someone who has never used what they're selling you!)

So, loyal reader, what can you do if the same thing happens to you? If you have a reasonably good understanding of how colours work, you can almost always have a gallon of paint re-tinted. What I did was request a small shot of brown tint to tone down the yellow and a few shots of white to pale the colour and reduce the saturation. The end result looks like this:

Even with daylight and overhead lighting, this room is still dark and the shade
 came out more "french vanilla" or yellow than creamy white.

I'm not 100% happy, but we'll see if we can work with it once furniture goes in. What do you think?

The lucky part is that the actual painting is the easy step and our hard work prepping the walls won't have to be repeated in order to adjust the final look of the room. 

DIY Rating: 6

It takes time and practice to master the art of choosing paint colours. 

Look for an experienced sales person at the store 

to help give some suggestions on good tints 

AND 

to offer their expertise in re-tinting your choice in case it doesn't work out!

New, but not you?

We're all used to TV shows and renovation blogs where we see horrible images of dated wall coverings and green shag carpeting being ripped out and painted over in order to create something non-offensive, reasonably updated and boring that will easily sell on the real-estate market. 

But what happens if you buy one of these houses and the decor just isn't you?

That's kind of what happened to us in our last move.

The choice was between a house that hadn't been updated AT ALL since 1975 - I'm talking museum worthy kitchen, green shag and a lot of original (expensive to replace) fixtures - and a house that had been through quite a bit of upgrading since 1975, but still needed a bit of coaxing to fully bring into the 21st century.

While we decided against a major reno project and took the fixed up house, a lot of the decor choices that the previous owners made fall into the category of "Home-Depot Decor." Not to say that the Depot is a bad place, it's just that it's kind of overpowering when you make all your decorating choices at one store. What I'm talking about here is a lot of brushed nickel and dark, taupey-brown paint. (ok, I have found quite a bit of Canadian Tire decor in here too, but you get the picture!)

Back in 1989, my parents bought a house that had also been newly decorated. It was awful, but because it was new, they kept the bizarre wallpaper up and decorated around it. I hated it, but they refused to rip it out.

Do you change it even though it's in good shape? We were dealing with a dark, olive-green in the office, which has very little natural light. Though I love all those images of dark, moody rooms in Elle Decor, somehow, it just doesn't work as part of the 1970's architectural aesthetic. 

Dark looks good when...high ceilings, large window, use of mirrors and white rug/furniture/mantel piece

Sadly, I have 8ft ceilings, small window and dark furniture!

After a month, I decided to bite the bullet and start priming it out. My save-a-dime instincts rebel at the thought of re-painting a freshly-painted room BUT sometimes, there are colors (like dusty rose in that 1989 kitchen) that just cannot work.

(This is my second attempt at priming over dark green and let me tell you, it's a pain in the A**!)

Here are the "before" shots:

Way darker at night - these were daytime with all the lights on and using flash!

I'm hoping that I will like the finished product more than what we had and still not fully decided that I made the right choice to change this out, but maybe there was a reason that this was the only room not included in the online sale photos?

If you're thinking about a dark color like this, my suggestion would be to seriously consider whether you have the architectural details in place - like windows and higher ceilings. Our window is covered by the porch, so the light is very filtered.

Secondly, this type of green works well as an accent colour - let's say, like above white wainscot or around a wall with cream/off-white cabinetry. Four, full-sized walls was way too much of a good thing!

Finally, the person who picked this paint should also have aimed a few shades lighter to get the cozy, saturated feel they were looking for that was still green - paint always looks darker on the walls and this one was verging into black in the evening.

DIY Rating: 5

About the same amount of work to "live with it" 

and decorate around something I didn't love 

as the work involved in changing it right off the bat.

Still wish someone else was doing the painting work for me though!

The Mov-tique

It has been almost a month. We moved away from our beloved Kingston home on July 25th and this Saturday is the big move-in day for Regina.

I spent some time the other night looking at before and after photos of the Kingston home and enjoyed the satisfaction of how well the place turned out in the end. It will be interesting to start again and incorporate some new elements as well as some repeats from the last house into this place.

The transition will be from a 1956 1 1/2 storey home to a 1976 split-level. Both, interestingly, are mainly white on the exterior and somewhat similar in size.

Stay tuned for some exciting reveals of the new rooms and of the interesting antique furniture that I scoured the Eastern Ontario countryside to find in the last few weeks leading up to the move. I know, who buys furniture BEFORE they move?? It's just that I've developed a love for antiques during our years in Kingston and this was my last chance to be able to bring some of those pieces to the West, where they are much more scarce.

Luckily, our shipping container weighed in finally at about 8,000 pounds, which was considerably lighter than the 11,000 pounds we had been quoted. We'd literally assessed each item in our home and tried to decide whether it was worth keeping at $1.50/pound - a lot went the way of the garage sale to make room for the new furniture!

In terms of DIY planning, it made sense to have the house moved professionally and the china/dishes and pictures packed by experts. We packed the rest ourselves. Overall, the cost and effort involved in going the 100% DIY route and picking up a self-move truck wasn't worth it. We decided that Hubby should drive the car west instead of shipping it, so I'll find out in a couple of days whether he'd ever recommend that method to anyone else!

Hope you are all enjoying the summer!

(promise more pictures next post!)

Christmas in July?

Caneel Bay Resort

With a cross-Canada move coming up for us in a matter of mere weeks, it's time here at The Do-tique to begin the process of de-cluttering and de-provisioning. Estimates coming in on the moving costs are suggesting that the cost of moving will work out to about $1 per pound of stuff. That means that unless something is literally worth its weight in gold, it has to be let go. That also goes for all the provisions and dry goods around the house - which I'd naturally re-stocked mid-spring unaware that we'd be moving so soon.

This all brings me to the topic of Christmas in July...How do you use up Christmas-like ingredients in the middle of the summer?

I had a can of pumpkin filling in the pantry and a tonne of oatmeal - They became delicious breakfast granola for a week or two. We also had a small turkey that we bought on sale right after the holidays that turned itself into a BBQ feast - quartered the bird, brined it for a day and grilled it with homemade BBQ sauce - better than Thanksgiving! Finally, I found a package of gingerbread cookie dough that I'd stashed away in the freezer and thought it would work pretty well as a base for ice-cream sandwiches.

My methodology here was to take the same approach as if I were using brownies and bake the gingerbread as large squares.

Fill them with ice cream, freeze the whole lot and then cut them into smaller bars with a hot knife:

The results were amazing and the sandwiches got better after a few days once the gingerbread spices had begun to flavor the vanilla ice cream. Interestingly, Chatelaine stole my idea for the cover of their August  issue! 

Photo by James Tse via www.chatelaine.com

Here's the link to the Chatelaine recipe.

DIY Rating: 10

Yes, go, NOW and de-stock that freezer 

and pantry before the end of summer! 

You have some crazy tasty stuff in there waiting 

for you if you get creative about it!

Overall, all three of these options were easy to make 

and helped stretch the grocery budget a tiny bit.

What's Been Done?

So, what's been doin' at The Do-tique? 

Yes, dear readers, it has been a while! I didn't know how loved this blog was until it went quiet for a while and the emails and requests for more started coming in.

To be honest, the picture above from the movie "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" pretty much describes it all. Here's what has been happening:

Yves St. Laurent Tuxedo            Image courtesy of Retro Threadz

There hasn't been quite as much baking, crafting, decorating or home projecting this spring at The Do-tique. The DIY projects have all been centered around building a format for my "real job" which is philanthropic advisory - helping charities ask for support and showing donors how to plan their giving. 

I wanted to take the time to learn about and create an online marketing strategy for my planned giving work through LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging and a website. It's been an interesting journey so far and the best part has been the chance to meet and work together with people from across North America. I didn't realize at first that such amazing connections could develop out of Twitter!

You can check out my DIY website project for this whole initiative at www.christinaattard.com

(On the overall, I'd get a web-expert to set up the site for me next time, but more on that another time!)

Usually, I'm blogged and tweeted out by the end of the day and have neglected to post updates here.

Roger's House Truck                        Image via House Trucks

In other news, we learned at the end of May that my husband was going to need to move to Regina, Saskatchewan this summer. That meant prepping, staging and selling the house in a very short amount of time and setting up a crazy shopping trip where I had only a few days to buy a house in city I'd never visited before. (It's left me a little in shock!) Luckily, everything worked out and we'll have a whole new set of home projects starting this August. 

Lessons learned: a deadline can make Hubby move very, very quickly on all those little house maintenance and touch-up projects that have been sitting around for two years. Our basement was looking wonderful and I think that effort did, in the end, add great value to the house when it came time to sell.

I'm battling my DIY mentality and struggling with whether we should hire the moving company to do a full-pack. It will all be in the numbers in terms of time vs. money / sanity.

Finally, the leader of the Junior Small Society here at home, Baby, is really not much of a baby any more these days! We're also having a lot of fun going to the park, taking her for bike rides and generally running around after her. 

What's been happening with you? Anyone want to challenge the DIY mystique and share a guest blog post on their most recent projects? (I'm hearing of other house moves, people getting chickens, bathrooms getting renovated...so lots to share, dear readers!)

Submission guidelines: 1-2 photos, paragraph describing what you did or decided not to do, DIY rating.

DIY Rating: 10

Really, can you stop life from taking over sometimes?

Promise to get back to this blog, 

but also feel great about my new ventures over at 

www.christinaattard.com/blog.html 

A Basement Vocation?

We all know the rule, you live at home in the basement until you're married, right? And if that marriage, job, move to a yoga centre in California doesn't work out, the basement will be ready for your return, still decked-out in fake wood panelling and orange curtains with mom upstairs making meals and doing your laundry. Just like in That 70's Show...

I have recently had an idea for a book that I'd like to publish on financial advice that I would give to my Millennial generation peers entitled, How to Move Out of the Basement and Never Come Back. Since I'm not a professional financial advisor (yet, anyway), my words of wisdom are mostly anecdotal and gained from my own experiences. Since writing a book won't do much to keep me out of the basement personally, I thought I'd just share a few of the ideas I have in mind here at The Do-tique.

Xylophone jobs were harder to get than anticipated!

Living at Home Does Not Help Save Money

How often have you, your siblings or your friends used the old adage, "I'm just living at home for a while to save some money so that..."?

The problem is that a few years go by and the bank accounts are still pretty much empty. 

Living at home doesn't save anyone money - I mean if it's between street life and basement dwelling, by all means, live at home - but the tactic that really helps anyone save money is to have a savings goal and a savings plan. Usually, if you're working and not getting resourceful about supporting yourself - ie. get a roommate, cut expenses - than you might have some work to do in terms of developing better spending and saving habits before you can expect your parents to help you.

Paying rent is not always throwing money away - do the math on property taxes and interest rates and sometimes renting can be better than buying.

Pact with the Devil (1633)

Avoid Unnecessary Debts

When I graduated, I had a student loan that was worth more than my annual starting salary in my first job after graduation. I graduated in 2003 and cleared my loan by 2007.

The key is to continue living like a student for as long as you can while you still can and pay those suckers down. My strategy was to set up a savings account and move an amount over at the start of each month from my paycheck. If I needed the money later in the month, it was there for me. I would make a lump-sum payment on my loans each time the savings account balance reached $1,000. Soon, bigger purchases like cars, weddings, mortgages are going to start coming around and no one wants to be stuck at 30 still paying off purchases they made at 19. 

Part of this mentality is choosing not to make luxury purchases that you have to borrow to acquire. This does not mean always use cash, but the bottom line is to re-claim a mentality that you have to save for things like clothes, electronics, trips. 

By living as debt-free as possible, if your income changes suddenly, you're not carrying monthly debt payments as part of your fixed expenses. It might help you close the gap on a few more rent payments until times get better.

Saving Can "Buy" Time

Granted, young, single people rarely have room in their budgets for major savings, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't start looking at the small things. Finance gurus are always showing us how much those Starbucks trips and magazine purchases add up to annually. We noticed a huge difference just by taking bagged lunches to work and cutting down our restaurant visits to once a week or less.

So few people in my generation are working in full-time jobs with benefits and insurance. Most people are surprised to find out that EI benefit payments do not equal their regular salary or they are simply not eligible to make a claim. Events like job loss or the birth of a child might mean you need to rely on your savings to stay out of the basement. Do you have a good idea of what your monthly expenses are and how many months you could survive for on savings? 

Once you've saved an emergency amount, you can start thinking about moving excesses into your retirement fund. The days of jobs with pensions are pretty well over for the Millennial generation and it's going to be up to us to self-manage this process. 

Their mommies wouldn't let them
bring their guns home from work!

Build Your "A" Team

There are all kinds of professionals who can guide you  through the steps that will help keep you out of the basement. Some are amazing and will treat you as well as their own children. You need to start looking for these people and getting to know them long before you'll need their help.

Your Parents - seriously and honestly think about their spending and saving habits and how they have managed their money, careers and hard times in the past. Ask them about these things if you can. The key to understanding your own ways of dealing with financial matters is buried in your experience as part of that family. It will help you to know what worked and what behavior you need to avoid.

Financial Advisor - these folks do more than just help the wealthy! Often, their advice is free and they get paid on commission through products you may eventually purchase through them. Shop around until you find someone you trust and ask them to help you create a financial plan. 

Insurance and Mortgage Brokers - yes, you are indeed invincible, but just in case something happens, you are going to need to be insured. Agents can shop out the best policies for your needs. Question those automatic insurance checkboxes on major purchases and make sure you are getting the right coverage at the best prices. 

As for a mortgage broker, you will be glad that you got pre-approval on a fantastic interest rate when you happen to find that perfect home to buy rather than having to scramble and risk losing a chance to make an offer. He or she can identify what you need to do to become eligible for a mortgage in case you do have some other major debts or bad credit in your past.

Real Estate Agent - buying a home for the first time is a major emotional and administrative experience. An agent can help you to get realistic about what your dream house costs and this will help you with developing a specific dollar amount you need to save for your down-payment. Get to know their personality long before that 2 AM negotiation session when you're ready to buy. Stay in touch with them afterward to discuss market prices and recoup values on renovations in your area before you put in a $10,000 hot tub. We'd spent three years getting to know our agent casually and it paid off when we ended up in a fast-moving bidding war over our dream home.

I am going to share this post with some professionals and perhaps they will have their own comments to add. What are your thoughts as a reader? Agree? Disagree? 

DIY Rating: 10 and 0!

Unless you experience some very unlucky circumstances, 

staying out of the basement is a total DIY project!

That means get resourceful about bringing in experts who 

can help you get yourself the lifestyle you actually want.

And a bedtime that's as late as YOU want it to be!