Vancouver & Our New Townhouse

Hello everyone and happy holidays! Sam and I just got back from Vancouver, BC. We were there for 8 nights looking for a place for us to live next year. For those of you who do not know - Sam's company just purchased a lab in Richmond and want Sam to head it up for 12-14 months. Canada here we come! So we found a great little townhouse in an amazing part of Vancouver, walking distance to everything including the beach! Everyone told me I would love Vancouver but I really had no idea how right they would be! We got a lot of snow while we were there, which is suppose to be unusual, but it was gorgeous none the less. I will be so super sad to leave our new home, our friends and my family - especially sad to not be around for my nephew's first year! (he should be joining us any day now, I know Natalie is ready to be a mommy)!! Please come visit us, it's 2-bedroom and such a fun little place. Has a private courtyard for Marley too, which is a huge plus!

Enjoy photos above of my first snow angel and gorgeous Vancouver!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Love to all,
Tiff (& Sam)!

Chez Fisher is open for business!

We officially have 3 bedrooms and a breakfast nook!! Sam did a wonderful unique painting for our master bedroom to go with our chocolate brown wall and blue comforter. It took a lot of work to get the middle bedroom done as we had destroyed it by removing the wood paneling when we first bought the house. Up until this past weekend it was nothing but storage. We had a lot of nails to remove, holes to fill, dry walling, painting, and we put the floor boards back in. Our front guest room didn't really need much work, though it has now become storage for tvs and tv stands as you can see, ha. They're not all as decorated as we would like but we're keeping them neutral and not spending money on them for now since we plan on renting the house out soon.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!! Love to all,

Tiff

Anniversary Trip to Breckenridge, CO!

Sam & I had such a great time on our trip to Breck - we took tons of photos, these are some of my faves, you can click on the slideshow at the bottom to view them all, I think...

I even got to reconnect with some old friends. I've known Kelley since I was 4 and haven't seen her in a few years. We got to meet her husband Ross, they live in Fort Collins, so we met up for the day in Boulder. Adrienne & I went to college together and she lives in Denver now, we had lunch @ her restaurant the day Sam & I were flying back to Houston. All in all it was a wonderful trip, just what Sam & I needed after so much stress & work on the house. Hope you enjoy the photos!

xo, Tiff (& Sam!)

Tug of War

I have a ton of amazing photos from our recent trip to Breckenridge...which I will try to post tonight or tomorrow. For now, you can see what Marley was busy doing when his parents were in Colorado...here you'll see his tug-o-war skills with his puppy-cousin Griff...

Some "After" Shots

We are going to take more, but here are some we took real quick before the housewarming party...

Housewarming Party

The day finally came for our housewarming party! Actually, it was probably a little early since we aren't technically finished with the house - but it gave us a goal to reach and also our weekends are booked until December, ha. It was a great day (which lasted long into the night), lots of people came by and some even brought gifts which was unexpected! My parents gave us a fire pit, which actually came in handy since Houston seems to be having a chilly Autumn for once. I think we would have lit it no matter what, who can resist staring at fire all night? It was really good showing everyone all of the hard work we've done and discussing what we still plan on doing. Those bedrooms and bathrooms don't know what they have coming to them! ha. Stay tuned for some "after" photos. I don't have all of them but I'll post some. Also Sam is putting together a slide show of before/after shots I will try to post at some point. This weekend we head to Breckenridge to finally celebrate our 1-year anniversary that was postponed due to Hurricane Ike. It'll be nice to get away and be forced to relax! We may end up doing DIY to the place we stay at, we can't help ourselves, haha. xo, Tiff & Sam

All Moved In!!

This past Friday we officially MOVED IN! After so many long days of hard work, our moving day actually came pretty quick. It was a very busy day for our house, at the same time our movers were trying to bring in all of our crap the granite and hardwoods were also being installed! So basically the movers had to put everything into the guest rooms so we could sort through it later once the floors were done. By the end of the day Friday, Sam's bestfriend Chris had flown in town, our granite countertops, new kitchen sink, and hardwood floors had been installed. The place is really looking amazing.

We finally have some furniture to sit on and a tv to watch! This weekend we also removed the mirror in the master bath so we could put up a pretty framed mirror, and installed new lighting. I'm almost done with the cabinet doors for the kitchen, you'll see how exciting it is to spray paint the tops of screws in the picture above. Chris has been a huge help, him and Sam did the very exciting task of painting the trim of almost the entire house and also installing a new fan in the kitchen...as well as many many other mundane DIY chores that kept us all busy throughout the weekend. Our housewarming party is this Saturday, we can't wait & hope to see everyone there! I can't promise the house will be in tip top shape, but it should be decent enough for a guest or 20 ;)

First dinner made in the new house!

Our new gas stove/oven has been installed so we finally got to cook a meal in our house last night! We were there all night painting the kitchen and cabinets. Oh and we had cable wiring installed too, can you believe this house didn't have any cable tv wiring? It was nice to have the tv as background noise as we worked...even if it was "You've Got Mail" (seriously, are there people out there that have never seen that movie?).

Tonight is packing night, you never realize how much stuff you have until you go to shove it into a million boxes. Fun! :(

SOOO Close...

We are soooo close to being ready to move in! This past weekend our hardwood floors were suppose to be installed, unfortunately they weren't! We did however have the Brinks guy come and put in a good solid 8 hour work day installing our alarm! Meanwhile, Sam & I finally got our truck from U-Haul (u-haul sucks btw), so we got the guest room furniture from Natalie & Austin's place so they can make room for the baby...we took that to my parent's house, unloaded it and then loaded the truck up with furniture for our house they've been storing for us. So now we have a king size bed (no frame just yet, we couldn't get it apart so we still have to go back for it), dresser, armoire, nightstands, 2 chairs, & patio furniture. It was awesome to have Austin there to help move (see below) & it was really awesome to have a bed to sleep on Saturday night instead of our usual air mattress (see below). We decided the green we painted on the walls Friday night was WAY too minty, so we toned it down and it looks way cozier now. After Sam did some pretty professional dry-walling to our breakfast nook, I started to take on the task of refinishing our cabinets in the kitchen. They've all been primed and painted white, so now we have the scary task of doing a faux finish on them that I'm curious to try. Wish me luck! Hopefully by this Thursday/Friday we'll be moved in, the hardwoods should be going down today and tomorrow, granite this week as well. Stay tuned...