Left behind again!

Not that I have regular followers, but if there is even one reader out there who happens to check for regular updates, I'm sorry.

My last post was exactly one month ago!  Summer is disappearing before my eyes!  :(  It's been good so far though - done a bit of travelling, a LOT of shopping, reading, relaxing, organizing, and a little DIY stuff.

I'm currently working on painting a desk that will go in our office.  I forgot to take a before picture, because I was just too excited to get going on it.  So far, I'm only done one section of it (it's a big corner desk), and I hope to tackle to other pieces this week. 

The hubs and I had our second anniversary on July 28th.  Where does time go, for real?!  We are off to Cabo this month  to celebrate.  I can't wait!!!!

Pinterest Challenge #1

I know it's not the official Pinterest Challenge time as per Sherry Petersik at Young House Love and Katie Bower at Bower Power Blog, but hey, I'm on my own timeline - especially now that summer is here!  :)

A friend and I made a goal yesterday before leaving work.  The goal: make two things from Pinterest before the end of the summer.

I'm already halfway to meeting my goal, Jenn!!!

I saw this photo on Pinterest a little while ago...

I thought the beer can cake was so cool!  I've been seeing more and more of these types of 'cakes': diapers, school supplies, and now, beer!

We have a 30th party to go to tonight for one of our friends, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

My first step was to creep Facebook and see what brand of beer he actually drinks.  Random and stalker'ish'? Maybe.  Resourceful - yes!  Stella Artois was it!

Then I grabbed a platter from the dollar store - just a plain white one, as it seemed to be the sturdiest. 

I went to Michael's figuring they MUST have ribbon that said Happy Birthday on it, but they only had one roll and it was clearly girly with its pinks, purples and light green.  I needed something a bit more masculine.  I could've went with something plain, but then I noticed Party City across the street.  I headed over there in search of something and came across those foil birthday banners.  They had lots of different ones, so I picked one of those, after trying to decide for about 10 minutes.  Yes, for real.

Next stop, beer store, where I picked up a 12 pack of Stella.

I took everything home and set to trying to put everything together.  Admittedly, I dropped a few cans on the floor and finally decided to use some tape to hold everything in place, since the beers cans don't sit on top of each other really well, unless they are directly on top of the one underneath it.

I got everything stacked, then just used some leftover 30th birthday napkins from my husband's party to make a bow. 

This was my final result:

It turned out pretty cool, but I still think I like the original Pinterest photo and how the ribbon around the cans is not as wide as the banner I got.  Also, I love the lime green in the bow, but it doesn't go perfectly with the banner. 

My husband was thoroughly impressed though, especially with the fact that it's made from beer, so hopefully the recipient will enjoy it too!

Happy birthday Todd!  :)

Summer has returned!!!!

Ok, so I'm a few days early.

I have 5 work days left.  Five.  Where did this year go??????

It's been a crazy whirlwhind and this whole blogging thing got totally left in the dust.  I have a few DIY projects up my sleeve for the coming months though, so I hope to post about them here.

And maybe one day I'll finish recapping our Euro Honeymoon Adventure ....after all, that was mostly the reason for starting this whole thing. 

What have YOU been up to for the past 10 months?

We've been had!



You always hear all kinds of things about identity theft, etc, etc ....but when it hits so close to home, it's scary!  Total invasion of privacy!

Rewind to when Tim and I got married.  We opened a bank account and put the money we got as wedding gifts in that account, so that we'd save it for something we really wanted instead of just putting it towards bills and things that we needed for the house.  With that account, we got a Visa that would typically have an annual fee, but if you kept a certain amount in the account, the fee was waived.  Ok, great.

I used the Visa for a while, racked up some travel points, redeemed them - used it as it should be used.  We went on our honeymoon and used most of the money from the account, so we decided to close the account.  We also talked about cancelling the Visa since we both have other credit cards and didn't really to pay the $170 a year to keep yet another card that we probably wouldn't use so much.  Let me re-iterate ...we talked about it.  Tim needed to be the one to call and cancel because he was listed as the primary cardholder.  I reminded him, he didn't do it.

Fast forward to last Sunday, November 20th.  I was fed up with all the mail piling up on the counter.  The numerous people who come to check on Gus can attest to the fact that there is ALWAYS a pile sitting there!  So, I grab the pile and go to the couch where I proceed to open everything up.  I get to the Visa statement ...hmm, ok, fine .... I knew he hadn't cancelled the card yet, so it makes sense that we'd still be getting statements.  However, you assume that when you have not used the card in months, you should open the statement and see a balance of zero.

Not so!!!

I opened the statement and see an interest charge of $115.  Ummm, what?  How can there be that much interest when the balance is $0.  Look again and see that the balance is over $4600.  Now I start to panic a a little.  I run upstairs to the computer, check the statement online and sure enough, on September 23, someone purchased over $4600 worth of goods at Holt Renfrew on Bloor St. in Toronto.

I've never seen Tim move so fast.  He called Visa immediately and went through the whole thing.  Apparently the person also tried to put another $1800 on the card and it was declined, twice.  Would that not be a red flag to the Holt's employee?!?!?!  Or Visa, for that matter?!

So, now we basically just wait.  It all goes to the police and they investigate and do whatever it is they do.

We're not responsible for any of the charges, they told us.  However, had we left that pile of mail on the counter for another 3 days, it would've been out of Visa's hands and up to us to pay, because you only have 60 days to report discrepancies.

Lesson learned: open your mail!!!!!!

PS:  If I could afford to shop at Holt Renfrew, I would.