Waste is one of my biggest pet peeves. Brent and I have been steadily working our way through our leftovers because we both leave at the end of this work week. We’re packing up a 16ft truck in another day or so…. or I should say that the movers are packing up the truck since I’m useless in my pregnant state and there is no way Brent could move all our stuff, which includes a 300 lb marble top table, by himself.

Anyway this is what we’ve had for dinner the past couple nights:

Curried vegetables and chickpeas over saffron rice

Vegan burrito with black bean “meat” and guacamole.

We’re waiting on the documents to sign to finalize the house. If all goes as planned we should have the keys on Friday. Its been a harassing process that I’d prefer not to go through again for a few years. This house is more like an investment to us than a home. Don’t get me wrong, we love the house but we paid half of what it was worth (due to the current market conditions) and fully intend on turning around and selling it for double in a couple years when the market stabilizes. The next time we do this we’re going to be building our dream home.

Lunch was nothing special today… just soup (raw vegan cream of tomato) and a salad. The bread (which is not raw) is the last of our sourdough. We’ve been trying to eat all the leftovers to clear out our fridge for the move. It is definitely soup weather here; cold, wet and miserable!

We’re off to do an early Christmas with Brent’s family since we won’t be up here when it rolls around. This is the first time I’m seeing them since we announced the pregnancy. We’ve all been so busy that we just haven’t been able to get together.

I’m six weeks pregnant today. So far I have no symptoms whatsoever… I’m not sure whether to be happy or concerned about that. No excess tiredness, no morning sickness, no cravings, etc.

I haven’t changed my diet at all. I’m still averaging two green smoothies a day. I am drinking a lot more water though… 2 to 3 litres a day! I’m going to try and stick to 75% raw throughout this pregnancy (at least two “meals” a day that are raw.) It’s important that I am getting enough calories (which can be a bit of a challenge when you eat primarily raw) so I’ll be occasionally tracking my intakes on Fit Day.

According to 3DPregnancy, I’ve got a tadpole swimming around in there.

Here is the requisite pregnant shot:

I can’t wait to finalize this move so I can start running again. The sidewalks have been icy up here and I don’t want to risk falling in my first trimester.

As promised… here are some pictures of our new house. Its a new build, 3200 sq ft, two story with three car garage, 4 bedrooms plus office/den and 3 1/2 baths! This is of course a huge change from the 2 bedroom 1 bath well under 1000 sq ft apartment we currently reside in.

So let me take you on a mini tour….

So this is the front of the house (that’s the realtor’s car.) As you can see the front landscaping needs some work. The house has been sitting on the market for awhile and the sprinklers haven’t been turned on. We are the first real owners (the previous owner was an investor who bought the property to flip just before the market bottomed out). Brent’s mother is a landscape artist and horticultural specialist so she has put together some specs for the front yard already (including things like lacecap hydrangea, hibiscus, etc.) Its a corner lot with no rear neighbors so we have a good amount of yard space to work with.

This is a view of the front entrance of the house. The archway you see to the right of the front door leads to Brent’s office (which is the next picture) and the half bath (all the bathrooms including the half bath have linen closets. There’s space abound in this house!) The wide open space with wood floors is the formal dining room. It has huge windows in it which is nice. The door to the left at the beginning of the picture is a “utility closet”…

Brent’s office with wood floors and the room at the front of the house.

Kitchen with granite counter tops. I’m not particularly fond of the lighter wood so changing the cabinets might be something we tackle in the future but I can live with it for now. The white door leads to the pantry. The open archway leads to whats called a “butlers pantry” with more counters and cabinet space. That then leads to the formal dining room which you can see in the picture.

This is the view of the living room from the breakfast nook which is adjacent to the kitchen (you can just see the kitchen counters peeking out to the right.) It has 25 ft ceilings! I don’t know how the hell I am going to change the light bulbs in there or clean the ceiling fan. The archway at the far right of the photo leads to several things. To the immediate right inside the archway theres a door leading to the laundry room. The laundry room then leads to a three car garage. To the left of the archway is a hallway leading to the ground level master bedroom.

This is a view from the master bedroom looking down the hallway leading to the master bath. The doors on either side of the hallway are his and her walk in closets.

Our master bath… it has a jacuzzi tub (which you can see reflected in the glass of the shower doors) with a stained glass privacy window over it. Two separate vanity sink areas flank the bath so we can both have our private space.

One of three bedrooms upstairs. All the bedrooms (including the master) except the office have carpet. The main areas of the house are either tile or wood. We’ll be definitely ripping up the carpet and replace it with wood in the room that will eventually be our baby’s room but I think we’ll leave the other two guest rooms with carpet in them. At some point I definitely want to ripe up the carpet in the master bedroom and replace that with wood also. I’m just not a fan of carpet at all but I’m nervous about replacing all the carpet and somehow reducing our resale value.

One of two full bathrooms upstairs. All the bathrooms have marble counter tops and all but one have double vanities.

A view of the back of the house. Those two pitiful trees are probably going to go. I need to find out what they are first though. The property has no fence around it currently. That will be amended soon. The porch/veranda is covered. Its larger than it looks and can easily fit a table, chairs and a couple chaise lounges. We are considering screening it in and making it a true Florida “Lenai” but we aren’t sure yet. There are a lot of things I want to grow back there… fruit trees in particular. I am hoping we don’t have an HOA run by someone with a Napoleon complex. Some of the trees I am thinking of putting in the back are fig, pomegranate, sweet sop, otaheite apple, etc. I am really looking forward to having a garden again!