Did anybody mention going to TH9 yet? :)
I was in a similar predicament, but I had finished upgrading all my walls to LVL 8 but my defenses weren't finished yet. My troops I use for farming were all maxed though so I went for it anyways. I'm spending so much time playing through the holidays that I'll likely grind out all my LVL9 walls in the next couple weeks before all my buildings are maxed at TH8 level. lol
I'm having no issues at all farming at TH9 because most of the bases I was hitting at TH8 were TH8-9 bases anyway so it's pretty much the same. (~1300-1500 trophy range). I'm spending all my gold on walls so I'm not at all worried about getting 3 starred.

