Small Town Gal...

That resolution time...

2011-12-28T22:26:00.000-05:00

First off, hope you all had a lovely Christmas time :) It was our first with our little man, and I have to say, it was lots of fun! Can't wait until he's a bit older though and really appreciates the magic of the holidays. And hopefully, he doesn't think his parents are too weird. :)

And now, the next big holiday is almost upon us: New Years! Which, along with it's countdowns, means resolution time. I was trying really hard not to make a resolution this year. I never keep them anyways, so what's the point. I did want to be a bit better with our budget though, since in the near future, the little man needs to go to daycare, and mat leave pay is killing me, so really, we need to get that in check, but I didn't think that was a resolution. We need to do it, whether it's 2012 or not. Then, while browsing about Pinterest tonight, I feel upon this site: 52 weeks to an organized home . I got intrigued and decided that this could be something I really do need to do!! Our appartment is tiny, and quite disorganized. I need to get things sorted and purged, so I figure, this could be a great incentive to start. And, it keeps me accountable too :)

I'll try and post updates on here as often as I can. Will also hopefully get me back to blogging (been meaning to post more, especially my new found love of crochet-ing :) ), so hopefully I can join all of it and become more organized!!

Wish me luck, and let me know if you join in :) Will be nice to see everyone's progress!!

Pinterest + crafty me = fun things! :)

2011-12-12T22:39:00.000-05:00

Ah Pinterest! You've made me lose quite a bit of time, and I wasn't sure I'd ever see a payoff. Thankfully I have! :) I've made quite a few things based on Pinterest Pins. From Food to crafts, a few things were attempted, and so far, nothing was a major fail, except one cleaning tip that didn't pan out (but I've learned my Peroxide is expired and could be the cause of the issue. Stay tuned!).

Most recently, I've mixed my new found crochet love with Pinterest and made a few Christmas gifts. Since I'm sure the recipients don't read my blog, I an safely share that I made some lovely Cup Cozies and they look awesome! Didn't get to take pics yet, but I'll try and post some soon. What I love is that I was able to change up the pattern the original gal had posted and make it into something that fit better with what I was doing!! :D Love that! I never thought I'd actually be good enough this early on to do that. I'm proud of me.

Next on the list is making a few gifts for a mommy friend (secret santa style, so it's still a secret for now ;) ), based on a pin. Ooh, this has also been useful to buy her items. She pinned things, I bought them for her. At least I knew she got things she liked :)

Pinterest, I think I *heart* you :)

I think I'm becoming an 'adult'. Gulp!

2011-12-12T22:33:00.001-05:00

Wow. We actually managed to clean our kitchen (it had been months sadly. With the baby, we just had no time, and it piled on and on... it was bad!). And we've maintained it for longer than the day we needed it! Hubby actually did the dishes 3 days in a row! I think we're becoming adults, or something... This is weird.

(This post is only partially kidding ;) )

Bullying

2011-12-06T21:42:00.000-05:00

A good friend of mine wrote a great post on bullying on her blog. Hope she won't mind me sharing it, as it really is very well written. You can check it out here.

Part of me is so happy that this issue is coming to the forefront a bit more. But at the same time, I have to wonder what people's definition of bullying really is. I've mentioned it before, I was that kid that everyone laughed at in school. It was most definitely not easy to have to face it, and I felt like many of the kids talking about bullying issues do. My goodness did I wish I could stay home from school most days. But, was I really being bullied? Or was it just plain old teasing gone bad? Who knows really. It's still not fair to anyone to have to deal with anything along those lines, though, no question.

Anywho, lets all hope bringing this issue forward helps, even a little. Seeing adults suffering as a result, yours truly included, makes it hard to say 'it's just a kid's thing, they'll grow out of it'. It has lasting effects. Some devastating ones at that.

Self Destruction sequence started

2011-12-06T21:31:00.000-05:00

Brains are a funny thing. Mine seems to love to go in self destruction mode. Essentially, it starts thinking very wonky, and even though the very logical part of me knows I'm being irrational, it still won't stop. It just goes on a rampage, and makes me doubt everything, everyone. It sucks. I hate that my head does this and I've tried to make it stop, but it doesn't quite work so well.

It just sucks.

I'm turning into my grandma. God Help Me!!!

2011-11-11T00:01:00.000-05:00

I adore my grandma. She's all kinds of awesome. But, she has a bit of an addiction to contests. She'll call my mom up at ungodly hours so my mom will participate. If I'm there, I'm also greatly encouraged to participate too. It can get a bit annoying sometimes.

The first thing I ever won was the first Backstreet Boys CD in 7jour magazine. I was a very happy camper. I can't say I've won much else since. And then, in the past few months, which I'll blame on being home alone and some serious need for social interaction (mentioned a while ago), I started entering some random contests. I won some Sens tickets from the St-Laurent shopping center's Facebook page. A week before I was due to have the kiddo, so that was tons of fun! I then won a GlowDose medicine thingy for the baby from PTPA. Some Duo Body Butter from Body Shop's Facebook page. A few other things since then, and most recently, a Pottery Barn gift card from another facebook contest. I feel like I'm turning into my grandma as a result. Oy!!

At least, I get to enjoy a few free things, that's always nice. Now, lets not tell my lovely granmother about all the facebook contests. This could turn ugly ;)

Aliens aren't as alienating as I am!

2011-11-10T16:24:00.000-05:00

Let me start by saying, not looking for a pity party or anything, just stuff I've been mulling over the past few weeks.

I've always been a pretty lonely kid. I didn't have many friends, and when I did, they weren't quite the nicest people. All of this made for a very, very insecure adult in the making. This adult tends to over compensate when she does make new friends. She gets very happy and excited, and the lack of other friends to hangout with makes it so that she can seem clingy and needy, but really, it's only cause you are the only person she has to hangout with.

I've managed to make some nice friends in the past few years, thank you interwebz. Sadly though, I've managed to make those poor people hate me, which is making hanging out with other people a bit hard now (all friends, so those people tend to be there sometimes...). Again in the past months, managed to get some people I adore mad at me to the point where they ignored me for months and gave me BS answers as to why all of a sudden, we're not talking...

What irks me even more is that they can't be honest with me from the get go. I only found out a year later for someone what really made them stop talking to me and when you know the full back story, it doesn't make sense!!! For the more recent people, no idea. Will probably find out in the coming year what the real reason is. It all really just feels like High School all over again. For crying out loud, these people have more (and better) education than I do! You'd think they'd be a bit smarter and logical than this, no? I mean, sure, I know I'm to blame for quite a bit of it. I'm insecure, full of anxiety and have zero selfesteem, so that whole combo makes it hard to function in society in general, but still. I know I'm not to blame fully for all of it.

Anywhos, all of this made me realize, I don't think I'm made to be around people. I think it's probably just better if I learn to enjoy being lonely (or alone, I should say), find lots of pastimes, and read up on how not to make my kids hate me. Cause if people I don't even live with can't stand me past a year of knowing me, how in the heck can a human who's forced to have me as his mom?! That's just doomed. At least my crochet skills are pretty awesome! Who knew I would catch on to it so quick? :)

Le sucky week!

2011-11-10T15:48:00.000-05:00

(I had written out this post last week, and it got lost in cyber space somehow, so it won't be as good anymore... Thanks for the heads up on this Marie!)

Oy! This week, not so great. Monday (Halloween day!), ended up being the day we bought a new car! Kinda happy about it, but at the same time, wondering if it was the right decision. Could we have shopped around more? Could we have gotten a better deal? More stuff? Who knows! Obviously, if we start telling people how much we're paying now, they'll make comments, I'll feel awful about making another mistake, and it'll suck more. So, it's a great thing in a way, but kinda sucky too. [UPDATE: got the car Tuesday, love it, and the price is not a factor at all anymore :) Got taken down a tad since we owed less than expected on our previous POS, and really, it's great for what we're paying. I is Le Happy!! :D]

Tuesday came around. I wasn't super happy, cause our car (POS, it shall be referred to henceforth) was even more broken than before. We were flashing people up the wazoo cause the brights were the only lights working, when the handle wasn't falling out. Nico wouldn't nap, things, just not great.

Wednesday, Happy Starbucks Red Cups came out!! I was super excited, figured, a bus ride would be a great idea to go and grab some. Yeah, not quite. Go to the store to grab some tickets and they are out. I only have 2 twonies, so had to overpay a bit for the bus ride. Get to Starbucks, Baby 'made me' buy him a toy (I showed it to him, he ripped it out of my hands and proceeded to put it in his mouth AND rip the tag off of it...), that was a bit more expensive than I wanted to spend, but he does love it. Grab my happy Caramel Brulee Latte, a book (after rolling on someone's foot, cause apparently, the ramp is a great spot to hide and read a book, and moving when a giant stroller is coming isn't a smart idea... :S), and a toy, we get on the bus, get home, still nap refusing.

Thursday comes around! I don't remember much of that one... Then Friday, I have plans, so try and find my driver's license cause it's somehow not in my back pocket anymore (it was there cause on Monday, they needed it for the car stuffs and crying baby, made me just stuff it in my back pocket and forget about it). Look everywhere, can't find it. So, get out of the house, no driver's license, which means, I'm driving super slow ;) Get to spot #1, the Toy Sale!! There's a crazy lineup!!! Like, I didn't end up going in the end. Ok, that's a bust. Get home and start making calls. I figure, last time I wore my pants was to go on my Starbucks Roadtrip. Call them and Chapters, no one has my card, but they are nice and wish me luck. 3rd option is OC Transpo. Miracle of Miracles, THEY HAVE IT!! Baby wakes up, we drive out downtown to grab that. I get a few angry looks for lack of putting on my flasher. I promise, I will try really, really hard not to make comments again when people don't put on their flashers (especially POS Dodge cars), as it could be broken. Who knew). Get home, get baby fed and stuff, have to leave and stay stuck in traffic for an hour, all so I could have some social time. I am so deprived of human interaction that I don't even complain about Rush hour + Sens Game traffic just to have coffee with people. I don't care that I feel like I don't fit in with anyone anymore, or that it's awkward cause some people in attendance aren't really on speaking terms with me (more on my incredible ability to alienate people some other time), I don't care! I will subject myself to sneers, sideways glances and massive amounts of unhappy commuters cause I'm blinding them into oblivion with my brights, just so I can hear people talk about their (very awesome) jobs, upcoming babies and the awesomeness that are Red Cup drinks. I seriously need more socializing time.

So yeah, all in all, a not so awesome week, but things are hopefully looking up. We shall see!

I think I found a hobby... Sort of.

2011-09-30T23:23:00.000-04:00

Ever since being on Mat Leave, I've noticed I really didn't have that many hobbies. I relied on other people to entertain me, being the social creature that I am, and when they started to dwindle out of my life, I found myself damned bored, to be honest. I've always liked reading and browsing the internet, but I needed something a bit different as a hobby. I think I finally found something I enjoy doing: Painting! :)

Nothing fancy. So far it's been a pot (LOVE Chalkboard paint!!) for a gift, and I'm currently painting the wooden Advent Calendar we got for the kidlet. I'm not creating my own things, just kind of painting what's already there, or basing myself on things I've seen. The pot is basically a Terracotta pot where the bottom is chalboard paint, and the top boarder I painted yellow and made it look like a 'ruler' (the person is a teacher). Drew a few fun things on the Chalboard part and voila! Got me a nice gift :) The advent calendar is just a big wooden design, already drawn out to be Santa with a bag of goodies and little doors to hide presents in. Just painting it the right colors.

For some reason, I'm finding this incredibly relaxing. I guess I need to concentrate so much on not messing up that I just forget everything else and it actually calms me down. It's nice to finish a color and just feel chill for a bit. At least until I notice all the cleaning that needs to be done, but that's a whole other thing. I've found I'm happier in general as a result and I have a tad bit more patience, which is also a welcome change.

I'll try and post a pic or two when I get a chance. The pot has given me a great idea for a spice garden. :)

I'm tired...

2011-09-28T23:26:00.000-04:00

(I'm sorry in advance, as this might be all over the place. Mostly a 'vent' post I guess)

I'm tired.

I'm tired of people questioning every single parenting move I make. You don't even have kids/had kids over 20 years ago!! Things have changed since then. You haven't done the millions of hours of research I did on every single subject, only to find the info/methods that work for me/us. Please butt out!! All you're doing is making me feel like a more horrendous parent than I already feel like. There's a reason I spend my whole day reading about what others do and think of the millions of things that have to do with kids. I don't think, to this day, that I can do this and not screw up that poor kid. I try and find out as much as I can so I can keep that screwing up to a minimum. It takes me forever to reach a decision on what I do want to go, and be sort of OK with the results of said decision. You telling me I'm doing it 'wrong' only makes me question every one of those decisions and feel like an a$$ for thinking I was right about something. I'm really tired of going over those decisions over, and over, and over again.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of people telling me I 'shouldn't complain' about things. 'You knew what you were getting into when you got pregnant!', is something we hear all too often. What to know something? That's the biggest load of BULL I've ever been told. Yes, you kinda know it'll be hard, and you won't sleep, and whatever, but you NEVER can fully imagine what you are getting yourself into, until that second night you've had that little person in your life, and he's cluster feeding like there's no tomorrow. And you sure as hell feel like there's never going to be a 'tomorrow' cause tomorrow usually happens after sleep, and you haven't done that in 2 days, and now, that little person wants food 12hours straight!! Then you start to realize that maybe people were keeping stuff from you. That maybe it isn't at all what you thought it'd be. But way worse, actually. Thankfully, after a bit, things settle down, but as soon as you have the nerve to open your mouth and say anything resembling a complaint, you get told off. You need someone to give you a big hug and tell you it'll get better, but no. Instead, you're completely shoved to the side and told to suck it up, buttercup. I'm tired of those comments.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of being made to feel bad when I'm happy that my kiddo did something great (like sleep through the night!!). That first time you get a bunch of sleep, and you feel like a human again. Those glorious moments when you wake up, not feeling like you got run over by a Mack truck, and think that today will be good, cause you don't want to tear people's heads off. Then, you have the nerve to go and post a mini 'Woohoo' post on whichever media you can find, and you get torn to shreds for it. I kind of understand why people resent you for it, but at the same time, it freakin' sucks to be put down when you're finally feeling good about yourself.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of people telling me I have no reason to have self esteem issues. 'But, you're so skinny!' ... Sure, great reason not to have self esteem issues. Who cares what weight I am? Has nothing at all to do with that. Not even a little bit. Tell that to 10 year old me, who started getting teased by every.single.person in her grade 2 class for something completely out of her control. Tell her she'll be skinny one day, so there's no reason to be sad that she has no friends. No one to talk to. No one to do something with on the weekends. No one she can confide in when people around her tell her she's good for absolutely nothing in life. No one to stand up for her to the other people who are making fun of her. No one at all. Yeah, I'm sure being skinny will make her feel just dandy! Anxiety and self esteem issues don't all revolve around the way one looks. The way they are treated plays a giant part in the whole thing, and people really don't seem to get how big a part those grade school years play in making or breaking a person's mental image of themselves later on in life. That's why I can't make a decision to save my life. I'm tired of being made to feel like crap cause I'm apparently too skinny to feel the way I do.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of alienating everyone around me, and not knowing why. I don't know if it has something to do with the previous statement, but it sure seems to. I never learned how to keep friends, really. I don't think I ever really knew what real friends were. I ended up making friends with all the wrong people later on in school. People who liked me cause I was so desperate to have friends, I'd just do whatever they asked of me. Heaven forbid I should disappoint someone! I ended up being a pretty mean person myself as a result, and lost some great, and true, friends in the process. Nowadays, that desire to please is still there. And it seems to be ruining all my friendships. Still not sure how, as I can make people upset with me in 2 seconds flat. Some people can't get why this happens, and trust me, I wish I knew, but that's me. If you need to lose someone in your life, give me a few months with them, I work miracles for that apparently. I'm tired of being lonely as a result.

I'm tired.

The worse part of all this? I have great nights! I have a kid that has my love of sleep, so he's been sleeping through the night forever it seems now (cause, after you do sleep, 'tomorrow' is actually a possibility), and I'm not 'tired' per se. I'm just mentally, completely drained. I don't even have the strength or energy to want to care about changing anything anymore. I have no friends? Meh. What's new there. People think I'm a dummy who can't take care of myself and my family? Meh. People have thought I wasn't good enough all my life, it's really not unheard of. Me changing anything in me has never done anything in the past. Why would it be any different now? It won't. I am me. No one seems to like her, which is fine, really. I can't make everyone like me, as much as I do try. Guess I just have to live with the fact that only my kid and husband think I'm decent, and hope someone else realizes it at some point.

It's late, and I really am tired right now. My bed calls.

(And yes, I do realize there might be more to all this than just 'me'. PPD has been mentioned to me before, but many of these I've been meaning to mention since WAY before I got pregnant even, so that's likely not it.)

Randomness...

2011-04-06T16:27:00.000-04:00

Things haven't been uber exciting since the last post. We did win Sens tickets though and got to go and check out a great game last night, which was a fun little outting for hubby and me (even for Hubby who doesn't like hockey that much!) before the tiny dude gets here.

It seems all our time the last few months has been spent either dealing with shitty service somewhere, cleaning and sorting, or just trying to chill and rest before the little man gets here. His room isn't quite done yet, but definitely getting much better. He has a kick butt closet organizer now (I'm actually jealous ;) ), and the drawers are ready to be filled and sorted and all that jazz. As soon as the last 2 pieces of furniture arrive in there (well, one arrives, the other gets assembled), I think we'll be in pretty good shape and just missing a chair so I can cuddle the little thing in ;)

Over the last couple of weeks, I can say, the nerves have definitely kicked in. Mostly in a 'how do I take care of a tiny human' way. At this point, I'm still in partial denial about labor (although it may be me coming to the conclusion that at this point, not much can be done to skip that part, so might as well just not worry about it), but really starting to worry about life with the little guy. Especially when hubby isn't around. He's so great with kids. I see other people's babies and just stare at them. I barely ever pick them up cause I don't know what to do with them. I will play and make faces and all that, but that's the extent of it. I know, everyone and their dogs has told me it'll change when it's our little guy, but part of me really worries it won't. I guess it's just normal to finally start worrying and being a bit paranoid about things.

Not much else to report otherwise. I think it's time for a nap actually, since I am getting tired and this is the point of those 'sick day Wednesdays' I'm on (gotta love 4 day work weeks :) ).

Customer Service woes

2011-04-04T21:21:00.000-04:00

Like most people in this world, I hate having to call customer service lines. Most of the time, I am stuck talking to someone in a foreign country who doesn't know what I'm talking about, just reading off their screens what the auto prompts are telling them to say. I know this is super stereotypical and awful, but we all know it's the truth.

Then, every now and then, you get lucky, and the CS department is actually in the same county you live in AND, in my case, offers service in French (and I mean real French, not just the one person that can say 'oui' in the call center and the convo ends in English anyways, cause it's just easier that way), which I try to encourage as much as I can. This was the case with our crib. Their CS department is in Montreal, so I can get great French customer service (although I'm still not sure how to refer to my crib in French anyways ;) ), and I figured, it's in Montreal, this'll be great and quick! Oh was I ever wrong...

We bought our crib in late January. The in laws ordered it in for us, picked it up and delivered it for us. By the time we got it here, it was mid-February, give or take. We go about to install the whole thing and sure enough, there's a defect in one of the pieces. Now, being me, I follow the instructions in the booklet that state to call THEM, not return where we bought it. That was mistake number 1 or many. We call, get the run around that it's not a problem, our piece will be sent, yaddi-yaddi-yadda, almost a month passes and we've got nothing. Call back, turns out it takes 2-3 weeks for pieces to ship out AND we're not just getting the tiny missing piece, they're sending us a whole new crib side. Ok fine. Another week passes and we still have nothing, so I call and sure enough the piece was just delivered to our house/CP location (as we weren't home). Turns out, they shipped the piece over 3 weeks after we'd asked for it. But of course, they sent the wrong color. When I called back explaining this, I get told that it's my fault for giving them the info in the instruction booklet, not the one ON the crib. Um, no, I asked the cs agent when I call, is the info the same in both and was told yes (I'm lazy, didn't feel like waddling my bum all the way back to the baby's room if the info is the same, duh!). So, after much back and forth, and some yelling on my part, we manage to get it sorted out another week later and I'm told the piece is in stock, it'll ship shortly... Yeah, right! Sure enough, call again this morning and no, piece hasn't shipped as they had to order it in, and a manager/supervisor will contact me that day... Finally get to speak to said person, who's managerial skills I am greatly questioning, and nope, never get the piece, cause the stupid thing is discontinued!!! So after searching high and low for ages, cause I couldn't find something suitable, turns out, if we want our crib, we'll need to figure it out on our own or take the replacement crib they are offering (although, I have yet to get the e-mail she sent me with the pictures of said replacement... Which I know I likely won't take, since none of their other models appealed to us in the least). [Sorry, tried to keep this part short, but failed quite a bit apparently]

Now, I am a supervisor. Thankfully, our client interactions are pretty straight forward: they order something, we send it. It's not rocket science. We don't do problem resolving with accounts or anything like that. But let me tell you if I ever got a complaint like the one I just put in (I don't think I was being unreasonable: I spoke to about 5 different people in their call center and not a single one of them gave me the correct or same answer at any of the times I called. To me, that's a serious problem if not everyone seems to know what their job is and what to communicate with the client), I would be apologizing up the wazoo trying to get this person happy. I don't think this person actually apologized for her staff's behavior once while I was talking to her. And she just sounded pissed that she had to deal with an issue today. I would never, ever talk to any of our clients this way!! Maybe cause I know we have thousand dollar contracts riding on it, and she figures I'm just one measly little person? I don't know. But really, I have never had such horrid customer service and could not be more sad that we purchased an item from them.

On top of that, we've been having serious issues with our car dealership's customer service, pretty much ever since we bought our car, and it also had to come to a head this week. To the point where we're most likely going to change our car much earlier than planned just because of this.

What's happening to customer service these days?! Are there only a handful of people who actually care about making their customers happy? Have they not heard of the power of word of mouth and reviews on the ever easy to search internet? I remember once seeing a client of ours posting about a slight error in one of the products we sent her on her facebook, and as soon as I got to work, I was e-mailing her to find out what happened, and how I could fix it. I didn't have to, cause she didn't complain to our company directly, but no way was I going to not do anything! Am I the only one that thinks like this?? I just don't see how a company, even a bigger one like this, can think they'll get away with treating their customers like crap this way.

You can bet that I have told everyone we know buying baby furniture to stay away from these people, and car buyers to not consider our dealership, at least not for the parts department (we did have semi-decent experience with their sales person, even though he totally screwed us, but that's our fault since we had no clue what we were getting into ;) ). I just wish I could rave more often about GREAT customer service, rather than have to sound like the bad guy.

Should I stay or should I go now...

2011-03-03T21:24:00.000-05:00

Decisions, decisions...

Basically, long story short, my awesome OB offered today to make me drop down to 4 days a week at work instead of 5. I might have had a mini meltdown in her office today to prompt this offer. I haven't been sleeping so well lately, and today was just bad, so I started crying when I realized I didn't gain the required 1 pound a week that the last few weeks are supposed to be like in pregnancy. I feel awful that baby is kinda small (although he's perfectly OK), and this was just the last straw.

Part of me REALLY wants to do it, just take her up on it, have an extra day off a week to rest and relax. Our weekends are pretty full these days, so I can't say I do much R&R then. But part of me thinks it's selfish and I shouldn't do it. I don't have a hard or too stressful job. Sure, if you heard me today, you'd think quite the opposite, but those days aren't typical, so really, I feel like I'd be weak or something along those lines if I did drop a day. Heck, the girl who's currently on mat leave complained EVERY.DAY for 9 months about something related to her pregnancy. I've had it pretty darn easy really, so why should I get that when she didn't (granted, she did call in sick quite often)? In my crazy little head, it's just more amo for my bosses to see that I'm highly incompetent and shouldn't be working there anymore.

I'm so torn, I really don't know what to do. After tonight, I'm very close to calling in and telling my OB I'll take her up on it, and just do 4 days a week. Take Wednesdays off, and relax at home a bit before little dude shows up. But then, I think of my yearly review coming up and I just can't get myself to do it :(

I hate decisions like that :(

I made FOOD!! :)

2011-02-27T18:23:00.002-05:00

Right now, our whole apartment smells of the yumminess that is Channa Masala. Just hoping it tastes as good as it's smelling ;)

(After a 30 min. eating break...)

WOOT! IT was successful :) I think I may have put a bit too much liquid, but it was still rather yummy and not too spicy, just how I like it. Wish we'd bought Naan though, would have made it a million times better. Here's the awesome recipe :)

Channa Masala (Chickpea Curry)

1 Tbsp of vegetable oil
2 cloves of garlic minced
1 thumbsized ginger minced (I would say it's probably a girly sized thumb... Might have put a bit too much)
1 diced onion
3 Tbsp of good curry powder mix
1/2 can of coconut milk (I had heard you could put the whole thing in, as it makes it saucier, but it didn't thicken up as much as I was expecting as a result...)
1/4 cup of cashew butter (almond or hazelnut butter is also good)
1 can of chickpeas
2 cups of diced butternut squash
2 cups of diced sweet potato
2 cups of vegetable stock
1/4 cup of chopped coriander (Didn't have fresh, so I used 1Tbsp of dried)

Heat up oil in dutch oven.
Cook garlic, ginger and onions for about 2 minutes.
Add curry powder and continue cooking for 1-2 minutes until you can smell the curry
Add squash, sweet potato, chickpeas. Mix and cook for 1 minute
Add coconut milk, cashew butter and stock, making sure to scrap up any bits on the bottom of pan. Stir in about half of the coriander
Bring to boil, then simmer with lid on for 20 minutes
Spoon over bowls of rice, garnish with remaining coriander

I'll hopefully post some pics in the coming days of it. Our battery died as I was taking them, and I want to make a general post with random cooking pics :)

Having a sick pet is hard on one's heart strings...

2011-02-23T21:31:00.002-05:00

We have two kitties, if you didn't know. Our kitten, we got in July. She's one heck of a furball with energy! Our older kitty, Hum-Vee, I got 6 years ago. We found her under my parents' neighbor's shed. Her mommy had left her there after carrying all her other kittens across the fence, but for some reason, she left little Hum-Vee there to fend for herself. And fend she did! My mom had seen the mommy move the kitties around the night before, around supper time. The next morning, while my dad was having coffee on the deck, he heard a faint meowing, and went searching for the sound. Sure enough, he found our little critter there, all cold and hungry. Needless to say, it was hard not to just fall in love with the little thing, with her giant, oversized ears and those big eyes.

My parents couldn't keep her, as their cat did NOT appreciate the little ball of fur, but me, being the cat lover I am, I insisted on bringing her back with us to our apartment in O-Town. So, if we went, and that was the beginning of it all. She was so young when we found her, we had to feed her by hand with tiny little syringes and she had her own little house, in the form of a giant box we had from the new sound system I'd just bought. Her name came easily enough: just like the massive trucks she's named after, she went where she wanted, when she wanted, even though in her case she was tiny.

Back then, I was dating Hubby, and he fell in love with her too. He fed her, showed her how to use her litter box (even though she later started playing in there a bit too much), and she cuddled him the time he came to our place sick as a dog. I called hubby crying a few times cause I just didn't know what the heck she wanted, and all she did was meow incessantly! We loved her a whole lot right from the get go, and she's always returned the favor. She's been an awesome kitty. Never sick, always loves cuddles and even though she's not super socially, a very likeable furbaby, no question about it.

Fast forward a bit to last week. Our big baby got sick. Really sick. :( Long story short, she has (most likely at least) acute kidney failure. That's the kind that comes on fast and furious. Your kitty is fine one minute, and the day after she's growling at you and doesn't want you near her, kinda thing. When I got the news yesterday, I spent all afternoon crying non stop. On Friday, I thought, worse case scenario, she's stressed out by the kitten (she never really took too well to a sibling), and combine that with all the moving around of things to make way for the new baby, she must be stressed, and that caused her ulcers. I had Dr. Googled it, which one should NEVER do. The fist thing it told me was that my cat was dying of kidney or liver issues. I liked denial, so I stuck to my stress theory. When I had to speak to the vet to get results yesterday though, I knew it would be bad. Of course, the Humster has to have the lowest numbers ever (whatever it is they measured was so bad, that her numbers don't even show up on the chart, bad!). She's barely eating and is so dehydrated. She can barely walk right now, cause she's so weak. We had options, and I felt awful because my first thought at every turn was 'we just can't afford this!!'. I love my kitty more than you can imagine, but still, money is tight... They gave us the option to learn to put the IV to do the hydration/fluid therapy from home. I thought that would require her to be plugged in constantly, but after talking to my awesome aunt (who works at a vet), I was reassured it's easy and I can do it at home no problem. So, that's what we're currently doing, in the hopes that it will flush out her system, and we can get our kitty back.

I never realized just how attached I was to her until last Friday, when hubby brought her to the vet originally and all I could think of was that there's no way she's coming home with him. I knew this day would come, but she's so young to have something like this, I never thought we'd have to deal with that this early in her little life. I've cried and cried thinking of having to make that dreadful decision, asked for countless amounts of good vibes for her, and was given a few really nice success stories of other kitties who also have something like this. It's given me more hope than I imagined I could ever have, especially after yesterday.

Just writing this out, I almost started crying a number of times, but I figure, what's the point? We had a very successful fluid administration, and managed to force feed her more food than usual. She's still not stable enough to walk or do much on her own, but it's been an hour, and I just need to be patient. One thing I was told is that this kind of thing doesn't put them in pain. Sure she's sad and probably feels helpless as all heck, but she's not in pain, and that's always been my main concern. I just didn't want her to be in pain.

Hopefully the fluids help her out and tomorrow she's able to eat on her own a bit more. All I can do now is hope and pray for the best. She seems to know we're doing this for her good, which is nice. She still loves to be cuddled and purrs a whole lot, so I'll definitely be keeping that up :)

If you can spare a good thought or two for our baby, we'd appreciate it. She still has a long life ahead of her, we hope and wish, of being chased around the house by our newest little dude. I think she'd make a great 'assistant mommy' to him :)

Pack-Rats: Listen up!

2011-02-21T18:41:00.003-05:00

Guys and gals, I've come to an amazing discovery today: purging can do you some major good!!! I was one of those people. You know, those people that keep everything because 'I might need it if/when/someday [insert excuse here]'. As a result, our computer room (and now soon to be nursery) became overly cluttered with stuff. Papers, posters, scrapbook stuff. Computer parts and pieces. Magazines... and more magazines! Christmas stuff, Halloween and Easter stuff. Just loads and loads of STUFF! Needless to say, it's taken quite the bit of time to sort through everything now that we don't have a choice and it needs to be done like, yesterday. Add to all that the fact that my energy levels are dwindling faster than the ice on the Canal these days, and it's been quite the challenge for us.

In the past month alone, we've probably spent more than half our weekends and most weeknights in that room sorting through the piles. Massive amounts of papers were shredded or just put in boxes for recycling (Like, bills and papers from as far back as 2006 were found!), and we've managed to fill up our car and my dad's truck with old items we didn't need/want anymore, and some furniture that we just don't have any space for either. The little people at the Value Village near my house were quite happy, I must say (and it's not over yet!).

Today, we tackled what I thought would be the most gruesome of the tasks: baby's soon-to-be closet. That thing has been full since the day I moved here almost 4 years ago now. Mostly just random boxes, not unpacked or touched from our last move. Thankfully though, most of these were empty and it only took us a few minutes to sort through those and decide to not keep a single one of them. The ones that did have items in them weren't as awful as I thought. Only one box of random papers, and lots of stuff to give away. Of course, the room is now back to being a giant cluster-f*ck of stuff, but we know what all of it is, where it's going and all we need is a box to pack it up in (yes, I realize the irony of this statement ;) ). At least, once we manage to get that done, we're DONE! And baby will have a room way more decent than I ever could have expected him to have.

Now, the point (sort-of) of this whole thing: if you are a pack-rat like me - STOP DOING IT! Do yourself a favor and while you have the energy and time, get on with that cleaning and purging. You will be happy you did it before things got too bad, and trust me, it feels sooooo good to see a room that was completely and disgustingly cluttered have a floor again. Or a big empty closet! This isn't coming from some random person, I've been there. For a LONG time, so I know how hard it is to do, but start small. Grab one box or pile and go through that. After that's done, take a break or grab another. It's a snowball effect, and it makes you feel way better in the end.

On that note though, I am taking a giant break tonight! 3 full days of cleaning and sorting has got both me and hubby exhausted and achy like you wouldn't believe. It's times like these I wish we had a giant bath tub that I could go soak in :) But since we don't, I have a giant pile of sock to go match up and fold (don't even get me started on our laundry situation! Thank God my mom offered to help us out, because not much got done in that domaine in a while. I blame the reliance on Looneys and Quarters for that issue though). Lets hope there's more than 2 pairs that much up for a change!!

I could get used to this ;)

2011-02-17T21:06:00.002-05:00

Sorry Mr. Hubby, but I could totally get used to sleeping all alone in my big bed ;) Hubby is on a work roadtrip, as I mentioned yesterday, and I had the bed all to myself last night. Usually, there's me, hubs, 2 kitties and a snoogle in there. Quite cramped in our Not Quite Queen sized bed. Last night, with 1 and a half kitties (our youngest kept getting on and off), me and snoogle, it was way more manageable. I slept so well, it was quite incredible! Not saying I don't like having hubby at home, by no means, I do miss the back and leg rubs and him helping me (read: making) with supper. But I will miss having the bed all to myself when he's back tomorrow night, that's for sure!

In tiny human news, all is well. He's moving around like crazy and seems happy like a fishy in there :)

And culinary-wise, I made something decent tonight, again!! Nothing fancy by any means, but something I was craving for a while. My mother in law makes these chicken thighs in Diane sauce that are soooo good. We'd made them a few times ourselves, but not recently, and I whiped some up tonight and it's quite good!! Had lots of potatoes left over from yesterday, and the corn I couldn't put in my vol-aux-vents cause there was an overload of pees, so I made those along with them and it's just delish! I used the Maple flavored sauce: SOOO GOOD!! I think we usually used the plain one, but this is my new favorite, along with a bit of Chicken Spices. So yes, nothing fancy, but another high marker in the 'food I miss from home' category. I had a pretty good food day all in all actually. Been having trouble eating well and gaining the weight I should for me and little dude, so today was a win I think in that category. Had breakfast (new Banana Nut Cheerios - totally yummy!), a smoothie from Booster Juice (my post-OB treat ;) ), lunch (leftover vol-au-vent), 2 clementines and supper. Oh and there may have been some of those new Aero and Coffee Crisp eggs in there too, but I figure the goodness of the clementines cancels those out ;) .

Anywho, enough rambling about my food intake, I'm sure it's not that interesting. But, back to it for me, the rest of my supper looks quite yummy!! :)

I sure am not a cook...

2011-02-16T21:32:00.003-05:00

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE to make food. I hate cleaning up after, but making food I like is always fun to me. Sadly though, lately especially, I always seem to do a half assed job at it. I buy stuff to make homemade Mac&Cheese, and I manage to buy a cheese not quite strong enough, so it tastes uber bland. I make a lasagna, it's good but something was off (I can't quite remember what it was... Think it was too liquid or something). Tonight, I make my absolutely favorite 'reminds me of home' meal, as Hubby is out of town for a work thing, and being me right now, I manage to screw it up the first time around ;)

It wasn't much really, it's soooo simple to make, but I was in such a hurry that I didn't even realize I didn't heat my sauce up, I put way too many peas in there (thus leaving no space in my tiny pot for the corn. Boo!!), and started the little potatoes too late, so my first plate ended up having a burnt pastry shell, cold sauce on top and no potatoes. Being as it's 9pm already and I'm starving, I ate it anyways. Thankfully, plate number two has potatoes and warmed sauce (still a slightly burnt shell though).

I'm not sure why I can't do anything quite the way I used to. The first obvious answer is 'preggo brain', but I've always hated that excuse. Sure enough, I didn't think there was such a thing as Preggo or Baby brain, but let me tell you, there really is!! Ask my hubby, I can remember things that are so far fetched sometimes, it's borderline scary. Now, I can't even remember simple words or names! It's starting to be embarrassing at work too. Sadly, it's also translated in me sucking at cooking.

Thankfully, tomorrow's supper (also a chicken dish!! I do miss it sometimes with Hubby being a vegetarian now... Just seems so sily to make different meals for both of us) is kinda stupid proof. Don't think there's any way I can mess it up, and with the potatoes already boiled (I made enough to last me both days!), that should help greatly ;)

Darn you review websites :(

2011-01-25T18:51:00.002-05:00

We just booked our anniversary trip. We got a kickass Groupon deal for a nice Hotel in the beautiful area of Saint-Sauveur. I'm super stocked as I've never been (not even for a day trip or anything!), and am really looking forward to a nice day out with the hubby. Of course, in my search to find something to do while there (who knew it was so hard to find a decent priced pedicure in the land of nordic spas), I came across a few reviews of the hotel we'll be staying at. And, of course, most of them SUCK! Now, I'm usually not one to take those at heart too much, but since most of these all state the same things, I'm thinking there's a pattern here. Thankfully, the food reviews started going up (not that we plan to eat there much, but breakfast is included), but I doubt they can have done much about some of the other reviews... Mostly, I'm now a bit worried about our room location, as apparently it's up a pretty steep hill, and with it being winter, and me being bigger every day, I don't know how that'll work out too much. Oh, and no elevators?! What kind of place is that!

Anywho, all that to say, lets hope I am reading too much into it and it turns out to be absolutely amazing. And that I can find a decent place for a pedicure in the meantime. At least the food recomendations we got sound quite promissing :)

Food. I hate you, I love you.

2011-01-20T18:38:00.002-05:00

The one thing I have noticed recently is I am a semi-bottomless pit for food. All I ever want to do it eat it seems! And I can EAT!! I've never been one to have more than 2 Tacos in one sitting... Try 4 (plus a tiny bit leftover that I ate as a salad)! I ate massive amounts at Christmas too, it's kind of disgusting when you think about it...

Since I got pregnant in August, the one thing I have been craving is steak. I have wanted steak so badly, it's not even funny. Of course, I can't just crave steak, that would be too easy. I have been craving the one steak we made when we were out camping, in the boonies, and it was cooked right over a fire and we'd splurged on some AWESOME cuts of meat... I've never had a steak that good in my life. I'm picky about steak too, but that one... I can't even describe it properly, really. Needless to say, kind of hard to start a little cook fire in Downtown O-Town to satisfy that craving. So I have been trying to get myself some steak for months now. First BBQ season came to a close; then Hubby became a vegitarian (super happy for him, but I have lessened my meat consumption as a result); then Thanksgiving; then Christmas. A few supper dates with the parents, where steak was on the menu, had to be postponed and never got rescheduled. Tonight, I just can't take it anymore and hubby is indulging my craving. We're gonig to Montana's and I'm having steak!!! I know it's not somewhere where the steak is at its bestest, but it'll do at this point. I just need steak!!!

So, that's why I'm a bit mad and yet in love with food. Some days, it's great as I can eat whatever and be so happy, other days, I hate it cause only one random, rare item will satisfy me (mom's spaghetti sauce at a random hour of the night, or St-Hubert, or in this case steak). Love/Hate relationship for sure.

Posting about nothing really...

2011-01-18T21:44:00.002-05:00

There really and truly is nothing going on these days. No really, it's incredibly dull! Even with everything that is going on, there's nothing going on! Maybe I am just incredibly unmotivated to do anything, that might be it too. I feel like I spend way too much time online and not enough doing things I should be doing right now. I'm tired and just don't feel like doing anything. If I started on my actual current vent topic, I would probably alienate a gazillion people, and I already feel lonely enough, probably not a good idea. I think I need some incredibly serious sleep time. Hopefully it goes away soon, it sucks.

A whole lot of blah

2010-12-11T13:55:00.002-05:00

I'm not quite sure why I just don't feel like writing much these days. There's enough going on after all, that I can probably write a little something every now and then, but I am just lacking motivation. I'm blaming the weather on this. Really, is there anything more demotivating than seeing pitch blackness from your office window at 4:30pm? I think not.

So, what's been going on... Well, our NYC trip was a blast!! Myself, the hubby and the bro had a great time. Sure there were some hiccups (a very annoying tour guide on the bus who managed to give me a migraine because he laughed so hard and badly right in the microphone, and a taxi driver that got given a ticket for picking us up... That one was actually funny and he deserved it!), but all around, we had a blast and wouldn't change the trip. Well, maybe the bed bug... Could have done without that one! Got a couple of cute outfits for the little babe, a great shirt for moi and a super cute teddybear for the little babe too. Hubs got some Legos and bro went on a crazy shopping spree. Loads of pics were taken and all around, just good times :)

Otherwise, what's going on... Christmas tree is up! Still need to clean up in the living room and other parts of the house so I can finish decorating (although I don't think I'll have much motivation to do that this year, and may just leave it to the tree). Haven't done a single bit of Christmas shopping, so next weekend, I'm throwing myself at doing that! Thankfully, only one person to buy for and 2 exchange gifts and that's it.

Hmmm... Baby is doing great! Growing well, and enjoying some bladder kicking galore in there (much to my dismay). Still not quite sure where he's growing as I'm half way there and still have barely a tummy to speak of. Wonder how that works.

I think that's about it! Tonight we're supposed to go out and check the lights across the downtown area. Should be a fun little car ride for us, and it'll be nice to see all the lights and feel all Christmasy. Other drivers will probably hate us for driving all slow and whatnot, but I don't care all that much. Hopefully there's a fun Christmasy movie or TV special on after so we can cuddle up with some hot chocomolate and feel even more Christmasy :)

And, hopefully, I'll get back to my writing on this blog a bit more. There's bound to be some motivation somewhere I can muster up. One can wish ;)

The vegetarian conundrum

2010-10-24T16:37:00.002-04:00

So hubs decided to try out being vegetarian, and it's working out pretty well for him, so he's sticking to it. I'm really happy for him, as he had been feeling bad about eating so much meat (he just loves animals so much...), but it's made things a bit hard on the food habits of this little lady. I don't know what to make for food anymore! Or rather, what to have him make, as he's the main cook in the house. Right now he's out getting some chicken so we can make a stir fry of some sort, but of course, his will be the veggie only options, which is nice and all, but I feel badly having him cook the chicken that he won't eat. And of course, guess who's been craving steak beyond belief the last few days? Just my luck for sure. I'll most definitely need to make better meal plans so we can plan for food better and I still get to indulge these crazy cravings when they happen, but can still cater to Mr. Hubby's no meat policy. If anyone has yummy recipes, do share, please! :)

In the meantime, back to my nap, as I'm feeling like shit today, which has made the weekend plans a bit cruddy. No shopping for me (which I've also been craving in a different way), as I feel like I'm going to fall at any second from being up too long. It is loads of suckiness... And nothing seems to be curing it either, which helps even less. Hope it's gone before work tomorrow, otherwise, I'll have some serious issues.

We have a stroller!!

2010-10-15T00:01:00.004-04:00

Now that it seems my life revolves around this whole baby thing, most of the posts will likely be about this new thing. Sorry in advance.

Today we bought our first 'big' piece for the babe, a stroller!! Since I'm picky (and according to some don't like things unless it's expensive), I've been looking at strollers for a while now, and had found exactly the one I wanted from the get go. It's pretty sturdy and uber versatile, and I love it with all my heart!! Here's our new beauty!

Can't wait to get it (at the time I'm writing this, it's on order, as they only had one orange left, and it's their demo, and since we're in no rush for it and all, ordering it in wasn't the end of the world, y'a know?)!! We probably won't get to assemble it until the Winter, but I guess we may have to do it earlier, just to make sure everything is up and in working order. We will see!! :)

ETA: We got it super quick and we LOVE IT!! got to assemble it to make sure it was all happy and fine and it is. Gotta love something that's so easy to assemble! :)

EEK-ness all around!! :)

2010-10-14T00:01:00.002-04:00

Well, I guess the wait is over, and we can announce it officially (on Hubby's Birthday no less), but...

Yup!! There will be a new little Asselin in the mix, on or around April 28th 2011!! :) We couldn't be more thrilled (although still in major shock!), and can't wait to see how this crazy journey goes! :D

Obviously, I'm not 1-2 weeks anymore, the picture was taken when we found out on August 22nd (weirdly enough also, Isa's 2 year anniversary!). Today is officially Week 12. Hopefully things stay nice and good until the end of April.

And I do apologize in advance for the influx of baby related posts that will happen as a result of this ;)

Let's hear it for NEW YORK!!!

2010-09-19T15:30:00.002-04:00

I woke up yesterday morning with the urge to just pack up and leave for NYC right then and there :) Of course, I couldn't quite go through with that idea, but the next best thing came to me: Let's go again in a few months!! Why not plan another little road trip, this time with the boys, and get to enjoy my absolutely favorite city once again. I sent a message to the Dude within minutes of getting up and decided that whether hubs wanted to come or not, I was going, no questions about it. Dude definitely wanted to come along, and Hubs also decided to join in for the fun, so it looks like we're NYC bound in December (that truly was a fantastic time to be going. Christmas in NYC was quite stunning and you just felt like you were in a giant snowglobe of happy!)!!

From our last trip:

EEK! I definitely can't wait! :)

Cup cakes... Litterally!

2010-09-06T18:14:00.002-04:00

I know I've been MIA lately, there's just been some interesting developments in our neck of the woods that kinda sidetracked me a bit. More on that in the coming weeks hopefully! :)

In the meantime, I am taking a minute to share with you the awesomeness that is Cake in a Cup (or literally, Cup Cakes! :) )

Ingredients:

4 Tablespoons cake flour
4 Tablespoons sugar
2 Tablespoons cocoa
1 Egg
3 Tablespoons milk
3 Tablespoons oil
1 Mug

Instructions:

Mix flour, sugar and cocoa;
Spoon in the egg;
Add milk and oil, mix well;
Microwave for 3 minutes;
Let sit until it settles back in the mug;
Enjoy, either straight from the mug, or tip in a saucer.

Seriously, this is the yummiest thing ever, if you're craving cake and have none around. All that's missing is some Betty Crocker icing, and we're in business!! Having one right now actually, and it's quite delicious. There are some variations online, so Google is your friend on this one.

Promise I will write more soon!! :)

The Countdown is on!! :D

2010-08-20T22:45:00.002-04:00

Yup, you probably noticed the great new ticker at the top of the blog: We're counting down to the first part of the last Harry Potter movie!!! I can't believe it's here in less than 90 days now. CRAZY!!!

I remember when the movies and books came out. Oh, how I laughed at all the little people running like maniacs to get the books and be the first to see said movies, all decked out in those weird colors and whatnot (Gryffin-WHAT?!). At some point in time, I had decide to at least try and read the first book (I believe that was just before Half-Blood prince had come out), and at least see what all the fuss was about. They were on sale, so I figured I'd give it a try... One week later and 4 books read already, I was hooked and in love! How had I NOT fallen in love with it sooner?! What kind of a Muggle idiot was I?!

Needless to say, I was, after that point, in line with those people at the movies and pre-ordering the books (Was I EVER happy when Deathly Hallows showed up on the Saturday from the nice Canada Post people... Kinda sad it wasn't by Owl, but I still loved CP that day, for the first and last time in my life). And now, after all this time reading and re-reading and watching and playing (cause we have ALL the videogames too), etc., it's almost over... I absolutely cannot wait, and you can be sure I'll be at that theater at Midnight on the night it comes out and I will be wearing my Muggle shirt and Gryffindor scarf and laughing, screaming and crying the whole way through. And I just needed a reminder of when that would be taking place ;)

Nature Rocks!

2010-08-20T22:15:00.002-04:00

So far, this summer has been pretty damned awesome. I have a few ideas as to why, but really, it's just been such a nice change of pace to have a GREAT summer rather than a completely crazy one (like last year with work!) or sad and boring one (like most of the ones before that :( ).

One of the great things about this year, so far, has been camping!! We've had quite the discussions on whether we should go with our friends D&G, as they don't do 'normal people' camping (or car camping), they go out and do a more rugged canoe-camping version of it, and D. didn't think I'd survive out there. I have to admit, I didn't think I would either, but being me, and having my ego bruised a bit, I kinda needed to prove him wrong on this, so I fought hard, and sure enough, we ended up on their group camping trip participant list. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, even with all D and G had told me about it, but went with an open mind (and a killer amounts of food!), and in the end, I didn't want to leave after our allotted 3 days. I just wanted to stay and enjoy that beautiful island for a few more days, and soak up all that beauty and nature as much as I could, but couldn't and had to come back to reality, which was way harsher than I ever could have expected. I already warned my boss that next year, he'll definitely need to give me a bit more time off at the same time as D., cause I am going again for sure and will definitely be staying way longer than our measly 3 days this time.

And now, off to call my brother and see if he wants to come camping with me in a few weeks!! ;)

So hot...

2010-08-05T19:00:00.002-04:00

My goal in life, is to have Michael Buble as a second husband. I know, lofty goal, but, like he said in his great hit song, he just hasn't met me yet, what can he do! This may all change on Saturday, when we go to see the lovely man (FLOOR SEATS BABY!! WOOT!), and I just may throw myself on stage to see him. I likely won't, but you never know what I might do in the moment... Check the news peeps.

But really, I do love him. He's a great Canadian artist, and he's cute as all heck. He just makes me smile :D

And, because I can, here is the Lyric video to his song stated above, where a very pretty gal makes an appearance (1:50 and 2:20 in!! :D ): http://www.michaelbuble.com/media/videos/havent-met-you-yet-lyric-video

And here, just lots of hotness...

Hopefully some pics soon!!! :D

I'm a geek

2010-07-20T18:55:00.002-04:00

We are now back from our kick booty vacation to Toronto (been back for a week almost, but having computer problems, so it's hard to post anything). We had a blast, I LOVE the train (such and efficient way to travel), think Ottawa seriously needs a subway, and discovered I'm such a geek!

One of the reasons we went to Toronto was to check out the almightily cool Harry Potter exhibit at Ontario Science Center. From the moment we got there, I was in heaven! I actually got sorted (WOOHOO GRYFINDOR!!), and was more eager than all the little kids when the doors opened to reveal the train from HP right there! I loved how everyone had their fake British accents on and the cloaks and seeing all the movie things... It was just absolutely perfect! I would go again and again if I could :)

So yeah, I'm geeky like that, I get REALLY into these things, what can I say ;)

Now, back to the daily grind of work. That, I'm not super happy to be back to, but more vacation time is coming up (include my adventure in camping. That should be interesting...), and some visits from family (EEK!!!!) and weddings all over the place!! Can't wait!! :)

I'm on a train! :)

2010-07-11T11:09:00.003-04:00

Not as cool as being on a boat, as we all know, but still pretty damned awesome! :)

This is our first ride ever on a train, and so far I'm loving it!! Not sure if the pre-emptive Gravol have anything to do with it (new non drowsy gravol gets 2 thumbs up, yet again!!), but I have no motion sickness whatsoever. It had started happening more and more on OC Transpo buses lately, so I was a tad worried. All is good though. The sites are pretty nice (although not very exciting, but better than the 416 or 401 ever are, and we get to nap, which I highly appreciate after the crazy busy day and late night we had yesterday. (Hey, we're in Napanee!) Oh, and the free Wi-Fi is always appreciated :)

Now, I'm sure you wonder why we're taking the train, rather than our car. Well, it seems Pat didn't inherit his parent's travel gene, and, mostly, we won some free Via Rail passes last Nov. at a friend's auction fundraiser (best 20$ I ever spent!!). They were round trip tickets for 2 to Toronto. We had talked about going for our anniversary, but Toronto in winter isn't really my thing. Then we'd thought of going for Pat's birthday, but that's in October, and you just never know what kind of weather you'll get. So, when we both decided we seriously needed some time away from O-Town (and a certain kitten who is highly over active in the wee hours of the night), we figured, what better time to go than now, when there's the Harry Potter exhibit going on at the Science Center ?! I don't think there's any really. And also, cause it was the only week Hubs could get off work.

So, here we are, sitting here using our laptops (Me, on FB and bloggin while Hubs is playing his little Runes of Magic and Mario games. Geeky much?) on our way to Toronto. Promise to post pics! :)

Never thought I'd say this

2010-07-06T21:23:00.004-04:00

I miss my office. That's where all the nice AC is! The one that's running much better than my tiny, crappy bedroom one, and where I didn't feel like I was passing out from doing nothing in. Hell, I actually had to wear a long sleeve shirt in there today. I miss that!

I'm trying really hard not to complain right now. I am. I love Summer and have missed it terribly, but this is completely unbearable!!! I have barely eaten in the past 2 days and I'm feeling nauseous (both from the not eating and from the heat), which is making my whole digestive system go wonky and unhappy (sorry for the TMI there), and I'm spoiling my Bluesfest tickets as a result (just too hot to go stand in a crowd of people to see bands I don't know or care for). I feel like I'm about to pass out and I'm in the coolest room in the house. WTF?! This morning, at 9:30am, it was 39 with the Humidex!!! That's not right. And, the UV index was 11... ELEVEN! I thought it only went up to TEN! Eleven is considered Extreme. As in you're likely going to get a sunburn from just looking outside your window today.

I hate to complain about summer, but this is just ridiculously extreme for heat. It's crazy! My poor kitten is panting like a dog for crying out loud. It's quite the sad sight.

Going to go grab some ice or something before I actually do pass out from this heat :(

Hobbies

2010-06-29T20:20:00.002-04:00

A few months ago, a dear friend of mine suggested that I might need to find a hobby. At the time, I didn't think it was too funny (over thinking me took it as 'get a life', while the logical side of me knew she just wanted me be happy and suggested it to combat the increasing boredom I'd been feeling lately since she was super busy with work and I have very few friends in these neck of the woods lately, but I digress), but the more I thought of it, the more I realized that she is right. Playing Farmville a hobby does not constitute.

So, I set out my sights on finding me something to do. I had hinted to hubby that I wanted a clarinet, as I used to play in high school, and sure enough, what did I get for my Birthday? A clarinet! Can't find a single place that offers lessons though, so I'll have to get me some books and try and remember what I learned. I did get the beginning of the Hockey Night in Canada Theme back though.

Then, I kept thinking about what I like and what could be fun to do, and also something practical, cause I'm like that. I do try and scrapbook a bit and make cards, but right now, our computer room is packed and there isn't much room to do anything in there, so all my supplies are just under a pile of stuff. What else do I like, I thought. And then, a friend of mine's own new found hobby hit me like a tone of bricks and I realized it was perfect! So, I'm hoping in the very near future to learn how to sew!! I can't even do buttons properly, so this should be interesting, but I figure, it's practical and something I would love to learn. I figure there are so many nice dresses and totes and such that I LOVE, but can never find quite the right one to copy it, so why not make my own copies?

My goal at the end of this is to learn how to make the beautiful Halston dress worn by the amazing SJP in the new Sex and the City movie (the one pictured here). I know it won't happen after just a 4 week course, obviously, but I'll be a happy girl once I get that dress on me :) I'll try and keep you updated on the progress I've made, if I manage to start on the class at the end of July, like I'm hoping to. At the end of that one, we should be able to make our very own 'designer tote' as they put it. Can't wait to see how that works out...

And I'll hopefully be able to remember the rest of my clarinet tunes in the meantime.

It had to happen eventually

2010-06-29T20:19:00.001-04:00

Someone called me 'Madame A.' today. Le Sigh. Made me feel old.

That's all...

I am not an athletic person, and therefore...

2010-06-27T15:18:00.003-04:00

... should be banned from any and all sporting activities on the face of this planet!

OUCH!!! My everything hurts today! We did dragonboat racing yesterday with some friends for a charity out in Aylmer. Had TONS of fun, even though we didn't make it in the top 8 (BOO! Stupid wind!), but today, I'm most certainly paying the price!! My sides ache (at least it means I've FINALLY started doing the correct technique!), my shoulders and an arm are dead, my bum is quite unhappy and I'm EXHAUSTED!!!! At least, there are no sunburns this time around, as there was no sun to speak of for most of the day. Small consolation, I would have taken the sun over it all!! At least I had my sunscreen this time around, but I digress.

We're scheduled to play in H.O.P.E V-Ball Summerfest in a few weeks (shameless plug, but let me know if you'd like to donate! :) Yes, I do realize there's one person who reads my blog ;) ), and I know I'll be in heavy pain after that one too! My arms are not used to volley-ball any more, and I have a feeling they won't be happy after that one! I think I'll need some serious practice before hand!

Well, back to my lounging and low moaning in pain ;)

Anything you can do...

2010-06-27T15:07:00.002-04:00

I noticed a funny thing recently with the kitties. Our oldest, Hum-Vee, has always been a pretty laid back kitty. She eats, sleeps and likes to be scratched. Even as a kitten, she was never 'that' crazy. Now that Yang is around though, jumping every where and sleeping on tables, Hum-Vee has for some reason decided that anything the kitten does, she can do to! What she doesn't seem to realize is that she's 3 times the size of the kitten (if not more), and she weighs WAY more, so it's harder to get to certain spots.

One of the places kitten likes to sleep is a desk/table we have behind our couch. She'll just get on the couch, on the table and nap there. Hum-Vee decided she was going to go nap there too, and trekked her way up (kitten = 1 jump, kitty = 5 jumps and lots of fumbling around) and when she got there, realized that she's too big to lie down there, and just sat, checking things out. Now, we scold the kitten for doing it, so of course I have to scold Hum-Vee for it too. And then I have to try and lift her to get her off said table. Forgot how heavy she was actually, after hauling Yang around with 2 fingers for a month now!

She keeps doing things like this, trying to get our attention most likely, and then I feel bad having to get her to stop doing it. And then, when Yang is all over Hum-Vee, biting and gnawing at her, I have to scold Yang, cause Hum-Vee doesn't just bat her with her paw to get her the heck off of her. Guess it evens out in the having to discipline them category.

The joys of Kitty-Parenthood ;)

I'm a workaholic...

2010-06-22T21:53:00.002-04:00

... I think.

I'm not quite sure, really. It could be that, or just my unusual want to please people which makes me do it, but I'm not sure.

This week is a tad funky at work since we've got a couple of people on vacation. No big deal really, but I do need to pick up some slack here and there, so my usual supervisor work kinda takes a hike. Our boss asked me and the other supervisor to do some quality control on a few of our staffers for 2 weeks straight, and I haven't been able to do it for the past 2 days cause of said extra work. Today, I actually had everything ready so I could do it from home tonight. Will I get extra credit for it? Nope! Paid for it? Nada! So why in the heck and I making myself do this?! I was just about to open it up and realized that no. I didn't owe it to anyone, since I have done my job for the past 2 days and I want to relax tonight and play stupid Facebook games rather than be listening to work stuff for hours on end. Part of me is patting me on the back for it, the other part is wondering if my boss will have a fit when he comes back from vacation because I didn't do what he asked. I think (make that more, pray to GOD!) he'll be understanding once I explain the situation, but I'm still scared shitless of his reaction either way.

Lets hope I don't have to be job searching in the next week or so :S

Bachelorette parties and babies...

2010-06-12T20:41:00.002-04:00

It seems my life is caught somewhere in between those two (not as exciting as Carrie's and Big's 'caught somewhere between Wild Sex and a Baby', but it'll do ;) ). Today I went to my first of 2 (possibly 3) bachelorette parties for the summer. I had an absolute blast, no question (we went to a Burlesque dance class, highly recommend it, and out for supper. Nothing fancy, but the bride wanted it simple like that :) ), but when the other thing dominating your life is babies (talk, bellies, clothing, accessories, the actual little humans themselves), it sure makes you wonder...

We're at that point in our 'married relationship' where the honeymoon phase is over. We've been married a year (and 4 months), and we've sort of settled down (sort of being very important in this sentence. Obviously, we don't have a house and there are still some iffy things in the finance department, but it's definitely MUCH better in general), so everyone seems to be expecting it, which prompts us to talk about and wonder: are we actually ready for this? I mean, it's not just like asking yourself, am I really willing to spend that much on a pair of shoes/clothes/[insert item of choice here]? No no, this is long term commitment to another little human being. One you are responsible for minimum 18 years, most likely more (hopefully not less), and that you have to raise to be a decent-ish citizen of this planet... I have zero decision making skills people, am I even fit for this job?! So of course, every one asking you prompts a mini panic attack, cause you're not sure what to respond. You don't really need them to know if/when you're trying (do I really need to give them a mental picture?!), but you need to give them a satisfactory answer, but nothing that will make them ask too many questions. So far, my response has been: But I've only just recently discovered my love for beer! How can I get rid of that already?? Usually shuts people up and no more questions are asked. And then, that question ends up dominating conversations with the spouse. Are we ready for it? We can barely stand the new kitten, are we REALLY ready for this? Really..?

That's why I like bachelorette parties. There are no such questions involved. Only happy thoughts of drinking (see? had I been pregnant, no drinks for me! ;) ) and laughing and having a good time, and talking about all the wedding prep. You know the commitment is there, but no one questions it or asks about the other commitments attached to it. It's easy, and fun, and frivolous. I miss that!

All that is said, and hubby and I have actually decided on the whole baby issue, and ever since then, my mind has been running crazy with such thoughts as today's. It's just so monumental a decision! The best comparison I could come up with was to a wedding: with your wedding, it's THE most important day of your life (according to most, not all, myself included), and you think that every single decision you make is the be-all, end-all of decisions (Yes, but I NEEEEEEEEED the 20$ a table black satin crush table cloths, Babe!!!), and it's the end of the world if something goes wrong (like a DJ playing Itsy Bitsy Spider during Supper, or a woman who can not tell what freakin' shade Raspberry Pink should look like!). But really, after the fact, you look back and it wasn't that big a deal. So, you had the pretty table cloths... No one noticed but you! And yes, the DJ was awful. Who's wasn't? (seriously, haven't been to a wedding in a while where the DJ wasn't iffy... or at least the bride thought so ;) ). When it comes to babies though, the decisions, to a certain point, are a bit more epic. Granted, picking a Becco Carrier over a Snuggli won't change much, or nursery colors, but in the grand scheme of things, some of those decisions will affect a new little person much more than the color or your table cloths!

I know this isn't really the best analogy in history (really, what you choose to make of your wedding/vows is just as epic and important), but it's still way more of a big deal than most other things so far that I've had to decide on. And to be honest, it's scaring the living crap out of me.

(I apologize, this must be the most all over the place post I've ever done! Sorry if it makes very little sense!)

My very first birthday party!!

2010-05-30T21:04:00.002-04:00

No, sadly this is not me reminiscing about a birthday party from the past that was that memorable. I've only ever had one birthday party in my life, and it happened to be last night!

After 8 years of being together, hubby finally listened to my pleas and threw me a birthday party. A complete surprise too, cause I truly wasn't expecting this in the least!!! It's actually a friend's birthday today and so I thought we were celebrating her birthday yesterday. I was *this* close to not going cause I was soooo exhausted from waking up early to pick up Yang and I actually had a 2 hour nap before hand and was still exhausted, but figured it'd be a fun night and we'd just leave early. Turned out that we got there to a great bunch of friends to wish me a great birthday, with a house fully decorated in Tinker Bell things (would have made any 5 year old girl quite happy, and this 26/soon to be 27 year old ECSTATIC!!). We had a blast playing outside, where a live jam session was held (and I do have a bit of a soft spot for boys who can play instruments, so it was a great gift for sure! lol) and some footballs were tossed around, while I was getting drunk (it was one of my presents) on Cosmos (not quite Tinker Bell approved, but quite nummy for sure ;) ). Cake was had, all the candles were blown out in one shot (SCORE!), and then lots of jumping and dancing around and singing. Oh, and Pin the flower on Tinker Bell's hand ;)

OOH! And the bestest gift EVER, a brand new Clarinet!!! I used to play in High School and needed a hobby so I mentioned to hubby I would like to take that up again, and he listened and him, along with the friends who's house we invaded, got me one :D I tried her out this afternoon, and I can still get it to sound semi decent, which I'm pretty happy about :) Now, just need to get a book or two so I remember what key is what, and we'll be all set.

For a first ever birthday party, I couldn't have asked for anything better (except maybe BIL and SIL being there), except maybe having come home a tad bit earlier. 5am is a bit too late/early to go to bed at my age ;)

That new little fur ball I mentioned...

2010-05-30T20:30:00.006-04:00

Isn't she the cutest little thing you've ever seen? I'm completely in love with her! :) We picked her up yesterday morning from the vet where my aunt works, and everyone over there was sad to see her go. She was one of the few kittens they've had that was actually super nice and friendly (even my aunt liked her and she usually hates cats!). We're super happy with her so far.

It was a bit of a shock to introduce her to our other cat, but it all worked out in the end (they've been running around and playing all day. Our cat is a bit of a big wuss, so she just lets the little one run all over her! But there's only been one instance of hissing, so it's all good. Her name is Yang, as she's all white with a spot of black on her head. We have friends with a cat who's exactly the opposite: all black with the tip of his tail white, and his name is Yin. It just fit pretty well :) Off to go supervise, I think I hear some running around again ;)

Adding a (furry) bundle of joy to our household

2010-05-28T18:49:00.002-04:00

That's right! There's a new little addition on the way, and NO it's not human (don't even get me started on that one!). It's all white, with one spot of black on it and cute and cuddly and furry!! We're getting a second kitty!!! :)

We got our first cat almost 6 years ago now. She was rescued, as her mom forgot her under the neighbor's shed one night and my dad heard her meowing like a crazy thing the next morning and went to get her. They already have a cat and didn't want the extra one, so me, in my little sad state at seeing such a tiny little creature all alone, adopted her, and she's now our little baby girl, Hum-Vee. I do love her so much, even with all her weird quirks.

So, when my aunt (who works at the vet back home) mentioned an ever so cute 2 and a half month old kitten they had who needed a home, we just couldn't resist. Of course, after thinking and reading about this, we realize it may not have been the best of ideas just cause I'm kinda worried about Humster will react to the whole thing, but hopefully it won't be too awful... Really, I do hope, cause I won't want to get rid of the new kitty, that's for sure!! The old one either, don't worry ;)

Will post pictures as soon as I can!! :)

A Yummy recipe to share

2010-05-26T22:24:00.003-04:00

My friend Claire posted this on her Facebook page not too long ago and I had to share it as it is quite the yummy recipe. After having it, we figured either switching the Sweet Potatoes or making it half-half with normal potatoes could be even yummier!

Chicken, Sweet Potato & Coconut curry
Taken from BBC Good Food

Ingredients:
* 1 tbsp sunflower oil
* 2 tsp mild curry paste
* 2 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
* 2 medium-sized sweet potatoes , peeled and cut into bite-size pieces
* 4 tbsp red split lentils
* 300ml chicken stock
* 400ml can coconut milk
* 175g frozen peas

Steps:
1. Heat the oil in a deep frying pan or wok, stir in the curry paste and fry for 1 minute. Add the chicken, sweet potatoes and lentils and stir to coat in the paste, then pour in the stock and coconut milk. Bring to the boil, then simmer for 15 minutes.
2. Tip in the peas, bring back to the boil and simmer for a further 4-5 minutes. Season to taste before serving.

Per serving:
291 kcalories, protein 19g, carbohydrate 24.5g, fat 14 g, saturated fat 10g, fibre 3.6g, salt 0.57 g

Prep time: 25-35 minutes

Definitely worth try out :)

Who doesn't believe in Global Warming exactly?!

2010-05-26T22:10:00.004-04:00

Cause I sure as hell do now! Really, April THIRD most people I knew were at the beach, and I was in shorts. And anyone who knows me KNOWS I get cold when it's 25 outside, so this is definitely not normal. Today is May 26th and with the humidex, I think we were damned close to the 40s. SERIOUSLY?!

I love summer. LOVE, love, love IT! But this is getting completely crazy. Summer in April, as much as I enjoyed it, is just not normal and shouldn't be happening. I have no great arguments on the why of this, but it shouldn't!

I will now go back to sweating like a mad woman over here... Lets keep our fingers crossed for that crazy T-Storm to come and cool things off.

Enjoying the sunshine!!

2010-05-23T14:03:00.004-04:00

Man, can this weekend be any nicer?? Got to hang out outside in the park with some great ladies on Friday (and some darn cute kids too!!), played poker outside yesterday (for a great cause, and with minimal rain interruptions), and today, being all alone as the hubby is cooped in playing video games (I know, WTF?! lol), I got to go and buy something I'd been wanting to do for a long time: a new Herb garden!! I'm very excited about it, got 5 different kinds of herbs and I do hope I actually use them :S We'll see. But at least, I got to be outside for the day rather than inside bored. And, even did some cleaning (maybe I am growing up after all... ;) ) and am actually blogging this from my cutie little patio set, with the smells of my new freshly planted herbs right next to me!!

Man I love SUMMER!!! :)

The business of getting older

2010-05-21T23:34:00.004-04:00

As my 27th birthday is approaching, and a few comments on an old friend's Facebook status today got me reminiscing on one of her birthday parties from at least 15 years ago, I realize that I'm definitely not getting any younger (DUH! I know...). When I'd done the quick math and realized that said Birthday party, complete with bad hair cuts and LOTS of watermelon, was that far away, I couldn't believe just how quickly 15 years had gone by. I don't think I can explain this in any way that would make sense, as obviously 27 years of my life have gone by, but actually putting the number to that memory was a bit of a shock...

I've never had super exciting birthdays myself. I have pictures of my 4th B-Day party (where I apparently got a swing set and all my cousins and aunts and uncles got invited to try it out/assemble it while we eagerly waited), but otherwise, I have never had a typical 'kids birthday party'. In a way, it makes me sad, cause I do remember those younger times as being a bit unpleasant and definitely lonely. I kinda wish I had those fun memories of birthdays past. But, since one of the many things I'm working on at the moment is not dwelling on the past, I'm quite hoping to make some new memories with this upcoming Birthday. I've already got a few things planned out, which will hopefully turn into making some nice memories that I can look back on fondly instead of cringing at the thought of.

Along with an extra candle on that cake, and wanting some happy memories to look forward to (or be able to look back on I should say?), there's also the thought of being closer to being an 'adult'. Yes, I put 'adult' in the quotation marks cause I still don't know what that means yet. I am pretty sure I'm not quite there, but I have a feeling it's near... That's probably scarier than the extra candle, really. ;) More on that later...

Trying this out once again...

2010-05-21T23:27:00.002-04:00

Since I've been needing a bit of an outlet lately for just about everything, and there's only so much waxing I can get done (no, seriously! I found this is the best stress reliever EVER!! No plates to smash or pillow to scream in? Book an eyebrow wax, works miracles!), I figured I might as well take up my blog again (which I also believe many people will thank me for, as they will not be getting random e-mails from me venting every other day...)

I can't promise great big insightful posts, my writing skills or vocabulary aren't magically up to the standards of most people I know and I sadly don't lead the most interesting life, but I'll do my darndest to post something every now and then...

Here goes nothing...

Ah, the weather!!

2008-06-18T10:26:00.002-04:00

Last weekend was probably the weirdest, weather wise, since that crazy snow storm of the winter, when we got snowed in a FBIL's place! On Saturday, we had about 3-4 Thunderstorms back to back!! I don't remember seeing more than 3-4 T-Storms all of last year. Sadly, no great pictures of the storms themselves, cause our camera was in the car, and we weren't about to run out there to go get her. But I did catch a few pictures...

***
Sadly, the pics won't upload right now, and I have got to head on off to work soon, so I will try again tonight once I get home! Stupid slow computer!

Torpedo Schnauze!

2008-06-11T09:48:00.003-04:00

While FBIL and his lovely wife were off to London (England!!) for the weekend, we brought their Giant Schnauzer, Surelock, to the Kennel on Friday morning. I adore that dog, but good god is he ever big!! So, anywho, I was able to snap some pictures of him, roaming about in the back of our car. And, yes, we have to flip the seats down for him to be comfy in there...

Surelock and Uncle Pat, driving along...

TORPEDO NOSE!!!!

How can you not love that face!!

Resting up for yet another...

TORPEDO SCHNAUZY!!!!

We have a bit too much fun with that dog I think ;)

Foodie Me!

2008-05-25T11:36:00.004-04:00

These are slightly older pictures, taken last weekend. It was the first time in a LONG time that FH and I were both home, together, at the SAME time for meals!! We're usually on very different schedules, so making food in our house consists of me making pasta when I come home from work for myself!

First, I'll start with a yummy desert I didn't make. In the quest to find the perfect wedding cake at the perfect price, one of our lovely fellow WBers had offered to make my cake for me (best price I found so far!). Being me though, had to try it before hand, so for Mother's Day, I asked her to make me a cake! Wasn't a problem since she was making one already for her mom. This is BY FAR, the best cake I've EVER EATEN in my life!!!!!!! Three layers of Chocolate cake (that actually tastes like real chocolate!!!) and the yummiest Buttercream icing you've EVER tasted... Sorry, the pics are a tad crappy, but it was SO GOOD!!! And for those of you that saw my Facebook status a while ago about FH eating the last piece of cake, it was this cake... I put a HUGE post it on it, saying NOT to eat it, it's mine (PMSing, needed the chocolate!), and he never saw the post-it and ate it :( ...

Yes, that is my finger heading towards the icing...

My little bro, enjoying some cake (sorry for the open mouth shot... Caught him 'in action'! lol)

And the three yummy layers of cake... GOD it was good! Gonna have to ask for another cake soon I think!

So, on Saturday night, I invited FBIL and his lovely wife over for a Mexican feast! Thank you Kraft Magazine! :) Made some Quesadillas and a layered Taco salad, both BEYOND yummy!! Don't have pictures of that though, sorry. Dessert was a great Strawberry and whipped cream... I don't even kow what it's called! But it was good (basically crushed strawberries, with Cool whip and Eagle Bran, with oreo crumbs as 'crust'. Freeze it, unmold it 5-6 hours later; 4 wasn't enough FYI. Then cover it up with MORE whipped cream and strawberries!!). That I do have a picture of! ;)

Then, on Sunday night, I made a yummy chicken stir fry for the FH. He loves stir fries and I don't make them often (even though it's SO easy). Not great photography, I know, but that food really was yummy and deserved to be shown! :)

I know it's not quite Leslie's food blog, but we've all gotta start somewhere... Now, going to go make me some lunch. I'm hungry staring at all those yummy food pictures! :)

Wedding dream...

2008-05-22T17:48:00.002-04:00

The first non picture post has arrived! Sorry gals, just had to share the weird dream I had last night!! I'm guessing the first of many wedding related dreams to come, but definitely odd...

I was getting married to my hunny, but in Ottawa for some reason (our wedding will be in our small hometown). I had my dress in hand, which is gorgeous (and my actual wedding dress!). Put it on, all of a sudden, it's NOT my dress anymore! It was a nice dress, but definitely not mine! Fine, I can deal with that. We get out of the car (I think I actually did get dressed in the car...) and we're at the corner of Rideau Street and King Edward in Ottawa, in front of a WALMART!! (It's actually an LCBO at that street corner). I get super excited, and we go in and sure enough, I'm apparently getting married in the WalMart!? From there thigns are blurry, cause even though I am sleeping and dreaming, I keep asking myself, what the HE!! are we doing at a WalMart?! I do remember that they played the wrong song while I was walking down the aisle (quite litteraly!), the BM dresses were ALL wrong, I'm pretty sure my parents weren't there... Thankfully, I was marrying my FH (who did look SMOKING hot! lol), but it was still weird getting married by a clerk at cash 1! So weird... When we got out, I was out of my dress and stuff got really weird (I think we were being chased by some weird video game creature of some sort...) and I thankfully woke up.

I know they say all dreams are supposed to have a meaning, but I do NOT see the meaning of this one! :S

Will try to post some pictures from the weekend tonight!! Get back to normal on the blog at least.

Flowers for Mom

2008-05-15T10:47:00.003-04:00

Last weekend I went over to our parents' place for mother's day! Every year, around this time, my mom gets SUPER excited about her flowers blooming. I get to hear all the funky names of all her plants, even though most of them I won't remember, and this year, I got to take some great pictures! :)
And, I also had a bit of fun with Picasa!

These are Parrot Tulips! Only flowers I remember the name of! lol

And this is from her Lilac tree!

Can't see it super well, but there is a Bee there! First time I've been able to take a picture of a bug, without being right in it's face! Was an exciting moment for me there... lol

Marc and Marie's Wedding!!

2008-05-06T10:14:00.004-04:00

One thing I learned this weekend: No matter how much prep you put into a wedding, on the day of, it doesn't matter! Whether it all goes right or wrong or on schedule, it's all over way too quick. But heavens is it ever worth it! :)

So, this past Saturday was the first of the 3 upcoming weddings in my life, Pat's brother's wedding. We had an amazing time, and yeah, day of, nothing went as planned (timeline wise), but it was GREAT and PERFECT!!! The bride was a stunner and the groom was super handsome. There was no rain at any point while we were outside for pictures, which was rather surprising, and they are now on their honeymoon in the Dominican!

We have many pictures, but I will only post a few. The rest are on my Facebook page (I think I have most of you?), so go right ahead and check it out! :) And some have been taken by FH and FMIL too, so I can't take the credit for all of them (will let you know when it is moi though).

The night before, at the rehearsal.

Let's call this 'de-stressing' at the Westin?

Morning of, our groom, practicing his bow tie

Their fabulous cake!!

The yummy candy buffet!

I know from here we're missing a big chunk, but while we were getting ready, I didn't take any pictures. So, our newlyweds!!! :)

Their first dance (This year's Love - David Gray, which hasn't left my head since Saturday night!!)

Doing some twirling around!

Dancing with her new Brother-in-law!!!

For good measure, a picture of moi and the Sweetie!

And with the bride too!

Doing the Sprinkler!!!!!

Much later on that night, during our Timmie's stop. A Toast to the night that was!!

The amazing luggage tags I got them (a HUGE thanks to Pam for this!!!) They absolutely love them! :)

Stealing a kiss at the airport in Montreal

Ready to go on their honeymoon!!

Last picture before they were off! Miss them a whole lot already!! :D

Sorry I don't have better ones of the bride and such, it was a really crazy day. Can't wait for it to be my own now soon!! :)

Location Scouting

2008-04-30T23:57:00.007-04:00

As I have bored you so many times with, my Lovely soon to be Sister-In-Law is getting married in 3 days (May 3rd!!), which is more or less why I have been MIA for the past little while. Things in general have been slightly crazy, add to that the great fun I am having helping her out with her big day, a girl doesn't have much time for anything else.

Last weekend, she and I went Location Scouting for nice places to take her wedding pictures! Saturday was a really nice day here in Ottawa, although a bit windy... OK, make that SUPER windy! But we still had a blast and found some really nice locations, and even discovered things we didn't know existed until then in our very own Nation's Capital!! BTW, I am not originally from Ottawa, so I don't know everything there is to know about it. My parents weren't really touristy people so we never really went to Ottawa for anything... Except the Science and Tech Museum!

So, here are the fun locations we visited and the great things we discovered on our little journey! :)

The much needed shot of Parliament Hill from afar! This was taken from Mackenzie Bridge (behind Rideau Center, where the buses whiz by at amazing speeds, and where Rick Hillier was being run down by reporters a few weeks back!)

A cute Courtyard, with an odd little bear statue... Can't remember where this one is... Think this is the Jeanne D'arc Courtyard we found, but not sure...

This courtyard is located near the Justina McAfree Wedding Dress store (there is a restaurant called Memories, and it's right next to that!!). Truly a stunning spot!

This is actually a piece of Art, hung on the wall of one of the buildings in that courtyard! Didn't read the whole plaque, but it's really neat in person, definitely worth checking out!

Trying to get an artsy shot of it...

The absolutely stunning National Gallery! Such a great building!!

A cutie puppy that was taking a walk downtown! lol

The American Embassy!! Yes, I actually dared take a picture of the thing! We were rather far when I did though... We kept kidding about having the guys on Saturday pose in front of it, in full Canadian Military Uniforms, for some pictures! Would make some funny shots with the security guards chasing us around the Market (apparently, they are very picky about who takes pictures of their embassy...)

FSIL, standing on the foundation of Colonel John By's house, which is located in Major's Hill Park!! Another one of our discoveries actually, and it was a really neat one! :)

The great view of the back of Parliament Hill from Major's Hill again.

I LOVED this! The 'fence' around the cliff on Major's Hill has this written/imprinted in all of it!! Just thought it was really neat! :)

Love the way the road bends...

A slightly peculiar work of art in Major's Hill still... It is made to represent all the spirals found in Nature around us... ??

The Rideau Canal Locks, all drained for the Winter, with this REALLY cool boat in them!

And the one shot I just can't do without, every single time I have gone on the hill, I need one shot of the Parliament building from the front! :)

The Centenial Flame in front of the Hill

The pretty Flowers in front of one of the Hotels in Ottawa (drawing a blank on the name... Think it's the Lord Elgin though...). Our weekend Bride is having Tulips, so of COURSE we had to take pictures of the ones we saw! :)

These we found on a tree in front of the, now closed, Carmichael Inn, in Downtown Ottawa. It's right next to the location of their reception venue, and she wanted to show it to me and it had this amazingly pretty tree! I have no clue what kinds of flowers these are, but it's gorgeous!!!

Random Wall we saw on our way back to the car. Just LOVED the way it looked, and we just might use it for a picture or two, cause it's SO neat!!

Another place I discovered were the Hog's Back Falls! I'd never been there before, and FSIL wanted to see if there was a way to get on the rocks below without wrecking the dress...

Sadly, we couldn't even get on the rocks with our normal shoes and attire, so we scrapped the idea, but I did get to find a great landmark I didn't know existed only a few minutes from Downtown!

So, there you have it! Our fun scouting day and learning adventure at the same time!! :) My next entry will probably be of her in a super pretty wedding dress, and I doubt I'll be able to post much in the next few days, sadly... I will be back soon with the details of the wedding though!

Have a great weekend! :)

Kitty Model!

2008-04-09T00:42:00.003-04:00

For some reason, our kitty LOVED posing for pictures last night!! Not sure what got into her, she usually hates it, but not last night! We just kept cuddling her and taking pictures and she didn't move... She didn't do quite what I wanted, so didn't get exactly the shot I wanted, but she was adorable nonetheless!!

She was super happy to be home!! We had to bring her to my parents' place while we went there on Sunday night, as we're having a slight Bat scare, and she's not vaccinated against rabies and such... She kept giving Pat big hugs!!

Later in the night, on our bed. She was sleeping and I was trying to get shots and she woke up... Thought for sure she'd go away, but no, she just kept rolling around, letting me take pictures! :)

Looking like she's sleep walking!

Maybe she's flying in her dreams in this one?

I just LOVE how you can see ALL the details in her fur on this one! She's multi-colored, kinda counter productive when you are trying to wear a certain color clothing, dark or light, it always shows up on it (!!), but she is so gorgeous!

Sorry for all the pictures, just love my baby! :)

The 'runner up' shots...

2008-03-26T14:49:00.002-04:00

I tried amazingly hard to get pictures over the weekend for the Photo Contest. The one I ended up posting is the one sweetie thinks looked the best. I have to say, I was kind of disappointed with my shots... I tried changing the settings and all that jazz, but they always came out WAY darker than it actually was on that day! If only it would naturally take the shots like we see them!

So the first 4 shots were taken Saturday, at my aunt's house back home in L'Orignal. And, just for the record, I was standing up, and the snow bank reached around my chest or chin area!!! It's MADNESS I tell you the amount of snow we had!

This is in their 'driveway'. They have this really long street-like driveway that goes down to their house and their neighbors', and with the trees being bare, you can see the river and mountains below SO well and the sunset! I do hope I can take a few pictures there on my wedding day! :)

This is on the side of the river. It's a really dark picture, but I love the pinks and oranges of the sunset. And you can still see a glimpse of the sun too

The view to the right of the shot above. our usual sitting spot during the summer. The boathouse to the right can barely be seen nowadays because of the massive amount of snow. I loved the pastel shades that were showing up on this side, a big contrast to the blazing colors from the shot before.

Probably my favorite, but there is something annoying me about the 2 trees smack dab in the middle of the shot...

This last one was taken on Easter Sunday at my In Laws' place. I went to the car to get my glasses and the sun was setting and it looked AMAZING with the big field of snow in front of their house (gotta love country living!) and the barn and trees on the other side. If there would be no Electrical wires running through the shot, and if it were a tad brighter, I would have used this one as my contest entry.

So, there you have it! My attempt at taking pictures! Now, lets hope the wind stops and we get a bit of warmth for the next weekend so I can take nicer shots outside, without freezing my hands off!!!

Getting back on track!!

2008-03-20T01:52:00.004-04:00

I won't bore you guys, yet again, with the details of why I haven't posted in the longest of times! I did say I would put a picture up though and here it is!

We went for our class on how our D40x works, and I took this lovely picture of my Gerber Daisy plant (yes!! This is THE picture I've been talking about non stop!! lol) and I think it looks pretty darn decent! :)

I know it's not an award winner, but considering I got this shot when it was pretty dark inside, i am proud of me! It's stupid, but just knowing how to change the light settings (finally!!) is greatly improving my pictures!!

And, just for kicks, a funny picture of my brother taking a picture of me taking a picture of him... LOL
he just got his Canon and is pretty happy with it! :)

Will try and post more often now. As I know how to take better shots I should be able to get more pictures taken!!

Playing with Fire

2008-03-05T14:28:00.003-05:00

Here are some pictures I took of my Dollorama candles the other night... They burnt up pretty quickly, and one of them kept doing funky things even though there was no air coming through to make it go nuts...

There is something really neat about the color and light in this shot that I love!

Looks like the flame is just lying in mid air...

And it starts going nuts...

Then it thinks it's on a skateboard ramp...

And it gets SUPER high!

My nail polish set was near by and I thought it looked cool in the light... The shot isn't great, but I kinda like it!

Nothing super exciting, but it's pictures!

Roadtrip back home!

2008-02-28T00:48:00.004-05:00

Every few weeks, we drive back to our parents' houses in Eastern Ontario for a visit (and because we are too big babies who miss home A LOT!). Here are some pics of our trek back to Ottawa!

The obligatory mirror shot, all dirty from the icky roads...

As we left home, the sky was bright and blue and the sun was shinning! That didn't last long...

Within minutes, we had a snow storm!!

And then blue skies again (all within about 10-15 minutes of each other!!)

Some spots still had some snow though

The sun through a small patch of trees

More pretty blue skies!

I know it's blurry, but this is to show the snow being tossed on the Hwy. The car barely stayed on the roads, it was SO windy!!

But it looked all nice and pretty with the sun

More snow and wind

Here we are at the half way point (Rockland)! The wind was worse here, as the river is to the right and only a couple of meters from the road.

The river, looking like a big white desert, with even more wind and snow!

Further ahead, on the Quebec side, you can see the snow clouds looking pretty menacing

Up ahead for us, oddly enough, was no snow! Clouds looked wicked though!

The GINORMOUS Canada Flag at Perkins, corner of St-Laurent and Coventry, in Ottawa.

An all too familiar site: Getting stuck behind the #2 bus on Montreal Rd.

A really NOT so familiar site: Our street actually having been cleaned up!! The snow bank on the left is actually higher than our Dodge Caliber!! The guy usually parked there has a RAM, the big one, and it's about the same height, probably higher!!

There you have it!! Our almost weekly raodtrip home! An hour each way, and SO worth it when you are home sick! :)

Cat Naps

2008-02-28T00:27:00.003-05:00

One of the favorite pastimes around our house is napping. Winter tends to do that to us. Here are some shots I caught of the kitty and Sweetie napping on the couch.

Aren't they adorable?? Now, if only the kitty slept at NIGHT instead of running around like a crazy thing!!

Sweet Valentine!

2008-02-15T12:37:00.007-05:00

This should have been posted last night, but I was tired, so here it is now!

Since I wasn't going to see my sweetie all day, I figured I'd get some sweet treats done for the boys I would see, My staff! No worries, some stayed here for Sweetie to enjoy (he enjoyed it so much, he didn't even realize the color at all! lol) So, here is my cooking adventure from yesterday!

My Oh-So-Me Apron!

Sifting...

Mixing...

Coloring...

Ooh! Purty!

Getting closer...

Ready to cook!

Did someone make a mess?

Hot and Toasty!

DONE!

Iced up and ready to go!

There you have! My fun little baking day! :)

Wii Olympics!

2008-02-13T01:53:00.004-05:00

Seeing as today (well, yesterday I guess?) is the two year mark before the Vancouver Winter Olympics, I thought I would get some shots of us playing Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games! It is Summer sports though, but the Olympics nonetheless! AND, I made some serious arm muscle playing the running and swimming games, so really do love this game. ;)

The very important warning that comes before each game: secure your Wii-Mote well and make sure to have adequate amounts of space around you at all times! Ask my Sweetie, I hit him in the leg during a swim race...

Kitty, not impressed about being 'neglected by her parents...

Sweetie and the great art of Wii Archery

Almost got a Bullseye on that one!

Me, being extremely concentrated on whatever sport I was trying to win at...

Guess it was Swimming! GO ME/PEACH!

The lost art of Table Tennis! Who doesn't like a good game of Ping-Pong really?!

His (very cocky) character, Shadow from Sonic, after winning the Ping-Pong match.

And Sweetie, playing with my 1up Mushroom plushie... Can you tell we were tired? (reason the color is so weird: My fingers were in front of the flash and I didn't feel like taking another one! Too bad cause it's really great! lol Although he would probably have looked flushed out with the full effect of the flash since I was SO close to him.)

Random Sceneries...

2008-01-23T22:50:00.000-05:00

Figured I'd better update this before I get kicked off the island, so here are some random scenery shots I've taken throughout the past years... Kinda boring, but better than the random picture of our PopShoppe bottles thawing out!

And a cute one of Sister-in-law's 'puppy', a beautiful 130 pound Giant Schnauzer! lol He enjoyed the car ride I think! :)

24-25-26 ... Christmas took over all 3!

2007-12-29T15:26:00.000-05:00

Yup, we had a three day Christmas around here! Won't bore you with all the details, but it was lovely, got pretty much all I asked for, and then some! Lots of food and Sangria (maybe a bit too much of that last one...), and I couldn't be happier! Here are some of my faves...

The almighty Cathedral the boys made (Gingerbread base with White Chocolate bricks!)

A small portion of Mom-in-law's Christmas Village!

Karina, with her Christmas present from moi!

Pat, wondering WTF is this?! (It's a shaky back massager thingy!)

Pat, playing tug with Surelock!

Me, opening up my stocking stuffer... Yup! It's in our toaster box... It sure as hell didn't fit in any stocking I own! (It ended up being a really cute plushy of the Mushrooms from Super Mario Bros., the ones that made you bigger!)

Hope all of your Christmases were merry and white, and filled with gifts too!!! :)

Invites Gallore!!

2007-12-29T14:37:00.001-05:00

There had to be SOMETHING wedding-y in here! The whole weekend was filled with random wedding things. On Saturday, I tried on some more gowns (sadly, no pictures allowed :( ), and then Sunday we finished up my Save the Dates and started on Marc and Marie-Eve's invites! Here are just a little few...

Showing us how it's done...

Pat's fancy system for making the folds...

Cute picture of Pat and Surelock, Marc and Marie's dog...

The 2 bros/hubbies-to-be, making invites together...

Some gluing!

And, here are our finished Save The Dates!!! They are all handed out, no backing out of it now (although the more I think about it, the more I wished I hadn't picked that date... :( )

OK! Christmas day is coming up now... Oy this is long! :S

Alight at Night @ Upper Canada Village

2007-12-29T14:20:00.001-05:00

Most Ontario gals (probably more in the Nation's Capital area and Western Quebec though) know about Upper Canada Village. For those who don't, it's basically a walk back in time! They have this whole village set up like the olden days. You have a bakery on site (they make their own bread and all!), there is a saw mill (I am really not sure what the actual term is, sorry!) thingy, old style school and church, many other little houses in between, all with the good old, no Electricity or TV or any 'modern' things in them! Pretty neat (as long as I don't have to live there permanently!).

During the Winter, it's closed, except for the holiday season, when they have the Alight at Night festival! They have the whole place decorated with around 500 000 lights (so they keep saying on CJOH anyways!), and it's just magical!!! Even our boys thought it was cool!

So, now that you know a bit what I'm talking about, here are some pictures! Pretty much everyone took some shots, so they are not all by me.

When we got there...

Looking into the gift and candy shoppe from the outside. Looks really cozy!

The Church!! SOOOO pretty!!

Pretty lights...

Of course, there had to be snowballs involved... Pat looks BEYOND evil on this one... And, I am running to get snow myself!

Some of the lights through the snow... Not as cool as I wanted it to look!

The lights on one of the street signs.

Beautiful shot of the moon through the lights of one of the trees!

Lights, lights, EVERYWHERE!

Marie-Eve and I, near the entrance/exit! You can really see that there were lights EVERYWHERE on this one!!

For those wondering, I think it ends next week! Definitely worth checking out (and bring a tripod if you have it!! We had ours, it was just wrapped under the tree and Pat didn't know about it... Too bad, cause we would have had more good shots than we did...)

Oh What a Holiday Season!!!

2007-12-29T12:48:00.000-05:00

Good God! That was not the most relaxing holidays ever, but then again, they never are! :) 4 different lunches/suppers for Christmas alone, a very filled weekend before with a visit to Upper Canada Village, and some invitation making, work a few days after and it all starts again tomorrow! I will need a break from all this at some point...

Anywho, much pictures were taken, a few shall be displayed here (late, I know, but I have been so tired lately, I just go to bed whenever we get home! :S ) and I hope you enjoy them! :)

I'll make new posts for them though, because otherwise, there will be WAY too many in one post!

Let the madness begin! ;)

Our snow accumulation so far...

2007-12-17T01:06:00.000-05:00

Just to give you a small idea how much snow we've had since the beginning of all this madness... (taken by Pat)

On here, I'm on tip toes, trying to reach the top of the pile! And I'm like 5'9 or so!!!!

The neighbours shed... The snow is about the height of the fence, maybe a bit lower.... NUTS!!! On the top of the shed, I am pretty sure that's just today's accumulation!!!!

Work decorations!

2007-12-17T00:41:00.000-05:00

Yup, more Christmas decorations! This time, more office decorations. Had to go in to work tonight because of yet another snowstorm, and an employee being snowed in, so we brought along Cameron (yup, I named our Nikon camera Cameron! I am boring aren't I!) and took some pics of my 2 desks at work!

Let's start with THE coolest one, the other supervisor's desk! Which Pat and I decorated ourselves! :)

Here are the cool ornaments hung above the desk I share with a coworker:
This is the desk that shall be mine, someday (can you tell it's mine by all the pink! hi hi)

And finally, the box of toys we collected for our annual Christmas Campaign! This year, we are delivering the gifts to emergency shelters in the area, which is such a great thing to do :)
It doesn't look like much, but those 3 boxes are FULL, and people can still bring in stuff!! :)

I'll try and get better ones of the ornaments near my Christmas stocking, they are pretty neat-o! :)

When all else fails, Use the Cat as a model!

2007-12-13T03:39:00.000-05:00

When we got the camera, I was the first to use it. Pat was at work, I had just come home from a cookie exchange. So, the only living thing I had around the house to take pictures of was our kitty!! She was a good sport, and got some cuddling in, so she didn't complain much! I find the shots look SO neat with the blurry backgrounds (the preset 'portrait' setting), it's really neat! :) I haven't gotten into all the completely manual stuff yet, we're getting a course to hopefully help me out with that stuff!

So, here is our baby girl, Hum-Vee!

Getting some lovin'!

This should have a caption next to it that reads "That's the life!"

Mommy! Leave me alone why don't you!!

Oh fine, I'll pose for one more, but that's it!

Hi hi! I just adore our kitty! :) And, yes, I took those first pictures while holding the camera in one hand, shooting randomly and scratching the kitty! lol God knows how I got them, but she looks so sweet! :)

Tomorrow, shots of the houses along the way to our parent's place!! lol

Christmas Decorations (Better this time!)

2007-12-13T03:25:00.001-05:00

AH! I LOVE our new toy! :) At first, I kinda didn't really want it, cause it meant that was our Christmas present, and I wouldn't be getting my ever so cool Nintendo DS, but I'm really happy we did! I played around with it and really like it. The pictures are much more colorful and accurate (the pictures of our tree, if you compare, you can see the different colors of the balls!) and there is just so much more depth to the pictures! I really love them!

Here are some I re-took of our ornaments and tree! They just look SO much better! :)

Our Kitty's Ornament!

Pat's Star Wars Ornaments

From here on, you can really see that our tree is Purple and Blue shades! I Love these!!!

The kitty, acting mischievous under the tree...

After some present wrapping! :)

WOOHOO for DSLRs!!!

The first pic with our new camera!

2007-12-13T03:22:00.000-05:00

Totally accidental shot! I was playing around, wondering how it worked, and took this shot! :) OK, I shall post actual good pictures now! hi hi!

We have MORE SNOW!!!

2007-12-03T03:08:00.000-05:00

Thank God for WB! I didn't even know we were under a Winter Storm watch, until I saw Angie's post tonight! I had to go in to work for some OT (and some decking of the office halls... More on that soon! :D), and brought the Hubby-To-Be along and he had some fun with the camera, taking shots of the city scape!

This is a building they are finishing up construction on next to where I work (on Rideau Street, where the Capital Music Hall used to be - WISH I could move there!!). You can see below, there is already loads of the white stuff! It was more icy snow, but not quite ice pellets, at that point.
That is when we got in the car! Holly heck was there lots of snow and ice to scrape off!! As you can see, my little flip-flop car freshner looks kinda out of place...
On our way, we go on this bridge I adore (the one that joins Rideau and Montreal Rd.). We stopped by on the side to take a picture. They all came out blurry except this one, that turned out super weird! lol But it has a little something something!
This one, nothing special really, EXCEPT: on the left hand side, you can see the outline of Hubby-to-be... But he looks ghostly, cause you can see the sign above the Rideau Center entrance through him!!!! Really freaky... It's not his reflection, he was actually there, cleaning out the hood of the car, so I have got NO idea how it turned out like that!!

Hope everyone's commute is not too bad in the morning!!

Deck Them Halls!

2007-12-03T03:02:00.000-05:00

We have officially Decked our Living Room for the Holiday season! :) Sadly, until tonight, we didn't really know how to take good pictures in the dark, so they look pretty bad, and the ones with the flash just look SO crappy. The Hubby-to-be had some fun tonight playing around with the settings, so soon enough I should be able to take decent pictures in the dark too!

Here is my "Mama Claus" clothing line!

The Kitty was Fascinated by our Christmas Lights...

We have the ones that gently blink, so it looks like the tree is twinkling, and she was just riveted by them!
The completed tree!
Our Color scheme is Silver, Navy Blue and Purple! I know it looks all Black and Silver, but the Bows are a gorgeous Purple, and the ball is Silver and Blue.

Hopefully, very soon, I'll be able to take better shots of it and post those ones too! :)

Cooking up a storm!

2007-12-03T02:57:00.000-05:00

Since we do have a cookie exchange coming up next week, I had to do some baking today. Chose my recipe carefully, didn't find one of the ingredients, but it turned out pretty yummy anyways! Just tried some out! :)

The kitty was paying very close attention to what was going on...

The UBER Yummy Finished product!

And, of course, the mess it left on the recipe page...

Let It Snow some more!

2007-11-24T18:14:00.000-05:00

So, I Posted our pictures of the first snowfall of the season a little while back, but here now is the first really big snowfall that lasted! We still have snow today, and I doubt it's going anywhere...

Neat shot, taken through our computer room window. The screen is completely visible in the shot. IT gives it something fun I find... Dunno, I know it's not a great shot, but I found it rather neat.

Some Evergreens in our backyard.
Here are two fairly similar shots. The first one taken by my sweetie as soon as he woke up. You can see the snow accumulation on the side of the window...

The second taken by me, quite some time later (about 4 hours or so?). The snow just kept on accumulating on there, it was nuts!!

Tomorrow night should be the official putting up of the Christmas Tree at our place, so I should have some pictures of that... Really wish I had a more interesting life than this, really!

Rockin' Christmas with the TSO!

2007-11-24T17:43:00.000-05:00

Last night was the Trans Syberian Orchestra concert here in Ottawa. Truly one of the most entertaining shows I've seen. The music is SOOO good, the musicians are great and the effects during the show just make it a great visual performance. Sweetie isn't a huge music guy, but when he likes something, we try and take advantage of it, which is why we went last night. Here are just a few of the shots we took (we were sitting in the 300's, so not close enough to get anything decent, but FH had some fun with the binoculars and the camera nonetheless!)

One of the neat tricks they had for us: Snow!! :)

They had a smaller stage in the back of the arena, here is my neat-o shot of the smaller stage (with two of the HOT singers they have) and the main stage. I really like this one!
Speaking of the Hot singers, here is a picture the sweetie was able to snap with the binoculars and our camera! That made for a really good zoom! I swear all 4 of the female singers looked as good as she did, and BOY can they EVER sing!!!!!!!! I am beyond jealous of their singing abilities (and I want that dress!!)
Some pyrotechnics during the show. It was hot all the way to the 300s with those flames!

And near the end of the show. You can see all 4 hot singers in this one, two on each of the platforms at either end of the stage.
Definitely an AMAZING experience. I also decided I am walking down the aisle to their Canon in D, cause it just sounds WAY cool (they have 2 versions, so I need to pick which...). If you get to go see them once, it's more than worth it, even in the nosebleeds!

Shopping Roadtrip!

2007-11-20T02:00:00.000-05:00

Man, I am really not on par with this... Not keeping up the blog too well, like all you other gals are!

Anywho, here are some fun pictures from this weekend's roadtrip to Syracuse! Was a fun shopping day, maybe a bit too early (Woke up at 5:30am after having had only 2 hours of sleep... Thank God for Starbucks!), but it was still loads of fun!

The Bridge to the US! We arrived via Ogdensburgh (which the boys couldn't pronounce for the life of them! lol) and had the fastest 'going into the states' experience I've heard of in a while! 2 cars in front of us! :)

That's Canada on the other side of that river!

My FSIL, Marie, took this shot of our GPS in action! Thank god for that thing! :) (My angle was really crappy, you couldn't see a thing on it!

A really neat little bridge we went under. We made the boys stop in the middle of the road (there was no one near by) so I could take the picture. Looked just like that little bridge in the IKEA ads! lol

And they had SNOW down there! Like cars were covered in a foot of snow at least! CRAZY!!!

The mall in Syracuse is called the Carousel Mall, because of this gorgeous thing! It's from 1909!! We didn't get to go ride it, but it was oh so gorgeous!

Of course, I had to take a picture of their tree! It spanned 3 stories high (the 3 levels of the mall) and was so pretty! :)

And, for supper, we went to eat at this place called the Spaghetti Factory. Yummiest spaghetti I've eaten ever and we were seated in that wagon! Very neat dining experience. Worth going back there just for that! :)

AND, just because for the first time in my life I am excited about this, 3 neat shots of Ottawa tonight...

We put this out today, and I told my sweety it might help get the snow here faster...
... Sure enough, look at the sight when I left work tonight and we got home! :)

So, there it is! I will try to be better this week, but cannot guarantee much...
Have a good week girls! :)

And some more Christmas things...

2007-11-15T01:47:00.001-05:00

First off, apologies for not posting yesterday's pictures sooner. We were on a mission to try and 'fix' our Save the Dates last night (still not sure what I like better. ARGH!), and I figured I'd do it in the morning, but my Dad called and told me they were going to Costco and I just couldn't resist... And then work! So, I finally got all the pictures I wanted to post uploaded, hope you like them! I do feel badly that I only have my crappy point and shoot and can't do much with it and you guys go out of your way to post STUNNING pictures all the time... So, I do apologize and am trying to find a great deal on a new cam to make up for it! lol

So, first off, here is the picture of those same lights as the post before, but at night. And then, what happens when I zoom in on things! :S

Then, yesterday, I went off to get my E-Ring at St-Laurent Center in Ottawa. I wish I had a good picture of the ring, but no Macro setting on this POC, so it won't be for now (although I am sure everyone is so sick and tired of hearing me talk about it and the wedding that you are all super happy I don't have it! lol). But, when I walked it I was completely STUNNED by their Santa Village this year! OMG! It's gorgeous!!!!!!

They usually have the traditional, kinda getting boring Santa Village, but this year, it's a Winter Wonderland theme, with Igloos and beautiful trees and Snowmen...

Seriously, any of the Ottawa Gals, it's definitely worth it to go and check it out! I was just there staring at it for like 5 whole minutes, not moving! I must have looked pretty stupid too! lol Oh, and Santa is arriving this weekend! :)

And, lastly, two shots of Downtown Ottawa. Almost the same one as the first picture I posted on this blig, but I LOVED the sunset on it (can you tell I love Pink! :) hi hi), and the first one is a shot of the overpass area that I took pictures in for the last post! The other one has a Gingerbread house competition, so we'll surely go and check it out soon!!

Let's hope tomorrow's post isn't all shopping related! I really do other things in my life y'a know! Although, tomorrow is devoted to locating a missing VHS tape of Christmases Past with A Muppet's Family Christmas on it... Which means completely emptying my living room closet, so nothing super exciting there, but we could be surprised! hi hi

Let the Christmas Madness begin...

2007-11-13T12:20:00.000-05:00

So, yesterday, we went to get some massages downtown (at Holtz Spa for those of you who know Ottawa), and since I was super early for work, we went and did some Christmas shopping! We got 2 gifts out of the way, which is good, so our Christmas shopping is well underway and we might just get it all done early enough this year! Pretty happy about that part.

While at the Rideau Center, we went to the The Bay overpass where all the pretty Christmas things are. It's been decorated like that since BEFORE Halloween!!

Here are some pictures of the overpass itself all decorated and a shot of just the decorations they have on the ceiling.

And a shot of the decorations inside the Rideau Center itself (this is the stairs near the Movie Theatre and HMV). I'll try to get one tonight with the dark lighting outside. Was going to last night, but I kinda forgot my key to get back into my building and didn't want to get locked out... lol

So now, shopping season is officially here and I just hope it won't hurt my credit cards as much as it did last year...

I know, I know!

2007-11-07T23:46:00.000-05:00

It's been FOREVER since I got to post anything. Last night, we got tickets to go see Trans Siberian Orchestra, and the internet was EVER SO SLOW, there was no way I could upload anything, and today, I was going to upload stuff for that, but got called in to work early cause LOADS of people are sick at work (I'll probably get it too. The gal I share my desk with has been feeling pretty crappy the past week or so!)... So, here now is my make up post. As many fun neat shots as I can, to make up for it! Sorry for the overload!!

A few cute shots. First, our kitty fascinated by the laptop...

And, a picture of my sweety, working on our sort of monogram for the wedding. I was trying to take a neat artistic shot of my shoe with the shoe he was designing in the back ground... Not as great as I wanted, but I couldn't move too much, otherwise, he kept losing his spot in Photoshop! lol
And some pictures of a Lasagna I made the other day... Yeah, really nothing exciting in my life to shoot! The boiling water made some pretty cool shots I found, and the cheese just looked yummy!

And we had some rain that looked nice on the windows, so I took some shots of that too... And I LOVE the sky in the first one

Some neat vines on the side of our appt. All dried up, but kinda neat.

And, again, the kitty fascinated by the laptop. This time a Kitty that can play piano on YouTube!

As long as no one else needs me in early tomorrow, I should be OK to take better pictures! Let's hope I steer far from the food ones again! :S I'm not as talented as others to take those shots! lol

Have a good day everyone!!

For enquiring minds...

2007-11-05T01:00:00.000-05:00

Here is another shot with the mice...

Kinda blurry (was zoomed in again!), but it sorta gives you and idea where they are... More or less! lol

Fun and Learning!

2007-11-04T23:03:00.000-05:00

So, today, we went to the Nature Museum in Ottawa, with sweetie's bro and his fiancee. Had lots of fun, but we are now all SUPER exhausted (lots of walking, plus time change! :S). So, here are some of the fun things we saw! The nicest pictures anyways!

Two little mice playing in the T-Rex fossil ... You can't really see them very well in this shot though.,,A giant Dinosaur Sea-Turtle. Loved those things every since Finding Nemo! :)
A neat shot of the Dinos from a platform above.

A Polar Bear going after a little seal (looks very realistic!)
And a cute picture of the soon to be married couple, on our way back to the car! :)

We were there pretty much all afternoon and only half or so of the museum is open at the moment (and we didn't dwell too much on all the different things. Mostly just the dinos! lol) !! You'd have to spend a whole day there to see everything! But SUCH a beautiful place though! Would be really lovely for a wedding reception there!!

Next free time visit with them: War Museum!

Boring old pics...

2007-11-03T19:12:00.000-04:00

Sadly, I have nothing new to post today. I spent the whole day cleaning (not a fun task, but a necessary one at this point I've got to say!!) and was supposed to go for Glow-in-the-dark Mini Putt tonight, which I was sure would make some really neat shots, but it seems it will be postponed (if not, I will post some new pictures I promise!!). So, I will share some pictures I took at the Tulip Festival last May. They are some of my favorite pictures I've taken.

And this one was taken this year at Canada Day on the Hill!

Tomorrow I should have some great pics as it seems we're heading to Gatineau Park!!! Pretty fall colors and sunshine, should be lots to take pictures of!

Hope everyone's Saturday was more fun than mine spent cleaning! :D

Yup, Fall is at our door... Litterally!

2007-11-02T01:52:00.001-04:00

And I have the picture to prove it! :D

Yup, lots of leaves and general Fall debris (sp?) at our doorstep, covering up my oh so cute and summery doormat (note to self, find a more wintery doormat)! Oh well! Could be worse, I could have woken up to snow! Although, that would make all the Christmas commercials and general decorations I saw today make a LOT more sense! But that's a whole other post!

So, today, I actually went outside and took pictures just before work. Not the best ones, as I only had our back yard to work with, but there were a few flowers still left, so I took a few pictures of those poor little freezing blooms, just trying to survive.

Man, I really wish we had a better camera! Everytime I try and zoom in or get close to something small, it gets a bit blurry. No macro (or is it micro?) setting on my p.o.c point and shoot (note to self, get a better camera!). Everyone else I know has one, but mine! I really hate Sony sometimes, but it was a gift, and I won't complain too much, because I probably wouldn't have one otherwise!

So, that is today's batch! Hopefully, tomorrow brings even prettier things to shoot!

Oh, and I got a real Second Cup Chai Latte today, and it was heaven! :D

Sleep and Sugar!

2007-11-01T01:29:00.000-04:00

So, last night, just after I finished posting my entry, I get in our bedroom, and poor Sweetie of mine if completely knocked out in bed! He didn't even realize I had walked in the room and turned the light on!! Him and the kitty were just sleeping peacefully, so I snapped a picture of my two fave people taking a nap...

And, since today is Halloween (I sadly couldn't go out and take great pictures, as I am working nights, so I missed out on all the action and fun!), here is a picture of me in my costume (Half Angel, Half Devil)

And, a picture I wanted to post last night, but realized I had accidentally deleted it from my memory card before transferring it to the computer!! Thankfully, we have an AMAZING 'Undelete' program that recovered the pictures! It's a picture of our Reception Hall for our Winter Wedding in '09! I had forgotten how great it looks and we went there this weekend to help us get some inspiration for decorations and such. If anything comes to mind, do share! :) We have plenty of ideas, but new ones are always welcomed! :)

This is right when you walk in, first thing you see is this! To the right, there is the bar, and where we'll have the gift table and on the left, the dance floor and on the far right corner, where I want to put our headtable (away from the dance floor, so all the tables are more over there and if people want to talk, no speakers blaring in their ears!), and on the far left there is a step and that's where some people put the head table, but we'll likely have the DJ there, and maybe a Candy buffet... who knows! :)

Woohoo!! Three days in a row I was able to post things! Nothing great, but we're getting there! :)

Expecting the Yummy...

2007-10-31T01:38:00.000-04:00

Ah yes! That moment when you realize that you can make that yummy cafe style drink at home (in my case, a yummy Chai Latte!!)! Oh so exciting! You get it all brewed up in the saucepan like the indications that you finally decided to read properly indicate...

... And you put it in your fancy (although Dollorama quality) new little mixer mug thingy, cause it wouldn't be right if it didn't have some foam...

And then you get to taste it, expecting all the yummy taste of that usual Second Cup or Starbucks Chai Latte, only to discover it tastes NOTHING like it, and the portion they get you to make is less than half your mug (it's actually 3/4 of a 1 cup) and you are now craving the real thing! And, of course, the mixer thingy lives up to the Dollorama label: As soon as you put the batteries in it starts to mix and won't stop! Cause the button is jammed! So, you have to play around with the batteries to get it to stop and start! Really lovely!

So, since those are the only fun exciting pictures I got to take so far today (well, on the 30th...), here is another one of my faves, more exciting pictures. A nice summer sunset in my little Hometown of L'Orignal, Ont. Probably one of the prettiest place I know! :)

Hope you enjoy these! Will try to get better ones for tomorrow... It's Halloween, I should be able to manage something good, right?

My first Picture post...

2007-10-30T14:05:00.000-04:00

OK, I know, Very non original name! I am lacking in originality today, since I've been up only a very short amount of time and since I didn't get to post my first picture last night, like I was supposed to, I'm just trying to get it done!

So, here is a picture I took last week, on the night of the Throne Speech. The Peace Tower was illuminated for the occasion and it just looked really pretty with the night sky. I don't have a great camera yet, so it's not the best quality, but I really like that shot nonetheless.

So, there we go! My first picture is now up! There should be another picture coming up tonight after work, of something I actually took a picture of today!

Have a good one everyone!