Tag Archives: friends

eating down the fridge part deux: day three and four

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Let me think back now, need to catch up on the next couple days of eating down the fridge. Because we didn’t have a lot of meat in the house when we started we have very quickly hit a roadblock of not having much to work with. I predict I’ll be at the store by tomorrow getting something to help us make it through the week. I think I could be a vegetarian but because I haven’t been I don’t know how to feel full without some meat in my diet.

Saturday’s meals were a bit altered because I had an all-day training for volunteering at the Paralympics. I’m going to post separately about the day but it definitely saved some money on meals for me.

Let’s get to the facts: Continue reading →

Peaceful Christmas: Week 10 & 9

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christmas08

Christmas 2008 at our place

So far I have figured out our Christmas budget, and how much we can spend on each person, and have figured out what mailings we’ll do and to whom. As far as setting up the mailing, we have our addresses in place and have designed our photo card we just need to print them. I’m hoping to handle that this weekend so we can get our cards and Christmas letters ready to go by the end of next week.

Onward and upward.

Week 10 of Simple Mom’s 12 Weeks to a Peaceful Christmas is all about starting your Christmas shopping. I’ll admit I have been on the fence about this one. I know in theory that finishing my shopping before the holiday season is suppose to help me save money, be less stressed and enjoy Christmas. But I enjoy being out among people this time of year, drinking an egg nog latte and feeling the collective cheer. I’m concerned that I’ll miss out on the fun if I skip the holiday shopping.

However, it is true that being in stores with the music playing, the beautiful displays and a festive mood in the air makes spending too much money seem like it might not be that big of a deal. This year we’re serious about not overspending (and following our budget more closely in general) so I’m willing to try staying out of the stores this year. I won’t know until I try.

That being said, I have made a list of everyone we want to buy for and a gift idea in the agreed upon price range. Now my goal is to purchase whatever I can online and whatever is left before December.

Still playing catch-up with Simple Mom’s weekly plan so I’ll do a second one this week again.

Week 9′s assignment is to make plans to give back. Well I know right away what we’ll be doing this year. I’m a huge fan of charity:water and all that they do and have already set up a mycharity:water campaign to raise money for wells. I’ll be talking about it a lot this Christmas because I am trying to raise $500 in place of receiving gifts, cards, baked goods or anything that costs $$!

I support charity:water because 100% of public donations directly fund water projects in developing nations. I love being able to make the campaign my own instead of just sending in a cheque. So visit my Christmas Water campaign page, sign up to follow me, donate, help me get this campaign off the ground and give back this Christmas. I’ll post more on that soon.

Follow charity:water on Twitter
 Follow Scott Harrison on Twitter

As long as I do get those photo cards printed this weekend, some online shopping and some promotion of my charity:water campaign I’m on track. How are you guys doing with your Christmas plans? What’s causing you stress already and how are you trying to tackle that?

3 years behind us

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Today was our third wedding anniversary. It was a pretty low-key day, I mean I remembered to say something to John when we got up this morning but then I forgot to tell anyone else until the afternoon. It’s a Tuesday so we didn’t have anything wild and crazy planned. We both agreed we are tired and have been going in and out of town all summer and what would make us most enjoy this day is to take the pressure of ourselves to celebrate in a any certain way.

I tried to buy a card for John but for some reason they were all just so bad this year. Heavy, velvet appliqué, five pages of poetry about how your husband/wife is the glue that holds the whole universe together and your only reason for living… and the whole thing ways more than my purse. None of them said “John” to me, that’s for sure.

I won’t get into it too much because I have neither the time now the memory to recall all the details but my card search resulted in some pretty funny suggestions by myself and a couple of my co-workers for something we liked to call “Biblically accurate Christian cards”. Many ideas were hatched, including “I will love you forever, unless there’s no marriage in heaven” or “I will stay with you through good times and bad, pre- and post-trib.” You get the idea.

I almost went for a Christian card in the bookstore at work that had a terribly mis-quoted verse from Song of Solomon about springs of water which could have at least gotten a laugh.

What I did end up doing was coming home and meeting John and our friends, who are visiting, for sushi at Sushi Garden. John showed up with a big bouquet of flowers and a card. Then we all got bubble tea and John and I came home and I did what I always do when he gets me flowers: take the bouquet apart and create a bunch of little flower arrangements. This is the way to go with store-bought bunches, break them up by types or colors and they will fill your house and look like you picked them all out individually. Currently I’m really into using glass milk bottles and mason jars to hold casual bunches of daisies and brown-eyed susans.

I’ll put pictures of the flowers up another time, today I’ll do what I’ve done before: I  like to surface some wedding photos each year that haven’t previously been on my blog or Facebook. Enjoy. And happy anniversary babe.

Click on the pictures to see them full-size.

The details of my dress…

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My mom showing off the necklace my dad bought her for the wedding: it had the August stone in it to commemorate our wedding for her…

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Our wedding rings and my “something blue”: my shoes…
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Just us…
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skating & pho

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I joined John for his staff fun day on Friday which consisted of “stick & puck” and Vietnamese food. It was so much fun to get out on the ice which I haven’t done since we lived in Edmonton.

Kim loaned me some gloves and a helmet (though my little head ended up needing a rental) and John did his best to teach me some new skills. Maybe I just need some more ice time…

p1014079_2.jpg OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA skating.jpg

twinkle toes

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Angie has been nice enough to let me join her on her monthly outing to Bloom for a little nail art. I went last Friday for the first time and had a great time. It’s no wonder Ang has been going there for years.

I got black, white and gold cherry blossom branches on a bronze background. Nice for Fall. The price is great and the results will last upwards of 4 weeks if cared for. I am already planning my next look! Thanks, Angie, for introducing me to something even better than the usual pedi… and sorry the pictures don’t do it justice!

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canadian thanksgiving weekend so far…

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This long weekend has been full of fun and it’s only half over.

Friday night we helped surprise our friend Angie with a costume birthday party. John pretended to be at work so that I could catch a ride with Kim and Angie to the diversion “party” at a restaurant. Then John drove over to their house and let all the friends in to hide and wait.

I was really worried about how Kim planned to get us back to the house and I don’t think he knew what he was going to do either because he kept looking at me in the rear view mirror and I would just make a face like, “what are we going to do?!”

About 5 minutes from the restaurant Kim pretended he needed to go home for something but Angie got instantly suspicious and we never really got her back on board after that! Kim did a great job though, even came back to the car with a bag and started to leave again, then stopped and told Angie he forgot the camera and asked her to run in and grab it. She looked like she knew something was up for sure but she went in and let everyone got to jump out and “surprise” her. : )

After the jig was up we could relax and have fun. Everyone was dressed up in costumes: one family was The Wiggles (it’s a kids show for those who don’t know), another was Loony Toons characters. Kim, Angie and Boo were Batman, Wonder Woman and Supergirl.

I took advantage of the gear I kept from my Starbucks days and came as a barista, with John dressed as my hot cup of coffee! I even made him a sleeve out of light brown paper complete with a hand-drawn logo. We totally should have won Best Couple but The Wiggles took it with the cute factor.

Besides just costumes there was also catered Chinese food, drinks, snack, music and a half a dozen toddlers to keep us all entertained. I can’t wait to get copies of the pictures that were taken, I’ll be sure to post them.

I should mention I was the only non-Asian person there (well, me and half of John!) which reminds me how awesomely multicultural my life has become.

granville3.jpg Today we slept in and acted lazy until almost noon. Then we drove down to Granville Island, bought fresh raspberries and blackberries and handmade pasta, sampled gourmet chocolates and the newly brewed Granville Island Winter Ale. Yum! We even got to hang out with Justin, our friend who goes to the Emily Carr Art Institute right there on the Island.

At our favourite stationary store, Paper-Ya, we found a big piece of handmade paper we want to frame as art over our couch. It’s a big empty wall so I’m looking forward to that project.

All in all it was a great couple days. Next up: we host Thanksgiving Dinner.

rainy weekend blogging

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Ok you know it’s bad when your own dad has to email and remind you to blog.

I normally really enjoy blogging, even though I have an audience of about 3, but the past few weeks it felt like I didn’t have much to write about. Not that nothing happened but most of the happenings were work-related and I make it a practice not to blog in detail about work or my fellow staff. Just in case any of them aren’t too keen on being internet famous.

I think more people my age need to be careful what they put out there, blog for awhile and you’ll find you get a false sense of privacy. Some people aren’t getting hired because of what the prospective employers are reading on their blogs, Myspace and Facebook pages.

Anyways… down off my soap box. It has been a rainy, foggy weekend, perfect for blogging (or video games if you ask my husband).

What’s new… I decided it was time for John and I to see the dentist (I have dental work that needs to be done and he hasn’t been to a dentist since before we started dating) so I booked an appointment with one whose office is in the mall across the street.

This was 4 Fridays ago and I have been back every Friday since.

John of course only had to go once for the initial visit and once more for cleaning. I on the other hand had to go for the initial, the cleaning and 2 more cavity filling appointments. I’m not done either! Unfortunately our health coverage for the year pretty much is so the rest will have to wait until January. Dentists don’t really bother me, I can handle pain pretty well (2 tattoos sort of take the scariness out of the freezing needle) and I have been to the dentist alot in my life. I really slacked off in university though and now I’m paying for it.

This time my goal is to take advantage of our good health coverage (go Canada) and get my teeth to a healthy point where I’m just going for regular cleanings.

I got pricing on teeth whiting as well so if we don’t use all our dental funds next year maybe John and I will go for that. I wouldn’t normally spend money on it but the way our insurance works if we don’t use the allocated funds they just go away so I say why not.

boo.jpg Other than my weekly visit to the dentist we’ve also been babysitting every other Thursday. Our friends and landlords (they don’t like it when we call them that!) have a 2 year old that doesn’t think much of their home group so she comes and spends that time at our place so they can attend. We’ve learned alot from having her around, like the fact that our condo is not child-proof, we don’t own anything that can hold a 2 year old’s attention for more than 10 seconds and if you take a toddler for a walk without a stroller it will take you an hour to make it to the end of the street.

It’s good practice for us though since we’d like to have kids and now at least we’ll know some of the things to expect. It’s also good for us to have the opportunity to take care of her together since we don’t have any experience caring for another human being jointly. But most of the time she just keeps us laughing at her animated little personality. The best part is her parents think we’re doing them a favor! Awesome.

Between work, John being in and out of town, dentist appointments and babysitting we’re keeping busy. I love my weekends when I can lay low at home, get laundry and grocery shopping done and tackle projects that have to sit during the week. I think I’ve done all I plan to do today and even got in a bath at the end.

My eyes are closing and I don’t think I can watch John play any more Assassin’s Creed so I’ll leave him with his Xbox and call it a night. This update was for you, Dad. Goodnight!

catching up with friends

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We went out with some friends last night, one from out of town and a few from the area. The one who was traveling through leaves today for a 2 year teaching contract in Macau. We had an awesome time eating Chinese food and bubble tea and then chatting for awhile over drinks at the Foggy Dew in Burnaby.

I say all this in order to record a quote I want to remember from the night. Our friend Steve and I were talking about how I had spent most of the meal observing my surroundings and taking mental note of all the small things that were amiss around the restaurant. I don’t do this on purpose, it’s like a mild case of OCD or something. So Steve listens, nods in understanding and then says,

“So you’re like a Jason Bourne, a really slow Jason Bourne.”

jasonbourne.jpg I laughed pretty hard but I didn’t actually know whether to be flattered or insulted! I will miss Steve and his one liners. Have an amazing time in Macau buddy, when I finally make it to Hong Kong I’ll look you up!

staff Con and such

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2.jpg We’re back from Staff Conference 2008 in Whistler. We got home last night after an 8 hour drive that should have been 3. Don’t know if you heard but there was a landslide on the Sea to Sky Highway so the road down from Whistler to Vancouver was shut down until at least Monday.

Once the panic subsided we realized the only other way down was a twisty, turny road through Pemberton (too bad the festival was over and Jay-Z and Coldplay were long gone) that takes more than twice as long.

staffcon2.jpg In fact, the road was so rediculous that poor little Boo threw up her blueberry breakfast all over herself halfway down the mountain. We had to pull over while Angie redressed Boo and John and Kim cleaned out her car seat. I couldn’t blame her though, I felt sick most of the trip myself.

Besides the adventure of getting home we had a great time. It was alot more laid back than last year- I think the 40th anniversary celebration and the unveiling of the organization’s new name was more than most of us could handle. This year the only thing that got people’s knickers in a twist was the speaker, Erwin McManus. Despite the anxiety hanging in the air that, as Kirsten pointed out, could have been cut with a knife, I think it’s awesome when speakers come and challenge us. I personally loved listening to Erwin and both John and I have put a visit to Mosaic in LA on our list of things to do before we die.

1.jpg A few of our friends from out East crashed at our place between Campus Staff Days and Staff Conference. It was fun to tour around Vancouver; it had been awhile since we had been down to Granville Island or the 218 Flavours ice cream place.

3.jpg Of course now I’m sad that I got to know Emily, Brad, Joe and Kolten better and then had to say goodbye for another year.

It’s late and I should be heading to bed so I’ll just end this here. Another Staff Conference over and the best news of all: they decided we’re don’t have to join with the American Staff Conference next year after all! Whistler 2009 baby!