Book & a Cuppa

A couple weeks ago I mentioned that I had signed up to take part in the Book & a Cuppa swap over at Chaotic Goddess Swaps. I was pretty surprised when I got the email with my partner, I had actually been paired with another blogger from Nova Scotia. I didn't think I was the only blogger in NS by any means, but I figure there probably aren't too many of us. So to be matched up with one was pretty neat. My partner was Sarah and I definitely think you should check out her blog, especially if you're a book lover.

I was completely spoiled with my box!

My mug was this awesome Kate Spade travel mug which will be perfect for filling with hot chocolate to take to work for the rest of the winter. (It probably is going to get used tonight simply because it's so cute even though I have no plans to travel anywhere since we're in the midst of another snow storm.) Sarah also sent a couple boxes of delicious looking hot chocolate that I can't wait to get into.

I received book one and book two of Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave series. I am so excited to dive into these it's not even funny!

And then, on top of two hardcover books, the adorable travel mug and the hot chocolate, Sarah also included this book for my future kids. I couldn't have asked for a better partner for this swap.

Thank you Sarah!


xo,
Sara

Snow Day Binge Watching

We got our first real snow fall of the season last night. I think we ended up with about 17cms where I live just outside Halifax. Wednesdays are my day off so thankfully I didn't have to attempt to drive in to work. I hate driving in the snow, I had a couple bad experiences (including a 360 on the highway a couple years ago) and so now I get panicky every time I think about having to drive in the white stuff.

Somebody in my house absolutely loves the snow though. Our beagle, Daisy, gets so excited to run and play in it. She sticks her nose right in the snow trying to smell it and she has this cute little two foot hop she does when she's trying to get through the deeper snow. I'm kind of glad she likes it though, because if she didn't I wouldn't get out to enjoy it either. And it's really not that bad, as long as I don't have to drive anywhere!

If you're stuck inside today other because of snowy weather or just being under the weather (I swear I've had a never ending cold since Christmas) I do have a few TV series recommendations for you. These are shows that we've watched from start to finish and have really enjoyed for one reason or another. Here are three shows I recommend you check out the next time you're looking for something to watch.

1. White Collar

We just finished the final season of White Collar over Christmas and I completely bawled my face off during the series finale. This show is about a con-man turned CI named Neil Caffrey (Matt Bomer) and his partner at the FBI, Peter Burke (Tim Dekay). Neil helps Peter solve white collar crimes in order to keep himself out of prison. The show has a great mix of humour and action and the relationship between Neil and Peter feels very real. The supporting cast are excellent, especially Peter's wife, Elle (Tiffani Theissen) and Neil's partner-in-crime, Mozzie (Willie Garson) being my favourites. White Collar is available for streaming on Netflix.

{ USA Network }

2. Burn Notice

Burn Notice is another USA Network show. (Apparently I really like their programming or something.) It follows the life of burned spy Michael Westen (Jeffrey Donovan) as he tries to find out who was responsible for burning him and why. It's been a while since we watched this show, and we've watched several series since, but it's one that still stands out to me. It was action-packed and kept you guessing until the end. Each show had Michael helping out someone, but also gave us another piece to the puzzle of how and why he was burned. I also bawled my face off during this series finale... (I'm a crier, it's just who I am.) And again, this show has awesome supporting cast, especially Mike's spy buddy, Sam Axe (played by the one and only Bruce Campbell) and Mike's mom, Madeline Westen (Sharon Gless). Burn Notice is not currently available on Netflix, but it was in the past so hopefully it will come back. If not, I'm sure you can find it somewhere else. (Like Amazon.)

{ commonvee @ tumblr }

3. Chuck

Chuck is another series that we watched a while ago, but it's one I continue to recommend to my friends and family. This series is more of a comedy than the other two, but it definitely has it's share of action too. It follows the life of Chuck Bartowski (Zachary Levi), after he downloads a computer program/database into his own head and becomes a CIA asset. Full of lots of cute, awkward moments this is another show that is really made complete by the supporting cast. Chuck's best friend Morgan Grimes (Joshua Gomez) and Adam Baldwin as Major John Casey are two of my favourites. Chuck is currently available on Netflix, and you should definitely watch it.

Hope this helps you out if you're looking for something new to watch. I think I'm going to spend the rest of my snow day binge watching Arrow.

xo,
Sara

An Early Christmas Present

My husband, J, and I made the decision to adopt around the middle of August 2015. It was a decision years in the making and one that we didn't make lightly. There were a lot of late night conversations, a lot of prayer, and a lot of tears. We know that this isn't going to be an easy process, and it's definitely not going to be a quick process. There is definitely going to be a lot of waiting. (After five years of trying to conceive, I think we're pretty good at waiting, but this is a whole new situation so it's really hard to say!)

During our intake interview (a quick phone call with a social worker) the process was explained in brief. After the intake interview would be an information session. After the information session would be a 9-week training course. After the training course would be the home assessment. And then after the home assessment would be the real wait. There was no time line for how long anything would take. The social worker who completed our intake interview told me that she didn't know of anyone who had waited for more than a year to get accepted into the training course, and during our information session they explained that the seats in the course were prioritized based on certain conditions. Based on our desire to adopt two children under the age of six we figured we were in for a bit of a wait. When we were being cautiously optimistic we hoped to hear something about our course mid/late February and when we were feeling less optimistic we expected we'd be starting our course in the early spring. 

A week before Christmas Eve I took a break from wrapping presents to quickly check my email and was completely shocked to find an email from community services inviting us to a training course. I actually couldn't even open the email - I handed my phone to J and told him to read it first. We were invited to a course beginning January 11th. 

That's today. 

We're attending our first session tonight, I'm scared and excited and a lot of other emotions that I don't even have names for yet. I'm looking forward to connecting with other families in our area who are in the same phase of this journey and I'm looking forward learning more about this process and about what to expect as our journey continues. But I know everything isn't going to be easy to hear, I know there are going to be heart breaking stories and scary stories shared in this course. And while I can't claim to be "excited" about that part, I know that it's necessary and so so so important to know as much as possible.

This journey is like nothing I've ever experienced, but I love knowing we're a little bit closer to bringing our children home.


xo,
Sara

Book & a Cuppa Swap

I am a reader. Ever since I was little, I've loved reading. I love curling up with a good book and spending hours losing myself in it. There's really nothing better. And it doesn't matter to me if it's a paper book or my Kobo, I just love a good story. That's why I'm so excited about the swap that I just signed up for!


I love swaps in general, but with this one you're exchanging a mug and a book with another blogger. I'm excited about shopping for my partner, and I'm excited to see what I receive.

Signing up actually got me to start thinking about books I might want to read and I realized I'm sort of out of the loop. I spent probably a good hour between Goodreads and Amazon looking up books that looked interesting and adding them to my to-read list.

 If you think this sounds like fun, you need to act fast. Tomorrow is the last day to sign up!

 Oh, and if you have any must-read books to recommend I'm all ears. :-)

 xo,
 Sara

Phone Photo Dump: Dec. 31 - Jan. 6

Growing up I was always the one with my camera out, snapping away. Didn't matter where we were or what we were doing, I always had my camera. My friends used to call me The Paparazzi and J's uncle used to call me Flash. I got away from taking pictures the past few years, but since I upgraded my Blackberry for an iPhone I've been snapping away again, only now all my pictures are on my phone.

One of my favourite parts of blogging is seeing a little bit of other blogger's lives. I figure by sharing the photos from my week (or at least a handful of them) I can share a little piece of my life more easily. These aren't the only pictures I took this week, but they're definitely some of my favourites.

1 & 2 were taken New Year's Eve. We decided to use my new selfie stick to try and take a "family" picture. Daisy (our beagle) and Sydney (our cat) weren't particularly cooperative. Daisy doesn't usually get that close to Sydney, we think she's actually a little afraid of her.

3 & 4 are what most of the pictures I take every week look like. Daisy likes to sleep, and she's pretty adorable when she's all curled up on the couch with us. Every time I take a picture of her like this J laughs and makes a comment about how I must already have enough pictures of Daisy sleeping. But can there ever really be too many pictures of an adorable beagle flaked out?

5 isn't exactly a picture obviously, it's a text message I took a screen shot of. It's from one of my staff. I know you can't read it but he basically thanked me for being a lovely person to work for. Most of my staff are university students and I always try to be accommodating to their changing availabilities and flexible with time-off and shift-switch requests. Dorky, I know, but it's nice to know they appreciate it. (I took the screen shot to text to my husband because I was that excited. DORK.)

6 - 9 were taken on New Year's Day at my parents' place. We had dinner there with my brother and his fiance. Two of the cats (the boys) stayed pretty close to dad while he was cutting the ham. My brother brought his BB8 over to show off, and Maggie (mom and dad's third cat) wasn't quite sure what to make of it. My brother was also in charge of dessert, he and his fiance worked together and made a delicious carrot cake from scratch. He enjoys the baking and she enjoys the decorating so they're a good match.

11 - 13 were taken on my father-in-law's 60th birthday on Sunday. 11 & 12 were taken at the church (he's our pastor) during the party we threw for him and 13 is of him opening his new iPad from my mother-in-law and all his kids. (J is one of six kids so if they all go in together getting big ticket gifts is do-able.)

14 is probably my favourite picture from the week. Daisy is totally a daddy's girl - she loves getting as close to J as she possibly can!


Happy Friday, enjoy your weekend!

xo,
Sara

Monthly Goals

I love the idea of setting goals each month, but I've never been super great at actually achieving them. I'm going to try and take it a little easy on myself this year, and only set three goals each month. One will be a blog goal and two will be goals that relate to one of my 2016 resolutions. I'm cautiously optimistic that tying my monthly goals to my resolutions will make me more inclined to work on them. And hopefully by the end of this year I won't be writing a post and how (once again) I sucked at keeping my new year's resolutions. 

January Goals

1. Try out at least three new recipes. 

(One using the veggie spiralizer I got for Christmas.)

2. Completely organize and de-clutter at least one 

of the following rooms: office, laundry room, 

rec room, master bedroom, spare bedroom. 

3. Blog at least 10 times. 

Pretty straightforward and hopefully pretty achievable. I'd like to get more than one room cleaned and organized but at the same time I want to be thorough so I think I'll aim for one a month to start, I'd also like to blog at least three times a week, but I also don't want to be posting just to post. Plus, I think I'll be more motivated next month if I achieve all my goals this month. I'll try to gradually make them a little more work, but this is as tough as it's going to get for now.

Wish me luck!

xo,

Sara

Hello 2016! (My Resolutions)

While I was getting ready to write this entry, I decided to look back and see if I had blogged about my new year's resolutions last year. I did. And they were great. No, really. Completely in line with what I had planned for this year, but written much better. Yay last-year me! ;-)

But at the same time, it's not really a "yay" moment. Because if those were my resolutions last year, why are they my resolutions again this year? Apparently it's because I suck at keeping my new year's resolutions.

I thought about calling them something different. About doing a whole post on the difference between resolutions and goals. And then making goals instead of resolutions because maybe resolutions are just too much pressure. But that's a little ridiculous.

So, here are my resolutions for 2015. I mean 2016!

1) Be healthier

• I want to eat better. I need to cook more meals at home, and I need to try to use healthier ingredients.
• I want to drink more water. And not just drink more water, but less diet coke (sob) and less energy drinks. 
• I want to move more. One ringette game a week does not do it. When the time comes I want to be able to chase my kids and play games with them without feeling like I'm going to pass out. 

2) Be organized

• I want to do planning. I want to have meal plans and I want to have a plan for this space. At work I am a super planner, everything figured out down to the last detail, but at home I'm pretty much completely disorganized.
• I want to keep my house clean & organized. If company were to show up unexpectedly I would be mortified. We're not dirty people or anything, but things are cluttered and things rarely go back where they belong when we're done with them. (True confession time, we basically live out of laundry baskets instead of putting our clean clothes in our drawers. So bad.)

3) Be disconnected

• I want to step away from my phone more. I want to step away from the TV more. I want to step away from social media more. (That last one might seem odd considering I'm also wanting to blog more, but I waste so much time being unproductive when I'm online. I could spend half the amount of time and still get posts done and leave comments.) 
• I want to read more, and I want to "wife" more. I want to spend quality time with my husband. I want to play games, I want to chat, I want to go for walks.

I guess my 2016 resolutions aren't exactly the same as my 2015 resolutions, but they're definitely close. Here's hoping I do a better job with them this year!

Do you make resolutions? Do you stick to them or do you find yourself making the same ones every year? (Or is that just me?)

Happy New Year!

xo,

Sara