My Week in Pictures!

I think I like the idea of doing a phone photo dump each week. I take so many random pictures with my phone it's hard to narrow it down though. Okay, that's totally a lie. At least half of the pictures on my phone are either food or one of my fur babies. But I managed to find some that show what I was up to last week.

1. This is Lil Eatily. It's one of the "food trucks" at Truckside, a new indoor food truck food court in Dartmouth. We had supper there Saturday night. I had pasta from Lil Eatily and J had fish from U-Pick Fish. We both enjoyed our meals. 

2. I was in charge of the nursery Sunday morning at church and I couldn't resist snapping a picture of these two cuties colouring together. 
3. For Mother's Day J and all of his siblings gave his mom a family ring with all their birth stones. She burst into tears before she even looked at the ring. As soon as she saw the box from People's the waterworks began. 
4. My amazingly smart friend Jenn was interviewed in the local paper as part of a nurses' week feature. She's a labour and delivery nurse and a strong advocate for breast feeding. 
5. My staff spoiled me with lots of birthday treats. (Including chocolate covered jujubes which are my absolute favourite.)
6. We are finally starting to get some sunny, warm, spring weather here in Nova Scotia. Two evenings in a row I laid outside reading while Daisy played in the yard. It was wonderful!
7. At work this week we presented a cheque to Threads of Life. We raised $1305 as well as providing a barbecue for participants in their annual Steps for Life walk. I love that my job allows me to do stuff like that. 
8. After supper at Truck Side Saturday night we headed to the Middle Spoon for dessert and drinks. If you're local and you've never been I highly recommend it. Dessert ended up costing more than dinner, but it was totally worth it. 
9. This picture shouldn't even be included because it was taken today but I absolutely love this picture of J and Daisy and I couldn't wait until next week to share it. 

I love that it's so easy to take pictures with my phone, but I find I never get pictures printed anymore. I need to start getting prints again I think! (And I might start with that shot of J and Daisy.)

Grateful for History

I am one of those incredibly lucky people who has had the same best friends since practically forever. And by forever I mean junior high. I met Jenn (who was my maid of honour at my wedding six years ago) on the first day of grade seven. She came right up to me (not shy my Jenn...) and told me she had the same shirt I was wearing. We've been friends ever since. (I still totally remember the shirt too. It was a cream coloured blouse with a vest attached. Made of rayon. My mother hated it.)  Kerry was Jenn's friend from elementary school and she and I didn't really become friends until grade nine when we ended up in a hotel room together on a band trip.

I have so many memories with these girls and on Saturday night I was lucky enough to make more. We all went out for supper together with our husbands. (It sounds so weird to say that, Kerry only got married about a month ago and this is my first time we've all gotten together since they got married.) We don't see each other nearly as often as any of us would like, but when we do get together there are never gaps in conversation and we laugh harder than should be possible. (I have to admit the conversations were a lot different with the guys around though!)

These girls were there for me when my brother was diagnosed with cancer and they were there by my side when I said "I do." I am so grateful to have them in my life. Our lives are all so different but we can always make time for each other. We decided this weekend to plan our first ever girls weekend away and I couldn't be more excited. I can't imagine a life without them in it - they remind me of who I am, and they made me who I am too.

Wedding Shower Planning

Last Saturday I threw my first ever wedding shower, and I am so happy with how everything turned out!

My brother-in-law, David, is getting married in July and J and I are both standing in the wedding. In a short period of time David's fiancée, Tracey, has become one of my favourite people. They've decided to have their wedding in our church which is older and hasn't had many updates over the past 15 to 20 years. In order to get the church ready for the wedding without spending a fortune David and Tracey have been doing a lot of the upgrades themselves. The church is looking amazing, but it's taking a bit of a toil on them and their wedding planning/preparation is a little bit more stressful than it is for the average couple. Because of the added stress I really wanted to make sure Tracey's shower was perfect and something she would really enjoy. (I like to think I was pretty successful.)

I decided to go with a morning shower and serve breakfast type foods. I think this surprised some of the guests, but it worked really well. Months ago Tracey had pinned an image of a yogurt bar to her wedding planning board on Pinterest but in the end they decided to go with a candy bar. Since I knew she liked the idea of a yogurt bar I knew that was something I wanted to incorporate. I served vanilla yogurt with three different types of berries and granola. I love the chalk board easel and galvanized pail that I picked up at Micheals. The serving dishes all came from Dollarama. It was a big hit! We also served four different types of muffins made by my mother-in-law, some fresh fruit, and mini cinnamon rolls.

For the decorations I tried to go with a bit of a rustic theme. I made two banners (one said "Thank you" and the other said "From Miss to Mrs") using a free printable. (You can find it here.) It was so simple, and I love how they turned out. One of the other bridesmaids painted the "62 days" canvas and I just love it, it worked perfectly.

I also made a display of pictures of David and Tracey using paper doilies, twine, and clothespins. (I totally got that idea from Pinterest, you can see the original post it came from here.)

I painted mason jars and filled them with artificial flowers for centre pieces, and I covered water bottles with pretty duct tape so they'd look a little classier sitting on the tables. (I used this tutorial for help painting the mason jars. I ended up deciding not to distress them because I liked how they looked as they were.)

For the favours I bought little bottles of shower gel and stuck tags on them that said "From Tracey's shower to yours" and for the guest book I had everyone sign a white plate with Sharpies. (I used the oil ones as I've found they tend to fade less than the regular ones.)

And of course we played games! Tracey's sisters created a "Who Knows her Best" game and a "He said, She said" game that used their past Facebook statuses. We also played wedding pictionary,  "What's in Your Purse" and of course we played the clothespin game. I put all of the prizes in brown paper bags with purple tissue paper so they would match the theme of the shower.

I will admit that the shower may have consumed my life for a couple months. I work full-time so it felt like every day off was spent doing something shower-related but I didn't mind in the least. It turns out I really love planning events like this! Luckily one of the girls at work is going to need a baby shower soon and my brother is getting married next year. ;-)

I hope that this post helped a little if you're planning a shower! Let me know if you use any of these ideas, or if you have any ideas for the next shower I'll need to throw.

Birthday Ramblings

My third birthday... 30 years ago!

My birthday was on Tuesday. I turned thirty-three. 33! I don't know how that happened. Didn't I just turn 23?

J and I celebrated quietly at home. We had lobster and cheese cake and caught up on some TV shows we had missed. Not the most exciting birthday celebration, but life has been pretty hectic lately so I think it's what I needed.

We're going to continue the celebration Saturday night and go out for dinner with a couple of my girlfriends and their husbands. We're planning on checking out a new place called Truck Side, it's an indoor food truck food court. I'm pretty excited about it!

I'm not where I thought I'd be at 33, but I'm happy with where I am. Life is good, and I'm excited to see what this next year brings my way.

Let's try this again!

I feel like life is finally starting to get back to normal so I'm going to try to carve out a little bit of "me" time each day for my blog. I had all kinds of ideas of the past two months so I'm hoping that a) I remember some of them since I didn't write anything down and b) I'm able to execute them the way I envisioned them while I was laying in bed, or in the shower, or on my commute to work. (The shower tends to be where I do my best thinking...)

One of the things that I'm really excited about is monthly guest posts I have lined up. Lauren, my best friend since forever has (finally!) started a blog. Lauren and I have been best friends since grade seven, despite being complete opposites in many ways. The biggest difference is that she's healthy. No, really. Lauren is a real inspiration when it comes to being active and eating properly. She is extremely passionate when it comes to fitness and eating properly and she's going to be sharing some of that passion over here once a month. I can't wait! (If you can't wait either you can check her out over at The Golden Graham Girl for now.)

 

Here's a quick snap shot of my week taken from my phone... 

1. The shower I was planning for my brother-in-law's fiancee finally happened on Saturday. Everything went really well, I was super pleased with how everything turned out. I'm actually planning a post about it because I stole a lot of great ideas off Pinterest that I want to share. 

2. It's finally barbecue season! We've had the longest winter ever but it's finally nice enough to barbecue. J made supper Saturday night as part of my early birthday present. 

3. I found a new summer-y "adult" beverage that I really enjoy. It's white peach and it's delicious. (PS: Doesn't my jamicure look fabulous? I recently started selling Jamberry and I love it!) 

4. Daisy has completely destroyed the back of our loveseat so this past week we finally went out to buy some new furniture. It's not being delivered until May 28th but I am so excited! I can't wait to actually be able to have company over again. 

5. My brother popped in for a visit and Daisy got so freaking excited. Uncle Jon is definitely her favourite human. 

6. Our passports arrived! J and I are leaving for our first big trip together in 28 days. We're heading to Washington, DC and West Virginia. I'm so excited! 

Hopefully you'll be hearing more from me soon. :-)

Grateful

On Saturday, February 7th J decided to go skiing as a reward for himself after the 20 hours of overtime he had put in. 

At 12:17 that I was on my way home from work when he called. 

"You're going to kill me," was the first thing he said to me. 

He had wiped out on his first run down the hill. Ski patrol had gotten him down the hill, and he was waiting for an ambulance to get there. 

The first responders were pretty sure he had a break in his lower leg. 

I managed to drive myself to my parents' place and then had my dad drive me to the hospital. 

X-Rays confirmed it, J's leg was indeed broken. And not just a little broken. He had a spiral fracture is his tibia and a break in his fibula. The X-ray technician told him it was a "doozy" and everyone who's seen the X-ray since has made a similar comment. 

Post-surgery x-ray. You can see the rod & pins. 

We were transferred to Halifax later that evening for more X-rays and to wait for surgery. J eventually had surgery on Monday afternoon. He had a rod inserted with pins at the knee and ankle. (Gross.) He was released the next day and we started the rehabilitation process, plus the process of applying for EI since he'll be off work for several months. 

It's been quite the struggle. I'm not used to doing everything around the house plus everything for J plus working full-time. The first couple weeks I spent A LOT of time crying and a lot of time praying for strength. 

And you know what? Things are getting better. Slowly, but I'm starting to feel like we're going to make it. My head is above water, I'm getting enough sleep, J is impressing the physiotherapist, and Daisy and I are doing lots of bonding on our daily walks. 

Daisy and I enjoying our evening walk.

When I start getting stressed or overwhelmed I remind myself how much worse it could have been. I could have lost J that day. Or he could have permanently damaged himself. And I am so grateful to still have him by my side. (Even when he's complaining about how bored he is.) I think I've been guilty of taking my husband for granted. Not just all the things he does, but his strength and his presence. Those couple nights without him in the bed beside me were really, really hard. There are a lot of lessons in this situation - and some are easier to take than others - but I'm also grateful for every one of them. 

PS: This was very long, and very ramble-y. Ooops. 

Going Viral

I don't talk about work on my blog a lot for several different reasons, but I'm throwing caution to the wind tonight. Mostly because I'm really freaking proud, but partly because what I'm going to talk about has been all over the internet and the local news for the past five days.

Last Friday a woman driving by the store I work at snapped a picture of one of my employees walking home an elderly blind woman. She uploaded the picture to Facebook and tagged my boss (whom she used to work for) in it, asking him to thank this young man for being such a great employee.

Since Friday the picture has now received over 15830 likes, 191 comments, and has been shared 5875 times.

This young man (Austin) and the customer in the picture were interviewed by all three of our local TV channels. (CBC, Global, and CTV.) Then, the icing on the cake was Sunday when two of my staff simultaneously texted me to let me know that the story had hit Cosmo Online. Later on Sunday it even hit Fox News too.

Walking this customer (her name is Mary and she is an absolutely sweet heart) home is something my staff does on a regular basis. On multiple occassions my faith in humanity has been restored by the amazingly sweet things my staff will do for our customers. Sometimes young people all get lumped together in an unflattering way, but the team of young men and young women who work for me and in other departments of our store blow me away on a regular basis. I am so glad that they're getting this recognition, and I couldn't be prouder!

PS: While I do work for Sobeys, all opinions are my own. (But I'm pretty sure everyone is pretty darn proud!)