Thankful Things on Thursday

The week was off to a strong start. Sunday was the perfect start to the week and Monday & Tuesday were solid days. Yesterday I hit a wall and the grumpiness returned in full force, I'm happy to report that today I'm feeling a little less crazy and a little more rational. I've also decided I need to have chicken strips & fries for lunch so that's probably also contributing to my inner peace. 

I've been joining the Stuff & Things link up with Joey and Kristin for a long time now so when I found out that the link up was going into retirement after today I knew I needed to link up one more time. And since I've been feeling more grumpy than not lately I decided it would be a good idea to dedicate the last Stuff & Things to stuff and things I'm thankful for amid the current chaos of my life. 

Last year before camp started I jumped on The Fringe Hours  by Jessica Turned bandwagon and had a genuine mind shift. I always thought that I needed large chunks of time to do things that I loved. And as a consequence of that thinking I rarely got to do those things. The whole point of the Fringe Hours is to find little pockets of time and use them. And now I've discovered that by being productive when I need to be, most days I can create a full hour that I can use to work on Project Life before work. I still prefer a full afternoon of scrapbooking but I am thankful for The Fringe Hours!

Even though there's snow in the forecast, it's still starting to feel like spring around here. Blue skies, trees that are starting to think about coming back to life, temperatures that don't involve a minus sign and sunshine are all things I've been feeling thankful for this week.

Best friends, group chats and Skype dates are all things I'm feeling overwhelmingly thankful for lately. 

In this moment I'm also pretty thankful it's Thursday and that there is a whole weekend ahead followed by the last full week on work before the end of my office contract and a little break between office life and camp life.  

Also linking up here for Thankful Thursday. 

Fall Camp Weekend

Friday afternoon I packed my bags and set off to Girl Guide camp for the weekend. First I stopped to appreciate the hilarious contrast of my camp gear and my Michael Kors purse. I am nothing if not a well rounded individual. 

There was a little hiccup  major problem Friday when we got to camp only to discover that the fly wasn't with our tent. Normally I would never go camping (especially with girls) without checking and double checking all the gear before hand. This weekend though I was just filling in with a group whose leaders couldn't go to camp. Luckily another group had an extra tent and saved us. Shortly after getting our site all set up it started to rain. And then it poured. And then there was some thunder and lightning. It was good times but the tents didn't leak and the girls did awesome. None of them were the least bit bothered by the who ordeal and continued on giggling in their tent, I'm not sure at which age girls realize that tents aren't soundproof but I do know it doesn't happen between the ages of nine and twelve. As a result of this I am now well versed in all the latest teeny bopper news. I also found myself saying, "Girls, please stop doing gymnastics in the tent. You're going to knock it down."

Thankfully the weather cleared and Saturday was a nearly perfect fall day. Sunny, bright and as long as you dressed properly being outdoors was wonderful. This camp was a little bit of learn to camp type camp. The girls learned how to choose gear,  properly pack a backpack, practiced putting up and taking down tents and a bunch of other useful and essential stuff. Added bonus, I picked up a new Ice Breaker game (that's basically equivalent to gold in my life) and not one but two super, duper awesome packing tips. 

I haven't done a whole lot of fall camping but I've determined it might just be my favourite tenting weather. The days are nice enough that you can be outside and sleeping in a tent is perfectly comfortable as long as you dress appropriately and have a sturdy enough sleeping bag. Plus, the scenery is pretty awesome. The leaves were pretty spectacular and the rainbow of dish bags also made me smile on a regular basis. 

Sunday morning we packed up and headed home. I went to J.'s and made myself presentable before we went out to eat. I should note that I showed up at J.'s in my finest camp attire sporting long johns, camp pants, tank top, long sleeved t-shirt, my high school grad hoodie and my bright red rubber boots. Accessorized with my camp toque and hair that hadn't truly been brushed since Friday afternoon. Once I looked more presentable for the world we went and ate. I happily ate a bacon cheeseburger and french fries that had some kind of magic delicious spice on them. And then drank some coffee because it was only 4 o'clock and I was ready for bed. I rallied and kept my eyes open until 9:30 but then I was more than ready to climb into bed.

Today I'm off to vote, pick up a package at the post office, get some groceries, drop off a cheque for Sparks and cross everything off of my to do list! 

Linking up with B Loved Boston

Five Favourite Things

Cactus

Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli was one of the first books that I read that really stuck with me. More than just a favourite book the characters, interactions and philosophy of the story has stuck with me since elementary school. In a lot of ways it's influenced who I am. In high school I was lucky enough to be part of a stage production of the story with my best friends. I used a quote from Love, Stargirl as my yearbook quote when I graduated. And whenever I come across somebody who shares a love of Stargirl I feel an immediate connection to them. My love of the book has lead me to develop a serious fascination with the desert and cactus. I've been on the lookout for a perfect cactus plant to have as my own and I finally found one a few weeks ago at Wal-Mart of all places for $3.97. It now sits on my desk and looking at it makes me happy.

Sunsets

Call me a stereotypical white girl if you must but there's nothing that forces me to take a minute and bask in the beauty of nature and the world than a sunset. Every sunset is different but they're all 'God Moments' I'm so awe-struck by the perfection of the colours blended together as the sun sets. Sunsets are also one of my favourite things to photograph. I love the contrast of black shadows against a pink/purple/orange/yellow/blue sky. Someone once told me that if I was a colour I would be "sky-blue-pink", which of course is the way to describe all the colours of a sunset. I took that to heart and the nights when the sunsets on a 'sky-blue-pink' are among my favourites.

Photography

I'm not a master photographer. I don't have scores of families begging me to take their photo or companies hoping I'll photograph their latest product in the best light. But I love seeing the world though my camera lens. I have a friend who is super into photography and he's always making comments about how I don't share my photos. Every time he says it I'm confused. I share some on here but other than that I don't feel the need to fill albums on Facebook or dedicate an entire Tumblr for my photography. I certainly don't pass around my journal for everyone to read and comment on so I won't do that with my photographs either. It's something I enjoy doing, it helps me be creative and notice the things around me from different perspectives. It's for me.

Daisies

Daisies are my favourite flowers. If I was brave enough and I could convince my future husband to agree I would name a little girl Daisy-May. I'm very specific in my daisy love though, I have no time for those artificially neon coloured ones. It has to be the real thing. Yellow middles and snow white petals. The wildflower type are my absolute favourite but I appreciate the garden variety as well. 

Frozen Hot Chocolate from Second Cup

I got a little deep with my first four favourites so I'm throwing this one in here too. I love a good dose of caffeine. Hot Coffee. Iced Coffee. Iced Cap. Frappachino. They all have their place in this world. My favourite fancy coffee shop treat though is a Frozen Hot Chocolate from Second Cup. I'm not even 100% sure why this is. I don't consider myself a chocoholic, I enjoy hot chocolate on occasion when it's cold outside but I almost always choose coffee or tea. There's something extra delicious about Frozen Hot Chocolate though. Plus I rarely get to have it so when I'm in the vicinity of a Second Cup it makes the experience all the more magical!

Also linking up with Amanda at Meet @ The Barre!

'Twas The Weekend Before Christmas

I spent most of Friday & Saturday finishing up Christmas shopping, wrapping and checking things off my to do list.  When I came home Friday night I realized I ran out of the brown paper I had been using to wrap gifts so I had to switch to more generic wrapping paper. I was disappointed for all of three minutes then gave myself a reality check and accepted it was not the end of the world.

I made gift tags with my Cricut for the ones I used generic paper for so there was still a little touch of homemade. 

Saturday morning I got outside and played with my camera. I had a lot of fun experimenting with the settings and trying to capture the perfect snowy image. I didn't realize until after I got home that I'd taken over 500 photos in just a few hours. I also didn't realize I no longer have iPhoto on my computer...based on what Google tells me I'm just going to have to suck it up and pay $15 to download it from the App Store. Which is really freaking annoying and if anyone has any alternative suggestions I would love to hear them! I also need to invest in an external hard drive to store these giant photo files. So much to learn!

I've still got a long way to come before any of my photos are "Pinterest Worthy" or I get specifically get asked to take pictures for friends but I'm happy with quite a few of them and I was able to pick out a few favourites.

I really like trees in general and I recently discovered I love trying to capture details. I just like the way you can see all of the needles on the tree and you can kind of tell how weighed down it is by snow.

Squirrels are my absolute favourite animal! I could hear this little guy long before I finally spotted him hanging out in the tree. I wish I could have gotten closer to him but every time I moved my feet would crunch in the snow and he'd run away. 

Yesterday my cousin was supposed to get baptized but we had an ice storm (our fourth storm in seven days) so church and the baptism was cancelled. Instead I spent the day at home doing a whole lot of nothing, which after a busy few days before and what is sure to be a busy Christmas week wasn't such a bad thing!

I've got a few posts planned between Christmas and New Years including a my Year in Review, Blogging goals for 2014 and I will be guest posting over at A Beautiful Exchange  to share some advice on how to set goals for the new year! 

I'm linking up my weekend recap with Showered With Design and Dateless in Dallas.