Adventures in the Big City

Last Wednesday I finished work at the office job, headed home for a quick nap and then hopped on a plane to Ontario to visit H.. When we first started planning this trip we were hoping for a week long adventure but in the end our schedules only allowed for a quick Thursday - Monday visit. We crammed all the tourist highlights, lots of good food, hours of life chats, multiple glasses of wine and sangria and it was the perfect little getaway to transition from office life into part-time vacation mode before camp. 

I landed in Toronto at 9:30 a.m. Thursday morning and after a quick pitstop at H.'s to change out of airplane clothes we headed for Niagra Falls. We didn't stay long because the weather was cold, rainy and foggy. We hung out long enough to be impressed by both the falls and the amount of selfie sticks. So.many.selfiesticks. 

We called it a night early on Thursday because Friday we had big plans to hit up the Toronto Zoo and visit the twin panda cubs that were born a few months ago! It ended up being an awesome day at the zoo because it wasn't at all crowded and even though it was a little chilly it was perfect weather for walking and getting to enjoy everything opposed to thinking about how uncomfortably warm it was. In addition to the baby pandas we saw their parents and I think I could have spent all day just at the panda exhibit. I wish I looked that cute laying around all day eating. I could also spend all day watching meerkats, back in university I binge watched Meerkat Manor and ever since then I have been fascinated with those little critters. We also got to see the gorillas, which I've recently become more interested in after watching a lot of documentaries about the gorilla conservation efforts. 

Saturday we were up bright and early to spend the whole day in Toronto. We purchased City Passes, which gave us admission to almost all of the main tourist attractions in the area, we saved a lot of money and at a few places we got to skip the lines because we had already purchased our tickets! We headed to the Royal Ontario Museum and prioritized what we wanted to see, we easily could have spent the whole day there but we were kind of on a tight schedule. We checked out the dinosaurs, the Canadian history section, Chinese Architecture, Ancient Egypt, quick tours of the mammal displays and a few smaller exhibits. It was the first time I had seen dinosaur displays in person so that was really cool and the history geek in me was overly excited about all of the Canadian History stuff. 

From the ROM we headed back through the city with a pitstop for Poutine and another in front of the Toronto sign so we could take a selfie for National Wear Your Camp T-Shirt Day. Did I mention we spent the entire day roaming the streets of Toronto and all of the attractions wearing matching shirts so we could have photo ops? Because we totally did. And that's why we're besties. 

We went to the top of the CN Tower where I confirmed my theory that I did not want to ever live in a big city and then headed next door to the aquarium. The aquarium was a little bit of a hilarious experience for this east coast girl who grew up on the ocean. When we first walked in there was a big crowd around one particular tank so I got really excited thinking it was something really exotic....turns out it was a tank of halibut. I laughed a lot and then took a discrete photo of the hoard of people admiring fish that I have seen my entire life. It's the little things in life you never really think about being different from place to place. There were lots of other cool marine life, we were able to spot a turtle in the biggest display of fish, and turtles are always a highlight. They had several tanks full of jellyfish that were completely hypnotic. I kind of felt like sitting right there and spending hours watching them float around. 

By the time we got back to the apartment each day were were more or less exhausted and didn't have any interest in changing clothes and heading back out to supper. Which was just fine but us and it meant we got to spend time cooking and eat supper with H.'s boyfriend while telling him all about our days adventures. He only judged us a little bit for our matching outfits. We did eat out a few times  including amazing sweet potato pizza that sounds weird but was delicious. 

It was hard to say goodbye Monday evening, but hopefully it won't be too much longer until we see each other again.

Corn Maze, Chicken & Cleaning

I spent Friday evening snacking on pretzels and watching Chopped. I have zero regrets about that decision.

Saturday I woke up at my usual time but lingered in bed while I read for awhile. I feel like I've been reading the same book (Americanah) for decades now but I'm trying to finish it before I post about the books I've read this month. I'm over halfway through but it's really dragging. There are chapters that are really interesting but they always seemed to be followed by chapters that are decisively not interesting. More on that later in the week (hopefully). What I really did on Saturday was shiver my way through a corn maze, pick out mini pumpkins for my Sparks to decorate tonight, admire some fish and eat fried chicken. Also, zero regrets about my Saturday.

J. and I went to a corn maze/family farm about an hour away. My main motivation was to get little pumpkins for Sparks. The weather was so weird. You can see from the photo below that the sky was full of grey clouds but the sky behind it was clear blue it almost felt like rain but it was also very cold, we didn't waste any time in the corn maze (except of course pausing for the obligatory corn maze selfie). 

The farm has a bunch of playscapes for little kids and we planned our visit during lunch time assuming we'd beat the crowds. It worked out perfectly, we got the pumpkins and did the corn maze before it got busy. And we got a chance to check out the fish without feeling bad/awkward for being the only adults who weren't accompanied by toddlers. I've always had a thing for goldfish and when I think about my dream home/yard it always involves a little koi/goldfish pond in the backyard. With lilypads and frogs. Because if you're going to dream big you may as well go all out. 

The real highlight of the day was our stop for fried chicken. It just so happens that in order to get to the farm we had to drive by my favourite (and the best) fried chicken place in all the land. We got chicken to go and I should probably be sad that my car now smells like chicken, but I'm really not. Some day I'm going to go on a ridiculous road trip in the southern U.S. that is planned around eating fried chicken. #goals

Post chicken we caught up with Jon Oliver's Last Week Tonight. J. really only watches sports on T.V. and I stick to cooking shows and the occasional reality show depending on the season. Last Week Tonight is the one show we watch together on a regular basis. I left around supper time and headed to the mall in hopes of finding a birthday present for J.. His birthday isn't until the first week in November but he's hard to shop for, luckily I found a couple of things that I'm pretty confident he'll love. I'd like to find one more thing but if not Christmas is just around the corner!

Sunday I dedicated my day to cleaning up my scrapbooking area. I'm 99% finished my camp scrapbooking so it was time to regain some order with my supplies. My newest scrapbook love is stamps, but I refuse to spend $20 on a single stamp so my collection is pretty small and mostly made up of alphabet sets. Peyton was of course eager to assist  get her paws on various ribbons and papers and not nearly as helpful as she would like you to believe. 

This week I have my usual Sparks meeting, a weekday lunch date with J. and an old friend has moved back to town so hopefully we'll be able to coordinate our schedules to catch up. I've also got a full list of blog posts planned with Shay's What's Up Wednesday, The Blogging Elite's monthly link up, an update about about what I read this month and another round of monthly goals! 

linking up here & here. 

Spring Weekend

I got a new lens for Christmas but between work and weather I really haven't had a chance to put it to use. Saturday was the first full day of spring, but you'd never guess it was March based on the photos. Everything is covered in snow and the sky was grey never the less it felt good to spend the day outside.

I found it interesting that this sea gull was so inclined to sit on top of the pile of snow and ice rather than the rocks. I took it to mean seagulls don't get cold feet? 

I don't like snow. There is something kind of magical about foot (or paw) prints in fresh snow.

I'm not sure what kind of birds these are, ones that don't mind cold ocean water. I really appreciated that they organized themselves in a pattern. And then I thought maybe they were out on a double date. And then I decided I should stop thinking about the courting rituals of birds.

Last year around this time I went through a phase where I was really big on the colour purple. This year I have similar feelings towards orange. The orange bouys against the white snow made me pretty happy. 

I took a lot more photos of my grandfather's boat and more identifying scenery that I'm not willing to post online, when all was said and done I snapped close to 200 photos. It served as a great reminder how much I enjoy taking photos. And it's a hobby I need to make more time for on a regular basis. 

My goal for the week is to take more photos, follow some prompts on instagram, experiment with some tutorials on Pinterest and exercise some old fashion trail and error. 

Linking up here & here!

Let There Be Light (But Mostly Shadows)

I was finally reunited with my camera this weekend after spending months and months apart. I didn't get to play with it as much as I would have liked because I was busy with family stuff and Easter things (mostly eating junk food in my jogging pants).  But I did take it out during Easter Dinner at my grandparents' house and took a few shots.

There are also a series of photos I've been referring too as "unphotogenic grandkids", which although on my camera I am not responsible for (I am one of said unphotogenic grandkids) that prove just how hard it is to get seven people between the ages of 24 and 9 to look at the camera and smile at the same time.

I wanted to take photos of the stack of lobster traps that were in my grandparents' backyard and when we first got there the lighting was awesome but I was being lazy and snapping away from the deck. I figured I'd have lots of time to take photos after dinner. But then of course the sun changed and when I returned it just wasn't in the right spot and my manual shooting skills aren't strong enough.

Before lunch, lovely bright colours, lots of potential.

After lunch, things looked much less bright and much more gloomy.

 

I made several attempts to capture the awesomeness of my cousin's camo boots against the snow and the traps but the shadows kind of thwarted my efforts.

The good news is that I have full access to my camera all the time and with summer coming there will be plenty of opportunities to practice and learn and get better. Depending on where life takes me in the fall I definitely want to look into taking a basic photography course somewhere!

Stress Free Scrapbooking

I mentioned SMASH* books a few days ago in this post and since then I've gotten quite a few comments and questions about them. Since they are one of my favourite things I decided to make a post to share some pages from the books I've completed. 

I used the Pink "Pretty Style" book to keep things from my last year of university. To be honest I wouldn't even say it's 100% full. I keep meaning to take some time to stick in a few more things I have kicking around my room but I never seem to actually get around to doing it. There aren't very many photos in this book. It's full of ticket stubs, random things I cut out of magazines, quotes, notes and cards from friends. 

This page is full of movie stubs, a favourite quote, a random dinosaur that I liked and an "autograph" from a friend. (Just in case he ever gets famous.)

On these pages I taped in a friendship bracelet after it had fallen off, a list of the songs that we listened to on our drive to school each day, a post it note from my roommate and a letter from a friend that she wrote me to read while on the plane for a visit home at the end of the summer.

The second book I did was "Eco Style" it was perfect for camp! I had planned on using it during the 2012 summer but in the end I just put all those photos in a photo album. I knew I had to use it for the summer of 2013. I was much more intentional about taking photos and saving things. I brought the book and a rubbermaid container full of scrapbooking supplies with me to camp with the idea to do complete the book as I went, working on it during breaks and pasting notes at the end of each day. I should have known better than to attempt that though, I didn't do a single page over the summer. Instead once I got home from camp I printed all my pictures and spent almost a month working on the book.

In the end I'm really happy I waited until the summer was over to build the SMASH book. It was a wonderful way to reflect on the summer, remember the good times, move on from the not-so great times and I had time to really make the book what I wanted! I'm really happy with the way it turned out!

These pages are extremely simple, but I love them. I glued in my favourite pictures of sunsets and the moon over the river and added in a pocket where I put a particularly special note. On the side is a clue that was part of a scavenger hunt my secret friend made me one day. The clue is about a romantic spot to stargaze so it fit in with these pictures perfectly.

Back in my scrapbooking days these pictures would have all been cropped into straight lines, backed with coordinating card stock and arranged in parallel lines on a 12x12 piece of paper. Now they just got cropped into whatever shape made the most sense and allowed them to fit on the page. I threw in some dinosaur stickers as part of an inside joke and a particularly hilarious quote from the summer and that was it! 

I had originally planned on including more pages but I had a really hard time taking good photos. And some of the pages I took photos of lost a lot of their splendour once I very unsophisticatedly edited out people's faces. 

I've always been into scrapbooking but stressed about making everything "perfect" with the SMASH* books the point is literally just to smash it all in. Sometimes I organize my thoughts and create pages that do have layouts like you would see in a traditional scrapbook. Most of the time I just create a pile of things I want to include and stick it in where ever it fits! I have two more blank books that I'm not quite sure how to use. I really like the red one and have been saving it for "something special". (Saving nice things for special occasions is a habit I really need to lose.) And the purple one I bought during a really good sale and I was looking through the pages the other night and decided it would be perfect to use if my whole Texas plan happens. 

If you're someone who is a "saver" like me and hangs on to little notes and ticket stubs but has no idea what to do with them I really recommend this method. You can stick pictures along side your "stuff" and at the end of the day you create something totally unique that gives you just as much satisfaction as a scrapbook without the stress. 

**I was in no way, shape or form compensated for sharing this product on my blog. It's just something I happened to learn about, buy and totally love!