What's New

I recently got together with a friend that I hadn't seen in a while... and by a while I mean it had been a few years (I guess that's just what happens when you live in different provinces though).  Anyways, the question that kept coming up was "what's new?" because of the course of 4 or so years surely there should be a bit that is new.  I haven't even abandoned this blog for more than a year though and still there is a lot that is new.

1.  I've been settling into married life.  I hadn't lived with anyone for a number of years prior to living with my husband so that was a bit of adjustment.  But we are doing great!

2.  We've had our wedding pictures back for a while now and I don't know that I've shared a single one.  Expect a post with a few of our favourites for you to gush over soon!

3.  I went to a wedding (I mean... I want to say I've been to more than just one but I think it's just the one).  I made a super fabulous wedding shower gift for the bride... but that's a post for another time.

4.  We've expanded our garden!

5.  We've gone to the lake a whole bunch.  My biggest accomplishment there was catching a fish immediately after plunking my hook in the water.

6.  Oh, and perhaps the biggest change is that we bought a house!  Our possession date is in precisely one week so expect some pictures and what not after that!

Summer is winding down and I got bored so expect at least a few more posts before I get too busy with house renos and substitute teaching.

SNOW DAY

3 out of 5 of the divisions I can work in cancelled classes today (and yesterday as well).  All city school buses are not running.... sometimes even the substitute teacher gets a snow day!

So I've made a long list of things to get done today... 

I've already got a load in the washing machine and the dishwasher.

Once the dishwasher is done I'm going to attempt to put all these tomatoes to use and make and can some salsa (the jars need to be warmed for it to work properly).

I've got some presents to wrap.

I've got some meat to sort through and freeze.

I still have groceries in the car (because I had already done 5 trips up and down those stairs in the snow and didn't think I had it in me to carry the big bag of rice last night)

I'm going to make the executive decision on what we are doing for our preliminary batch of thank you's from the wedding and order those so we can hand some out this weekend.

Dishes need to get done (after I make the salsa though)

It looks like I have some snow to shovel

Maybe I'll vacuum

We got our free (included in condo fees) cable finally hooked up last night so I think I'm allowed to sit back and watch something.

If the road reports within the city seem better than yesterday I've been invited to a friends for dinner

Oh, and I've got Bible study tonight (if the roads are okay).

Bur for now, I'm listening to Family Force Five's Christmas album - Christmas Pagent, drinking hot chocolate, and not leaving the computer until I type up a little something something about our trip to Mexico!

(this last thing proved to be more difficult than I had anticipated... apparently my iphone needed updating before it would show up on my computer!)

Here's hoping it's a productive day off!

Making Room

My goal over the summer was to make sure I made room for John to potentially (I say potentially because we are house hunting) move in here after our wedding in October.  I don't think I would be too happy to go from having all kinds of space (not that he really has all kinds of space now) to hardly any at all so hopefully my efforts will be noticed (and appreciated).

I have a walk in closet so I wasn't concerned about that at all.  It's probably big enough for 3 people... so if it isn't big enough for mine and John's things we have a problem.

I have 2 dressers (one is in the closet) and I think I've managed to get 4 drawers in total between the 2 dressers emptied.

I have 2 nightstands.  One is (sort of) emptied for him.  I say sort of because I store extra sheets and pillow cases in the bottom drawer of both nightstands.  So he technically has as much space as I do there.

There was never much I could do about the spare bedroom.  We'll have to figure out a way to move things around so John has space in there for his computer.  Since I only use my laptop I imagine packing up my desktop would be the best solution.

But my biggest accomplishment was tackling the indoor storage room (I have outdoor storage as well and I'm hoping we'll be able to store both our bikes in there).

Here is the before photo:

And the after photo:

Those random green bags on the floor I usually keep in my car... they were just there because I had just gone grocery shopping.

Or maybe we'll find a house to buy and have much more space!

Life Lately

I interupt my usual talking about wedding stuff to tell you all about my life lately (because it's more than just cookies and wedding over here!)

School is winding down and my pool has officially opened (it actually opened about a month ago but this weekend was the first time I headed down there).  My friend and John's sister came over for an evening swim because it was just way to hot to do anything else.

Those same 2 girls that came over for a swim also went to a wedding with me (John also came).  It was for a friend from life group (and John's sister knew the bride).

the whole life group!

We (my sisters and I and all our significant others) took our parents ziplining for Mother's and Father's Day (because it was something that my mom actually wanted to try!)

just my sisters and I hanging out with my dad

the guys hung out with my mom

my mom even managed to climb this... and by the time we got to this point it was pretty windy!

I've got tomatoes, flowers, spinach, and swiss chard growing in my "garden" outside.  The tomatoes are an experiment John is doing because they aren't actually growing in any soil.  So far, lots of flowers on the tomato plants but no tomatoes.

And of course wedding planning, wedding planning, wedding planning.  We have pretty well made our way into the 7 month part of the checklist I found online which is nice... mostly because we have less than 4 months before the wedding!  I'm not too panicked about it though... it'll all get done.

The list for the next couple of weeks includes:

finding shoes (for me)

deciding on suit (for John)

finalizing the guest list

deciding on invites

deciding on a florist (pretty sure we already know who we will go with... we just need to contact her)

figuring out flowers for the centerpieces (ahem florist ahem)

make gift registeries

finalize the cake

The list seems long now that I look at it... but I think it'll be doable... most of the stuff we already know what we want we just need to make sure it's going to happen (or possible for it to happen)

And that folks,

Is my life lately!

Wedding Dresses

Some people might think it's a bit crazy to get engaged one day and the next afternoon be out dress shopping with my mom.  But I knew I would need to order the dress soon because we are planning to get married rather quickly (but more on that later).

Anyways, I have found a dress.  It was actually the very first dress I tried on... I guess the consultant that was helping me really knew her stuff when I showed her the picture of what I thought I wanted.

BUT, I wasn't sure that was THE dress until I checked everywhere else first.

A number of things went into my decision to purchase this particular dress (that I will not be posting a picture of for hopefully obvious reasons).

1) Price

I don't think I had made a budget for John and I yet.. actually I know I hadn't because John said to wait until I saw what was out there before I limited myself with a budget.  But in my head I was hoping a dress for under $1000 wouldn't be unreasonable.  And it wasn't... I found many for under $1000.

2)  Style

I was fairly confident that I wanted a particular style but I wasn't 100% sure of it until I tried on other stuff.  After the first store I knew I didn't want a number of other styles... like I said my consultant was VERY helpful.

3)  Alterations

The fewer the better.  I had one place offer to make me the dress that I wanted using an existing dress that I liked the bottom of.  She told me all in (well, not including taxes) it would cost $850 which still seems like an amazing deal.  If this is an option for you and you fully trust the person doing the alterations than I say... why not!  I opted to not do this because I felt like I was paying for things I didn't want with the original dress... and well... I knew I already had one I liked.

By the end of the first day I had 2 options.  Going into the 2nd day of dress shopping I had 1 option and after the 2nd day of dress shopping I had 3 options.  Those 3 options were:

1) The dress that would need to be altered.

2)  The dress that I was showing everyone every store I went to.  I used an app called "Lookbook" by The Knot to search and save wedding dresses I liked... so I used a picture from on there.

sidenote:  I also used this app to decide on a ring style that I liked... and it's free!

The only problem with this option was that I had never actually tried it on.  BUT I was confident I would love it if the price was right.  Well, I never found out the price because they told me it wouldn't come in on time so that was an easy no.

3)  The first dress I tried on!  I could actually purchase this one in 3 ways.  The first being in store... easy and safe because they would take care of the ordering process for me.  The 2nd being online.  Not a great option because it was all in American dollars.  And the third being online though their sample sale.  I was seriously considering ordering it online though the sample sale.  They had it in my size after all and everything I had looked up about their sample dresses sounded very promising.

In the end I ordered it through the store.

Why?

Because they told me they were having a sale and everything would be on sale.  And well, can a Mennonite even resist a sale?  I don't think so.

So, as of Friday I have my dress ordered.  I'm hoping that with alterations it comes in well under my budgeted amount of $1200.

I had a number of other options to keep it well under budget.  A couple places had me trying on grad gowns... but I wasn't sure if I wanted a train or not and didn't want to have to not have one. Plus, it's hard to envision it being white instead of red.

And... if you are wondering if I'll be showing you the dress in person... the answer is probably no.  I haven't decided if I'm showing people it yet so I'm just not showing people.  Other than the 3 people that have seen it (my mom, John's mom, and a friend).

Psst... John and I set a date and booked a venue over a week ago!  Stay tuned for some details on that!

Miss The Proposal Story and want/need to read all about it?
Here is a picture of The Ring.

The Proposal Story

It all started on a kind of gloomy Sunday day in May. May 15, 2016 to be exact. 

The plan?

To go geocaching 

So, John shows up at my place and I ask him where he wanted to go and look for geocaches and he suggests a nearby park because we hadn’t been there yet. I pull it up on my old phone (which isn’t connected to a data plan) and he immediately decides we should try the red dot cache. So we look into it at my place and that cache is supposed to lead us to other caches… something we had never tried before so why not?

So we (I) find the cache in the park and inside is this clue:

Clue #1

We usually bring a stamp to stamp the log book but had forgotten it this time. Sometimes there are tradeable items inside the cache container and in this one was a lego man (not the first time we have found one so I just quickly give it to John without thinking and we leave one of our army men in its place. Because we had forgotten to bring our stamp and we didn’t have a pen to sign the log I never even looked at it… BUT… there was a clue as to what we happening on the log… that I never even saw.

Do you see the clue in the log?

Based on the clue I knew it would be by the boat docks and I pulled up the geocache map on my old phone. There was a dot there so we headed towards that dot. However, once we got there my gps on my phone started to act up and it thought we were on the wrong side of the river. I was kind of discouraged because this would make it harder to find the next cache. BUT, I told John I would restart my phone and hopefully that would help. Meanwhile, he told me it was probably where someone would sit to watch the boats based on the clue and we should see If there are places to sit around the actual dock (because I had led us into the trees already). So we head over that way and my phone comes back on. Remember how I told you my phone isn’t connected to data? Well, I guess because we always load the geocache map while at my place all those geocache dots show up and stay there… but now that I had restarted the phone (and the app) they had all disappeared. I didn’t bring my actual phone and we were at the park (so no wifi) so we were left without the dots (but a correctly functioning gps). Now I really thought we were sunk. But, John found the second one quite quickly… maybe because he had placed them all. 

No log in this one.. just the clue which read:

Clue #2

I knew right away it was by the duck pond and I knew there was a little hill behind it. So we headed there. John insisted that it could also be by some of the rock piles around the pond so he made us check half of those before we got to the hill. Honestly, we would have never found the geocache in that area without the help of my phone… but John insisted that it could still be by a rock pile. So we went to check the last ones… and this is what we found.

Clue #3

By this point I had started questioning some things... All the containers looked brand new. None of them were labeled as an official geocache, and that one by the duck pond was so close in the water at different times of the year it would likely be under the water... just seemed like a dumb place to put one if you ask me.

Anyways, I knew there was play structures at this park so we headed in that direction because it seemed like the right place to find it. John found this one, I later found out he found it because he had never actually left it there (with children playing on the structure all day long it likely would have gotten found and moved... multiple times). But I definitely didn't catch on to this.

Clue #4

I knew this one would lead us back to the shelter by the duck pond and when we got closer there were some bushes in the fork in the road so we knew it was in there. The only problem was that there were also a bunch of kids playing in there.

I quickly spotted that the container was on the ground (but still in the tree/bush area) so we just patiently waited for the kids to leave the area. The only problem was that they weren't. They did find the clue however and showed it to everyone in the tree. Eventually we left sitting right in front of that spot and wandered more towards the pond (but still within sight of the tree) about 30-45 minutes later the kids were finally leaving the tree so we headed back over there. But there was a new problem. One of the little kids had the container in his hand and then... he stuck it in his pocket! John was pretty insistent that we should find out how it ends because we had come so far and luckily for us... just when we thought we wouldn't get the final container back the boy through it under the tree and left. 

So John retrieved it and we quickly got out of there before the boy realized we had taken the container he had grown so fond of. 

This was the clue in the final container:

Clue #5

And well, I guess while I read it John got down on one knee and the rest is history as they say.

While we were finding all the geocaches John was collecting all of them so that I would have them all (I also never noticed this)... so here they are in all their glory.

All 5 geocaches

If you want to see "the ring" I posted a picture of it here

Oh and if you are wondering what the "parfait party" was... he had picked up 2 parfaits for us to enjoy afterwards... but I guess he was in a rush to leave his place/nervous (maybe?) that he ended up leaving them at his place.  Which worked out in the end because we were going back to his place to pick up his boat to bring to my parents house.  We enjoyed them on the ride to my parents.

Suddenly we realized all those love songs were about us...

Press Play

You don't have to watch the video... just listen to the song whilst you read!

John and I have news to share!

Last Sunday, May 15, 2016 we got engaged!

Eep...

Stay tuned for all the exciting details (like the proposal story, the venue, dress dilemmas - yes I've already had some, and so much more!)

And because you'll want to see it...

The ring!

Also what's a good not so typical first dance song? 

We might need suggestions

Life Lately

All I've been posting about is cookies lately but certainly there is more to my life than cookies.  So I sat down one Saturday afternoon to think about 5 things that were new or going on in my life... lately.  Here's that list.

1)  I discovered I like celery and started buying it on the regular. Here I thought for many, many years I didn't like it but then recently decided I did BUT only if peanut butter is involved.  Riveting.

2)  A friend and I have been going for bike rides and I've discovered that my bike is quite heavy.  This is unfortunate because I have to carry it downstairs whenever I want to use it.  Which is likely part of the reason I don't use it too often.  I think our longest ride has been 17km which was actually quite hard because it was SO windy... so go us!

3)  I started running.  The weather finally turned nice and I decided I could start wearing shorts and going for runs.  I usually follow a program to get me up to running 5km straight and this year I'm trying something new.  There is a walking path not far from where I live that when I do the whole thing (starting from my place) is 7km.  I always walk the first and last 1.5km though (and since I'm just starting off I walk in between my runs too).  My goal right now is to get down to a 7min km... which may not seem too hard BUT it includes those 3kms at the beginning and end that I walk.  Once I manage to start running the entire path my goal will just be to continue to run it and to run it faster each time.  Right now I can get through all 7km in under an hour.

4)  I've been working a lot.  Lately it's been mostly nursery and kindergarten.  Which isn't my favourite but you get a lot more hugs and appreciation than when you teach middle school!

5)  I set out my patio furniture.  I already mentioned it but I've been spending more time outside and that includes sitting outside and reading the occasional book.

Not an exhaustive list... that's probably because there isn't a whole lot going on in my life at the moment... just needed to let you all know that there was more to my life than cookies though.

Life Lately

I've been doing more than just making cookies... 

Just over a week ago one of the local centers was having a family day with free admission!  The temperatures were somewhere between -30 - -40 which kept most families away... but John and I and my sister and brother in law ignored all weather warnings and took to the great outdoors for some snow shoeing, cross country skiing, and sledding.

first time on snow shoes!

Don't we look thrilled to be outside!!?

On Saturday the weather warmed up to a balmy 3 degrees (yes, just 7 days after our minus 30 degree weather we moved into the pluses).  So my friend and I went for a skate at one of the local parks.  The river trail also finally opened up (for a very short skate) but we decided everyone and their mom would be there... and we may have been right because there were very few people at the park we choose to go to.

I finally was able to wear my new blanket scarf that I got for Christmas!

This was the non skating rink side of the building... it was a perfect winter day (with some snow gently falling too!)

On top of all the outdoorsy stuff I've been busy reading the book I got for Christmas (Krista, I'm nearly finished it), taking down Christmas, and working every single day for the last 2 weeks.

This coming Sunday I'm making some Mennonite comfort food for a friend... meat buns, soup, and jam jam cookies... is there anything else I need to include?

2015 Review

Here is is folks...that last Blogmas post I owed all of you that I didn't do when I was supposed to because I got too sick to do much of anything.

Before I start I suppose I'll share a little about what I did for New Years Eve.... it wasn't anything too exciting. You see, a special person in my life just so happens to celebrate their birthday on December 31st every year and so we did what he wanted to do (plus I wasn't invited anywhere else so good thing I had a party to attend!). We ate cake, we chatted, we said Happy New Year! We did it all at John's parents place and then spent the night there... because why not? The next morning we playd some games and eventually made our way back to the city. A low key time was had by all.

Now onto the review of 2015!

I broke it down into months and I realized something... I didn't have a terribly exciting year. But I'm going to tell you all about it anyways!

January 

 John and I started dating

February 

 I made my students some delightful valentine cards (they loved them!).  To see what I did and to get the template to make your own just click here

March 

Ummm.... well... I'm assuming spring break happened.... I'm sure I did something somewhat fun for spring break... maybe?

April 

 My contract gets extended and I get to continue teaching 5/6

May

I take my grade 5/6's to the zoo and I get to experience the polar bear tunnel for the first time!

My friend Kilian gets baptized

June 

I complete my first year as a grade 5/6 teacher. Would I do it again? You bet!

July 

I turn 30!  John gets me 30 roses to celebrate

I went strawberry picking!

I start off my 52 weeks of cookies with some Birthday Cake Cookies

August 

lots of boat rides and fishing at the lake and just being at the lake

We spend lots of time around the pool

I go with my friends to Folklorama

September 

We go on a loooong hike at Clear Lake for the first time.

We also go check out the bison... apparently not for the first time (but I have no recolection of ever seeing them before)

October 

John and I go see Odysseo

I go to school as Minnie Mouse on Halloween

Erin, John, and I carve pumpkins that will never be placed outside for Halloween

November 

John and I prepare for our first Christmas together by setting up my Christmas tree (which we also did together)

John and I also packed "shoeboxes" for Operation Christmas Child

December 

 A busy month with too many Christmas gatherings to attend!

Here's to an even better 2016!

Happy Halloween

and only a couple days late!

I ended up working on the 30th so I went as the same thing as last year... Minnie Mouse.  Even though I was subbing at the same school as last year I think many of the students (and staff) had forgotten that it was what I had worn the previous year so all was well.

On Friday John and I went out in search of the perfect pumpkins to carve.  After hitting up not one, not 2, not even 3 stores... we finally found the "perfect" ones at store number 5 (the first 4 places were all sold out).  The ones we found were likely not perfect at all... one had a rotting hole, another was green and rotten on one side (and on the inside), and the third was well.. I guess it was the least rotten out of the bunch.  But they were perfect for us!  And they were staying at John's place so I didn't worry about having to deal with a bunch of rotting pumpkins and the smell they would bring with them.

John, his sister, and myself each carved a pumpkin... can you guess which one is mine?

And no we did not use any tracers (or fancy pumpkin carving tools).  Yes, we did look up ideas online first.

I didn't buy any candy to pass out because I had heard that trick or treaters don't come to the condos.  Which was nice because I was off the hook from having to buy treats for children then!  And... I didn't run the risk of having to get tricked instead because of my lack of treats (no one came to my door)

And where I'm from we take part in this lovely thing (that apparently isn't so lovely if you have children) called day light savings time.  It happened to fall on the same weekend as Halloween this year.  What did I do with my extra hour?  I went to bed early and got up an hour earlier than usual.  Exciting stuff!

Life Lately

Lately my computer has been acting REALLY slow when I plug my phone into it to put some pictures in here and so I just haven't been so into sharing with you about my oh so fabulous life (I was being sarcastic).  But I promised on Saturday that a post like this was coming soon.  And so... here you go!

1)  We went to a play.  I don't remember what it was called but we clearly weren't expecting a 2 person play where they played multiple people.  PLUS, I wasn't the one who read or looked into it at all... that was all John.

 2)  John and i have these popsicle sticks that we wrote down a bunch of ideas of things we could do when we have nothing else to do on them.  Then when we need something to do together we pull one out of the jar and do it.  The thing is we know what we wrote on them so we usually just say "hey, we should go for a bike ride" and do it instead of surprising ourselves by pulling a popsicle stick and it saying "paint pictures for each other" instead.

Anyways, I'm telling you all of this because one of the popsicle sticks says something along the lines of "mystery ingredient dessert".  For this one we go to the grocery store and pick out an ingredient that the other person has to make a dessert out of.

So I picked up some aloe drink for John (mostly because I was curious about the taste... kind of like a flat 7up for those of us that were wondering) and he got me some Indian Karela (see photo)

We decided we were allowed to look up a basic cake recipe or cookie recipe or brownie recipe but nothing like "Indian Karela Brownies" - which by the way is what I made.  I was also allowed to look up what indian karela is because I had no clue what it was or what part was edible.  For those of us that are interested it is a bitter melon.

So yes, I made mine into brownies and because I wasn't sure what it was going to taste like I loaded it with extra cocoa and chocolate drizzle on top.  As well as some pecans and marshmallows.  It turned out not too bad.  I won for presentation!
John made a vanilla cake with his and then made a chocolate mousse for icing.  He decided a little too late that a nice vanilla and cinnamon icing might have been better.  His won for taste.

3)  I've been subbing a lot lately (in fact I haven't had a single day off yet - other than last Friday but it was a division wide inservice so I didn't have an option to work).  So I've been bringing this book along with me to read to my students.  One day I planned a writing activity around this book because the teacher had left me extra time to fill.  Basically we made our own monsters for scary street.

4)  I've got two Christmas presents bought... and plans to buy at least one more (and I know exactly where to go to get the stuff for that one) and part of another (which may turn into John's birthday present instead... I haven't decided).

Not sure what my plans for Halloween are yet... John and I have been looking at pumpkin carving stuff... so maybe we'll do that and hand out candy at his place.  And maybe watch some kind of Halloween movie too.

Life Lately

So I'm a little (a lot) behind... what else is new?

I'm sure I'm forgiven though?

I've been busy subbing lately.  Today I got home by 4pm... it's kind of nice.

Subbing has FINALLY picked up 

Last weekend we had Thanksgiving and as it is with most big family events... I managed to get a cold just for the weekend.

it was a lot of lying in bed and Watching Modern Family.  

Can you spot the super moon?  John and I watched it!

Super moon

I had one day off last week, luckily it was a lovely day!

More walks in the park

I made John and I breakfast for dinner one day (don't worry, we also had some slightly over cooked bacon and fruit salad)

Pumpkin Pancakes

But the highlight of the last couple of weeks was that last week John and I went to see Odysseo!

I thought it was great!

After the show we went to the stables to see the horses (we weren't allowed to touch them though)

This just seems like a slightly better than ordinary breakfast but in reality it was dinner.  John was away and normally he has to make the omelettes because, well... I can never seem to get it right.  But on Saturday that all changed.. it was delicious!

Probably about 6 months ago my friends and I made some bowls with what was pretty well paper mache and balloons. But there was never a time when we could all get together to paint them... until Saturday evening.  

Mine is the purple one in the front.  It now holds my keys by the door.

paper mache balloon bowls!

All summer John and I have been reading The Scorch Trials and we finally finished it!  Then yesterday John and I spent a couple hours at the mall waiting for Scorch Trials to start at the theater... and about an hour  before the movie was set to start alarms started going off at the mall.  Shops started closing and firemen were walking around with a hose and an axe... but no one seemed to be in any kind of panic so we kept wandering.  Then we got trapped inside Chapters which was when they said we had to leave the mall.  

But don't worry!  We just took a drive to the next theater and caught it somewhere else.

And that's been my last couple of weeks!  

Looking forward to more Thanksgiving festivities (this time with John's family) this weekend.