Six weeks until Christmas

Apparently it's only six weeks until Christmas. Honestly don't know where the time goes. Finally it looks like things are winding down so we're looking forward to having nothing on the agenda for the next little while. I've spent today responding to emails that have been sitting in my Inbox for the last few months and going through our receipts and all that fun stuff, hope I can stay on top of things a little better this time around. In the meantime, here's a photo of us back about a month ago downtown Vancouver before we started our bike tour along the sea wall in Stanley Park.

Adventures in Wagarville

Last weekend we went home to Kingston and took a day trip to Wagarville, Ontario which is about an hour's drive north. Mike's Grandpa Wagar grew up on a farm here and we saw the old house they used to live in. I've been wanting to go for years and Gramma's always tried to dampen my expectations: "If you blink you'll miss it!" and though that's quite true--seeing as the sign was hand-written on a piece of 2x4--I'm really glad we all went out there on this bright sunny day.

Na zdravje ("Australia") Slovenija!

We've just come back to Toronto after spending an amazing week in beautiful Slovenia. We stayed in a small village in the low mountains near the capital city of Ljubljana where Kyle & Masa got married.

We were completely blown away by the varied landscapes of this tiny ex-Yugoslavian country which is sandwiched between Italy & Crotaia: cobbled streets and riverside patios, stalagmites in the karst caves of Postojna, a castle built into the side of a cliff, glacial lakes and pretty villages... One day we would be swimming in the salty waters of the Adriatic Sea and the next we were high up in the Julian Alps.

And what do you know, the cheap beers and yummy foods really weren't so hard to adjust to either! ;)

Catching up with life...

Time is such a bizarre concept. Days, weeks, months, years... they all seem to go by so quickly. Whenever I think about time, John Lennon's lyrics always echo in my head: "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans." Despite having a reputation as a Type-A Listmaker and getting a bit OCD with making plans in my day-to-day life, I never put too much thought past the next year or two because who knows what's going to happen. Lately so much seems so trivial and I've kind of let go of all the little things because I just couldn't be bothered. But the carrying over of lists from week to week is getting to me and now I feel the need to catch up just so I feel more OK about things. So here we go.

End of May Europe Trip
It was such a treat to travel again, and especially going back to all these great cities we've been to before brings back so much nostalgia. I'd nearly forgotten what it's like to be somewhere else in the world and how good it is to associate certain memories with certain places. On our 10-day trip, we caught up with many good friends, cuddled a super cute baby named Ollie, stumbled onto the set of Ryan Reynolds's new movie, and spent some time in the beautiful countryside in Alsace for the lovely wedding of my dear friends Celine & Matthieu. Here's a slideshow of photos from our trip to London, Oxford, Paris, Colmar, and Strasbourg (some of which I snuck in from my archives because we didn't take as many pictures of the sights this time around):



Feel-Good Movies
Nothing quite like submersing one's self in brainless movies when you're feeling down. Especially the kind of feel-good rom-coms that your husband can't stand and that you've already seen before several times (e.g., "Stranger than Fiction", "Bridget Jones's Diary", "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days", etc... yes I know, don't judge me), it's just nice to just switch off for a couple of hours and be in movieland where everything's just peachy and predictable.

Pretty Flowers
This is such a great time of year for flowers. Everything's coming from the local farms and it all looks so fresh, cheery and gorgeous. I loved the softness of the peonies that came earlier in the summer but I also can't get over the vibrant dahlias that are in season now. I must say it is kind of awesome to get to be around pretty flowers all day.

New Music
When it comes to music I normally stick to what I know and love but lately I find myself to be a lot more open to listening to new music. In fact, some of the stuff the girls have playing at the store from their iPods has really grown on me. Right now I'm listening to a mixture of Tallest Man on Earth, Mumford & Sons, First Aid Kit, Paolo Nutini, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, Iron & Wine, Xavier Rudd, and Nick Drake. Of course I still have my staples but I'd forgotten how cool it is to hear a piece of music for the first time and love it.

Cutest Picture Ever
Maybe I'm biased here, but is this not the cutest picture you've ever seen? This is Baby Alex having a bath in the kitchen sink and the kind of thing that makes me forget how gross changing poopy diapers is and makes me wish he will stay little forever:

Weddings Galore
I don't know why I always think summer stays around for a while... this is Canada and I ought to know better by now, but is it really the second week of August already? We're going to three weddings over the next three weeks which is pretty great as I do love weddings. For the grand finale of the summer, we get to travel to somewhere neither of us have ever been before! Slovenia -- the land of mountains, lakes, caves, cobbled streets and castles. The pictures look ridiculous and we are super psyched for our trip which is just a short three weeks away! :o)

Espresso Cups
Is it weird that I don't drink coffee but collect espresso sets? I don't go out of my way to find them but when I see one I like, I buy it. Then I make Mike rotate through the collection so they all get used equally (I decided a while back that I wasn't going to be one of those people who collect things just to gather dust) when he's quite happy to use the same cup over and over again. This one is one of my favourites. I picked it up from a sale rack for $3 because it had hippos on it and looked cute. I wouldn't have realized if Mike hadn't pointed out to me that there's a hippo on the inside of the cup that looks like he's bathing in mud when the cup is full. I very much HEART it. I'm pretty simple, huh?

Long Overdue Post

Now, seeing as it's been nearly two months without a blog post, I think I will use the sub-headings technique to avoid rambling on incoherently. This is gonna be a pretty huge post--who knows I'll have time to write another one--so feel free to skip through for anything interesting.

April Showers Bring May Flowers
I feel like only people's aunts still use this saying but it's been stuck in my head lately. To be honest, I really haven't minded the rain because it's meant that I get to wear my new Hunters. They are yellow and they make me happy. Since I still had pounds in my UK bank account, I got them online from www.countryattire.com (free international shipping!) and for once the shitty exchange rate worked in my favour as they cost me less than $100! (I know that's still quite a lot, but they would've cost me $170 if I'd bought them here!). So yeah, I've been strutting around all over town in these and loving it. Still, can't wait til the "May Flowers" part.

Blue Jays Opening Game

Baseball is boring. It was pretty fun to be there for the Jays opening game at the Skydome (Rogers Centre, whatever) with a few cool new friends and I did feel rather excited at one point in that great big stadium packed with people. But baseball is so boring. The highlight for me was the awesome little red-headed boy singing "O Canada" at the beginning (5:15 in the video clip here). Apparently he plays Billy in the Billy Elliot musical. He was pretty great and I did enjoy the red & white & mounties scene a little bit too:

Bullet for Adolf
My friend Melanie is the set/costume/props designer for a show Woody Harrelson has written and directed called "Bullet for Adolf". I think it's awesome that Mel does what she absolutely loves to do for a living: make puppets, paint scenes, shop for costumes, etc. and so I offered to help her out with the play to get a peek into her world. It was pretty fun and the show is fantastic. Go see it before it finishes its three-week run!

Pretty Flowers & Woolly Pockets
This was a bouquet I'd made for Mike's Dad when we went back to Kingston one weekend and it had all sorts of gorgeous tulips in it along with some amazing dogwood blossoms. I do love that this is what I get to do at work everyday, make pretty things.

It's been pretty busy lately with all the back-to-back holidays: Passover, Easter, Admin Week (it's when you buy flowers to give to your admin staff to say thanks for doing all the things you can't be bothered to do yourself) and next Sunday is Mother's Day already.

In the meantime to celebrate Earth Month we have installed an awesome living wall in the store with the help of Woolly Pockets. These felt pockets are made out of 100% recycled plastic bottles and plants thrive in them. The company is based out of California and they've got some pretty cool photos in their gallery of how people have set up their own living walls so check them out!

The List that Keeps Carrying Over
Having gotten used to the three-day work week for a little while, it's been surprisingly draining to have something to do every day for the past couple of months. I know I should just stop whingeing and get on with it like everyone else, but I feel like I have so much stuff to do and zero time to do them! I guess I self-assign a lot of tasks but I do have things that have to get done... like our tax returns which I've been dreading because we still have an outstanding tax audit (it's only because we had foreign income so they wanted a lot of paperwork to make sure we were paying our taxes properly...). And I also owe a bunch of people emails and our budget spreadsheet needs a serious updating and so on...

The TTC Sucks

People who live in Toronto can identify with this. I can't take the subway anymore (not physically cannot walk myself to the subway and get on it anymore, but mentally it is slowly making me crazy). I am having a hard time remembering the number of times in the past few months when there wasn't a delay of some sort, whether it's a passenger-activated alarm, smoke at track level, or signalling errors... If you're going to charge people $3 to get from A to B, then do whatever you need to do to get them there. And what the F is the point of the PA system if no one can hear what you're saying? Anyway, I know there's no use in complaining and I'm not usually the type, but I'm just a bit worked up about it right now (like that lady on the subway who decided to say it all out loud, quite loud, during rush hour the other day).

After the Gold Rush
I always liked this song but a couple of weeks ago when I heard it again, I fell in love with it. I can't stop listening to it and it calms me down and makes me feel peaceful. I always thought it was so amazing that we all associate different music with different parts of our lives and the people we met at that time and the people that we ourselves were. This is how I feel now. (On a side note, I also absolutely love "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" which is on the same album.)

Baby Alex is Growing Bigger
Alex is now 4 months old and growing bigger everyday! He's a lot more smiley and babbly now and sleeps a bit longer too. He's also just got to meet his Mexican grandparents for the first time which was great! Here he is outside in the sun with the cutest little toque ever, then in my new favourite "like father, like son" photo with his Dad, and finally having some milk with his Grandpa Wagar:

Rupert the Rabbit

Mike spent this week in Kingston to help out around the house: do some gardening, set up mousetraps, spring cleaning and repairs, that sort of stuff. Today he spotted this guy in the backyard and this is a frame-by-frame depiction of Rupert the Rabbit as he crawled underneath the shed. Mike's Dad has long suspected that he lived under there, and now we have proof. Look at that little puff of a tail! And I just love the head-on shot. Too cute.

Fairy Tale Wedding
I didn't know I was such a suck for the whole "and the prince and his princess lived happily ever after" scene but it's now clear to me that I am. I hadn't planned on watching the wedding live but having unexpectedly got the day off work, I thought I'd get up at 5am and see what all the fuss was about. The fuss, let me tell you, was about a real life fairy tale.

It's so crazy when you think about it: that there are still Kings & Queens and Princes & Princesses... and not in some faraway land either, but right across the ocean, in the land where they also have Sainsbury's and football and cream tea and pub quizzes and the best curry ever.

I was absolutely gushing over the bride & groom. Kate looked so gorgeous in that dress and the way they smiled at each other was soooo sweet. And those two little kisses simply made my day (okay, I might have YouTubed them several more times throughout the day, but what's the internet for if not make your heart fill with instant flutter as you pause and replay that balcony moment?). *SIGH*. Love. How wonderful. Next time I get married--Mike's not so fond of throwing another wedding for some reason--I'm gonna have lilies of the valley everywhere (though I also rather like the idea of a garden roses tea party).

Europe-Bound in Three Weeks!
Watching the BBC coverage of the royal wedding seriously made me miss England. Good thing we're going back to Oxford in three weeks' time! Absolutely cannot wait! We've booked most of our 10-day trip already but I've yet to book my flight over. Gonna do that this weekend though and write up an itinerary, then I'll fill you in on all the details! So psyched! :) :) :)

In closing, I leave you with this picture of the biggest strawberry I've ever seen and eaten. That is an almond beside it. It was from H-Mart (we live in Koreatown) and it was delicious.

Spring Forward

Right, so it's been a month since my very brief post the week before Valentine's Day. February was a bit of a blur really: the week leading up to the big day we were working like little elves, swimming in a sea of flowers with zero time to stop and smell the roses, and still got completely slammed beyond our expectations on the day of. It then took us a good week to recover from the sleep deprivation and we're glad that it's all over now but I gotta say, the store did look pretty amazing and everything went very well:

Sadly, just before Valentine's Day we'd heard news from Mike's parents that Max hadn't been well and had to go see the vet. Max was a 10-year old Jack Russell that Mike had had since he was a puppy. Poor Max had gone blind by the time he was a year old and also had to deal with things like nerve problems and arthritis on top of that. Max was always such a good sport though, he loved to play and go to the cottage and go for walks and was a big part of the family.

When he'd started to have a hard time standing up, we'd hoped that it was just another thing that the poor puppy would have to sort out and that he'd feel better soon. But one day, Max got really sick and kept whimpering, so Mike's dad had to take him in to put him down which I can only imagine was the hardest thing he's ever had to do because Max really had become his best friend. We went back to Kingston for the long weekend and Max wasn't wagging his tail at the door to say hello when we arrived. No one said anything because we knew we would all just break down.  

Max, we miss you very very much and will always remember you.

As though to cheer us all up, baby Alex decided to start smiling a few weeks ago. It's hard to say whether the smiling actually corresponds to feelings of happiness, or whether it's some sort of reflex that comes with farting (which, I suppose, can contribute to feelings of happiness), but either way it is so super cute. Also, how cute and comfy are onesies? I want one for myself so badly. Sue did mention that they had "adult onesies" at Primark for less than a tenner but neither the cow nor the leopard prints sounded all that appealing to me so I'm gonna hold off until they do chocolate brown stripey ultra soft fleecy ones like the one Alex has here:

On Wednesday I sat down and reviewed our budget for 2011/2012 (did I mention that Mike made up a spiffy new Excel spreadsheet for me, with fancy formulas and pivot tables and all? I love it.) and found myself wishing that money grew on trees (or fell from the sky, whatever, I'm not picky). According to my calculations in cell C27, we could theoretically save just enough money to do all the things that we want to do... we just have to be very good with sticking to the budget and not spending money on things like these adorable owl linen bookends that were on sale for half price at Indigo... (to be fair, I'd bought them in February, before I had a proper look at the spreadsheet, you see.)

Anyway, we're going to be good from now on and not go out for dinners/drinks, not buy new clothes and things we don't need, and just focus on studying, doing stuff around the house, exercising and eating well. After all, what is March for if not to re-start New Year's resolutions? ;o)

Countdown to Valentine's Day

T minus seven days to V-Day, the single busiest day for flower shops all over the world which also means I'm going to be MIA for the next week or so and working all hours of the day/night in preparation for the big day. It's gonna be lots of fun though, I love the energy and excitement and the little bit of stress that come with Valentine's Day! :o)

Oh, and Happy Chinese New Year of the Rabbit! Thursday was the first day of lunar January technically but Chinese New Year celebrations go on for a couple of weeks so I'm not too late!

It's cold outside...

I am sitting in the living room looking out the window at the fluffy snow blowing all over the place and it is something like -20 degrees outside which reminds me of last Sunday when we went skating for the first time in years at Mel Lastman Square, ten minutes down the street from us.

It's a funny thing, ice skating... Let's wait til the pond in the backyard freezes over, strap some blades onto the bottom of our shoes, go skate around in circles for a couple of hours then go home and have some hot chocolate. How very Canadian.

What I loved most was all these little foreign kids on the ice. Indian kids, Chinese kids, Persian kids in full skating gear with their parents, who, having grown up in much milder climates never skated before themselves, laced up their skates and watched from the edges of the rink. Little wee hockey skates on a little wee Chinese boy with rosy pink cheeks. Makes me feel just a little bit better about this whole -20 business.

2011, really?

The concept of the year 2011 is so bizarre that I can't quite get my head wrapped around it. Of course, my not getting things never stopped the world from carrying on doing its thing, so here we are, to quote Lennon, "another year over, a new one has begun," and this time it's 2011.

You would think that looking back at my list of new year's resolutions from 2010 and realizing that I've barely managed to check off 3 out of the 10 items I had set out to accomplish this time last year would bum me out a little bit, but I'm cool with it. Maybe I've grown older and wiser and finally at ease with things, or maybe I've just come to terms with my utter lack of resolve, either way I am OK with not having achieved as much as I would have liked in a year's time.

This year, though I wasn't able to stay away from making a list altogether, I have limited myself to the following five items:

1. Exercise three times a week, eat better, and lose 15lbs by the end of May so that I can fit back into that suitcase full of skinny clothes currently sitting in storage (the clothes, not the suitcase).
2. Become a very good floral designer.
3. Pay back the last bit of student loans that we owe to the Ontario government by the end of February then scrimp & save a good sum of money for all the fun things we want to do over the next couple of years.
4. Organize all my computer files and back things up.
5. Sort through and organize all the rest of our stuff.

There, that doesn't seem that unreasonable now, does it? I will give an interim report in May and let you know how I got on with things this time around.

Mike, on the other hand, has one goal and one goal only: ace the GMAT in April, write up a few brilliant applications, and get accepted into MBA school for Fall 2012 admissions. He is now fully immersed in studying for the exam most weeknights plus a full day on the weekend and time seems to be flying by.

The other theme for 2011 seems to be weddings (and I heart weddings) -- so far we are booked for four, two of which are overseas thereby giving us an excellent excuse to finally get back to traveling again after a year and a half of hiatus. We are saving up to return to England/France at the end of May, see Slovenia/Croatia at the end of August, trek through Asia next spring, and summer at the cottage one more time before getting ready for school in the fall.

In closing I shall leave you with a few photos (mostly of Alex, naturally) to mark the end of 2010! :o)