Off the clock

In less than 24 hours we will be on vacation...can't wait for some time away to relax, refresh, and have fun!

There will be some of this:

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Some snorkle...

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And some of this...

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Replace this with pastier white skin, and a pregnant belly and you'll have me!

See you once I'm back!

Holiday wishes {all wrapped up}

I hope you are all getting ready for the big Christmas hoorah! It is litterally around the corner - stop shopping, stop wrapping, and sit back (maybe have a drink or two).

I'm already enjoying my break...I'm fortunate enough to have an office closure until January (such a good thing) so I am trying to really sink into holiday mode. I figured I should do one last post that includes this year's wrapping. Here are some shots:

 

And...I'm in for a white Christmas...

From me to you, have a happy, healthy and loving holiday season! 

My Christmas tradition

I'm over at Recreated today sharing my favourite Christmas tradition...hint...it has something to do with my tree:

Pop over and check it out!

Weekend recap {mini-Christmas}

Hellllloooo long lost friends! Thought I would give a little weekend recap to get back into the swing of things on the blog...this past Sunday was "mini-Christmas" for me and the Mr. It's a way for us to celebrate Christmas on our own, since we typically spend actual Christmas with our families. In the past we have said that mini-Christmas day is NO chores, NO work NO projects. Welllll it didn't quite go like that this year, but we haven't had a project in a while so it was basically a "gift" for the Mr. to work on a project (or at least that's what I like to think...). Before we get to the details, let's talk food...

We had Green Eggs and Ham for breakfast

and Beef Wellington with roasted leeks and brussels sprouts for dinner (so good).

I will share some of my Christmas wrapping later in the week...but for now onto the project!

A couple of weeks ago we bought an over the range microwave - we are so DONE with not having a hood fan. When we did the kitchen we toyed with putting in a hood fan, but our microwave is currently above the stove...so where would it go? It would have to take up valuable counterspace which wasn't really an option. So a microwave/fan combo was it. Well, those things have plugs that come out the top (instead of out the back), and they need a cabinet above them to be secured into the wall. Enter, project. The Mr. and his friend figured out a plan to get a new electrical wire up into the kitchen, which was then used for a new outlet above where the microwave will be hung.

Now we just wait for the electrical to be hooked up at the panel, and for the actual install to happen!

That was our delicious and busy weekend (although, more busy on the Mr's side than mine)...how was yours?

Holiday party DIY's

Yesterday I gave a peak at the Christmas party we hosted, and as promised today I will share some of the simple DIYs that we did.

Epsom salt candles
I saw these on pinterest and knew that I would be making them for our party. I have a collection of mason jars in the basement that the Mr is always encouraging me to use (ok, encourage is my word. His word may be "recycle"). How could I get rid of them when I know Pinterest is chock full of ideas? This one is super simple - put Epsom salt in the mason jar as your base, push a candle into it, and voila - candles in snow.

Bunting flags
This one is really easy and maybe teetering on overdone, but I like the cheery look of bunting flags. For these I used old scraps of wrapping paper (those ones I always keep just in case I find a present that needs a 2"x2" piece of wrapping paper - riiiight). Bunting flags are a much easier way to use up the odds and ends. I cut them into triangles and some pinking-sheared rectangles, punched two holes in the top and the laced white yarn through. Although I have different shapes and different patterns I made sure to keep everything white and red to carry a simple two colour theme.

Gold pine cones & nuts
These are leftovers from my wedding three years ago (do you get the message that I like to re-use??). I took pinecones and walnuts and spray painted them gold for some glitz. I put some in vases to complete my table runner centrepiece.

Wreath
I bought a fresh wreath from Home Depot and planned to Zhush it up. Unfortunately the last few weeks have got away from me, but I did manage to snip some berry branches from my front garden (it looks exactly like holly). Not a huge change, but it looks a bit more festive!

And finally the food. I baked a couple of weeks ago and put the cookies in the freezer until this weekend. Then I made a few recipes to round out the table including pistachio covered truffles (my new favourite) and mini pizzetas with caramelized onions and mushrooms.

 

The food was a hit, and I now have a new love for pistachios. What's your favourite new recipe for the season?

Holiday kick-off

I hope you are all in the holiday spirit now that it's December! The Mr and I hosted our annual Christmas Open House on Saturday. It seemed early when we sent the invite, but now that it has come and gone, the timing was perfect. It meant I had to get my butt in gear with baking, house decorations and the tree! Fortunately the Mr. was insistent that the tree was up in time for the party, so we had the full nine yards.

I will cover some of the DIY details tomorrow, but for now here are some photos to give a quick recap!

About 25 adults, 4 children under the age of 2 1/2, one visiting dog, and a partridge in a pear tree took part. Here come the holidays!

It's oh so quiet....

...around my blog that is...

I apologize for the lack of posting...I have some fun stuff to share, but I have been Busy (yes, busy with a capital B) at my real job...so unfortunately I'm forced into a bit of a blogger break. We are hosting our annual Christmas open house this weekend though so I hope to have some nice photos of our goodies for the event...in the meantime, we DID manage to get the Christmas tree up and decorated this weekend (good activity the day after my company Christmas party!). We don't usually do this until December, but since our party's coming up the Mr. thought (rightfully so) that we MUST have the tree up and ready.

 

I (aka the Mr.) also put up our new entry way chandelier (that I found on my antiquing mission that I mentioned in this post)

 

It's a small light, but we're limited to what we can put there because of the corner closet. I ended up having to spray paint the mounted part because when I bought it I noticed the brass had paint on it...so to clean it, I soaked it in vinegar and water....and the paint came off, but so did the "brass" finish! It all worked out well (and I think looks even better now). Here's a shot of it from the store, all lit up:

I have a million and two things on my to-do list, including a planter for the porch (not sure if I'll get to it...I will hang a wreath though!), and prepping for my party. At the end of the day, if we have wine, wine, beer, crackers, cheese, and christmas tunes we'll be good, right?

Boo! happy halloween

Happy Halloween all!

Truth be told, I am not a huge Halloween fan. Sure, I like the candy (who doesn't??) but the whole costume-gory-fake-blood-evil-spirits thing doesn't really get me going. I'm happy to be "grown up" enough to like handing out candy more than anything else about the day. Today's supposed to be pretty chilly so hopefully we'll still get a good crowd of kids through! Here's our pumpkin this year:

(simple is as simple does)

And yes, I did save and clean all the pumpkin seeds to roast them up - that's my favourite thing about carving a pumpkin! (Oh, and the smell of pumpkins with candles in them. Just me?). And I saw this a little too late - totally going on my list for next year's pumpkin (now just to remember...).

Hope you all have a safe and happy halloween!

Thankful and a reminder

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So many things to be thankful for this weekend! I was in Ottawa for work last week, and stayed there for the Thanksgiving weekend. The Mr. met up with me, and we hung out with family and friends, visited some of our favourite areas in Ottawa and stuffed our faces all weekend. All in all a great little Thanksgiving! So thankful for everything we have, and most importantly all the caring people we have in our lives.

Some smaller everyday items I am thankful for: flying home to Toronto instead of enduring a long-weekend-trafficy-drive, bringing home tons of leftover turkey, gravy, and stuffing (thanks mom and dad!), seeing my bestie's new house, having some time to catch up on blogging and magazines, seeing the beautiful fall colours in the trees, and having time (because of said flight!) to get to the gym today after a week away from it.

And, to end off - a quick reminder that Blogger Book Club is back on October 15th! We are reviewing Zadie Smith's On Beauty in a week - that means get reading! (Including me...my library book is officially late...but I have to finish for next week's review! Shhh...don't tell them I will purposely be incurring late fees to finish it).

Happy Monday which feels like Sunday, folks.

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day to all my Canadian friends and readers...and to people not in Canada? Raise a glass and cheers Canada for us today :)

It's ANOTHER glorious weekend (if you're not having a good summer move to Toronto...or anywhere else in Ontario...I'll pretty much guarantee you sun and fun :) ). We're heading to a BBQ with friends this afternoon, and have already hit the beach on Friday and a Blue Jays game yesterday - good little weekend we have going on.

I hope everyone has a great Canada Day wherever you are and whatever you are doing. Oh, and for all my readers in or visiting Ottawa - you're in the best place in the world for July 1.

via Martha Stewart



Friday faves - pastels

Happy Easter everyone! Good Friday is a holiday here in Canada so I am excited about the long weekend. I haven't posted anything yet about Easter, so I'm too late for any DIY or craft projects, but I've always thought pastels are synonymous with Easter.

Enjoy these hits of spring pretty and enjoy the weekend!

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via Country Living

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via Country Living

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Friday faves - New year's Eve

Tomorrow marks New Year's Eve - what are your plans? I'm wishing for a little sparkle and celebration for all of you for the big night. Enjoy!

Images clockwise from top left: 1, 2, 3, 4

Images clockwise from top left: 1, 2, 3, 4

Images clockwise from top left: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6



And they keep rolling...

...the holidays, that is! I'm fortunate that my office closes between Christmas and New Year's so this past week up until January 3rd should all be a nice workless blur to me!

I hope you all had a lovely Christmas...we went back to Ottawa to celebrate with our families and friends. Ottawa had a white (and chilly) Christmas, although the snow came later in the season than usual. Here is a view of our drive up on the 23rd (I was NOT driving, this is from the passenger seat :) ):

It was a great visit, and we were spoiled with generous gifts. My mom and I have a tradition of boxing day shopping, and although it's dwindled in the past years, Chapters was my target store this year. I had some great finds including holiday cards for next year and:

Stone bookends (they are SO heavy!)

This Gold Polygon Object (that is seriously the name Chapters gave it) is the perfect addition to my guest room's bookshelf. I had my eye on it for a bit and patience paid off!

I also went to Homesense and picked up a cute little porcelain cup for pens on the shelf of our coffee table and purple Tahari sheets (who knew Tahari did home stuff?).

All in all my boxing day sales searches have shifted to home stuff instead of clothes, but that's OK - I still love the thrill of the find! I did get a black and grey leopard print skirt which I'm excited about.

Did you have any great boxing day finds? Are you on the lookout for any additional sales?

Friday faves - what I will be doing over the holidays

Hello all! We are getting SO close to Christmas! For those of you who have been working the whole week, good on you. You are extra deserving of some time off.

The Mr. and I took time off starting Wednesday, and we're not going back to work until January 3rd! I am looking forward to a nice long break. For me, this means a lot of catching up with friends and family, lounging in jogging pants, catching up on blog reading, catching up on real reading, hopefully some time to visit the gym and or granit suppliers, and a lot of relaxing. 

I wish you and your families a very merry Christmas!





My wrapping

I am writing this post in advance because tomorrow (today by the time you read this) is mini-Christmas! The Mr. and I celebrate Christmas on our own before joining our families for the 25th. Today we'll open presents, relax all day and a make delicious dinner (boneless leg of lamp with balsamic rosemary marinade is on the "menu" this year). No blogging or work or anything of the sort :) I can't wait.

I finished up a good part of my wrapping over the last week or so, but still have a few gifts to wrap up. As I shared in my Friday Faves post last week, I wanted to use Kraft paper for presents this year. Our neice and nephew are the exception - they got printed wrapping paper with pom pom's. Here is a peak at some of the wrapped gifts I will be giving this year (sorry for the lighting...didn't get any pictures during the day on the weekend!):

Those of our friends who will be getting drinkable presents from us this year will see something like this:

I also tried to make woodgrain wrapping paper...I saw the DIY on a blog the other night...pre-computer crash...and have no idea how I found it in the first place so can't get back to the site! If this is your idea please let me know, and I will definitely give credit (although my attempt is more of a fail...).

First off you take a blog of wood and wrap string around it:

Then you brush paint all over the strings and block (*note - I wanted to use white paint like in the invisible example I'm referencing, but the $ store only had green and that was as far as I was going...)

And then you stamp!

So, this is supposed to look like wood grain. hmmm Not sure if I see it.  It certainly doesn't look like this:



via Martha Stewart (which is the only thing showing up in my google searches grr)

I'm pretty sure it's a fail on my part...I'll let you know if I change my mind when I try to use the paper! Maybe it was the size of the string, the pattern I did, the green paint...who knows.

Merry mini-Christmas to me :)