Sleepover!!

(Have you noticed my backdating trick yet? This is for those of us that don't get around to uploading our pictures until it's later than planned. bwahaha.)

Anyway, so "yesterday" I planned a little girl's night in for my birthday since DBF is away and he took me out to celebrate last weekend anyway. Through some discussion we ended up decided to do a sleepover because a lot of the girls live over in Dartmouth and beyond and that sucks that someone would have to stay sober for the drive. My friend Missy coined it "Jaime's Jammie Jam"...haha.

In the end, a couple of people cancelled last minute and a couple of people were sick so there was only 4 of us confirmed. But then Angie surprised me and was able to pop by for a little while at the beginning (she couldn't stay due to a prior engagement, but she told me she would do her best and so she did!!). Such a doll, she brought me a lovely giftie...knowing my love for all things Starbucks (and little did she know I was eyeballing these babies up while taking in all the Christmas action at SB earlier in the day). Couldn't have guessed better if she'd tried. :)

Since I had thought there was going to be double the people, I had seriously overbought on food. Cheese, meat, olives...oh my! Plus my guests brought food. There was enough for an army, but we still managed to put a good dent in it. Hello Bonnie's Mexi-dip....drool. And Marie-Claude's now famous stuffed mushrooms...more drool. Thank God for Cosette's veggies and hummus so I could feel slightly healthy. (sidebar: I made those new PC salmon wellington puffs...they were OK, but I found them kind of dry...just so you know.) And don't forget the wide variety of martinis!! I now have about 6 flavors of vodka in my pantry. Wooooo!

Around 11:00 we moved to the living room so we could inspect the "candy buffet" I had put together. What's a sleepover without Smarties and gummy bears? Believe it or not I had planned popcorn too...but we never even talked about that!

Then we decided to get into our jammies (I got new pink Xmas ones!) and cozied up on the couches for a movie. We had talked about watching something old school...I was thinking "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" (80s Sarah Jessica Parker) but instead we settled on 27 Dresses. By this point Marie-Claude chose to go home...she lives next door and was nodding off and decided to be cozy next to her husband instead of us. :) The three of us left finished up the movie and then got to talking some more. Poor Bonnie hasn't seen 4am in a long time, but both Cosette and I are night owls so even after Bonnie dragged her butt to bed, we stayed up another hour. We finally decided that our conversation could be carried on at some other time and went to bed.

Morning came much too soon...but because I'd quit drinking like 3 hours before I actually went to bed I was fine. Cosette had left before I got up (daughter had swimming lessons) so I just puttered around and cleaned everything up...and by the time Bonnie came down I was all done. Nice. We shared a bagel and had tea/coffee for a short bit, then she too had to go take her daughter to a sports event. I think I missed the boat on kids and sports!

I admit I was disappointed at the few cancellations, but in the end I still had a great time. Smaller group make for easier conversation. The best part was having friends from different circles all meet and get along great! Thank you all for making my birthday very special!!

And now the good stuff...my birthday loot:

Martini glasses from Miss Bonnie. Love them! They a bigger and better than my existing set, so these will be the new go-to glasses and the old ones will be put away for backup.

Bone china tea cups from Cosette. Lovely. Just the right size for a good cup of tea! How did she know I was lacking these? (and some gourmet hot chocolate for those chilly nights without DBF!)

And from the lovely Marie-Claude, these fantatic orange gerbers. The picture doesn't do them justice. I don't think I even told her that gerbers are my favorite. I'll have to do that!

And ya, I only got the two pictures of actual people. That's what happens when you get a group of women together who talk the whole time. They forget to take photos!

Merry...um...Birthday?

They say it's your birthday....da da da da da da da...Well it's my birthday too, ya!!

So, being that DBF is away and my party plans aren't until tonight, I decided to just treat this like any other Saturday. I already did most of my chores last night, and already bought the majority of the groceries I need...so it is my day to just chill. Of course, I decided that I needed to start my day with a trip to Starbucks...one birthday latte pour moi coming up!

But to what do my wondering eyes appear?...Yup, it's that time. Christmas has arrived at Starbucks. Tra la la la la, la la la la. Red and green everywhere. Peppermint Mochas, Gingerbread Lattes, Cranberry Bliss Bars, Christmas Blend coffee....and the best thing of all...the Eggnog Latte!

Now normally I don't do Christmas before December...and especially not before my birthday. But what was I to do? I was surrounded. And I have to tell you that these East Coasters sure catch the Christmas Spirit early....folks started putting up their lights the day after they composted their jack-o-lanterns. I thought they were a bit nutty, but I guess that's what you do when you live in the land of snow and ice...gotta get it done before the flakes fly. So this year, in the spirit of now being an East Coaster, I decided that it was OK to have a birthday Eggnog Latte. :)

Afterwards I wandered through Chapters eager to buy myself a birthday present, but nothing really caught my eye. I have a stack of books here at home to get through and I didn't really see the need for the $90 Twilight box set just yet. So instead I carried on with my errands.

Well, happy Christmas to me. er, I mean Merry Birthday! um. hmmm. Well, whatever. My birthday gift to myself ended up being new LED warm white lights and pine garlands for our front porch (remember this is our first Christmas season in this house). I also picked up Christmas cards because I might as well start now as it will take me a couple of weeks to get them all done! After that I went to Costco, where I got us this crazy huge lighted wreath for our garage door. Love it.

Oh, and I did get myself a real birthday giftie after all....Rachel Ray's Big Orange Book and this month's Rachel Ray Everyday magazine. Yes, I'm a corporate whore (she's just cheaper than Starbucks and LuluLemon).

Catch Up

I know, I have gotten bad about keeping this blog up to date. Not a lot to report as often, and then when there is I put it off and it becomes old news. But here I am!

DBF was home for a glorious 3.5 day weekend. I managed to keep work to a minimum on Friday (worked while he caught up on sleep and F1) so we got to spend a fair amount of time together.

Friday night I went to the Feist concert, so he had a boys night with his buddy Mark. He ended up having car trouble though so wound up staying over at Mark's place because he didn't want to get stranded in the middle of the night. I got home from the concert and thought that he'd decided to drink and stay out...haha. So we sorta lost that night. He got home right after I got up on Saturday morning though (I was dressed and heading to Starbucks) so we got to go out for a greasy breaky which for some reason is one of our fave things to do...and something I rarely do when he's away (if ever).

We ran a few errands, then he brought me home while he went in search of a birthday day prezzie for me. I did some chores and read my book and that was about it, until the evening when we got dolled up for our dinner out (only chance for us to do my birthday dinner together).

We met up with Mark & Cosette, and our friends Brand & Collen who we haven't seen forever, and their friends whose names escape me right now, at Bish. Yum! Arron and I arrived early (you just never know how fast a cab is going to arrive at our place) so we sat at the bar for a cocktail until everyone arrived. I had this yummy raspberry vanilla martini that I wish I had written down. Dinner was really tasty and fun...with 8 people it's tough to really do a lot of good conversation, but we managed to get caught up a bit.

After dinner we were all supposed to meet up for drinks, but Brad & Colleen ended up calling it a night and their friends had gone home to relieve their babysitter, so the other four of us hit up the Shoe Shop because that's what we always do. Lots of chit-chat, drinks and fun. :)

(I only wish I had taken pictures!!! Boo me.)

Sunday morning we slept in, then went for a fast food lunch and picked up a video. Stopped at the grocery store for dinner fixings, but ended up picking up Chinese take-out later in the evening because it was a lazy day and I didn't feel like cooking. Spent most of the afternoon sitting next to DBF reading my book while he played Playstation. :) He picked up my prezzie while I was in the grocery store...an iPod dock for the stereo so I can have tunes for my girls party tomorrow (of course I have no idea how to hook it up!).

Then it was Monday again...and up at the crack of dawn I drove him back to the stupid ship.

Good news is that as soon as he got to work he found out they are coming home a week early...so Dec-5th instead of the 12th. I guess that's something!

Camping in Nova Scotia

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Our first camping trip since our move to Nova Scotia. In fact, our first camping trip since two Labor Days ago. Last year we were living at separate ends of the country (while DBF was out here on his course and we didn't even know we would be moving) so no camping at all for us.

At first it seemed as though someone up there didn't want us to go camping. The place we wanted was booked, then the weather was supposed to be bad, then we heard about the campfire ban, and so on....but in the end we got up on Friday morning and decided to just go. I worked my buns of until noon then emailed my West Coast co-workers and wished them a happy TGIF and signed off for the day.

We chose to go to Porters Lake Provincial Park as it is the closest campground to us and they still had lots of available spots so we didn't need to book online for the extra fee. :) A couple of friends had wrinkled their noses when we mentioned the spot, but we figured since we've never been anywhere around here it would be fun for us.

And it was!! What a beautiful spot! The lake is huge and gorgeous and blue. The campground is large and spacious (a bit dusty but what campground isn't?). Our site was in a great location and it was massive and mostly grassy. And we didn't have a neighbor until late last night and even then they didn't bother us at all. Fairly private in general with just enough exposure to enjoy the goings on along the roads and stuff. They even had a proper bathroom with running water and real toilets...which I know defeats the purpose of roughing it...but it sure is nice to wash my face at the end of the day.

The fire pit was a bit chintzy but it served the purpose, and hey, at least we were allowed to have a fire at all! We kept warm for only $3.50 for wood (back in BC it's like $5 for half as much) and had enough of a blaze to cook our smokies and that's all we needed.

Friday afternoon and evening we just lounged around the site after we set up. The sunset was freaking amazing. Super bright orange, then pink, then glowing magenta. Awesome!

Saturday morning DBF got up early with Mojo and I ended up sleeping in for another couple of hours. hehe :) When I got up I made us a yummy breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs with mushrooms and hashbrowns. We forgot our coffee cups, so drank our tea from our travel wine glasses. LOL. Then we took a run to the front gate for extra ice and fire wood, then a nice long walk around the park. I considered going in for a swim, but we had Mojo with us and he doesn't like water and kept barking at all the other dogs. He's not good at sitting still for beach sitting either (and it's not a very big beach, and it's rocks not sand...). Instead we just took some pictures and enjoyed the walk. The sun was blazing! Then we decided to drive back out to the road and see if we could find a store for something refreshing to drink (we only had booze and Cokes and in this heat we needed something less dehydrating). Once we had waters and Powerade in hand, we came back to the site and just enjoyed the afternoon playing cards and reading our books. Our evening was spent at the fire pit again, with Trivial Pursuit and hot chocolate with Bailey's. :) Oh, and yet another fantastic sunset.

This morning we slept in a little longer then got up to another yummy greasy breakfast before packing up to head home. Yet another beautiful day! The location was just the right distance away to feel like a little trip away from home, but close enough that we were home by noon. DBF cleaned my car (holy dust and dog hair Batman!) because he's nice like that, and I unpacked and tidied up our stuff.

We were both covered in a massive layer (or ten) of dust and camping grime (ewwww....sunscreen)... a shower has never felt so good! Too bad a shower doesn't cure mosquito bites...but such is the price you pay for spending the night in nature.

All in all I totally recommend it. A perfect camping weekend.

Sadly it's Monday

I want another long weekend! Waaaa! The weather is gorgeous...so sunny and warm, but with a light breeze today...perfect! Supposed to get up to 28 degrees today...and maybe 31 tomorrow. Hopefully this stays now for a while. We've decided to go camping this coming weekend no matter what the weather predictions are. (It was supposed to be rainy and crappy this past Saturday according to the news all week, so we didn't go camping...and of course it ended up being beautiful out.)


On Sunday DBF had our neighbor over to watch F1, so I opted to do some shopping. I had decided to head back over to MicMac Mall to check out the Jacob lingerie store I saw there last weekend for some much needed new undies and a neutral bra....but on the way I decided to stop at our Old Navy for some tank tops (I realized while getting dressed that I only have one or two truly presentable tank tops). Well, Old Navy looked like a bomb had been dropped....I truly have never seen a store that messy or picked over. I lasted about two minutes before I dropped the one thing I had picked up and walked right out.


So off over the bridge I went to Dartmouth. As luck would have it there is another Old Navy at the mall, so I popped in there and thankfully it was clean and organized. Found four cute new tanks, two nighties and some blue shorts. :) Then up to Jacob where I got my undies and two new bras because they were on sale (I think La Senza has now seen the last of me...this was a way better find!). Also got some cocoa butter and scrub from the Body Shop for softening up my Summer feeties.

Then, while window shopping, I stopped into Aldo, mostly just looking, but well you know how it goes.... found a pair of gold strappy sandals that I really liked but of course they didn't have in my size (they rarely have 10s or 11s). So the salesguy recommends that I can just have them ordered in and delivered to my house....say what?! Yup, basically like ordering online, only since he does all the work he still gets the sale...fine with me. He was very helpful and deserves the commission, it didn't cost anything extra, and if they don't fit or I don't like them I can just return them to the store. This could get dangerous. :)


I also stopped and looked at some beds because we need one for our spare room. We don't want anything expensive, but I'm not looking at the $399 ones because they are too crappy. Anyway, long story short was that the particular store I went in did have a set that I liked and it was only $30 over my max, but the guy was a schmuck so I think I'll keep looking. Sort of a nice guy, but I could tell he was bullshitting me and I hate that.


Picked up some groceries on the way home and had BBQ'd steaks and corn on the cob for dinner. So yum! After dinner we went for a walk around the neighborhood, then a drive to the video store. Picked up In Bruge...don't do it, it was supposed to be good and quirky, but it was more weird and boring...and also the first disk of the first season of Mad Men. Watched one episode and so far, so good...but it's no HBO show. :)

Another Saturday Drive

Saturday morning we decided to go for another drive since we had such a nice time last weekend. We chose to head up to Victoria Park in Truro....actually we were looking at something to do with the Bay of Fundy, then noted that Truro is on the edge or end of the Bay or a part of it or something so that's what led us there. Then some surfing the web led me to find Victoria Park.

We loaded the doggie and the extra baggies and water into the car, stopped at our new favorite restaurant The Armview for a cheap but yummy breakfast (seriously.... $5.70 for my breakfast...2 eggs, bacon, toast, hashbrowns and coffee...score! plus patio seating!) and then hit the highway. It's about an hour's drive to Truro....and the gastank light came on about 1/3 of the way there....and even though I know that my car can go a LONG way once the light comes on I was starting to get nervous....but we didn't want to pull off the highway so we just went for it. Of course, it was fine.

Got to Truro, but didn't have a map, so just drove around until we found the signs for Victoria Park. What a gem!! This huge, beautiful, sunny, green and lush park. Mojo isn't so great for walking with crowds of people so we opted to stick to the lower main trails and didn't get to go off the beaten track....but it was still a lovely walk. I'd like to see it in the fall or spring when the waterfalls are really flowing. Afterwards we got drinks (cherry slushie for me!) and sat on the grass watching the funny band play.


Don't ask why I'm carrying my purse...we had already started down the path when I realized I had it and I didn't feel like going back to put it in the trunk.



On our way out of town we stopped at the viewpoint for one of the Tidal Bores on the Bay of Fundy. If I remember correctly a tidal bore is when the water is flowing out of the canal but being pushed back in by the ocean tide, creating a crazy whirlpool tidal effect. Mostly it just looked like muddy red water due to the massive amount of clay, etc. Still quite pretty though.


Then home we came to relax for a bit, then out to dinner with some friends. Followed that up with another quiet night in with wine and some Trivial Pursuit. I was poopered from all that sun!

How we spent our four-day weekend...

Friday evening:
We thought it would be fun to try to find a pizza place that I had heard about from one of the girls on my Relay for Life team. I'm sure she said it was called Red's and it was in Hubbards...but the only Red's we could find in the phonebook was in Upper Tantallon, which is only about a 20 minute drive from here, so we set out to find it. Upper Tantallon isn't very big, so we are pretty sure that we found the right place (it was actually a take-out fish n chip place that said it "proudly serves Big Red's pizza") but it wasn't the kind of place we were after so we decided to head back towards home. We were considering just heading into downtown to see what presented itself, but then DBF pointed out that I'd been wanting to try this place called The Armview that it right on the edge of the big rotary (Armdale Rotary) at the end of our main road. It looks like a total dive, greasy spoon from the outside...but we had noticed they got funky new patio furniture and there always seems to be a lot of people there...so we figured it wouldn't kill us. :) Well it turns out that it has recently been bought and turned into kind of a hip, upscale diner. Still obviously was a greasy spoon or something at some point, but reno'd and cleaned up with a yummy new menu. We each had a burger and they were AWESOME. We'll go back for sure. They must do a late night bar scene too....there were turntables on the counter and they had a good wine/martini/bar list. (They haven't finished their website yet, but here is a link from The Coast.) Then we went home and watched Definitely, Maybe....good movie.

Saturday:
The weather promptly decided to go south...Murphy's Law...but we still stuck with our plan for a leisurely drive to the South Shore. We loaded Mojo, his blanket, his dish and some water into the car and set off for our adventure (with McD's in our tummies and Starbucks in our hands of course). Our intention had been to go as far as Risser's Beach to check out the camping situation, but we ended up heading to Graves Island and then on to Mahone Bay instead. We would have needed to hop over to the main highway and just didn't feel like it. haha. We enjoy the old highway...more scenic...and I saw lots of cool places to stop to see when travelling that way with my Mom in the fall. If we had a truck, we would have had two brand-new, lovely handcrafted Adirondack chairs come home with us. :) The weather was grey and it tried to rain a couple of times, but all in all it was a nice drive anyway. Graves was a beautiful spot, but the campground was WIDE open with absolutely no privacy, so at least we learned not to book it for weekend getaway. We're still on the hunt for the perfect camping spot. :)

While perusing the internet to try to find a downtown pizza restaurant that I had heard about, I happened upon the website for another restaurant that we had wanted to try. Cafe Chianti. I showed it to DBF as a suggestion for a future date night, and he said why didn't we do it now? Well, OK! Twist my rubber arm for date night! So we got ourselves all dressed up (I swear I felt like I was getting ready for a first date...and was very pleased with the end result...and then of course forgot to get a picture!) and hopped in a cab for downtown. Dinner was awesome! The waiter was great, he offered us a great wine selection, DBF admired the man's crazy mustache, the food was excellent (although VERY rich!), and at the end of our meal DBF ended up befriending these two little old English ladies at the table beside us. They discussed the war and their travels...hilarious, he can make friends with anyone! We even walked with them for the few blocks to their hotel. So cute! After that, we carried on to the Shoe Shop for drinky-poos at the bar.

Sunday:
The weather turned total ass. Wet and gross. We basically hit up the grocery store so DBF could make us a yummy weekend breakfast and then hermitted in the house for the rest of the day. I don't even remember what we did for most of the day...haha. In the evening we watched a movie called Control, about the lead singer from Joy Division....good movie, terribly sad story.

Monday:
Weather was still a bit crappy, but at least it was warm. Windy and humid is an odd combination! We had a leisurely morning, then set out to do a bit of shopping and a few errands. Finally made it over to the MicMac mall in Dartmouth (it's the largest shopping mall East of Toronto apparently)....it's a mall...haha...a good mall, but just a mall nonetheless. Didn't buy anything, but did discover a Jacob Lingerie store so I'll be going back for that when DBF isn't with me. :) We stopped at Costco on our way home, where I picked up a new camera (just a little point and shoot digital...exactly the same as my old camera but brand new model) and we finally got the pizza that DBF had been craving. Turns out that $10 Costco pizza is pretty decent. Then we headed off to the movies to see Wall-E...which was cute, but honestly I was starting to get a bit bored...the storyline wasn't quite what we thought it would be. The graphics were Pixar's best yet though. When we got home we decided to have some wine (oh, after our DQ desserts...haha) and ended up staying up until 3am just chatting and playing Trivial Pursuit (90s edition...the questions are so bullshit...LOL).

Tuesday: HAPPY CANADA DAY!
Obviously we needed to sleep in due to our late night and wine consumption...and apparently Mojo was OK with that! The sun was shining when we got up...yaieeeeee...so DBF mowed the lawn and worked on trying to revive this weird dead patch in our front yard (the healthy part is sooooo green, but there's a dead patch that just isn't coming back!). I puttered in my flowers for a bit, then freshened up and just sat in the sun with my book and my coffee....very nice! We got talking to the neighbors while we were out in the yard, and they offered to have us over for drinks in the afternoon. We had planned to go downtown to check out the Canada Day festivities and to see our other neighbors' band play, so we thought we'd have the drink and then we could all head into town. Well, we ended up going for the drink, then the boys got into the video games while us girls chatted....and well, I didn't get to see any fireworks. :( haha, but we really like our neighbors so it's all good.

So, even though the weather thwarted us for the most part, we still made a good long weekend for ourselves. Thank goodness we only have three work days now, because we need a vacation from our vacation!!