Photo Extravaganza

Here are a bunch of photos I've taken over the last week or so with my new little camera....

Our neighbor's weenie dog, Gertie:

Fresh strawberries:

New umbrella plant I picked up for $10 (actually much nicer than the one I had to leave behind when we moved...):

Lillies in my garden:

My front garden coming along nicely:

Our front porch:

And here's Stoopy enjoying some of my tasty yogurt (taken with my old camera and you can totally tell...):

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!

Short hair needs to be done more often!

Do you ever just wake up and look in the mirror and decide that today is the day you need a haircut? And it has to be today! Not tomorrow, or whenever the next appointment is available! Today!

I don't know why I had a morning like that. I don't even do my hair for working at home. Maybe it was because I was thinking that I really ought to be doing my hair more often. Or maybe it is because I just haven't been in love with my hair since about a week after I got it done last time. Or maybe it's just cuz I'm bored.

So I called up the salon and asked for an appointment with whoever was available. (You know you are desparate when you are willing to take "whoever"...haha)

So the lovely Megan did my hair today...and before I even had a chance to really tell her what I wanted, she basically pegged it. Now, it's straightened because that's what all stylists seem to like to do, so I won't know until I get to style it myself...but I think I might have finally gotten what I wanted in the first place. Not that my cuts have been terrible or anything, but I changed my style pretty drastically so it's obviously going to take a few tries to nail it...if that's even possible.

Anyway...enough with the blabbering...here's a few shots I took of myself just now.... :)

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!!