Thrifting

I have always loved finding a good bargain and hunting for awesome finds in thrift stores and consignment. I even found my wedding dress hanging on a wall in a flea market.

Yesterday I had a wickedly horrid day so today I did a bit of thrift store store retail therapy in Ridgetown both at a charity consignment store called New to You and the Salvation Army. Here’s me showing off my goods, all under $5 per item. I know the images aren’t the greatest and I apologize for that!

First picture is actually just what I wore today. Top: Bluenotes. Shorts: Gap

Dress: no tag but is is super cute and perfect for a beach day or with a jean jacket for a dinner out.

Dress: Jacob (May it rest in peace). I thought this was a perfect dress for work! I could pair it with a blazer or wear it on its own.

Top: esprit. Necklace: who knows! There was no tag. It’s cute though. This is the perfect grey top. I will probably wear this everyday for the rest of the year because that is my style.

Dress: Lindor. I have never heard of this brand, but this dress is amazing (shoulder pads and all). It is a size too big but that is where my talented mother will come in. It truly is beautiful and I love the fact that it is made in Canada.

Top: Club Monaco. I didn’t end up buying this because the back was a little too out there for me – it was kind of like a cape – but it was beautiful and I love the way it fit me. I just didn’t see myself wearing it and it should go to a better home where it will be loved and appreciated.

And those are the goods! I recommend checking out a blog called Whatcha Find which is based out of Vancouver. You will be shocked at what they have hunted down in a Value Village – I’m talking Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Gucci, Chanel, and other ridiculously high end designer things. One time they found a leather coat that was selling on EBay for something like $40,000. No, that was not a typo. I always thought that if I won the lottery I would set up a little volunteer business in Value Village helping women find affordable work-appropriate attire. I would spend all day in a thrift store and be the happiest girl in the world.

OMG a liveblog of my Valentine’s day

After reading the liveblog of the Canada-Norway game yesterday, I thought, why not live blog my own day? Have you ever wondered what the heck I do all day? No? Oh well …

6:00am – my and Tim’s alarm clocks go off at the same time. He gets up and gets dressed and watches Sportsnet while waiting for his 7:30am chiropracters appointment, I hit snooze and cuddle with my dog for 20 minutes … Also check my Facebook and Instagram and a read a few Reddit posts.

6:20am – shoot out of bed and decide what to wear (green loose tee with a deer on it, dark skinny jeans, red undies (naturally! It’s Valentine’s Day), and my most favourite shoes of all time – slouchy shiny light brown leather Roots riding boots.

6:30am – go downstairs, look in the mirror and realize I am having a remarkably good hair day. Thank the lord because my carpool will be here in 15 minutes. Spray in some dry shampoo for good measure, brush my teeth, do my makeup with lightning speed using my new foundation – Covergirl with Olay 2 in 1 toning foundation ohmygodiloveitforever. Tim starts my car for me and finally takes his smelly hockey bag out of the trunk.

6:40am – kiss my husband, and a minute or two of innappropriate Valentine’s morning touching (#overshare). Throw some lunch stuff in my purse.

6:45am – my neighbour has arrived and it is off to work I go, my turn to drive today! We have pretty good chats on the 40 minute drive to work. We discuss Timber by Kesha – both love it, agree it is overplayed.

7:25am – get to work and respond to e-mails. My boss is also doing the same and I get back to his questions superfast. He sends me an e-mail saying “If I ever become a nascar driver i want you on my pit crew. Lol.” It helps when you want to great work for a great person! Decide to liveblog my day.

8:35am – have a cup of coffee in my vintage floral teacup. Everybody makes fun of me for it but they are just jealous. Also have a croissant because you may have noticed my AM routine (lay in bed for as long as humanly possible then rush to get ready) doesn’t allow for brekky. (Full disclosure: up to this point has been a recap, we are now up to realtime)

9:00am – have my morning chat with Jack (I am fortunate to be able to work with one of my best friends – don’t tell him I called him that). Yes, Hans – as usual, Jack saunters around the office with his shoes off. We generally update each other on what we have done since we last saw each other. As a fellow Dutchie, I was excited to show him ths link to the Buzzfeed article “The Dutch are having more fun than anyone at the Olympics“. We both agreed that a trip to Holland was in the cards for us. To be honest, he said it was in the cards for him and I just invited myself.

9:53 – uploaded the Valentines Day snapchat I sent to my beloved fellow Snapchatters to put on this post! And worked, obviously. Prepping for a course we are running next week and put some information together for some new employees and sales reps.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Kisses!

10:00am – the printer is being used so I’m going to head down for tea at morning break.

10:40am – a deadline just came and went, and wasn’t met. Oh well, we will have to address it on Tuesday when we are back at work. For the next hour I will be in a safety meeting, then watching the hockey game over lunch! Apparently the meeting today is catered, so that is a bonus. Catch ya on the flip side, or around 1:00pm or so.

1:00pm – back from the meeting and the game, Canada was winning 2-0 when I left! Awesome! Off to send four jillion e-mails now … Not much else to say at this point.

2:30pm – Mega updates! Valentine’s Day hit Pioneer in the form of my friend, Balls. See below for some delicious goodies (the cupcake I stole from Jack, the foxy lady cookie was all mine).

2:32pm – Received a “Happy Friday” e-mail from our friend Chubbs who reminded me that it’s Friday …

2:55pm – Break time once again. Going to eat my cookie and have some more tea. Also, it occurred to me that many of you may not actually know what I do for work. I work for a global company that sells seed to farmers … sounds fascinating, I know – but it actually is! We develop lots of new technologies and products and are well-respected in the agriculture world. I hold an administrative role which fortunately is diverse within the company, I organize trainings for the sales people that are out in the fields and doing the selling, I work for the sales team to recruit new sales reps, I work for the community investment team collecting and organizing and reviewing applications, I also work for the sales team in Quebec helping them to organize meetings, trips, events, etc. I started in April and hope to work here forever.

4:56pm – Just got home! I was hoping to update right before I left work but the last fifteen minutes were unexpectedly very busy so I didn’t the the chance. Tim had flowers waiting for me, good boy, and tonight we are having a lobster and scallop dinner! He will cook and I will drink wine and watch him :)

My good boy knows that the key to my heart is through my liver in the form of wine. So I will be inhaling that tonight! I also told Tim about my liveblogging adventure and he thinks I am a legitimate nutcase.

5:38pm – I’m getting my weekend started off in a relaxing manner involving a bubble bath and a glass of red wine, Tim said he’ll get dinner prepped in the meantime. Sometimes I feel like the most fortunate girl in the world with such a great guy, awesome friends and a loving family. Today is one of those days. (Don’t worry, there are also days when I want to strangle him – such as last night. Maybe he is just being extra nice tonight to make up for last night’s ridiculousness. Probably.)

6:40pm – I ask Tim if sweatpants are appropriate attire for our fancy dinner and he says yes. Sweet. Now, we feast. Hopefully we can play our most recent favourite board game – Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magical Carrot – afterwards.

7:40pm – dinner was ah-mazing, now we are heading to Tim’s parents house to play board games with his brother.

10:15pm – alright, folk. Party’s over! We are back at home watching Olympics recaps and ready to hit the hay. By ‘we’, I mean that he is snoring away beside me and I am watching Olympics. I won $10 in a bet with him about an hour ago so that was sweet. It’s been a wonderful Valentine’s day and I wish you all well! Thanks for playing along with me today, it’s been fun.

The Setting

Where did we leave off? Right, at a self-indulgent post of photos of just Tim and I. Well, let’s move on to the party! The most important things at the party both started with ‘b’ – the beer and the band. 

 

Other important aspect – the setting. It felt, to me, that my yard was transformed into a magical fairyland of happiness and love. 

We really wanted people to be creative with our RSVPs and it became a but of a challenge, so we definitely wanted to show them off. 

Getting the mail was the best part of the time leading up to the reception. I would try so hard to wait until Tim got home from work to open the RSVPs, but that rarely happened. We received quilt blocks, beautiful crafts, poetry, cartoons, and … the following, one which I have no words for.

I love this one – my bridesmaid provided me with some good ol’ Tennessee moonshine. Highly recommend.

 

Gotta go! I’m getting kicked out of the coffee shop. I’ll be back with more soon. Probably. Hopefully. Soonish. 

 

 

 

 

Basically I’m a nutcase.

Last week I had my wisdom teeth removed, and I was f’ing terrified. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared for anything in my life. Y’all might hate me, but I lost five lbs in two weeks from being too nervous to eat. My reasoning for the nerves is the whole epilepsy/anaesthetic link, but really that was just an excuse. Confession: I’m a baby.

Anyhow, last night my jaw hurt a lot. Like, wake me up at 2am in pain hurt. Obviously I did what any rational human being does in this day and age – I googled the symptoms. Side note: Worst idea ever. I quickly found out that I was about to die from a mix of rotting mouth and staph infection and exposed bone and dirty surgery tools. Awesome. I called my dentist almost in tears and left a voicemail for them to make an immediate emergency appointment. Then I knocked myself out on Percocets and slept like a baby.

Anyhow, fast forward to my appointment. The nurses were looking at me concerned then my (pretty awesome overall) doc comes in, looks around in my mouth and told me that I had the tiniest bit of food in there but overall I was healing very well. Then he asked me, “Do you need more painkillers?” I told him that I didn’t think so because I still had so many left. I showed him my pill bottles which are both pretty much full. He looked at me exasperated, rolled his eyes, shook his head and said “Well maybe, Leah, if you are experiencing pain you should probably be taking the painkillers I prescribed to you. You know, for pain.” Then he left the room. Haha. I don’t think he was too impressed with me because I made it sound like I was basically puking pus when in reality I was completely fine and was experiencing normal pain from my mouth being sliced open six days prior.

Moral of the story, generally it is a good idea to take the medication which is prescribed to you. Now I’m off to knock myself out some more and sleep like a baby.

And someday in will continue to post wedding photos! I’ll bring my laptop to work tomorrow and sit myself down in my favourite Chatham coffee shop (Dekoko’s) and work on that! Just remind me to bring my laptop to work tomorrow, kay? Cause I always forget it at home.

Kisses, kisses.

That thing that boys do when they kiss you not quite on the mouth, but not quite on the cheek either. That little spot in between. That’s when you know you’ve got a good one. That’s what it’s all about.

All about love.

More

 

Getting Ready & Before the Ceremony

Tim and the boys got ready at his aunt and uncle’s pool house.

Tim and his brothers:

 

Looking dapper:

 

 

We both looooove this one of Tim and his men:

The girls got made up and pretty at my Mom and Dad’s house, then drove to Tim’s parent’s house where we did photos. 

Getting me dressed. Yes, I always dress this provocatively in the mornings:

 

This moment was the cause of the first tears of the day from yours truly:

 

Something (accidentally) blue:

 

My girls:

 

My sweet as pie nephew Casey spent the morning handing out flowers:

 

 

My family:

 

Mom sewing my dress on me:

 

My whole family (this picture is so soon to be outdated as that bump under Micaela’s gloriously sequined dress will pop any day now)! By the way, major props to Mom, Mic and Lauren for sporting my favourite accessory of all time – sequins!

 

 

 

Tomorrow we shall move on to the ceremony. 

 

 

This is marriage.

Me: Are you going to fall asleep in the next ten minutes?
Him: Yes.
Me: Okay, then I’m going to go take a bath.
Him: Aw, but I was going to use you as a pillow.

All jokes aside, an update on my marriage is that I am loving being with Tim! I’d give it a 10/10, would marry again.

Wait, I don’t think it works like that…

When we got married.

Two weeks ago Tim and I celebrated our lives together and had a wedding celebration with our closest friends and family. It was truly the best day of my life, we have never been happier and all of those cliches! Seriously though, I woke up at 6:15am with a smile on my face and went to bed at 4:30am with an even bigger one. We got married that day, and become one – a unit, a team – but in my opinion we became one, we married, many years ago.

When we got married I wasn’t wearing a white dress. I was wearing jeans and a tank top in a baseball field on a Saturday night. We were walking home together in the middle of the night, it was pouring rain and the field was flooded. We jumped in the puddles and laughed till we cried.

When we got married he wasn’t wearing a tie. He was wearing a deer skin rug as a cape at a party on Cole road in 2005 and he asked me on our first date at the very last possible second as I was walking out then door, after having worked up the courage for a year.

When we got married he didn’t write a wedding speech. He wrote me love letters at Esnagami every day for an entire summer. I got more mail that summer than everybody else combined, and I was the luckiest girl.

When we got married we didn’t drive to the church. We got in his grandmas old car after graduation and drove clear across the country to start our ‘real’ lives together. I was just ecstatic at the mere possibility of spending even more time with him…

When we got married he didn’t say ‘in sickness and in health’. He said ‘I’ll always be here for you’ in the hospital room in Calgary when I was confused and scared and didn’t know what was going to happen. And he held my hand and looked out for me and he was my protector and my soul when things were at their very worst.

When we got married we poured champagne. It was a Tuesday night in Toronto and Chubbs and I poured champagne for him when he got home from work after calling his boss at home on her sick day to quit Marriott for once and for all. I was so proud of him. Our life was changing, and a challenging year was waiting ahead.

When we got married he didn’t say ‘for better or for worse’. What he said was ‘Quit, just quit. Come home, I’ll take care of you’ when I was in Toronto and he was back on the farm and I missed him so bad (and I hated rush hour on Friday afternoons so much). But what he meant was ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to make you happy.’ We both knew it was best for me to stick it out – which I did – but I always knew I had a choice. And that was really nice for me.

When we got married it didn’t smell like roses and peonies and beer and a pig roast. It was in our country house and it smelled of garbage and cat pee. I was nervous and very unsure of our choice until his grandpa VL stood beside me in the stinky living room, by the stairs, he looked around and then he looked at me and said ‘this house feels like it will be a home someday’. For some reason, I believed him – and he was right.

And finally, when we got married there wasn’t guitars and singing and ‘Cups’ and Wagon Wheel live. It was to the radio in the kitchen after a long day of renovations. The song Home by Michael Buble started playing and we danced right there in the kitchen and we laughed and cheers-ed and once again, I knew.

These weren’t the moments when I knew he was the one. These were the moments when we became one. A unit, a team. So, even though the wedding is over and it is back to our simple, wonderful reality, let’s have one last toast. Put your drink up to moments. Our moments and our moments to come. And to your moments. And to this one right here – he’s laying on my lap snoring away and he manages to still be beautiful. I love him forever. As he says ‘even when we are old and wrinkly and nothing works anymore’. Always.