Three

Happy Anniversary Husband!!!! Thanks for sticking it out with me these past three years, here's to 30 more!!!! Love you!!!!! xoxoxoxox

Word of the Day...to the power of AWESOME!!!

So, you need to check out this website!

www.savethewords.org

This fun site is chalked full of words from the Oxford English Dictionary that get very little use and the website seeks to find "adopters" for abandon words.

It's a fantastically fun time waster and educational too! My suggestion is to view the website with your speakers on....

Enjoy!

Another new family member on the way!

Not me & Mike! But my special cousin Jody and her lovely husband Dave are expecting their third! Due at the end of October, Baby Wyatt will be another lovely edition to our family and we're excited to meet him!

I've got a ton of photos to update the blog with from this summer, including pics of the latest new family member, Aiden, who arrived right on time on July 6th!

Before I start downloading and then uploading those photos, I wanted to give Wyatt his blog shout-out as I've done with Baby Kate and Baby Aiden - apparently a tradition I've created for myself and you all...hooray??.... :)

So, anyways, the nursery that awaits wee Wyatt is one themed around pirates - AAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!! - hence the theme in art work below! Again its all from Etsy and I threw in some other nautical themes as Wyatt is half New Foundlander!

Pirate Dingy



Pirate Ship




Carleton the Crab



Angry Pirate



We both go down together!



Boat



Chesapeake Bay Blue



Rock Lobster



Ladyship



Captain Monkeybones!



Lobster



Docking



More posts to come!

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!!!

Happy Canada Day Everyone!!!!

I hope you all have a lovely day!


(Do you like my fancy handy work? I'm pretty please with myself if I do say so!)

And I've brought some Canadian cheer to work! After the Americans get over the shock of my cube (I may or may not have decorated it with a flag that wraps almost entirely around it...), they enjoyed this Food Network Strawberries-and-Cream Tart that I made for them as a gesture of friendship and goodwill! :)

Quote of the Day

King 5 News @ 10pm:

"The US will play England tomorrow at the World Cup. This game will be a rematch for the two teams, the US won the last time they played each other in 1950"

Ahahahaha, seriously?! Rematch?!?! It was 60 years ago!...I think England has gotten over it! ;)

Good luck to both teams tomorrow!...God Save the Queen! :)

Our little garden

Here are a few pics of our little garden that I planted a few weeks ago! Due to the wooded area directly behind our building, we only get a few hours of direct sunlight a day (provided its not being wonderfully west coast - gray and pissing rain) so we have to jam our few pots of flowers and cute Japanese maple into the corner of the deck that gets the most sunlight. I'm really pleased with how pretty they've turned out! The colours of the stock flowers are so vibrant, the violas are soft and pretty and the lavender is starting to bloom.









After much coercion Moose agreed to have his picture taken in our "garden".

Under foot beauties

I came across these two beauties today on Overstock.com

I would love love love to have this Sage Green Peacock wool area rug for my living room, provided the colours were true to the way my screen displays them!



And if I had a cream/neutral coloured themed family room or bedroom, I think this Gensis wool area rug would add a nice punch of pattern without overwhelming the room.



PS - the formatting of these pics is driving me nuts! Why do you vex me photobucket???!!!

Yes, I'm lazy but I wanted to share this article...

And I promise to provide a 'real' post soon. I swear. Cross my heart.

Although this article on the lost of art of handwriting is a few days old and it's likely illegal to copy and paste someone else's work into a blog post, I thought I'd share it as it's a sentiment that I completely agree and identify with (minus judging people). I do recognize the irony of posting an article on handwriting on a blog, but nonetheless, I too am sad that handwriting appears to be going by the wayside. I still love receiving letters and cards in the mail and going to the mailbox is still something I look forward to everyday - as a kid receiving a letter or card was the absolutely highlight of my week.

Anyways, having read India Knight's piece, I am now going to make a more concerted effort to send friends and family hand written letters and cards - it's a nice friendly way to stay in touch and selfishly, it'll be a good way to practice my handwriting :)

Here's the article without further adieu:


From The Sunday Times May 23, 2010 (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/india_knight/article7133889.ece)

The kiss of death for romance
by India Knight

I judge people by their handwriting, which isn’t an especially nice thing to do but can’t really be helped: it’s one of those tiny snap judgments you make almost subconsciously, like the ones about shoes or ties.

If people’s handwriting is terrible — “thick people’s handwriting”, as I uncharmingly call it in my head — they can slide down a notch or six in my estimation; they risk a complete cull if they are older than 14 and dot their “i”s with fat circles (I’m a bit sniffy about fat, round letters generally). This isn’t remotely fair, but there you go; snap judgments seldom are.

Imagine my horror, then, on discovering that I now have thick people’s handwriting myself. I’m writing a book at the moment and last week something struck me as I was sitting in a cafe. I was without a laptop but I did have a (paper) notebook on me, so I started writing by hand.

First two pages of A4: no problem. Third page: thick people’s handwriting with knobs on — I might as well have been using my toes. My hand ached almost immediately; two more pages and my fingers had practically gone into spasm. Worse, when I got home, I could make out only one word out of 10 in the last few pages. I felt as if I was trying to decipher a doctor’s prescription, except the scrawl was my own.

Like everyone of my generation, and the generations before mine, I used to write reams without thinking twice about it. School essays went on for pages and pages without any discernible loss of calligraphic ability. University essays were practically books; you’d rub or shake out your hand every 5,000 words and just carry on. Novelists wrote in longhand — in fact, I know a couple who still do. Everybody wrote all the time — notes, letters, postcards, instructions, essays, schoolwork, billets doux.

Now nobody does — not even someone like me, who spends all day writing for a living. The only things I handwrite, I realised last week, are shopping lists, birthday cards and my signature on the odd cheque. Everything else is typed. (The other weird thing is that I can’t organise my thoughts properly on paper any more. They make sense only if I can see them before me on a computer screen. I’m sure it means some important hand-eye part of my brain is slowly atrophying.) I love technology more than most but this is really a pitiful state of affairs. A love email — or a love text — is never going to be the same as a pen-and-paper love letter of the kind you carry around with you until it disintegrates. The letter you’ve always wanted to write to your dying father loses something by being delivered via Outlook with a cheerful “ping!”; the diary you keep electronically will never have the emotional heft of the bulging, tattered five-year version you had as a teenager; an ecard isn’t the same as a Valentine.

It isn’t just the sadness of all of the above that concerns me (which it does — it’s a loss of the poetic, a loss of romance on a vast scale). It’s also the fact that we’re forgetting how to write — how to hold a pen and form aesthetically pleasing letters.

Does this matter? Well, yes: if you believe — I do — that beauty brings little darts of pleasure into your day, that a beautifully addressed envelope gladdens the heart. Then, yes, it matters a lot.

You pick your font carefully when you type, or you may even pay some absurd company a fortune to come up with a logo and typeface for you, so it seems mad not to apply the same care to your handwriting. (This is particularly noticeable when you get a typed letter on beautifully designed, letterheaded notepaper — everything made just so, to convey a particular impression — and find, three-quarters of the way down the page, that the sender signs his name like a monkey.) I’m constantly having a go at my older children about their handwriting, which actually makes me feel ashamed on their behalf. They, in turn, are constantly pointing out that nobody “needs” handwriting any more — not when you can type your homework and email it in.

Of course, even that’s going to change: by the time they’re at university, nobody will type by pushing keys — the exertion! — any more. We’ll all be gently stroking our touchpads, and presumably human beings will eventually end up with tiny withered hands that have giant, splayed, spatula-like fingertips.

A survey of 1,188 British schoolchildren aged 7-14, by the charity World Vision, found last week that one-fifth had never received a handwritten letter and one-tenth had never written a letter themselves. In the previous week alone, almost half of the children questioned had either sent or received an email or a message on a social networking site.

This is better than nothing — it’s communication, after all — and although some of the messages or emails will have been in phonetic text-speak, at least the social networking sites are full of voluble grammar Nazis. And I like the fact that children can type — if I were boss of the world, all children would be taught to touch-type at the age of five.

They would also be taught how to write properly, with care and attention given to letter formation, and encouraged to send letters and cards. It’s nice to email your granny — but how much better to send her something you sat down and wrote thoughtfully, rather than dashed off in 30 seconds; something that caused you to find a stamp and meant you bothered to walk to the post box.

Writing is magical when you think about it: you can communicate anything you like just by drawing a sequence of little loops and squiggles, and anyone who honestly believes that the loops and squiggles don’t have a ton more charm than Times New Roman has a section of their brain missing. Handwriting a letter is usually an act of love, which no one could ever say about typing.

Happy Easter and Spring Cleaning

Happy Easter! I hope you were treated to chocolate and treats!



This gorgeous photo is most definitely not mine but one I pilfered from the very beautiful blog Full House.

With this first rite of spring, I've been inspired as of late to spring clean around our apartment and started with my closet full of clothes! The following photo was taken by me - as if the quality doesn't automatically scream point-n-shoot - and is evidence of my effort! As always, I could have never completed the task with the support and supervision of my Moose! Note the stink eye he's giving me...hhhmmm...



On this particular Saturday (about 3 weekends ago), I managed to purge 12 pairs of pants, 15 tops, 4 sweaters, 1 pair of shoes, 1 pair of sandals, 1 suit and 1 purse - and of course I still have full closet! It felt good to declutter and to get the closet cleaned and organized. I then went through our outdoor/deck storage and laundry room and tidied and purged them too. Moose did his part and purged some of his toys that he never played with and donated them to the Everett animal shelter. And in the vein of tidying and reorganizing, I've done the same with my blogs-I-love column to the right - I've moved some of the less active blogs or those that have gone silent but are super resourceful to the So Helpful column.

I have a LOT of updating and recapping to do here and hope to get to it this upcoming week! Not only did is this post based on historical events but I've been extremely horrible with not posting photos from a very awesome trip in January that we took with my family and my day extrusion to Vancouver during the Olympics. So fingers crossed, I can get all the photos upload, formatted and posted this week!

Have you heard of Instructables?

It's a really neat DIY website where you can learn how to make almost anything you can think of! I plan on trying this Instructable recipe on the weekend - the 5 minute chocolate cake!

Heellllooooo cake!




There other project I'd like to try is this one - hack a regular pilot pen and replace the ink cartridge with a fancypants Mont Blanc rollerball refill! Instant upgrade for $12!



Happy Instructable-ing!!! :)

PS - Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Statement of the Day

"I’m so relaxed and happy here, at this hour, that I can turn over a Marc Jacobs bag, look at the price, and not immediately vomit. It’s all so perfect. Like the world would be without all the people."

Ahahahaha! :)

This gem comes from an article in The Times (London) - see, they're not totally evil, only during major world sporting events apparently - and is about how lovely department stores can be at 9:30am, the store in this piece is Selfridges on Oxford St, London.

She's ssssoooo awesome!!!

All things old

So this is a bit of a hodge-podge post compiled of a bunch of little things that I have just consumed from my couch in the past hour and bare with me, there is a common link.

Randomness #1

So Who Do You Think You Are?

This was originally a BBC series, which I believe continues to air over the UK, and was adopted a few years ago by the CBC and now (finally) has come to America! What is it? Well, it is a weekly program that traces the family history of celebrities. What's cool is not that these people are celebrities but rather how fascinating genealogy is and how much you really don't know anything about where you come from until you have the opportunity to dig in to the family gene pool and story vault. Tonight was the introductory episode of the U.S. version and Sarah Jessica Parker's mother's maternal line was featured (btw, her mother is adorable). SJP's family did not disappoint, her lineage had quite the story to tell from the California gold rush to the witch trails of Salem! Nerds likes me get a kick out of these kind of shows and I can't wait until I can start my genealogy search! This leads me to the next bit of randomness.

Randomness #2

So 10 years ago I started looking into my dad's parental family as I already knew a few things about them which included the name of the first Rivard to set foot in Canada from France, Nicolas Rivard. I ended up with a fair amount of information and was even able to trace the family back by two generations into France! Fastforward 10 years to this past December and I found the old word doc I had created 10 years earlier (happily not corrupted!) and started to Google the French ancestors and the places they were born and was thrilled with what I found! First, there is a plaque in a French village noting Nicolas and his new world compatriot's baptisms in France. Then with the help of Google maps, I was able to get an idea of where exactly in France my peeps were from! As I was doing all this searching one random night in December I was getting so excited and suggested/told Mike that if we get over to France again, I want to travel all to these villages and see if I can find out even more about these people, like my own Who Do You Think You Are!

Randomness #3

While cruising through PerezHilton.com - you know you all read it too! - I came across this super cool moving picture! It is from 1903 and is the first ever Alice in Wonderland movie! The British Film Institute Archive found the old reel and although it was badly degraded through the wonders of technology have been able to restore it. It can make for a long 9.5 minutes but it is very cool to see what they were able to do with movie making technology 107 years ago!!!!

Check out:





So the common link? All these things are old. That's it, that's all.

Anyways, bon weekend!

PS - Mike received some great news today! He's been named the Administrative Professional of the Year for his wing command! Yay! Congrats babe! xoxoxoxo

O Canada!

So we may not have "Own(ed) the Podium" BUT on the penultimate day of the Vancouver Olympics, we, Canada, do have the most GOLD MEDALS of any country (!!!) and provided Germany doesn't catch up tomorrow, we will have established the record number of gold medals won by a host country in a Winter Olympics! And even if we walk away with 25 or 26 medals total (Dear God/Yahew/Budda/Allah/Vishnu/Krishna, please let us win tomorrow!!!!!!), we still did a fantastic job and we should be immensely proud of our athletes, the cities of Vancouver, Whistler and Richmond and VANOC.

Oh, and Dear International Media - in particular The Times (London) - SUCK IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Especially you, The Times, you've been nothing but miserable, rude, pathetic gits these past two weeks, and well sorry mates but we've now got 13 Golds and the world has said that they've had a great time in Van...so there...I only hope London goes as well because won't you have a lot of egg on your faces then.... :)

PS - To everyone else who isn't The Times, apologies for the aggression but they've really been mega jerks in their coverage and it was both against the spirit of the Olympics and the levelheadedness typically displayed by the paper - basically poor sportmanships and poor taste.

PSS - I DO realize that my ranting against them (nearly) lowers me to their level but you know what? Sometimes bullies need a taste of their own medicine!

The Devil Wore Blue

So in my new job I essentially get paid to read the news all day long….I’m responsible for other stuff too but mainly it’s about reading. Specifically, I get paid to read news and coverage on Cloud Computing – at times tedious and at times extremely interesting. One thing I’ve come to learn is that in the world of IT, social media is one of the fastest ways to find out about software problems, outages and hacks and the fastest of all social media outlets in this regard is Twitter.

I’ve never bought into Twitter, in fact I did and still do fundamentally disagree with it as there really is such a thing as over-sharing and quite frankly, why do people think that other people care that they’re going for lunch now/they’re back from lunch and had a pastrami sandwich/they’re now in a food coma at their desk but are stoked about Friday’s night concert/blah, blah, blah, blah…… And while I disagree with it I do recognize its benefits – it’s a fantastic and free way to promote products/issues/events/across-North-America-road-trips (a la Alex and Luke :)) and in the world of IT it is a valuable resource for finding out about customer issues before they get through to a helpdesk and in the world of PR it allows you to get on top of an issue (hopefully) before it blows up. So this is all to say, I’ve had to sign up for Twitter and now have a bloody account. I only follow people for work – mainly IT gurus and wanna-be gurus and of course, Alex and Luke – who, by the way, accepted our invitation to stay with us if they find themselves in the Seattle area (I hope they do!) and who will be on CityTV in TO!

Anyways, I keep reminding myself that I’m not really on twitter, I’m just obliged to stalk people online for my job. And that’s ok.

Word of the Day

Panoply

1.a wide-ranging and impressive array or display: the dazzling panoply of the maharaja's procession; the panoply of European history.

2.a complete suit of armor.

3.a protective covering.

4.full ceremonial attire or paraphernalia; special dress and equipment.

It's origin date backs to Greece around 1570 - 1580 and can be used as an adjective: panoplied or unpanoplied.

I came across this word today in my daily coverage reading on cloud computing - gripping stuff I tell you!

Here's the line:

"In the world of software development today there is a broad panoply of software development models."

When I first read the word I thought perhaps it was IT related so I checked on dictionary.com and then realized how clever it was to use it in this context because it both fits and it's a word that you almost never see. Well played Brad Smith, well played.

Ok, nerd out!

Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremonies are FINALLY being aired here in the United States...now that it's 10pm....when in fact the opening ceremonies began 4 hours ago! What the F NBC?!!!!!! Seriously, why the hell did I have to sit through 4 hours of local news and endless promotion of other NBC programming and way way too much yabbering by a plethora of hosts and commentators when the open ceremonies were in fact going on live?!? Pathetic NBC, pathetic. I would have watch it online on CTV's website however non-Canadian IP addresses were blocked. Anyways, while this was incredibly annoying, it's not really important when compared to the death of the Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili - how truly heartbreaking. And his poor family and team members. We watched the Georgian team enter into BC Place and I nearly lost it; I thought they were very brave and that it was very touching that they received a standing ovation as well as having the opening ceremony dedicated to their fallen teammate.

Switching gears, Canada just entered the stadium (3 hours after the fact...) and I really like the retro/classic look The Bay went with for these games. The toques en mass looked fabulous! Anyways, the cultural part of the show has begun so I'll sign off for now but before I do, who wants to play a little game of I-spy? Did anyone else see Princess Anne in the crowd when Great Britain entered the stadium? I did!

PS - I went to work today in my Canada Olympic sweatshirt, t-shirt and mittens (yes, the mittens too, my emails today were completely incomprehensible but that's ok, it was for a good cause...) and this jerk on my team started shouting Canada sucks and that we're going down in hockey - I told him to not to crow too loudly because humble pie has a nasty after taste! Jackass!

PSS - This cultural part is awesome - the technology is beautiful! And now Sarah McLaughlin is singing! Yay!

1 More Sleep!

I went to Van this past Saturday to run errands and do some shopping and there was a buzz, kind of like in the lead up to Christmas. People were decked out in Olympic gear and lots of cars were flying Canadian flags. Tomorrow I will be going work decked out in my Olympic gear and with a flag from my car!

I'm excited. I may even get brave enough to go open next weekend to check it out...maybe...we'll see how heinous the crowds are...

Anyways, this year is our year! I hope all the athletes from every country have a wonderful experience but I hope they don't mind if we keep most of the medals! :) GO CANADA GO!

PS - A little update on the US Speed Skating Team - Stephen Colbert and the Colbert nation have done it - they raised $300,000 for the team! And it has had quite the impact - check out this article.

Free Valentine's card!

I just came across this gorgeous blog - Ruffled - a wedding blog that posted photos from people's unbelievably stunning vintage themed weddings. Check out, the photos are so beautiful, it'll make you sick.

It's on this website that you'll find this very pretty and free pdf for a Valentine's Day card.





Enjoy!

For all the bumps out there

As previously mentioned my cousin Shaun and his wife Chrissy are expecting their first bundle of baby in July! And a little boy to be named Aiden! As always in my perpetual cruising of Etsy and whilst in search of a pressie for wee Aiden, I've come across these rather funny and cute shirts for his expectant mommy and daddy!

For Chrissy and the other babymamas out there:


Culpeper General



Disco Belly



Disco Belly


Jellybean Apparel


Jellybean Apparel


KSS Maternity


What's Kickin'


Jellybean Apparel

And for the babydaddys:


Jellybean Apparel


Jellybean Apparel

And Aiden was not forgotten! He will be getting this:



A shopping cart covered from Nancy Deliz via Etsy. It came in the mail yesterday and I took it with me to Target today to make sure it was both easy to use and would, in fact, fit over the child seat and I can happily report that it received passing marks all around! I'm excited for him to enjoy germ/plague-free shopping experiences!

PS - Blogging is way more fun than the Super Bowl. Fact.

Alex and Luke - the social media project

So I came across this video the other day and thought I would share! These two explorers are setting off from Toronto on March 20th in a VW Rabbit for a year long trek across North America. Here's the interesting part, they have no route planned out and no accommodation booked - everything they will be doing on this trip will be dictated by the public at large - including what they eat! For those of us who live in office towers, we can contribute to their travel plans via Facebook, Twitter, their blog and this Youtube posting. I think this is a pretty cool adventure!...Jane, do they have place to stay with you? ;)



www.alexandluke.com
@alexandluke

Five bucks says by the time their year is over they'll have been on Canada AM and the Today show.

Part 2 - Christmas!!!

I'm finally getting around to posting Christmas photos...on the last day of January...

Anyways, Mike & I headed home to Ottawa for Christmas and New Years. On route to Bytown, we stopped in Burlington to visit with dear friends, Sarah and Lee and the McDowell family. Sarah & Lee were home for the holidays as well as they live over the in the UK. You can also find Sarah over here www.mcwoods.blogspot.com

Whilst down in southern Ontario we visited Niagara Falls - my second time and Mike's first visit. Having been there now in both the spring and winter, I think it is way more impressive in the winter - all the ice and microclimate is very pretty. After spending a few days with them, we took the train up to Ottawa where we hung out with family and friends and ate and ate and ate some more! :) We also learnt that my cousin Shaun and his bride Chrissy are expecting a little boy in July!!!! Yay! A new baby in the family!

So without further adieu, here's our Merry Christmas!

Niagara!




Ok, where's the hot water...




Check out the ice!




My Aunt Joan had a great idea to make us all wear wacky/tacky Christmas themed hats for Christmas Eve dinner!


Sad elf....!!!


All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth! My godson Payton!








Moosey unwrapping one of his many Christmas presents! He's not the least bit spoilt!


Happy New Year!