Happy First Birthday, Matthew!

It's hard to believe that one year ago, my one and only nephew was born! It's even harder to believe that I never shared his newborn portraits on the blog.  Since I can't be with him to celebrate today, here are those portraits, one year later.

Happy Birthday, Matty Moo!  You have brought endless joy into our lives.  I love you,  muffin!  

Linked to: Smart Schoolhouse, Ashley's Dandelion Wishes

Family in the Photobooth

I was blessed to have been born into a super awesome and fun family!  For my niece's birthday, I created the Life's A Beach theme, which you may have seen over at my other blog, Superflash Creative.  Since her friends' party was held on her actual birthday, we actually hosted two parties in one day!  First, the friends came over in the afternoon, and later in the evening, the family came over for a celebration.  Since the decor was still up from the first party, we decided to have a bit of fun in the photobooth!

 

       

By the way, you can download the props for FREE, right here.  The bunting printables, with the rest of the party decor, are available over at Etsy.

Family Portraits on the beach

My sincere apologies for the lack of updates lately!  Things have been very busy in my world.  If you're a fan on facebook, you've been seeing a few updates over the last little while, but unfortunately, the blog has fallen a bit behind, with my move to Florida and wedding.  Of course, however, I have not stopped taking photos!  Here are some I took of my sister's family on the beach, when they came down to visit me.

   

A little shameless self promotion

A little bit of shameless self-promotion to start your Wednesday off...

I entered this awesome picture of my mom in a Mother's Day contest at ModCloth's facebook page, and I would love it if you could spare a vote!

To vote, go here.  You'll have to "like" ModCloth first, and then allow OfferPop (the company running the contest) permission... then just click the vote button, and voila!

She's currently sitting in third place, and five more votes will boost me into first!  The contest ends on Friday, and you can vote once every 24 hours.

Thanks!

May 2011: Pittsburgh, PA

Back in May, I went on a road trip with my aunt & grandmother to visit some family in Pennsylvania.  While we were there, we went out to Pittsburgh (about 1 hour away from where we were) for the day to see a few of the sights.  This is what I saw:

More photos from my trip are right here.

Beautiful Downtown Clearwater, FL

Yeah, I ran out of macro shots, so no more what it is... at least, not for now. Did you guys like that game? I can't tell.

So, I think I've mentioned before about how we've been going to Clearwater Beach since I was about 8 years old. This place is my second home, and I've watched it change and grow over the course of the years. A recent development to the area is the way you get to the beach from the mainland. On the beach side, they built a beautiful new causeway (it used to be a small drawbridge type, that I absolutely loved, but I must say the new one is much more aesthetically pleasing), and they created a roundabout down near the pier, where you can easily access the marina, the public beach and beach walk area, the residential area, and another random street (hah!) ... but on the other side, on the mainland, they changed the access to be two different one-way streets - Court Street takes you to the beach and the causeway, and Cleveland takes you downtown. (With the old bridge, you could take either street and still access the bridge easily)

Ever since they made that change, we've tended to spend less time in downtown Clearwater. I thought this was quite sad, because downtown Clearwater has lovely architecture, and they've really beautified it with flowers, statues and trees. So I went out there one night, camera and tripod in hand, to snap a few shots. (I didn't really take that many, because I had plans to meet up with Gregg later on, and I only had about an hour to shoot off some pics)

Welcome to downtown:

more

La Belle Ville, c'est fini

The last of the updates on Montreal... finally, nearly a week after the trip!

So, on Monday morning, thanks to my brother-in-law's complaining about the loud, annoying people, the hotel decided to appease him a little. Thus, we had breakfast at the hotel restaurant, on them. I had the most delicious blueberry waffles ever (was dying for a croissant, but didn't think that would be enough to tide me over, since we had a long journey ahead of us).

Before we left, we went to St Laurent, to see all the cute stores that we had passed by the night before, but were closed. Ell and I went into a whole bunch of different shops. Saw some very cute things, but didn't buy anything. My sis and bro-in-law took the time to buy a couple of outfits for my niece, as well as croissants for all of us! Good thinking on their part. (I ate my croissant on the drive home. Seriously. Best croissant EVER)

>We also went up to the top of Mount Royal. Google's directions sucked, so we got a little lost (not really lost... but not up the mountain either) ... eventually I followed the signs, and got us there. The view was amazing, but it's too bad it wasn't a sunnier day. I forgot that I had white balanced my camera in a red room the night before, so the first few shots I got were... well. Blue. I uploaded one of them, thought it looked kind of cool. But I'm glad I remembered to white balance back to normal again, because a bunch of blue shots would have been annoying. Here's a few shots from the top of the mountain:



      






From there, we began the 6-hour drive home. Ell and I passed the time with a few rounds of "F*** Marry Kill" - and she gave me an awful round, where I had to choose between Danny Michel, Jack Johnson and Jim Cuddy.  How could she?!!?    We also sang some of our favourite tunes at the top of our lungs - Sheryl Crow, anybody?  Perfect for a road trip.

Except when you're driving so slow you're practically crawling.  V was leading the way, and he was going so slow that I was ranting about it every two seconds to poor Ell.  At one point, I got so annoyed that I turned to her and said, "okay, enough of this, we're never going to get home going 90!" and I passed him. Haha.  I ended up dropping Ell off and being back home before 10pm though, which was the goal.  So it was all good.

Fabulous long weekend.  I definitely want to do stuff like that more often.  :)

La Belle Ville, partie deux

On Sunday morning, we woke up a lot earlier than I wanted to. Our friend Nick came to pick us up, and the entire gang went out for breakfast in Laval. I'd say Ell and I look remarkably good, considering the previous nights' activities! Nick is hiding behind me, and continuously hid from my camera throughout the day.

During breakfast, we formulated our plan for the rest of the day, trying to fit in as many things that we wanted to do as we could.

After breakfast, we all headed out to Old Montreal, for a little bit of European charm. Ell and I very much enjoyed a fantastic, high-end book store called Librissime. It was absolutely beautiful. (Totally made me think of my friend Rae, I think he'd really like it).  It was full of first editions, limited editions, and several other books in the $50,000 range.  Absolutely lovely.

Of comparable beauty was the Papeterie Casse-Noisette. No doubt, even in another language, leave it to me to find a paper store. I ended up buying an agenda, with a faux leather cover in robin's egg blue. It's all in French, and it's a July - August, so it's already half over... but it was $5, and so pretty, I couldn't resist. I also bought a little notebook made by the company "Claire Fontaine" ... Hawksley Workman lovers will know exactly why I bought that book! (Amy, Danielle - I'm looking at you, kids!)

Afterwards, we parted ways. Nick dropped Ell and I off on Ste-Catherine Street, for a shopping adventure. Oddly enough, it was pretty much all the same shops that we have in Toronto, especially on Yonge St.. I was hoping for some local stores, but nope. I ended up buying a jacket, bra and book about Cinderella at Urban Outfitters. Go figure. We met up with Alex, at the Centre Eaton (The Toronto similarities are killing me!)... dropped off our bags at the hotel, and went out again.

We went to the Cafe Republique for coffee (and discovered that Celine Dion was in town that night... I guess we looked like we were on our way to the concert) ... and then we went to La Belle Province, so that I could indulge in some poutine (I was very upset about having to eat by myself, so Ell shared with me). I ordered all in French (or at least I tried!), and the guy told me that "c'est fait avec amour!" (he made it for me with love) ... very sweet. It was definitely the best poutine I've ever had. Quebecers definitely do it right (let's hope so, since they invented it...). We then got Alex something to eat at one of her favourite places.

After we were all nourished, we made our way over to St-Laurent, to a very cool place called the GoGo Lounge.  It was this super cool mod club - a throwback to the late 1960s, and we actually got to sit in hands!  (see the pictures, it'll make sense).  The drink menu was presented to us on a record - there were at least 25 or so delicious sounding martini's.  I settled on a Mr. Freeze (which perfectly matched my sweater).  Alex had an Orange Crush, which also matched her top.  Very amusing.  The music in there was an awesome retro mix that I constantly felt like singing along with.

Okay, that's it for now... More pics at my flickr... and the last of the updates hopefully to follow tomorrow.

I am very behind in my blog reading, and I promise to get to all of your blogs from the last week and a half by the end of this weekend :) Love you guys!

Valentines, La Belle Ville & lovely long weekends - part 1

I haven't updated in a while. I actually did have something to write about last week when I said nothing was going on, but I didn't want to ruin the surprise.
On Thursday night, Ell and I got together at her place to craft and bake, in preparation for our Friday night Valentine's date. Cupcakes and paper crafts... what could be better?!






All the while, I was still trying to decide if I wanted to go to Montreal for the weekend. I was pretty sure I did, but I wasn't sure that I felt up to making a 6-hour drive on my own, and none of my friends really said that they wanted to come. By Friday morning, I decided that YES, I would go, regardless of who came with me. My sister and brother-in-law decided that they were going to come too, with my niece. After a particularly annoying end-of-day at work, first, I got a call from my bro-in-law, saying that he had booked us a hotel in Laval, which I promptly freaked out about - I wanted to go to Montreal. Not a suburb, that is nearly identical to where I live right now! So I told him to cancel it.

Then I met up with Ell, and we delivered Valentine's Day fun to Pete at his office. I'm pretty sure it was the best part of his day. Okay, I'm absolutely sure it was. I am confident in our baking and crafting abilities. Then the three of us went out for Thai food, to a place that I hadn't been to before in Chinatown. It was rather good, but it's no Thai Princess.

I spent a great part of the dinner, and the car ride afterwards, convincing Ell that she should come to Montreal with me.

And she said yes!

The weekend was definitely shaping up. We went back to her place so she could pack, and I could book a new hotel on Hotwire. However, at that point, I couldn't get a hold of my sister and bro-in-law, so we decided to book it back at my place.
Got back to my house, and still couldn't get in touch with them. Called other family members, and they hadn't heard from them either. Now I was kind of freaking out, because they are pretty much glued to their phones. Left them very angry voicemails telling them to call me immediately when they heard this message.

Finally, at some point after midnight, they called me back, and I booked the hotel for arrival later that day. LOL. Talk about random and spontaneous!

Elliot and I drove in my car following my sister, brother-in-law and niece in their car (and an adjoining room - we ran into many problems last time we shared a room on vacation). We left at around noon. Ell and I had a totally top notch road trip - good tunes, good food, and girl talk. It didn't even feel like a 6 hour drive.

My friend David was actually in the hotel parking lot to meet us as we got in. I hadn't seen him in a while, and my back was turned, as I was looking in my car for something. So I heard him say, "Excuse me, did you need help with anything?" and assumed it was one of the valet attendants, and then turned around and saw him. It was quite funny. Checked in, got ready, and then Dave, Ell and I went for dinner at Les 3 Brasseurs. (Sis and others went elsewhere, to somewhere a little more family friendly). Our dinner was great - I had an LA Wrap (love those avocados, even though I'm pretty sure I might be allergic to them) ... Ell had some delicious poutine (one of my goals - to eat poutine in Montreal!)


It took us a while to decide what to do that night. After compiling a bunch of suggestions, we eventually parted ways with David, and made our way back to the hotel to weigh the options. We met up with my friend, Alex, who I knew from online but had never met before. She was absolutely fabulous, and everything I expected her to be - totally wish she lived closer!



We went for a VERY cold walk, over to McKibbin's Irish Pub. The music was fabulous. A cover band played two sets - they started out with a cover of Free Fallin', that was so well done, we didn't even realize it was a band until midway through the song. (In looking at the band schedule page, I guess the band's name was FM - This is all I can find on them.) We met up with Ell's friend, Jake, who informed us that we walked further to get to this pub, than to any of the places she had suggested to her earlier. Oops. A couple of random guys tried to pick us up, when they saw three girls sitting with one guy. They were amusing, for a moment. Until one of the guys called me a "Filthy Eye-Tye" ... yeah, not really impressing me much there, buddy.

Did you know bars in Montreal close at 3am?!

We didn't stay quite that late, but by the time we got back to the hotel, it was almost 3. I barely slept that night, even though I was exhausted from being up so late the night before, then driving, then going out... there were annoying people yelling in the hallway, and then I could hear my annoying brother-in-law yelling at the annoying people yelling. LOL. He ended up calling down to complain, and I managed to get a few hours of sleep in.


More photos at my flickr, and the rest of the weekend to follow!