Monday 31 May 2010

Things I love ... Monday!

Sorry, but usually Thursday is just not a quiet evening where I have time to think about the things I love at the moment.

  • Bank holiday Monday!
  • Hot chocolate. Found this lovely one to melt into hot mild. Yummy. @Dani, melted it into soy milk yesterday. Not as good as with milk I find, lacks fat it's just a bit too watery, but still good.
  • Having a reduced office next week. I like it when certain people aren't there!
  • SMT: Devil Survivor. Picked it up in Canada as it didn't get published in Europe. Loving it so far. They should get rid off country coding dvds as well. Why does it work with games but not dvds. It's a shame, but I love the gaming industry for dropping country locking on some of their consoles!
  • Kiwi juice. Can't get enough of it at the moment. Especially in Innocent drinks.
  • New Ubuntu release. Had problems with the old one as firefox struggled with the flash player (not a major problem since I block it on most sites anyway), but it's nice that it works properly now on the pages I do decide to let it run on.
  • New purple color scheme on Ubuntu. I know, a stupid thing to get excited about, but I really love it.
  • Seeing my cousin next Friday (hopefully, she hasn't actually agreed yet) and going shopping with a friend next Saturday for a fascinator and possibly going out after.
  • Birthday presents. Got Nana mangas from my bf and just finished the first one of those. Love them! It's the only manga I read, but I am addicted. Plus, New Super Mario Brothers Wii, playing it together with bf. Tons of fun! Though we keep accidentally killing each other. Meh, still fun.
All in all a good week behind me and a good week ahead. What else can I ask for?

Not much going on

Not much going on at the moment. Just plucking away at work. Enjoying a three day weekend at the moment. Gotta love bank holidays. The British just decided to throw in some random days during spring/summer to have off. Always on a Monday. Works for me!

Basically used Saturday to mope around at home. Didn't do much of anything. Sunday we actually made it out the door. Bf wanted to check out the iPad. So we did that. Looks fine to me. Nothing that has to be purchased immediately though. Puttered around at HMV for awhile and then headed to Regent's Park. Was all nice and sunny but really windy. Didn't stay much longer than an hour since I got cold. 

I had picked up some drinking chocolate earlier and decided to make it at home to warm up. Really yummy. It was one of those little bars you drop into a glass of hot milk, wait for about 1 or 2 minutes and then stir like crazy. Delicious. And it felt really nice to warm up after being blown away in the park.

Today will be hanging around in the house again. Weather is windy, might start to rain, very cloudy and not really warm. Perfect excuse to use this extra day to stay inside and not do much of anything.


Tuesday 25 May 2010

Wedding Pictures

I decided to post a few wedding pictures. Everybody put them on Facebook anyway so I don't feel bad doing it.



Here is the lovely couple at church. Notice all the windmills the bridemaids are carrying. The boy in the front is carrying a Mister Potato Head toy. It opens up and has the rings hidden inside. Smart way keep him occupied during the ceremony AND make sure the rings stay close-by.



The professional photographers probably have a better image but this is as close as I got without stepping into the muddy field in my good shoes. Remember those wellies the bride brought with her? Yeah, they were covered in mud afterwards.



The wedding party waiting for their next posing assignment.



Walking towards the photographers.



It's windy in Canada!


I don't really have that many more pictures. The ones in the evening didn't turn out good. Not sure why, but none of them are in focus. That usually happens when I take pictures in 'fake' lighting as opposed to in the sun. Don't know exactly what I am doing wrong there. Hope you enjoyed a little glimpse of the wedding despite my lack in photography skills.

Saturday 22 May 2010

Let's play catch-up!

I'm back! Hurray, hurray! We made it back ok despite ash cloud and everything. They shut down the airports the day before we travelled but re-opened them for us. We felt very special. ;-)  Not only let they back into the country, Air Canada was especially nice to us and we had our own check-in counter. When we walked into the terminal we went over to the international counters. The lines were loooong. But then we noticed one empty counter. For some reason, the London flights get their own counter while everybody else has to go to the normal ones. Sweet deal. We were the only ones there and could check-in immediately. This is what it must feel like to book business.

But let's go back to the beginning of our trip. At the airport before we left at the gate next to us was a Dreamliner. Now I am not a techno geek, but that plane looked impressive. It doesn't really show in the picture, but trust me, it is BIG.



Enough about planes though. The first weekend we were in Toronto. On Saturday we went to a birthday dinner at Ki, a Japanese restaurant. The food was delicious especially the dessert. I had ice-cream: green tea, red bean, and black sesame. Originally I was most excited about the green tea, which turned out to be really nice, but the real surprise was the black sesame. It was so good! Tasted like roasted sesame, but colder and sweeter. Hard to describe. The red bean ice-cream was good too, the sweetest out of the bunch. They complemented each other well. Would love to have some today as it is sunny outside!

The next day was mother's day so we went out to visit bf's mom and aunt. Picked up a wedding cake book on the way there. bf's mom is retired but as a hobby she started to make wedding cakes. She loved her present, it had blue-prints for flower patterns and the like in the back. You could see how she was already planning to incorporate those into her next cakes.

After the weekend we took it easy. The weather was not really nice, rain, wind, cold. So we opted to stay in most of the time and hung out and read and watched TV. Very relaxing. One of the days we met up with bf's mom and aunt again and had some nice lunch. Another day we used to go shopping. We picked up some more books since we were finishing ours too quickly. When the weather was good we went on nice little walks. Good times. Sorry, no pictures. Just not good at that.

But on Friday we made our way to the Waterloo-Kitchener area for the wedding. Checked into our really nice hotel in the afternoon. bf booked us a suite because it didn't really cost more than a normal double room. It turned out to be much bigger than our actual apartment! Sweet. Our friends' had put a gift bag into our 'living room'. Had a bottle of wine and all kinds of sweets and nuts in there! We ended up leaving most of those with bf's dad, but I really appreciated it. Was a lovely gesture. 

Our lovely hotel in Kitchener. I loved the town. Used to have a lot of German immigrants so a lot of place names are German.

Unfortunately we didn't have that much time to enjoy our huge suite. We made our way to the formal wear shop to pick up bf's suit. Stupid buggers ordered the vest in the wrong size so we ended up having to come back the next day just before the wedding to pick that up. Stupid. And then we basically headed straight for the rehearsal. The church they picked was a little bit outside of the city. The part was called St. Jacobs. Had a lot of little shops and cafes. I loved it there. When we were there on Friday evening it was really empty. But the next day it was packed. Must be one of those weekend spots were all the city people end up going relaxing on the weekend. There was an ice-cream place across the street that I wanted to try, but there was no time.

Everything went well and we went to a nice restaurant for dinner. It was really laid back no speeches or anything. The one thing we did was we had two big glass jars where we threw in papers with instructions. One for the bride one for the groom. Some of them were chores, like 'You should always bring out the garbage', others were 'On football Sunday you shall always make chicken wings and have beer around'. Things like this. We wrote the instructions during dinner and they read them out afterwards. Good fun. The food was good, but again it was the dessert that stood out to me. It was white chocolate cheesecake with a berry sauce. The amazing thing was that the cheesey part of the cake was wrapped in a really thin dough and it looked like it was deep-fried. The cake itself then was really fluffy and creamy. Heaven! I think some people went out after dinner for drinks, but we wanted to preserve our energy and went back to the hotel. 

Pina Colada! Yum, yum.

One of three bouquets. There were also three tables. Coincidence?

Amazing cheesecake. See how the dough is wrapped around it. It's really crisp too.


The next day we had a nice breakfast (bagel) and then went for a walk. Had to waste a little bit of time before we could pick up the vest. I think we got dressed just after noon and drove over to the hotel were the groom stayed. bf went up and they took tons of pictures with all the best men. I just hung out in the bar and read and had a drink. After that it was straight to church. Positioned myself in one of the front rows to take pictures. bf was in the wedding party so I kinda had to spend some time on my own. The fun part was that the bride's grandparents sat right next to me. I overheard them speaking in German so I figured might as well be a little sociable and get to know people. Let's just say they were delighted to find another German in the building. Had a really nice conversation with them. They told me about them immigrating to Canada about 50 years ago (wow) and then we started talking about my bf because they knew him from when he was in High School. So I got some nice stories. 

So I was well entertained in the time we waited for all the wedding parties to show up. The bride was fashionably late. But everything else went smoothly. The ceremony was nice and short. We has some good laughs when the bride messed up some of her lines and was really cute about it. For those who are interested, the bridemaids all wore black dresses that they got themselves and all carried little windmills with them. The groomsmen all wore black suits and had a little windmill attached where you usually would put a flower. Some were green some were yellow. The bride had a black and white one. No bouquets. After church we went out into the fields for the pictures. The bridesmaids got to wear green shawls for that. The wind was really strong and it was freezing because of that even though the sun was shining. They also took pictures in an apple orchard and in front of apple crates. Can't wait to see those. I think they will turn out really nice.

One of the orchard that pictures were taken in.

Wellies for the bride. She was the only one prepared to step out into the fields.

See how windy it is. There is a windmill somewhere on the left side. This is the only pictures I felt comfortable posting with people in it. I didn't ask anybody's permission to post them on my blog (since none of them know I have one). How do you deal with that? I saw some wedding pictures on blogs that I read and they always included people. Do you ask for permission first or just post away?

That probably took over an hour to get all the pictures. We then went back to the hotel to drop off the car and took a cab over to the reception. It was a the Canadian glass institute or something like that. Glass and ceramics pieces everywhere, I was little bit scared that I would break things, but luckily these were only in the reception area. The actual dinner area was clear of any breakable things, well except for the dinnerware.

Reception area. See the lovely baby clothes on the top?

What I thought was really neat were the place markers. Every place had an old book on it with a bookmark and a name. They made the bookmarks themselves and had a picture of them on there and the wedding details. Really neat. And I love books, so obviously I was smitten. The dinner was really nice, but again, I loved the dessert. It was chocolate pudding/mousse. Really creamy with some whipped cream and strawberries. Delicious! The photographers were there too. They had some goofy props with them so people took funny pictures. There was lots of dancing and drinking. It was a really lovely evening. I also liked that the couple had given out lists with hotels that most people ended up staying in and they then organised buses at different times that took people back to the hotels. That's how we got home, on the last bus. Very convenient. 

The pot in the middle contains some yellow tulips.

The wedding cake(s)

Little windmill for the guys. The ones the girls carried were much bigger.

The next day we met up with some friends and had a big brunch. After that we dropped of the suit and went back to Toronto. We visited some family before heading back to bf's dad. Monday was really filled with packing and moping around. bf's dad and stepmom had taken the day off to spend some time with us plus it was bf's stepmom's birthday. bf's mom picked us up in the afternoon and drove us to the airport. I must say I loved our vacation but it should have been longer. I didn't get over my jet-lag till almost the end of the week and then it was basically already time to go home. We got back into London on Tuesday morning. After unpacking and doing laundry we planned to take a short nap and then do some grocery shopping. Well, that never happened. We went to bed at 10am and didn't wake up till 4.30pm. Upsi. Yeah, basically had dinner then since we hadn't eaten anything yet. I wanted to go to bed early then but wasn't tired. Ended up going to bed at midnight but couldn't sleep. Work the next day was hell, I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Thursday was alright and now I am over it. Ah I think I am getting older. Body doesn't handle it that well anymore.

While we are on that subject. It was my birthday on Thursday. So we went out for pizza that night. Lovely food. I got some nice things at work. A voucher for a bookstore (bf said, oh no, not more books!), some nice tea, cider and chocolates! Good stuff. I mentioned once at work that I don't like to receive presents that cannot be used up or just serve decorative purposes. Somebody listened (thank you) and now I get things I really love. bf listened too. A nice package from Amazon arrived yesterday and I got some nice manga, that he knew I was looking for, and New Super Mario Brothers Wii! Yay. Haven't played it yet (since I thought I better catch up on my blog) but will definitely do today. Really excited about this one.
This blogpost is getting much longer than I attended. Apologies. I just wanted to get it all out of the way. Even though I enjoyed the vacation I am glad to be back. The weather turned really nice. It's sunny and warm. bf feels a little sick today, but I will be going grocery shopping in a bit and enjoy the weather on the way. You should do the same!

And here for the people who are interested:

Me! I ended up not wearing any of the jewellery, only the red hair-tie with the flower. Felt very comfortable like that though.

Saturday 8 May 2010

We made it!

We finally arrived in Canada. It wasn't the smoothest flight I had hoped for. The plane we were supposed to fly on arrived late so we didn't start boarding till noon which was supposed to be our take-off time. They rushed us all into the plane, which was fine by me. But after being on it for a bit they announced that we had missed our take-off window and had to wait two and a  half hours for the next, but since they hoped to squeeze us in sometime before that we weren't allowed to leave the plane.

Luckily they had the entertainment system on so we could start to watch some movies. I think we ended up taking off at two o'clock, so really we were just waiting for over an hour in the plane. Still annoying. Next surprise was the ever present ash cloud. Some UK airports were actually closed the day before. So we had to take a little detour over Spain and Portugal instead of heading straight over Ireland and Iceland. That added another hour to our flight time.

I really don't wanna complain too much though. The staff was really nice and they hurried out drinks for us and once we were airborne they ushered out the food. One nice thing was because we came in so late bf's dad was able to pick us up at the airport instead of taking a cab or *gasp* public transport. Got a nice Tim Hortons double double and off we were.

Next treat they gave us was some really nice sushi. Loved it. Pretty much went to bed straight after because I was exhausted.

Today is reserved for a birthday. We will go to a Japanese restaurant to celebrate. LOL. I love it! Good trip so far!

Thursday 6 May 2010

Things I love Thursday...

Check out this blog for the idea.

  1. Having a beer on a Thursday evening! Whoot, whoot. And watching 'The Hangover'.
  2. Going to Canada tomorrow. 
  3. Election in the UK. Even though I wasn't allowed to vote in the general election I at least was allowed to cast my vote in the local.
  4. Suitcase and hand luggage is packed. Only need to add stuff in the morning and then we are off.
  5. New books. I had a voucher £5 off at WH Smith when spending more than 15. So I grabbed two books, found out at the till that they were 'buy one get one half price' so I got another one to get over the £15 to save some money. Love buying books. The more the better.
  6. Potato wedges.
Don't know when I'll be able to post next. Can't wait to leave tomorrow. Wish us luck with the ash cloud. Some UK airports were closed yesterday. Today it was all fine, so fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Monday 3 May 2010

The inside of my make-up bag

As promised, today I will empty the contents of my make-up bag. It's really not all that exciting since I cleaned it out a few months ago due to the fact that I basically hadn't used it in years. But there are some recent additions that are, well, not that exciting. But anyway, hope you enjoy taking a peek!

I apologise for the picture quality. The weather today is not so good. Lots of rain and wind and it is very dark. Took these pictures under a desk lamp. I guess they have a nice warm glow.

Got this at H&M years ago. I have a similar one in red with a white Snoopy on it. But that is still at my parents' place.


The basics: I love that mousse make-up. It's so easy to apply. Really nothing that can go wrong! The two sachets are out of some magazines. Had them for years. Should probably discard them at some point, but I hate wasting things. Even though I don't like liquid make-up.


Two new additions. Powder and a pocket mirror from the body shop. Only used it once so far, but seems nice enough.


These colors are all quite glittery and shiny. Perfect summer colors. Hoping to maybe use them this summer to get some color into my face!


My mascaras. The top one is blue and looks brilliant with my eyes. The other two are black.


My eye-liners. They don't really get used a lot except for the big one in the middle. It's a beige shimmering color and looks good in the summer, fall and winter!
My only lipstick. It's purple and I got it as a freebie. The lipgloss is a nude color. I do have another one in brown/shimmer with vanilla flavor and tons of lipbalms, but I don't seem to be able to find them. They are scattered between my various purses and backpacks, so I'm never without one!


Last but not least: My disinfectant liquid for earrings, and two brushes, one for powder, one for the eye-shadows.

Now, what about you? Do you dare to bare it all? Show me the inside of your make-up/jewellery bag?

Sunday 2 May 2010

Accessorize me!

As I might have mentioned before, I will be going to two weddings pretty darn soon. I have the dress, the shoes and the cardigan. Now all I need is to accessorize (is that a word?). I am not 100% sure what to go with and since I never do this I figured I might get some help from my lovely readers (especially thinking of Dani here who has a really good eye for those kind of things). 

This is what my dress looks like:


Not the best quality but you get the idea. I may or may not wear the belt with it. Usually not a big fan of that, but it does look nice.

Then I have a little purse which I stole ... em borrowed from my sister.



The two reds don't clash at all and I think it will look rather nice together. I do have a black purse that I could take but it's not as nice and more chunky.

Then I have a couple of red pieces I thought about wearing. I have a hair tie with a red flower attached to it. Since I will probably just wear a ponytail that should work fine. And then there are some red bracelets I could wear. Both property of my sister. She got those two and the bag for my brothers wedding. So I am 'recycling':

This is the hair tie which I think is really cute.


These are the bracelets. Not so sure about those. They'll be noisy and probably annoying, so not sure whether I will wear those. Opinions always welcome!

So here is the rest of the jewellery which I may or may not wear. This is basically all the jewellery I own. For the fun of it I will throw it all out there and you can pick the pieces you think will go good together and with the dress. Don't hold back. Some of them as  you will see are out of the question. But I included them anyway just for the fun of it! 

Hair pieces:

HP1: I think I picked these dragons up when I was in the states to wear to my junior prom. But don't really remember. I love them, but they are heavy and tend to fall out of my fine hair.


HP2: Picked these up in the States as well. I think at Claire's. It's missing the third one which has a pink stone in it.


Necklaces:

N1: My dad made this one for me when I was a little girl. I think it was when he was on Crete without the rest of the family.


N2: Cannot remember where this is from. It's a really long one.


N3: Love this one! Bought it last year to wear with a black&white dress to go to one of bf's company dinners.


N4: Hm, I think I got this one from my host mom. Not sure though.


N5: Picked this pendant up at Camden Market.


N6: Got this one from my parents for my 17th birthday. I was in the States and they mailed it over. It came with a different necklace, but that one ripped. For some reason I always rip them because they get stuck to my hair at the back of my neck and then I find the pendants in my bra. *sigh*


N7: I'm a Chinese water boar! Can't remember where I bought this though.


N8: This is from Scotland. Got it in one of the many souvenir stores in the Highlands.


N9: My older sister made this in Arts&Crafts class at school when she was younger.


Earrings:

E1: I had my ears re-pierced a few years back because they kept getting infections when I was a kid. So I really didn't start wearing earrings till I was in my 20s. But I am still not wearing them often. On the day I had them pierced I got a little mad and bought some weird earrings. This is one of those pairs.


E2: This is another pair of those! You can't see it, but these turtles are actually pretty big. Only wore them once.


E3: The little small black ones are the earrings I had my ears pierced with. The others my little sister gave me for my birthday. Unfortunately one of the stones fell out. Wore these to my older sister's wedding.


E4: Got these last year. Don't think I have worn these yet.


E5: Got these together with E3. I like the really pale turquoise.


E6: Love these little leaves. Got them together with the previous two.


E7: Also got them with the previous one. Find them a little bit annoying to wear because of their size.


E8: Got these with the first ones. They have silver glitter all over them and they are really heavy. Hardly ever wear them.


E9: Got them in my last year of uni. I had bought a dark purple summer dress that had some white flowers on it. They look really good together!


E10: Wore these to one of bf's company events. Had to take them off after a few hours because they are kinda heavy. Really like the color though.


E11: (You still with me? Thanks!) Just a selection of smaller earrings. Might go for the black ones?


E12: Got these from a friend for Christmas before I even had my ears pierced! I liked them though, so I kept them.


Bracelets:

B1: Just a simple one I picked up for one of bf's company things.


B2: This one I still got at uni. It's really big and chunky.


B3: This one is really fine in contrast. I got this from a Polish exchange student who stayed with us for two weeks in high school.


B4: These are my summer ones made out of wood. They are comfy and nice.

Rings:

Just a pile of all the rings I own. Or at least the ones I took to London. Though I think this is it. The one on the right my Dad brought me as a present from Crete. The other ones I bought myself, some at uni and the orange one at high school.


See how I cleverly gave everything a number? So, please, please let me know what you think about what I should be wearing with this particular dress. We also have a rehearsal dinner. Not sure what I will be wearing for that, but probably a black skirt with either a black blouse or a red/flowery blouse. Opinions on that welcome as well.

And because this has been so much fun tomorrow I might open my make-up bag and show you what I got in there! (Not to worry, don't have that much. Even though I did buy some for these weddings.)

Looking forward to all your comments!