127| peeking, piquing

this weekend was long. and fun. and i want to do it all over again, very soon.

friday afternoon began with a thud and thump, and my father continuing to refuse to give me necessary documents for my taxes. i was not pleased. i don't recall much about friday evening, other than a long, long sleep that bled into saturday morning.

saturday morning we garage saled. or garage bought? i had three marvelous finds. that lovely bowl that i blogged about last week...the green one. i found for only $10. and a remarkable candlelabra. and a stuffed pig. the pig was probably the most meaningful. i had one, named knuckles when i went to europe last year and lost it in italy. so we found a new one and we're calling him Knuckle Junior, or KnuJu for short.

saturday afternoon was a lot of walking and exploring the market, buying new plants and coming home to garden them. we then made pizzas and yum, yum, yum. it was delightful! oh, in between garage sale-ing and gardening there was marvelous brunch. oh so tasty.

sunday was filled with grocery shopping, more gardening, more markets, baking, playing frisbee, eating BBQ and playing cards. i haven't had this much sun in a long time. i feel wonderful. like i said, i didn't really want for this weekend to end.

oh well, some of the goodies will last. including but not limited to these.

117| decompressing by doing.

{or: how to have a really, really productive saturday}

today was my last saturday as an undergraduate student. this sounds really weird, and it is a really weird thing to mark, but i've sort of had a schedule for saturdays over the past four years that has involved brunch, grocery shopping, school work and an out of the house activity in the evening.

in light of the really long paper i've been writing, my sleep schedule was thrown off and i went ot bed at six thirty this morning, after falling asleep on the couch around four {thank you to those of you who sent me lovely messages of support and demands for me to go to bed between four and six-thirty}.

my day commenced with andrew's doing the crossword and my trying to remain perfectly silent while he did so. i am not so good at this. but it was a good test for me, and i started thinking of all the things i wanted to do today, given that the weather could not have been nicer if it had tried.

we brunched at jak's, one of my most favourite brunching places, and the patio was open, which was marvelous! we went shopping for him and found the most adorable top for our friend's daughter who is presently obsessed with wonderwoman. we went to bridgehead: i worked for two or three hours plugging in footnotes {over a hundred}, while he went and played catch with a friend {tee hee}. we then came home and i gardened, and gardened and gardened. we are going to have so many beets this year. gardening was followed by picnicking {hamburgers} on the grass in our yard, and then more schoolwork, and then baking.

this might have been one of the busiest days i've had in a long time. but, it's also been one of the most enjoyable!

happy saturday!

107| weekend, long

this weekend never wanted to end. and in someways, i think i was glad for that.

i took so many pictures, did so many things. ate so much chocolate. i relaxed. i slept. i watched back to the future with my niece. i ate more chocolate. i played tag. i fell down the slide and smacked my shin, leaving a huge bruise. but i did not cry. i read and a wrote, and i was read to. i baked. and i cooked. and i shopped. and i spent time with some family and some friends. 

it was my favourite things amplified. this is sort of what i want our wedding to be like. and yes, if you tag my on my wedding day, i will run after you. which is precisely why i'm not wearing heels.

100| saturdays are for...

my 100th post. not much of a surprise, i guess, but nonetheless a bit of a milestone for me--the type of girl who is non-committal to blogging, for the most part.

intially, today was meant to be a very hectic, yet boring saturday with studying and working out, and not much else. however, my day got sidetracked into an even-more-hectic-albeit-much-more-interesting day.

last night, i told andrew--after mini-golfing--that i was going to sleep-in, go to the gym, bake, and do school work all before five pm. he did not believe me, and i thought twice about my goals when i woke up from my deep, deep slumber this morning. i figured, going to the gym and doing school work would be enough {plus i'd already slept in}.

so, i hopped the train in the wet, mucky weather, undressed of course, to the library at campus, where i hunted high and low for books for all of three hours. my arms loaded, i then made my way to the gym, and worked out. for an hour and a half. wheeeee. please note, that at this time i had consumed all of a coffee and a small bowl of cereal. stress = energy.

i left the gym at three and there was a message on my phone, from andrew and our friend rainer saying that we were invited to friends' for dinner and perhaps we ought to bring dessert. i called andrew back, and made note that they'd be home in two hours and i had to shower and perhaps we best just pick something up.

well, my dears... i walked by a stand selling luscious bright red strawberries. and i will grant you that they looked tasteless in their plastic packaging from california. but what with the weather being dreary and my wanting spring, i decided right then and there, after consulting my blackberry {to make sure we had everything else} to make rachel's strawberry shortcake for dessert.

so, i grabbed what i needed and rushed home. 

was it easy like she said it would be? yes
was it tasted like she said it would be? yes*
was everyone pleased?oh, you bet

not to mention, i was able to achieve that final task that i wanted to do today. by five pm no less.

*i would argue that it was even easier, because in the time span of one half-hour, i made everything and i showered. snap.

|photo from rachel, because it all happened far too fast for me to capture on film|

90| saturdays are for...

this weekend felt like every other, where it all blurs together and nothing is as standout as it seems. except that this week was warmer.

• kaitlin: 2. stairs: 0. the stairs are losing their battle. soon i'll have to up my sets at the gym.
• deli sandwiches on the steps of parliament.
• groceries in hintonburg.
• napping
• brownie making
• dinner with friends, duplicity {for which i actually stayed awake and knit}.

it feels to me a bit like my weekends are the same, over and over, and while that provides for a certain amount of blogging consistency, i tell you it must be pretty boring. in fact, it is.

but the sun will soon be out on a permanent basis, and i'll be able to tell tales of hiking and biking and rollerblading and shopping at markets, and gardening. oh gardening. these are the sorts of days when i wish i lived in california.

82| saturdays are for...

• proverbial ass kicking at the gym at 8 am
• eating a marvelous breakfast with all the fixings while people watching and paper reading
• going for a wonderful urban walk to the market for groceries
• visiting friends' one-month old {and the rest of their amazing family}
• thai for dinner.
• che, part two

70| saturdays are for...

• delicious, albeit overpriced breakfasts
• shopping in wellington west for sofas {we found the most beautiful leather sectional! waiting to ask the parents about wedding gifts}
• a marvelous walk through the forest {in above freezing temperatures}
• a little bit of mini-golf
• school work
• homemade burgers and fries {can i tell you home much i love australian burgers}
• spring shopping

all in all, a marvelous day!

50| saturdays are for...

• ...getting your ass to the gym at ten, only to have said ass subsequently kicked by your trainer {thrilling. i hate squats}
• ...shopping in the market for delicious things and bakeware {for today's cookie making}
• ...seeking out registries, and finding things to put on them
• ...eating delicious sushi, dim-sum style, and catching up with a friend
• ...enjoying some red wine and playing wii.

needless to say, it was a pretty busy day {we spent four hours doing registries}.

35| saturdays are for...

• ... going out for a delicious, amazing brunch, with eggs done just right {i don't remember the last time i didn't go for brunch on a saturday}.
• ...shopping at wonderful vintage stores and fair-trade shoppes in the market. my favourite score of the day? a lovely, bright orange and green peruvian poncho, for $16. or perhaps, my sterling silver hoops.
• ...working out, like i committed myself to doing, with excellent music, and a half-empty gym.
• ...cooking a yummy pasta dinner, followed by some serious monopoly rivalry {i had more than half the properties, and still managed to be the first bankrupted. sounds like our economy}
• ...falling asleep for a cozy nap on a friend's floor. 

27| saturdays are for...

• ... going out for a delicious, but incredibly early breakfast, with your friend + her daughter, in order to beat the early morning valentine's day breakfast rush. which is larger than every other saturday brunching rush.
• ...playing endless rounds of twenty questions, whilst waiting for food, waiting for the bill, and whilst driving {my two favourites of the day: gordon ramsay and woody woodpecker}
• ...reminding yourself why and how the dinosaurs died, and that your death will be much less interesting, and less widely studied.
• ...taking a plethora of photographs explaining why the dinosaurs died and what they looked like beforehand {to be posted upon editing}.
• ... finishing one of these.
• ... making a delightful dinner, served with an even better red wine.
• ...kicking ass and taking names.

all in all, quite possibly the best valentine's day i've ever had. surely it beats the one where i was stuck in an airport, and the one where my boyfriend was in chile. sans doute.

| credit little papoose |

12| saturdays are for...

• ...coming home completely, and unexpectedly plastered from a friend's at three in the morning.
• ...waking up at 9 to go skating/curling/brunching, only to realize that you're completely hungover and standing in the shower, you once again become nauseous.
• ...going back to bed until 1pm.
• ...eating ridiculously crappy eggs and homefries in an effort to rejuvenate stomach and to make it look like you did this all on purpose, as though you were in college {but, wait i am in college, i just never drink}.

yikes. hopefully if i ever feel the strong desire {which i didn't at the time} to drink this much, i will go back to this blog and remind myself that, holy hell, it really is not a good idea. vodka, my relationship with you is over. permanently. wine, beer, we'll talk later.

i merely hope that the rest of my day is supremely better than the first half {not that the sleep wasn't good...it was the waking up from sleep}. fresh air, delicious chinese food, and the movie that should win best foreign language film if the critics have any say about it.

6| saturdays are for...

• ...scrambling to finish interest statements for wonderful professors who are writing you letters for grad school {phew!}
• ...divine {however late} brunches
• ...mucking around with other people's printers to ready your wedding invitations
• ...playing with your niece and her friends {however violent}
• ...listening to old, awful music {that you appreciated when it first came out}
• ...taking photographs of dogs {that may not be yours}

after a conversation with eddyizm, i was determined to take my camera outside and remind it that it is loved, and is not just a tool with which i capture my other arts + crafts. so, off we went to bruce pit which is one of the few parks in the city of ottawa that dogs are allowed off leash. it is prime doggy-running-territory. camera in hand, i wasn't afraid to take some two-hundred shots of beautiful dogs and beautiful trees, running side by side. the owners of the dogs were equally pleased, and to my luck, many a hound believed that because i had a camera and therefore had treats {sadly for them, not the case}. this also meat a lot of close-ups, or near close-ups. some downright awesomeness {which i can't wait to edit}.