exercise – les mills style: bodyflow and bodycombat

So I know how difficult it can be to get off of the comfy couch, out into the cold and head off to the gym. Who doesn’t? So when I was trying to decide which gym I would belong to I wanted to be sure that there would be something to pull me, to get me to want to go to the gym. Then I found Les Mills’ group exercise classes and knew I had found a winner!

2 years isn’t too early to shop for dresses… right?

So on the night of August 4th, when Justin had proposed, in the wee hours of the night when I was unable to sleep and surfing the web for ideas I made sure to look at David’s Bridal website to get some ideas for wedding dresses. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the selection on the website is amazingly vast and there are so many great price points, so shopping there won’t break my budget.

workplace fun: McMaster CCE graduation 2012

So tonight is our McMaster University Centre for Continuing Education’s (CCE) graduation ceremony for all of our fantastic students who have completed their studies over the last year. It’s always great to see the students you’ve come to know so well, either by meeting with them when they first started or running into them in the evenings during Welcome Week, graduate and celebrate with their families. It’s a fun-filled night with cheering, big rounds of applause and of course, food!!

what?! are those mighty morphin power rangers?!

Justin and I were invited to my friends Jon and Diane’s Halloween Partay this past weekend and we decided to throw out all the stops with our costumes. We wanted to do something funny, cheesy, memorable and that would be a couple-do-able costume. Justin has been re-visiting his childhood and watching the original Power Rangers series lately and has re-kindled his love for the characters, especially his want to be the Green Ranger, so naturally, we decided we just had to go as the Green and Pink Power Rangers!

pretties! fall engagement photo shoot

Yesterday was an amazingly beautiful day. The sun came out in the afternoon, it warmed up (almost too much) and it allowed us to have our re-scheduled engagement photo shoot with amazing lighting, beautiful fall colours and a lot of laughter! We decided to spend our time on a trail on the Red Hill (just off Queenston in Hamilton) and we were not to be disappointed!

wedding flowers, fresh versus real-feel

So the other month I started to think about what kind of flowers I want at our wedding and wanted to start pricing out so we knew what we were looking at for our budget. At first I wanted daisies, these are my favourite flower, they are so simple and yet so beautiful. Then I started to see some photos of other bouquets that were lovely as well and I opened my mind as to what flowers we would have on our day.

paleo recipes: success!

So this past week I really tried my hand at making and consuming as many Paleo meals as possible (as discussed in my earlier eating like our ancestors post). I did have a few slips, but all in all I count it as a successful week. One of the things I noticed  is that you really need to plan your full week’s meals when you’re new to Paleo, all meals from breakfast (no cereal), lunch (no sandwiches) and dinner, to your Paleo-approved snacks. I’m sure once I get into it more this will get easier but I’m not going to lie, it was a bit tough to begin with.

sometimes the weather is not my friend

So Justin and I had scheduled with Kara, of Kara Lodder Photography, to have our engagement photos taken yesterday. We love the fall colours and were really excited to have them taken since the leaves have been beautiful so far!

2012 reading challenge

At the beginning of this year I joined a reading website called Goodreads because I wanted to track my reading and see just how many books I get through in one year. At first I was only going to track the books I was currently reading and finishing and lining up those I wanted to read. Then I caught the bug and went through my library and started adding those to my Goodreads library and guessing the approximate month and year I read those books, I’m a completionist, it was bound to happen.

photographer’s dream

Justin and I had been checking out a few different photographers for our wedding and a few weeks ago we struck gold when we landed the lovely and talented Kara Lodder of Kara Lodder Photography for our September 2014 wedding. I’d spent a lot of time searching the web and reviewing different photographers online galleries and once I saw Kara’s work I knew that I wanted her to take the photos I’ll be looking at for the next fifty years. Everyone says that the day goes by quickly and the photos are all you have left at the end, so I wanted to make sure they would be beautiful.