summer bucket list.

school is officially over and summer has begun! me and david are both taking summer classes but they are condensed so they’ll be over by the end of june. even so, it feeeels like summer is here. it helps that it’s 25 degrees today and super sunny.

me and david have big plans for the summer. it’s our first complete summer being married and we’re going to milk every second of it.

here’s what we want to get done by the end of august:

• walk to the movie theatre and watch a movie
• repaint the desk
• go to jam in jubilee
• have friends over for a bbq
• go to seattle for a night
• go to cultus lake and swim (i have to specify ‘swim’ otherwise david won’t)
• make nightstands
• go to whistler 2x
• read a book that’s not a textbook
• work lots/make $$$
• go to the gym/work out 2x a week
• keep our plants alive
• do the abby grind
• go (real) camping
• get good grades in summer classes
• go to burnaby mountain and watch the sunset
• go to the driving range
• richmond night market

anything else we should add?

i think it's going to be a good summer.

ps. we're on the look out for cheap patio furniture. preferably a smaller table with some chairs. let me know if you see any deals!

technical difficulties.

well, i think it's official: our laptop has reached its final days.

we have a desktop computer that is practically brand new but has extreme trouble connecting to the internet. so we mostly use it for writing papers and we use the laptop for any internet searching and tv watching (we don't have a tv after all). you always had to be careful with it though because it was super temperamental. it always had to be plugged in because the battery died about a year ago. you had to be super careful with the cord too because if you bumped it the wrong way or set the computer down a little to roughly it would automatically shut off. even if you didn't bump it or move it there was always a chance it would spontaneously shut down. also, the space bar didn't work, so there's that.

and now finally, it's time to say good-bye.

so now we have to decide what to replace it with. should we get a laptop or an ipad? we're leaning towards laptop because we'll use it for lots of netflix watching and a bigger screen will be best for that. it would also be easier to do research for school on a laptop. but on the other hand, ipads are legit!

baby of the family.

this totally struck a chord with me when i saw it on a tumblr about working at a non-profit:

"WHEN I'M THE YOUNGEST PERSON AT A MAJOR DONOR EVENT"

i'm the youngest person at work by like 30 years. i always feel like the baby of the group! also, 90 percent of our volunteers are seniors.

most of the time it's super fun, except when they assume i know everything about technology. sorry, i don't know how to do html coding or set up a network with file sharing. need me to show you how to send an e-mail? no problem. want me to look up that phone number online? i'm your girl.

knitting.

knitting is one of my favourite hobbies. you can do while your watching tv, sitting with a group of friends, or you can just let your mind wander while your hands do the work. i love that it's relaxing and monotonous- it's a total comfort activity for me.

i remember when i first learned to knit. i was probably in grade 6. my sister in law, lydia, taught me. she took me and my sister hannah (who's a year older than me) to walmart to pick out our very first balls of yarn. i remember feeling so cool and old. it was such a treat to go out with our brothers girlfriend and we felt so special! then we came home and got to work knitting our scarves. it took a long time to get the technique down. hannah didn't have the patience for it and i don't think she ever finished her scarf. i remember getting frustrated and wanting to quit but then i thought that if lydia thought knitting was cool than it must be, so i better stick with it. i would have done anything at the time to be like my big sisters! (and probably still would, my sisters are cool people).

after that i started knitting scarf after scarf. i stopped for a while in high school when knitting was definitely not the cool thing to do. once i graduated though i happened to have a boyfriend who played a lot of hockey. i would sit with my friend or my future mother in law in the stands, knitting, and watching hockey in between rows.

mostly i've just knit scarves but this past winter i've been trying to branch out. i taught myself to knit on circular needles and i knit some leg warmers and even a baby blanket (below). for my next baby blanket i need to put a border around it though because my last one got all curly around the edges. my goal is to mass produce them and sell them in an etsy shop. one day.

another thing on my knitting to-do list is to learn to cable knit. i'm desperate for a chunky cable knit blanket like the picture up top.

easter weekend.

happy easter weekend!

i’ve been having a great weekend relaxing with family and taking a break from work. i had a late meeting on thursday that left me pretty drained so i’m so thankful for this weekend!

on friday me and david both had the day off. i’m pretty sure this was the first day off we’ve both had together without a family thing or something else planned since we've been married (besides sundays, they don’t count). we were so pumped! we planned to go to church in the morning (for good friday of course) and then head out to richmond for the day.

as i’m sure you all know david is a major plane enthusiast. as evidence: our airplane themed wedding!

he’s been dying to go to vancouver airport and spot some planes. there’s an awesome park nearby called iona beach. it’s actually built around a waste treatment plant, which sounds gross but is totally awesome. there’s a huge pipeline that juts out into the ocean that they built a walkway along it and on top. so you can walk 3 km out into the ocean right in front of the airport. on my instagram feed i made it sound like it was super boring and i only went because david wanted to but in reality it’s actually a pretty cool walk.

our next stop (besides starbucks) was ikea! i’ve been making a list on my phone of things we needed from ikea for a while and we finally had a chance to pick them all up. we got some new drinking glasses, a roller thing to put planters on top for our patio, and a shelf for our kitchen. i’m pretty sad that we forgot about the chocolate bars though.

we were planning on getting some laundry carts in order to diy these nightstands but they changed the design of them so they weren’t going to work. so instead we improvised and got some shelf brackets and david is going to put up some simple shelves next to our bed so i can finally have a place to put my alarm clock, lamp, and cell phone. i’ll post some before and after pictures when they’re all done!

after our shopping spree ($38 is considered a ‘spree’ on our budget!) we splurged again and went out for dinner at white spot. and then spent the evening playing cards with my parents. all around it was a pretty fantastic day.

saturday david was back at work so i spent the day cleaning the house and watching tv. i have to admit that i did more tv watching than cleaning. it wasn’t my fault though! i sat down to watch one episode of the good wife and something major went down. so then obviously i had to watch 5 more episodes to figure out what was up. like i said: not my fault.

anyways, sunday was a more productive day. we went to church, had a relaxing afternoon, headed to church again, and then went to david’s aunt’s for easter dinner! it was a blast hanging out with cousins and the food was soooo good!

i didn’t eat breakfast this morning because i’m still full. true story.

wow, that post turned out to be much longer than i thought it would be! 

the end.


(wedding photos by Sharalee Prang Photography)

wedding rings.

two weeks ago i dropped my wedding rings off to get soldered. they kept sliding around and the insides were started to get all worn and scratched. i also got them refinished because it was driving me bonkers that my engagement ring was more worn than my wedding band! and today i finally got them back! they're all clean and sparkly again.

it felt so strange not to have a wedding ring on for two weeks. it made me feel younger and just different some how. i definitely feel more like myself now that i have them back.

ps. it's impossible to take a flattering picture of fingers.

throwback wednesday.

i was doing some re-organizing today and stumbled upon these photos of me from kindergarten and david from grade one.

oh man, just look at those glasses. david was such a cutie!

more work (in a good way).

the last few weeks have been some of the most stressful of my life (besides maybe the few weeks before our wedding!).

one of the realities of working for a non-profit agency is that there is never enough money to do what needs to be done. there is never enough money to pay people as much as they deserve and never enough money to buy everything that you need to run programs. this has become super clear to me since i started working at a non-profit last may.

at first i was just hired for a summer position funded by the government. i knew that the job would only last 14 weeks and then i’d have to move onto something else. at the end of the summer, however, they liked me and still had work for me to do so they kept me on for 20 hours a week while i was in school. i was totally thrilled because it was my first job doing something relevant to what i’m learning in school and i LOVED it! the contract was only till the end of the fiscal year though, which happened to end on march 31^st.

throughout the fall we’ve been working on a huge proposal that would give us enough money to run the program i’m working on for three years. we thought the funding would have come through by the time my contract ended but it hasn’t, and it won’t come until september at the earliest. so all of the sudden we were faced with the reality that the agency did not have enough money to keep me on, as well as some of my co-workers.

so, to make a veeerrrrryy long story short: there was a good chance that i’d be out of work at the end of march. and then they decided to extend my contract for one month while they figured out if they had enough money to keep me. so then i was probably going to be out of work at the end of april. but today we got good news! we got an grant from the government that is giving us enough money to hire me for full time work all summer!

i am so relieved. i was panicking at the thought of having to look for another job. there’s not a lot of criminology-related work out there, especially for someone who hasn’t finished their degree yet! the thought of having to search for a new job, interview, get hired, meet tons of new people and learn lots of new things did not sound appealing.

so. best case scenario: i work all summer and then we get the funding we are applying for and then i get to work for three years doing amazing things and helping run an amazing program.

worst case scenario: i work for the summer and then look for something else while i finish school.

either way, i don’t have to look for a new job now! and that makes me very, very happy. 

in my spare time.

lately david has had tons of homework/studying to do. i've only got one exam left and its not for another 2 weeks so i've had a lot of free time on my hands. usually i would knit to fill the time but yarn is expensive and i'm not up for spending another $20 on it. soooo, i watch tv pretty much every evening.

netflix has been saving my life. they have so many great tv shows its hard to narrow it down.

lately i am super obsessed with the good wife! it is seriously so good! i love all of the characters and i love the story line. as a person who wanted to be a lawyer for like ten years i really enjoy all of the law and politics as well. i'm almost at the end of the series though and i'll need something to watch after.

i've already seen...

 mad men (loved it at first but i got a bit bored of it near the end)

 how i met your mother (so sad it's over!)

 call the midwife (any BBC show is pretty much fantastic)

 downton abbey (hello, AMAZING!)

 and freaks and geeks (only one season but it was really funny and endearing)

me and david are also making our way through once upon a time. it's important to have shows that we watch together and shows that i can watch on my own. that way i can still watch what i want, when i want.

i think i'll try out derek next. i watch a few minutes of the first episode and wasn't crazy about it. the accents were so hard to understand i had to put the subtitles on. but i've heard great things about it from lots of different people so i think it deserves another chance.

what other series do you love? i've got another two weeks before david is done school so i've got lots of time to watch!

writing.

i'm nearing the end of my fourth year of university, just one more exam (woot!). i've still got a few classes left before graduation but i'm hoping to have everything finished before the end of 2014.

one of the reason i started writing this blog is a result of my education. i've spent the last four years immersed in the world of criminology and academia. i've written dozens of research papers, literature reviews, and case studies. i've read countless journal articles and textbooks. i don't remember the last fictional book i've read. just take a look at my bookshelf, i think there is a total of five novels on the whole thing, the rest is all textbooks.

all this academic reading and writing has left me in a rut. i can whip up a thesis statement in a matter of minutes but writing creatively takes a lot more practice. that's where this blog comes in. i want to expand my horizons beyond theory and research and explore the world of writing for the sake of writing. writing because it's beautiful and good for the soul not because of a looming deadline.

practice makes perfect, and that's what this blog is: practice.

(top photo of a print from this etsy shop, bottom photo of my ridiculous textbook situation)

glasses for david.

david has had the same glasses since we graduated high school in 2010. the simple black frames have served him well however, it’s time for a new pair. we don’t have any extended medical coverage and david’s eyes are so bad that he needs super expensive lenses. as an alternative to spending 500 bones on a pair of specs we decided to look at our online options. so far we've been able to find multiple pairs for $200 or less which is sa-weeeeeet. the picture above is what he has now. 

as far as style goes we’re looking for a pair of neutral full-rimmed frames, probably of the plastic variety. i’m thinking either black or brown.

Here are the top contenders… 

these ones from clearly contacts.

or maybe these,

i also love these ones from Lookmatic. they have a great shape and i like that they don't dip down to much in the middle. 

they also have crazy cheap ones that we're considering from this website. they've got frames for as low as $9.99, it's nuts. they have tons of selection, it was hard to narrow it down to just a few. at these kind of prices maybe we could get two pairs!

we tried a couple on at superstore yesterday and david liked these ones best. we didn't check to see how much the lenses cost though...

so, which would you pick? 

veronica mars.

to say i'm a big v-mars fan would be the understatement of the year. i was heartbroken when the show was cancelled in 2007. this show brings back memories of sitting in front of the tv with my mom and big sisters and feeling so grown up. 

last night me and david went to see the movie. it's been in theaters since march so this has been a long time coming. but with school and work being so busy this was the first chance we got. it was so cool to see the old gang reunited! i don't want to give anything away for those of you who still want to see it but i will say one thing: it won't disappoint! it felt like a whole season of veronica mars packed into an hour and forty minutes and i loved every second of it. 

new shoes.

i went shopping with my mom on the weekend and scored these super cute loafers from old navy for 6 bucks! the only down-side is the inevitable braking in of said shoes. it's before 1pm and i've spent 90 percent of my day sitting behind my desk and my feet already hurt. blisters are inevitable.

i wear those little half-sock things to try and avoid the blisters but they never help. although they are fantastic for avoiding excessively stinky feet which i appreciate.

do you have any tips for breaking in new shoes? i'd love to hear!

feels like summer.

today in the fraser valley it was sunny and 18 degrees. SUMMER IS HERE! well, for now at least.

me and david have been enjoying the beautiful weather by going for walks. yesterday we hit up albert dyck park and we went to mill lake tonight. it felt so nice to have to take my sweater off because i was warm. it is definitely time to pack away the boots and thick sweaters.

david also has his eye on the barbecue. can't wait for burgers on our awesome patio.

(photo of david from my instagram feed)