Ginger

We are still fighting colds at our house.  Mine has settled into a highly annoying sinus headache and a bit of fatigue.  Husband is unfortunately at the stuffed up, sore throat stage. This weekend husband offered to make up so cold-kicking ginger tea which I'd completely forgotten about since my head cold experience over the holidays.

While we were in Montreal between Christmas and New Year I had a lousy head cold (pretty much exactly like this one... sigh).  On our last day we were meeting up with friends for brunch but had some time to kill and went in search of somewhere to have tea.  It was insanely cold so Husband steered me into the first open place we found.  I was iffy on it from the outside and so sulked at him slightly since I was looking for a chain where I knew exactly what to order in case there were language issues.  Turns out Husband had chosen a fabulous local vegan spot and it's just unfortunate we didn't have time to eat there as well... next trip.  They had a wonderful, extensive (and English) tea selection.  I had yerba mate for the first time in years and Husband ordered their ginger tea.

Husband has since made ginger tea which was grated fresh ginger root steeped in hot water at our house.  This time he upgraded the healthy cold-kicking properties by adding lemon and honey.  It's a warming, soothing, sinus clearing cup of happiness. 

Now if only we could make it in gorgeous iron kettles like they had.  Husband looked at some lovely ones at a local tea store and I know he'd love to have gotten me one but I told him they were too expensive.  Maybe some day.  For now I have ginger tea and head ache medication.

White Out

When Hurricane Juan came through Atlantic Canada (quite a few years ago now) I was living in Europe and missed it.  When White Juan, the blizzard came through I was... living in Europe again.  So when the media started naming the snowstorm coming through I was fairly skeptical.  We get a lot of snowstorms here on the east coast of Canada.  I figured that we were just under our usual number so they were needing something to talk about.  This one wasn't even predicted to have the amount of snow that we got between Christmas and New Years.

Here's the thing,  I've never seen a snowstorm with this much wind before.  I woke up to the house shaking and thought "here we go again" because last week we had a major rain storm with a great deal of wind and lost a tree out front.  The back yard was littered with branches and the odd bit that blew in from the neighbourhood.  I got up to find we still had power and therefore running water (well system uses an electric pump) and noticed the wind was blowing in the opposite direction from the last storm so we're likely to have some trees come down in the neighbourhood that survived the last one.  We should be fine from that direction though.

I headed downstairs to let the pets out.  Our three cats and golden retriever spend the night in our utility room.  It's a room that some might describe as a laundry room except that about 1/3 is dedicated to laundry facilities and the water heater and tub sink and the other 2/3 are dedicated to pet stuff.  It's a fully finished room with paint on the walls and a lino floor. It's 10 x 17 and has 5 cat beds (yes we only have 3 cats, we like to give them choice) as well as a shelf for food and water bowls for each cat and then the dog bed, bowls and toys on the floor. 

And when I opened the door to the utility room a cold gust of wind blew out at me.  The back door which I always lock and bolt every night had somehow blown open. There were 3 inches of snow in our boots by the back door and in Sadie's food bowl and a fair amount of slush on the back door mat.  I ran to shut the door (which my sock covered feet are still not pleased about) while trying to count furry heads.  I had the two oldest cats and the dog but not the baby of the household.  The others all had grown up experiences of being homeless, but we rescued Spock at 5 weeks and he has no sense of danger ever.  He thinks everything and everyone is awesome.

I start frantically checking the rooms closest to the utility room while alternating between calling for Spock in a "I'm totally reasonable so of course you should come see Mama" tone and screaming for Husband who was still in bed in a "I'm completely losing it and also my feet are soaked with snow and they all could have died" tone. Spock came trotting down the stairs after I'm sure mere seconds wondering what all the fuss was about and why breakfast hadn't materialized.  Husband followed not far after to find me quite a wreck.

So I got to spend the time between 6:30 and 7:15am emptying snow out of boots and putting them in various places to dry, piling dog bedding and towels in the wash and scooping snow into a bucket and then throwing it out the door into the wind.  Not a single pet shows any indication that they remember the incident.  Spock bounced around trying to play with snow balls and at one point the golden retriever tried to carry the snow bucket off to her bed in the tv room (we have one dog and three dog beds... and she still often prefers to lay directly next to a dog bed).

I figured I've earned a nice cup of tea... which I just realise has been steeping the entire time I've been typing this.  We'll see if it's still drinkable.

PS. You know I was traumatized if there isn't a photo of the snow in the utility room.  Here's a glimpse of what it normally looks like.

Cutest Cupid

I've never been huge on Valentine's Day. I think it's largely due to how close Valentine's Day is to my birthday.  Red hearts tend to have taken over the stores by February 3rd.  Plus it always just seemed like it was designed to make everyone feel lonely and depressed.  I'm starting to see how it could be nice to have a reason to be romantic because, seriously, spontaneity really doesn't happen much these days. It's not that Husband doesn't do nice things for me. It's just that life is busy and, I don't know about where you live, but it's cold and dark here in Winter.

Anyway, all of that was as poor lead in to the fact that our local animal shelter is doing the cutest thing as a fundraiser for Valentine's Day designed to make people feel loved and whatever the opposite of depressed is.  It's called Cupid for a Cause and the way it works is that you order a "cat" or "dog" themed gift basket for someone and on Valentine's Day it is delivered to them by this year's adorable cupid, Murphy the Wonderdog (with a human helper).

Isn't that too cute? Check them out on facebook.

Sequence

I know many a blogger out there struggles with husbands who roll their eyes at the thought of taking outfit posts or photographing food or just generally documenting every aspect of your lives.  The thing is that I was a nut for photographing everything long before I started blogging.  Husband knows this and seems to like that blogging gives me an outlet for it.  This weekend while opening my card and gift from my parents Husband insisted on photographing the entire sequence of events, capturing a rather odd series of facial expressions.

My gorgeous new Christopher Kan wallet/clutch from Manchester Shoe Salon here in Saint John to match the purse I've shown off on the blog a few times now.

Juggling

I'm having one of those weeks where I feel like I'm juggling a variety of mismatched objects.  Juggling mismatched objects is much harder than juggling identical balls.  I know this because I juggled briefly in university.  By that I mean I had a few friends who were good fun who took juggling quite seriously so a one point I tried juggling while mostly sitting around hanging out.  The friends on the other hand eventually worked their way up to juggling things like fire (had to get special permission from security to be allowed to do that... bet you couldn't get permission these days). 

Anyway,  the point was not actually juggling.  The point was (and is) that I have quite a few very different projects on the go right now.  This week I managed to launch an initiative at work that I'd been work up to off and on since last June. That's had me scurrying some this week.  Plus I'm giving a series of workshops at work.  Plus the regular stuff that I do.

I've mentioned before that I'm a member of the Canadian Progress Club Ignite.  We're a group of women who volunteer and fund raise in order to help women and children in our community.  Having taken a break over the holidays we're now back into things full tilt.  We have volunteer activities coming up and some fun socials.  We're also giving away a cute pair of purple earrings to a lucky fan of our facebook page. Plus we're putting together a fabulous basket of goodies to raffle off next month. 

Then of course there's looking forward to a long weekend with Husband once we make it through this crazy, tiring week. It's nice to look forward to a weekend spent entirely around here.  No rushing off somewhere else or putting lots of time in on the road.  Instead we're seeing some friends and having a birthday dinner with my parents and enjoying a massage that will be covered by my health benefits (hurray free massage!).

It's fun to feel there are so many things going on.  I love having lots of things to plan and organize.  On the other hand I would like a couple of early nights! I had to bow out of step class early the last couple of times because I'm just feeling slightly woozy and drained. 

Rainbow Bright

The last time I was getting my nails done the esthetician said, "You should have taken photos of all of your nail colours so we can keep track of how they turned out." What kind of blogger did she take me for? Well, I have a suspicious that I'm missing one and I am now thinking I should have taken them exactly the same every time to turn into some sort of collage but here you are, a Friday retrospective of my nails the past few months. I'm going to admit upfront that these are not in order but I couldn't be bothered to flight with blogger!

These are all shellac colours done for me at Intuitions Spa .  I usually get about 2 1/2 weeks of my nails looking freshly done.  That is longer than some people but most people get about 2 weeks of their nails looking like new. 

Belting

It is almost Wednesday (or actually Wednesday or who knows really by the time you read this) and it is time for an outfit post.  We got quite a bit of snow over the weekend so I spent most of the weekend bundled up, staying dry, etc.  These were actually taken before that on a day that really got quite warm.  You'll notice I was still holding onto Mum's pearls at that point and enjoying my Michael Kors bag from Bling Borrowers for a little while longer. Plus, I decided to show off my new coat which I got for 50% off with a Christmas gift card. Love using gift cards combined with sales!!

Jeans, Top, Coat- Ricki's Swearter- Pepperberry Boots- Spring  Earrings- Esquared  Bag- MK Bling Borrowers