The Aftermath of Hurricane Frankie

Oh, look at me...I'm just the cutest doggie in the world! Well, not so much! This is my little Frankie. She will be 11 months tomorrow, and is currently weighing in at 9.5 pounds; full grown for a breed of her type, miniature dachshund. I will admis, shis is super cute, and I love her to death. She my be a little too cute for her own good though. She gets away with almost everything. For example, I am a shoe fanatic. I love shoes...they are your friend no matter what...put on a few pounds, and your jeans are no longer your friend, but your shoes will fit no matter what. I feel the same way about purses...they never let you down. Anyway, back to the point, Frankie and I, as it turns out have the same taste in shoes, unforunately in Frankie's case it's literal. She really likes the taste of my shoes. I showed you the first pic before, but there have been two more attacks since then. A pair of wooden shoes, which can in no way be saved, and my absolute favorite pair of shoes...black sling backs, with a kitten heel. My favorite because I don't usually wear black, I like brown, so when I found these shoes and discovered they worked in any situation, casual, dressy, at work; well, how could you not love them? So, of course everyone gives my the lecture..."You're just going to ahve to start putting your shoes away so she can't get them!" Not good enough for me, but I can deal with that for now. Then there were those who thought it was somewherebetween slightly funny and hilarious because they know me and shoes; not to mention any names Dad, Troy, Bevan, and the list goes on, and all men too. Coincidence? I don't think so. HAHAHAHAHA! Anyway, the guy at the shoe store saved the first victim (yes, I'm talking about the shoe), the second one is hopeless, but I have high hopes for the third pair. The shoe repair guy is a genius...it's not the first time he's saved my shoes...I've been tempted to jump the counter and plant one on him, but I refrain! I don't know if I can hold back if he fixes the black sling backs though! T There have been other things besides shoes that Frankie rips up as well, menus or anything paper, stuffed animals, and her bed. She's not picky, just as long as it leaves a huge mess. She even chewed apart a highlighter once. It stained everything, my carpet and even the pads of her feet were bright yellow for a few days. Mom's purse is another favorite of Frankie's, well any purse really, it's just that's Mom's is the most common. Anything edible is gone, even lipstick, eyeliner, the actual wallet and cards within. Not so funny now eh Mom? Oh yeah, and even wood, like not wood from my shoes, but the actual patio is no match for Frankie. She will actually pull pieces off and chew them up. You'd think she'd learn her lesson, I mean it can't be all that comfy sitting in her stomach. I guess the worst happened just the other morning. She finally crossed a line, see, it was always funny when it was my stuff, but Wed. morning rolled around, and Dad got out of bed and this time it was his turn. He come downstairs to find Frankie had eaten the buckle off his $400.00 orthodic sandals. Well, no word of a lie only a few hours later Frankie was signed up for obedience school. I'll keep you posted on how it goes!

I know, I know, I'm lazy...Time to play Catch Up!

Ok, where to start...I guess with going to the Pressroom on a Thursday night (as usual), and Kelly MacDonald was there. I haven't seen Kelly in a while, and found out that she just came home from out west and is going to spend some time on the cruise ships. Talking to her that night, we realized that we have hit, what we affectionately like to call it, "our quarter life crisis!" This is because a good majority of our friends, like I said before, are either getting married, having babies, or both, and Kelly and I are no where near that point. We don't even have real jobs yet! Anyway, this all took place the night before I was going wedding dress shopping with my sister, which was the day before my best friends wedding. It made for somewhat of a depressing weekend, fun, but just exaggerating the whole "quarter life crisis" thing!
Anyway, the wedding dress shopping thing went pretty well (no one with obvious tiara's up their ass!. I think everyone going had a different outlook on how it would play out, but it was good. Missy went with one style in mind, and came out wanting something completely different. There was the worry that we wouldn't find anything that suited Missy's taste, but instead we finished the day trying to decided between 2 dresses of the 6 she loved (Oh, and by the way Bevan, just so you know it's pink with lots of lace and pearls!). We also found a few different options for bridesmaids dresses. The one I personally loved isn't exactly suited for the wedding. I say I love it, and I do, but more as something I would wear to other peoples weddings...I don't so much love it as a bridesmaid dress. But it was amazing. The one we liked for the wedding was perfect, and it incorporates the brown and blue for the wedding. So, it was a very productive day. Now to prepare for the next one. Chris's wedding!

The day was amazing, I don't think I ever seen two other people in my life so in love. It was the first time I ever watched one of my friends get married, and not just any friend, the friend who signed a contract with me, God knows how many years ago, stating that if we weren't married by the time we were 28 we would marry each other. Needless to say it was a tear jerker! LOL! It was a good day though...Everything looked amazing, and of course the party was good. Brooke and I decided to smuggle in some of our own liquor and sneak off to the bathroom to put it in our drinks (because we needed more alcohol at this point)!


Obviously, we were already pretty intoxicated! Beyond Ash played and we danced all night. By the time is was time to go home none of us thought we were ready yet, so Kelly called her dad to bring "the paddy wagon" to come pick us up and go back to drink on the beach for a while. Once again too drunk...I sat in the back of the van, oh sorry, paddy wagon, and didn't pay attention to where we were going. We got there realized it was too dark to go to the beach so we had a few drinks at the house, and then I called my Dad to come get us at Kelly's Dad's house. This is where it gets good...I wasn't paying attention on the drive out there, so I didn't realize that we went in the opposite direction to where I thought Kelly's Dad lived. It turns out that in the year I was gone Kelly's Dad built a new place so my Dad waited at the wrong house for a while then finally called Mom, slightly ticked, asking where I was. By this time I had figured it out and called her to fill her in! I know, I know, I'm an idiot! But it made for an interesting story, which is all that counts!
This Saturday past we had a card work shop at the store. Mindy decided it would be fun to teach a group of women 10 different cards. Boy, was she wrong. Not about having fun on the actual day of the work shop, but the days leading up to it were slightly more than crazy! We didn't consider that it was us who would have to get all the pieces of the cards cut out for this class that a total of 28 women had signed up for. And, on top of all that Mindy planned a BB-Q at her house after ward....Mindy is slightly crazy, the reason I fit in at the store! Anyway, it came to a point that we were both either taking stuff home, or staying late at the store to get everything cut out for the day. On top of it all, on Wed, just before the workshop while we were dwelling on cutting out cardstock we got a shipment of stock in at the store, and not just any shipment...It was the mother load...27 boxes of product to be put on the shelves before Sat! Somehow we made it through!


This is the day of the work shop, looking very fancy in our new cropping aprons from Making Memories! Mindy is in the middle, Lynn (I know you love this pic) is drinking the water, and Kim Prince (an amazing member of our design team) is in the white on the left, not wanting to be in the picture...Sorry, I had to do it. Kim is also the designer of this card, which I love so very much!



She's so good! It was a thank-you card for a CD I made for her a few weeks before! LOVE IT! Thanks again!
Now that you are probably going crazy from reading this, I thought I'd give those of you who know about my blog a sneak peak at the first 4 pages of the powerscrap I'm teaching in Oct. I'll post the other 2 once I finish them (another day or so!) Hope you like them.

Here fishy fishy fishy

What a day! We left the house at about 1:00 to go down town and watch the re-enactment of the landing of the ship Hector. It was pretty cool, even though I think I've seen it like 10 times now! It was nice to see the ship out in the harbour instead of docked at the museum!




Then we decided to head out of the harbour and give mackerel fishing a try. It was awesome! I, alone, caught about 80 mackerel. They were all pretty small, and we only kept about 6, just enough for supper. But it was still fun. Once again, there ended up being 5 boats tied together, all fishing, but I caught the most! Of course the clouds had to start rolling in, and then the thunder and lightening started and everyone headed back in pretty quick. Except us! We just changed spots. I wasn't ready to go home yet!



So, this was me...no raincoat or pants, but I did find this beach bag hanging in the wheel house and thought it would be perfect to keep me a little dry, so away I went again, with the bag on my head! You can see in the last picture why I just couldn't get enough, there are 6 mackerel on the line in that pic! Even Frankie had a fun day chasing the flipping mackerel all over the deck, nipping at theirs tails and barking at them. She didn't know what to think at first, but once she got a little more comfortable she actually started trying to pick them up!

Ahhhhh, just finished supper, and there is nothing better than catching your own supper! Especially when it's mackerel...mmmmmmmmmmm!

A Few of my Favorite Things

Last Saturday, after the hang-over from Jubilee wore off, Missy and I decided to take off to Truro to go to the Scrapbooking store. We decided that since it was an hours drive each way we would actually find some other things to do as well (just an excuse, we really just wanted to go to the scrapbook store). Anyway, we realized while at the scrapbook store that it's not so easy to just blow our money on scrapbook stuff anymore. The only reason being that we both work in different stores! Now if we go to a store and see something we like we're just kinda like "ah, lets wait and see if we can get it in at our own store!" Either way, we still managed to spend some money. We both bought the small Heidi Swapp flower centers! Can't wait to use them.
After that, we decided to take a look at a bridal shop down the road to look at wedding dresses for Missy. We did find a really nice one, but the woman that worked in there must have had a tiara stuck up her ass because she was no help at all, and Missy is even thinking about not going back there to look for a dress. I mean come on, if you are going to be spending $1200 on a dress you'd think the woman would have been a little more accommodating! It didn't take us long to take off from that place, and then we went to the mall. This is when the best buys of the day were found. I decided to try out some new make-up, and I'm sooooooooooo glad I did! It's definitly some of my new favorite stuff; LashExact by Covergirl, and Vinyl Lip by Rimmel London in Eastend Snob. There is nothing worse than trying something and totally regretting it, but if you don't try it, you'll never know. I also decided to check out Coles in the mall to see if they carried my current favorite book, My Horizontal Life: a collection of one night stands, by Chelsea Handler. And, to my suprise they had one copy left. I borrowed the book from a friend, Nikki, a few months ago, and laughed my ass off while reading it. Seriously, she tells her stories about picking up, and she is a comedian, so as if the stories aren't funny enough, she makes them sound "fall on the floor laughing" funny! I didn't own the book for 5 minutes before it was in my sisters hands and I haven't seen it since. Hope you are enjoying it as much as I did Missy!
This led us to our last stop in Truro for the day, at the Dollarama! I love it! We got there and we were just kinda browsing around when we came across one pack of black ribbon that looked exactly like American Craft. Of course, there were only two left and Missy and I snatched them up right away. When we got to the checkout the woman told us that there were lots more colors but they sold out already, and they had only put it out at 6:00 pm the night before. Well, Missy and I looked at each other with the same mischievous look on our faces...Dollarama back home! It was a mission. We practially ran out of the mall in Truro jumped into the car and started on the hour drive home to try to get the ribbon there before it was too late. The drive took only about 40 minutes instead of an hour, but we made it, and, we cleaned them out of ribbon. It was just sitting there waiting for us. Two left of each color, just calling out "Melissa, Melanie we were waiting for you!" Perfect! What an end to a great day, and I think Missy would agree! Simple things make me too happy ;)

Jubilee Weekend

The 11th annual Riverfront Jubilee happened this weekend past, and even though I had no intentions of going I ended up there both Thursday and Friday night! And, I actually had a good time. Thursday night we decided to take the boat up the East River to take in a few minutes of the music, but mainly we just wanted a boat trip and a few drinks. Amy, Jen, Myself, Pat, Jess, Derek, Matt, Chris, Jay, Mom, Dad and Frankie all made the trip up that night. It was an amazing night on the water. As you can see. Amy, Jen and I decided to make the trip up the river on the wheel house. It was awesome, and even involved and "mini photo" shoot, at least that's what we called it! We stayed up river for a little while then decided to head back home to meet up with Melissa and Bevan who were on their way home from PEI to see "Joel" (just for you Missy)! So, we docked for a little while, then headed back up to the main stage, by car, to catch the show. It worked out perfect because we got there just as he was doing a sound check! After the show we headed home. Mom and Dad left the next day with the boat to go to PEI, leaving the opportunity for people to do the pre-drink thing at my place before we headed up town for a second night in a row. Unfortunatly, there was rain the second night, so we skipped the show and went straight to the cabaret for a little bit of dancing! As usual we had a ball, got a couple hours of dancing in and headed home! So, as I said for a weekend I had no intentions of taking part in I had a great couple of nights!