Allan Gardens - Free Things to Do in Toronto

I have wanted to go the Allan Gardens in Toronto for a while. We rotate between two churches, Grace Toronto and the Downtown Meeting House, and Grace's newly purchased building is beside the Allan Gardens. One of my university friends (who attends Grace) often stops in after worship, and posts the most beautiful pictures on her Instagram. We finally decided to visit on a Saturday afternoon after my shift at work. 

We were not disappointed by the beautiful greenery!

It's very easy to get to the Allan Gardens - on line 1 of the subway, get to College station, and take the streetcar east to Jarvis.

The conservatory has many rooms, and they are themed differently.

I love turtles. So much.

My husband in the jungle

One of the ponds with beautiful (koi?) fish. Also, that massive white one.

The main room is gorgeous. They even have a little stage in the middle, presumably for weddings or performances. 

Nic said he felt like he was in Jurassic Park, and I completely agree, with those huge fronds. 

As expected, the cactus and succulent room was my favourite. 

Someday Nic and I hope to make a vertical garden like this!

Keep Your Memories Alive with a DIY Photobook!

A few years ago I started making photo books through Blurb in order to print large amounts of my pictures. Since then I have also made a wedding guestbook using our engagement pictures, as well as wedding photo books. If you're going basic, they can be very fast to put together, but by now my books take me many hours to perfect.

I chose Blurb because I liked the examples I saw on their website, but Shutterfly is another popular site. Even Staples and Shoppers allow you to make online photo books. Online editors can limit your creativity, so going with downloadable programs gives you lots of customization. 

2012, 2013, 2014, wedding guestbook (engagement pictures), and our wedding photo book

Step 1 - Choose Your Theme

Generally my themes are "2013," "2014," "2015," but like I said previously, I've also made wedding themed ones. 

Step 2 - Select Your Photos

The most time-consuming part of the process is selecting which photos you want to use. I scour my camera pictures (Canon digital, and Nikon D3300), my phone pictures, my parents' pictures, Nic's pictures, Facebook... 

Step 3 - Choose Layouts

Most programs will have pre-set layouts for you to choose from, which makes it pretty fast to organize your photos on the page. I've been working on getting a little more white-space in a cool way on my pages, so I've made my own layouts. Make sure you think about what you want grouped on a page together - is it thematic (all the drinks you've had that year...) or by day. 

Step 4 - Put it all in!
Once I've uploaded all my photos, I go through and add all of them, trying to figure out good page setups.
Blurb has a free program, BookWright, which I haven't used yet. When I started this book, I still only had BookSmart, which you can download to edit your layouts yourself. I'm excited to try BookWright for next year's book!

In previous years I haven't included much text, but since I'm including our honeymoon in the 2015 book, I wanted to have descriptions of everything we did. I decided to stick to a minimal format, where I would have a small text box on the side.

Step 5 - Edit, edit, edit!

Make sure to preview your book before uploading it, to make sure that all the lines are flowing, the text is where you want it (I moved the boxes down to the bottom left and changed the date header after seeing this preview). 

Take as long as you want editing the book. One year I had slapped it all together to get the 40% off coupon from Blurb, and it arrived with typos (and I wrote that it had been my 21st birthday, not my 22nd). You don't want to have to go through it with white-out and a pen later. 

Step 6 - Order your book!

The best part of the project is getting it in the mail. Make sure you wait until your company has a discount code, so it's cheaper! 

Have an awesome time putting the book together!

DIY Matcha Green Tea Lattes

For Christmas I asked for matcha green tea. I've always wanted to get some, but it's more expensive than usual tea, so it wasn't in the budget. Nic's parents bought me Grand Cru Matcha from DavidsTea, They also got me a bamboo spoon, whisk, and a bowl from Teavana to prepare it in. 

Grand Cru Matcha, bamboo scoop, whisk, and bowl

In my year before university, I worked full-time at Starbucks. I got very frustrated cleaning the container for the matcha powder, so I decided I needed to test out my nemesis (it poofs powder everywhere if you're not careful). It turned out to be delicious!

Matcha is essentially the espresso of green tea: it's super highly concentrated, so with just hot water it can be pretty overwhelming if you're not a plain green tea drinker. Some people sweeten it with agave or honey, but I like it the way it is.

There are lots of health benefits to matcha, so check them out!

To make the green tea latte, start with a couple scoops of matcha, and mix it with a tablespoon or so of hot water.

Whisk the matcha and hot water well, to remove any chunks, and get that beaaaautiful froth going. You can use a regular whisk, of course, but since I got this adorable bamboo one, I had to use it.

I heat up the amount of milk that I want on the stove or in the microwave, and gently pour it into the frothed tea.

YUM!
Obviously you can pour it into a real mug and drink it from there, but I love how beautiful this bowl is, so I just drink it straight from there.
Let me know if you've tried them before or make them at home!

A Christmas-y Bath

If you've even been on my blog once ever, you'll know that I love baths. I also love my adorable clawfoot tub and will be sad to see it go when we move out.

I decided I would take a bath that is more Christmas-y. Basically, I bought Lush's Holly Golighty bubble bar which turned my bath water green with spicy clove, cinnamon, and patchouli. I also filled up the bath with my Vanilla and Shea Butter bubble bath from Joe Fresh.

As always, I used my Mint Julips lip scrub from Lush, and for Christmas, slathered on my Cranberry Joy body butter from the Body Shop (this year it's Frosted Cranberry).

I also compiled all the nail polishes I was considering putting on afterward. I put on Essie's Wicked, as always.

Green bathwater, and a hot chocolate in my Christmas mug from Home Sense.

My relaxing afternoon ritual

The day I wrote this post, I wasn't having a great day. I had been trying on dresses for the GoodLife Christmas party on Saturday, and was pretty depressed about how I was feeling in those dresses since my back has been out for a while, so I haven't been able to work out.
I bought the Bath & Body Works "Tis the Season" candle, grabbed my KOBO to read my current book ("The Essence" by Kimberly Derting"), Soap & Glory's "Heel Genius" and some coffee.

What do you do on a bad day?

Christmas Decor on a Budget

Christmas is absolutely my favourite time of the year. I love the music (I'm sorely missing good church music and singing in a choir this winter), the decor, the get-togethers, the excitement of picking out the "perfect" present for your loved ones, and celebrating Jesus' birth. 

The problem is, decorating and all that stuff gets expensive, and I'm guilty of wanting things to look adorably perfect. 

My number one tips for decorating for Christmas on a budget:

1. Buy things on sale after Christmas when it's all discounted.
1. This is easiest if you keep a steady theme over the years instead of thinking you need to redo everything year after year.
2. Make what you can
1. But remember that sometimes buying all the parts to make something can be more expensive than buying it.
3. Always use coupons. Michael's? Absolutely subscribe to it!
4. Find out if any friends are tired of their previous decor and are willing to give it to you or sell it for cheap. 
5. Plan your decor before you do any shopping, or make sure that you can return things you buy if they don't work well together.

I made this super easy advent wreath for our table. The wreath and candle set are from Bed Bath & Beyond, I bought them last year when we had the ridiculous post-Christmas sales. I threw on the gold beads from Dollarama which I had previously used as a garland on my tiny tree.

For the beginning of December, I put out this green tablecloth from Ten Thousand Villages since it's not overtly Christmasy, but it is green.

I set up this little vignette on the piano. The fake poinsettia and the pot are from IKEA, the red candle is from Dollarama, and the little statuette is a gift from Sweden.
Christmas lights always make things feel festive. Except that I have mine up year-round, because at night we like to cuddle on the couch in the romantic lighting. #newlyweds
For many years my youth choir performed at the Sankta Lucia celebration in Ottawa. We would sing Swedish Christmas carols, wear white robes, and hold candles in our hands. It was always a magical night. My Dad has been on a couple business trips to Sweden, so one year he brought back a little Sankta Lucia for me. She's adorable.

Earlier this week I posted about our Christmas tree. Despite fake trees not smelling right, not looking right, etc., you can buy them on sale, and save them for the next year. (Last year when Mom and I bought our large, real tree, it was at least $80. This tree was $25.) When decorating your tree, go for slowly collecting items that you can use for years and won't go out of style. Mom gave me the gold balls, which will probably be in our scheme for a while.
I may wish I had tons of vintage balls and other vintage ornaments, but for now, with our limited budget, that's not feasible. Maybe once we're both out of school? (Hah, that'll never happen lol.)
Cheap tree skirt? Put a pretty scarf down. This one isn't warm enough for the winter, so it was great covering up the plastic base.

Easiest wreath ever: grab a wreath on sale and add a fake bird. (Anyone remember Portland, "Put a bird on it!")

Every year I make my advent calendar using this little tree. I bought a set of 24 pearly bulbs, and have been putting them up one day at a time.

Merry Cookiemas! - Cookie Decorating Party

For our first Christmas, I wanted to host some sort of a Christmas cookie party. I figured for the three houses of my friends from undergrad, we should either make cookies together, or exchange them, so we have more cookies. We ended up decorating regular sugar cookies, and doing Maddie's cool egg-wash orange cookies, and splitting them up at the end. 

I set up our side table with the baked cookies (since Maddie was baking the orange ones in the kitchen at the same time), hot chocolate stuff, and someone even brought Bailey's.

Nic's parents lived in Zambia for a few years, and came back with this sugar cookie recipe. Nic was adament that we had to make!

Ingredients:

• 2 cups sugar
• 1 cup butter
• 1 tablespoon shortening
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup milk
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 6 cups flour

Instructions:

1. Cream sugar, butter, shortening, and salt.
2. Add eggs and vanilla and beat well.
3. Stir the baking powder into the flour.
4. Alternate adding milk and baking powder/flour mixture slowly.
5. Chill dough.
6. Roll out, cut out shapes, and bake at 350* for ~10 minutes.

I got these stunning copper cookie cutters at my bridal shower this spring, and I love how they look! My other cookie cutters are 5 dinosaurs that I got from Dollarama. We used both. 

 

We made basic icing with butter and icing sugar, and added food colouring.

 Maddie really wanted to do her egg-wash orange cookies. I'd never seen these before, so it was really cool to try them. I found a recipe from Pioneer Woman that you can try out. You roll them out, then paint them with different egg-washes, and then bake them.

I didn't do a cost breakdown, but I'm pretty sure that all of us chipping in for 4 dozen + cookies was cheaper than doing it all separately. And way more fun.

Oh Christmas Tree! - The Stories of my Ornaments

Nic and I picked up our first Christmas tree from Michael's when they had a 50% off sale on all trees. It's a bit taller than a meter, so a great size for a small apartment. We also got it pre-lit with white bulbs. It was about $25, which is great since it'll last us through until we get a house and can have a full-size tree. (And let's be honest, I'll still decorate the smaller tree!)

Since the tree is so small, we had to be selective about which ornaments went up. For the gold baubles, Mom had given me all her gold and red ones when she changed her own decorating scheme for Christmas. I used a mix of "brushed" and shiny ones.
Next, I had brought some of my favourite ornaments from home. There's a good mix of childish ones, keepsakes, and vintage.

In high school I started one of my favourite traditions, inspired by my Mom. Whenever Mom goes on a trip, she buys an ornament to remember it by. So of course on our honeymoon, Nic and I had to get an ornament. We chose this lobster trap from Cheticamp, which is the town right outside the Cape Breton Highlands Park where we camped.

This angel is from the Esterhazy Palace in Hungary. In grade 12 my music department toured Austria and Hungary. This was my first purchase for my keepsake ornaments. I think she's adorable, and it makes me happy every time I look at her.
The palace was owned by the Austrian royal family, and is gorgeous.
We had a ridiculous time getting to the palace from Budapest: of the 3 tour buses, ours caught on fire... Wait, what? There was smoke coming out of the engine, so we had to get off, (all of the instruments got taken off!) and wait for one of the other two buses to double back and get us.

Reading Week of first year university my residence sent about 40 of us on a Mennonite Disaster Service trip to Mississippi and Louisiana to help rebuild after Hurricane Katrina. My group worked in Pass Christian, Mississippi for the week. The depressing thing we learned while there was that even though most of the press focused on New Orleans, the most damage was around Pass Christian.
I learned how to put down laminate flooring and ceramic tiles.
We got to do some touristy things in New Orleans, (loved the French Quarter) so I got this Santa Claus riding a gator. One of the days I went on a short hike through a swamp, where you could see some baby gators a meter away, and big ones further away from us.

The hummingbird is one of my favourite ornaments. I got it from my great-grandmother who passed away when I was 5 or 6. I only met her a couple times since she was in Manitoba, but I've treasured it. I have always loved hummingbirds (second favourite bird after Canadian loons) and it's so delicate and beautiful.
I do usually have larger ornaments (it seems like 50% of my ornaments are ballerinas or ballet-related, but they're all too big for the scale of this tree) so someday we'll put them up on a big tree.

Of course, I can't forget this ornament that I cross-stitched for our first Christmas together!

What ornaments do you have on your tree? What stories go with them?