Category Archives: Life & Photography

Registering for The Dream

My fiancé and I had planned on registering for our wedding gifts at two different stores from the beginning of our wedding planning venture. We love cooking and entertaining so we knew we wanted to register at a one of a kind, one hundred year old kitchen and entertaining institution located in the heart of our quaint hometown. This poses an immediate problem as several of our guests won’t be coming from our distant hometown. To solve this problem we decided we would register at a national chain store in addition to the boutique shop with only one obscure location. For many reasons, including the old, ‘this used to be better,’ we decided to not register at the small town store and register only at the national chain department store. This large well known store is The Bay, it was one of the first department stores in Canada, and therefore, just about every city has at least one. They also boast being “Canada’s biggest and best gift registry.” These facts left us feeling pretty confident that we would be able to find everything we had ever wanted or needed with this one store – we were sorely mistaken. Continue reading

Ways to Stay Active in the Winter

As a Canadian, I know that I am supposed to love our long, cold winters, or at least pretend to. Many of us do legitimately embrace the winter months, looking forward to the perfect beauty of a freshly fallen snow, just pure and delicate enough to sparkle under the lunar light… at 5:30 PM. They see the ever darkening days as a sign of snowy fun to come. They bundle up and brave the wind chill, seemingly unaffected by that freezing sensation in their boots and mittens, where once healthy, soft and smooth toes and fingers existed. I am certainly not one of these people. Continue reading

Email Etiquette

Growing up, I though I was the only one who despised the telephone and detested the though of what troubling stranger could possibly be on the other end of that intrusive ringing. When I was a young teenager, we actually used to have to hold a conversation with a parent or sibling of our friend before we could speak with them on the phone, which at the time, was the only method faster than sending a letter. Even though that bygone time was only a decade ago, the technology of communication has advanced at such a rapid pace as to make it sound as if I came of age while corsets were going out of style. This technological supernova expansion rate proved I was not alone. Continue reading

Bring Back the Thighs

My earliest memory of feeling self-conscious took place when I was about six years old and being picked up from school by my father. It must have been a Friday because he was also picking up my cousin of the same age and our friend. As we buckled up our seat-belts in the backseat of the hot car I noticed something, even though the three of us were pretty close in height and weight, my thighs looked bigger than theirs. This was the beginning of a life-long insecurity about my thighs, reinforced every time I would watch my mother getting ready for a night out and listen to her complaining about the very same part of her body. Throughout my life, I have worked hard to maintain a healthy body, but all of the discipline and determination in the world couldn’t make up for the fact that I have neglected to obtain a healthy body image. The time for change is long overdue. Continue reading