...But first, coffee (with Jen)

Last week was super busy, and this week promises to be just as action packed! We have a bunch of family visiting and a group of the cousins spent some quality time in Petty Harbour . The town of Petty Harbour is beautiful!  The roads are narrow, the scent of the sea is everywhere, and there are great places to eat.  We certainly love our food here on the island. We all met at Chafe's Landing for great food, toe-tapping music and much needed catching up. It was a great time!  I was the last to arrive because I was waiting for a shuttle from work to the car dealership, so that I could pick up my SUV from a service appointment.  But, that was ok, I arrived in typical family fashion - late (LOL). Next stop was Hooked for ice cream.  I went way into the dark side of bad (but delicious!) eating this evening. Ha ha!  Hooked has a menu listing of a variety of ice cream options, one being "Freak Milkshakes" (I think that's the term) - and it d...

As Summer starts to fade into Fall, peak wedding season is wrapping up here for the year. Just this weekend past I stood as the Maid of Honor (well...the correct term is Matron of Honor because I'm already married, but the term "Matron" makes me feel old - lol) for my sister's wedding. This is the 3rd wedding that I've had the honor of standing in, and I thought that it would be a good idea to pass on my gained knowledge from these experiences. The titles that I've had are: Junior Bridesmaid, Bridesmaid, and Maid of Honor.  And, as a side note, I have also co-MC'ed my friends wedding with 2 of my best friends. Without further delay...Here is what you can expect by agreeing to stand in a wedding: Leading up to the Wedding: - Attending bridal shows with the bride and speaking with vendors .  This involves taste-testing samples, holding bags, and a small entrance fee for the bridal show itself. Wear comfy shoes, pants with stretch, and have two free han...

We have traveled from Canada to Florida a few times now, and each trip has been a little different.  We have found what works for us, and we use this information when planning future trips. If you're looking to travel to Florida and you are on a budget, then these tips may work out well for you. Set a realistic budget. Travel is expensive. So, plan ahead - research where you want to go, what you can expect to pay to get there and how much you will need to do the activities that you want to do while on vacation.  Start putting away funds ahead of time to cover the costs of the trip. When planing for Florida we add the price that we anticipate for flights, park tickets, food and shopping. Choose your traveling time wisely. The price of flights fluctuate quite frequently. When planning we have seen flights pop up with hundreds of dollars in the difference.  So, do your research, fly during the low (or off) season when possible, and set up flight price monitoring...

Like most Harry Potter fans, I'm still waiting for my letter to Hogwarts to arrive via an owl.  But, until then, I've settled for visiting the Harry Potter sections of Universal Studios. Most of this post will be Harry Potter related because that is were I take most of my Universal park pic's, and, during this visit, we experienced rain while we were visiting.  So, the photo ops didn't happen because we were running from cover to cover in our neon ponchos. We visited the two sections over two days.  If you want to do both sections in the one day you do need a park hopper pass.  We didn't bother seeing it all in the one visit because we wanted to revisit the area on day two to spread out the fun.  If you do have a park hopper ticket, take the Hogwarts Express when traveling from side to side because it is a different experience each way. On one of these days in Universal we ate lunch at the Three Broomsticks. Why?  Because we haven't eaten he...

Back in May myself, my hubby and a friend took a trip to Florida to see the parks (again!).  I love going to the Disney and Universal Studios theme parks.  The combination of the warm sun, sights, thrill rides, food and shopping does it for me every time. There is a lot of planning that goes into a 10 day trip like this. First, we visit during off season.  So, we miss the intense heat and long ride wait lines.  I'll post all the details on how we plan our Florida trips a little later because this post is just going to be gushing about the amazing time we had. At Epcot we experienced the Flower and Garden Festival. This festival is filled with beautiful sprawling flower displays, amazing character topiary (see the Stitch topiary behind me?), and featured menu items throughout. We've been to Epcot for the Food and Wine Festival, and I'm allergic to certain plants, but I think that this is my favorite time of year to be at Epcot.  I loved walking around t...

One of the events that I love, that happen in the Summer, is the Blueberry Festival. I've been there many times, growing up with family, and later on with my husband.  This year I ventured out with THREE of my work friends - all of which never been to the Blueberry Festival before! (Pic stolen from Andy - blog linked below)  These are a great bunch of ladies - they love to get out and see the sights, they are awesome to work with, and they are fantastic lunch buddies!  In fact, Andy (second from far right) already has her blog post up about the festival and you should check it out!  Here is the link to the Blueberry Festival post:  Just Being Andie .  I'm tots slow at getting this post up. It irked me a little that I didn't have any clear pictures of The Brigus Tunnel for my last feature on Brigus - so I fixed that with this trip.  I'm sure that I had pictures but they were lost when my computer crashed and needed to be brought back to fact...

Myself and my husband love breaking out a board game on quiet evenings at home.  Sometimes the weather is bad, while other times we are looking for something different to break up the mundane. Either way, we always have a blast and we have built up quite the collection over the years.  This post will focus on the newest game to our collection. (This post contains affiliated links.  Meaning that I may college a share of the sales or other compensation from the Amazon links on this page.) For my birthday this year hubby bought me my favorite game to date - Ticket to Ride Europe !  We started playing this game, and a few others, at a local gaming hangout called Doughnuts & Dragons (now closed). They had a wide assortment of games ranging from 2-6 (or 8?) players and the game boxes were color coded with stickers so you could easily pick out a game to play based on how many people were in your party.  This was the second of this type of hangout in the city...