a little secret

i buy my jeans from ardene. the teeny-bopper store that mostly sells tacky/trendy jewelry. i have repeatedly tried on skinnies at stores like gap, american eagle, winners. the ardene ones just fit me better. if you have a hard time finding skinnies, you may as well try ardene's. their jeans are around $20, so you can't go wrong.

hotel review: robin hood hotel, grand falls, NL

(oh, those orange walls)  

price: around $110. pretty standard for the area
bathroom: fairly ugly, old, and tiny
pool: nope
breakfast: maybe the worst continental breakfast i have ever had, and i have had a lot. toast, fruit loops, coffee, orange juice. that's it.
wifi: yes, free
tv: good. we watched dragon's den. addictive
location: not awesome. the town is pretty small though, so no biggie
parking: free
notes: in the morning when we went down for the little breakfast, it was not set up. apparently someone didn't show up for their shift, so the breakfast ended up being 2 hours late. there was an apology, but still a weird situation. also, the entire hotel has this 80's blue carpeting that appears super duper dirty. i would never ever stay there again.

a little trip to grand falls

 (really loving our snowshoes)

soo, we decided to take a little overnight trip to Grand Falls, which is about an hour from Gander. the main reason is that they have a movie theatre, and we were itching to see this movie, with all it's awards and good reviews. when we got there, we realized that i had read the schedule wrong, and actually this movie was playing, which looked truly terrible. we opted to watch bad reality tv instead.

if i'm honest, there really isn't much to do in Grand Falls. we asked the cabbie where was a good place to eat. he asked us if we like expensive, mcdonalds, or chinese. those were our three options. we chose expensive, but that restaurant happened to be closed, so he took us to chinese. i am not a buffet fan, but it seemed like the cool thing to do. i don't know what goes into that chinese food, but i was loving it. pineapple chicken? amazing

some cool things to do in Grand Falls in winter:
- snowshoe. there are lots of trails
- outdoor ice skating. we were sad we didn't bring our skates, because the little makeshift rink looked awesome
- play pool. we did this in a cute little bar
- get chinese food. might as well

on a snow day

on friday a blizzard hit newfoundland. we didn't get it too bad, but we did lose power for the entire day on friday. no work (sweet!), no heat, no internet, no power. it was kind of awesome. we cracked the nuts that we got during the holidays, we organized kitchen cabinets, we used what remained of our battery power on the laptops to watch a movie while piled high with blankets. jon made us coffee with our camp stove and expired instant coffee. we ate pb+js. it was a good day.

thoughts on 6 months ago

this is a long one. unless you are currently planning a wedding, you might not be too interested.

we were married 6 months ago today. i know it sounds hard to believe, but every single day of this marriage has been a tiny bit better than the one before. i guess for me it's about knowing that you are a part of a team. we were a team before we were married, but that little piece of paper really does make things feel different for me.

anyway, a couple things about our wedding did not go as planned. i am sure that many, many brides secretly feel this way. weddings are just so crazy because the bride (usually, along with the coordinator, maid of honour, mother of bride) spends tons of time and energy (and money) planning this day. then on the big day, you are supposed to "just enjoy it". so on that day, people are constantly coming up to you saying things like, "i totally just want you to enjoy your day, BUT there's this problem that is happening that i just wanted to let you know because i don't know what to do, and we need to fix it." examples from my wedding day:

1. the limo. the driver was super young and super new, and did not know his way around moncton. he was an hour late because he couldn't find the salon. when he finally came (to the parking lot of the hardware store next door), he wanted me to pay cash for the limo. i explained to him that i had already paid with my visa by phone weeks before. he was not having that. he wanted cash. he offered to drive me in the limo to an ATM (though he didn't know where any ATMs were). i had him call his manager (who was not working that day, of course). 15 minutes later, he had talked to his manager, and we were on our way. but really, not too fun.

2. the spa. i treated all my girls to pedicures at a fancy spa the day before the wedding. it was so fun, we had wine, and really had the best time. later that night, we got a call from the spa. we were all at the party my parents were hosting. the spa had accidentally undercharged me. i told them i didn't have my wallet with me (i was at my pre-wedding party), but i would do it first thing monday morning. they said no, they needed the money right then. i couldn't really leave my own party to go back and get my wallet, and we had just spent around $800 at the spa that day, so i really couldn't believe they couldn't just settle the bill two days later. the tip alone would have more than covered the amount i had been undercharged by. anyway, it was really upsetting, and i would never ever go back to this spa again because of it.

then there are a few parts of the wedding that i would totally do differently:

1. the photographer. j and i love taking pictures of our life and travels, but we are not fans of professional photos. we knew we would never put a picture of us on our wedding day up on the wall. just not our style. when we booked a photographer, i really wanted to get lots of pics of our guests. but i never told the photographer that. so she took as many pics of j and i as she could. but when all the guests did the wave before the ceremony, and when my university friends were all reuniting and chatting before the reception, the photographer was just chilling, waiting to take more pics of j and i. i wish i would have told the photographer what i wanted. seems so simple now.

2. the drinks. for j and i, drinks were really important. i think offering guests a drink right away makes them feel welcome. at our reception, the servers waited a full 30 minutes after we were all seated to pour the wine. i think maybe they didn't want to interrupt the impromptu speeches that were happening, i'm not sure. if i had a do-over, i would just have the bottles of wine at the tables so guests could serve themselves right away.

the issues may have been mostly because i had never met a single one of my vendors until the day of the wedding. our wedding ended up being a total success, and i think everyone had a great time, despite these little things. though j and i are both so happy we get to just be guests at our friend's weddings from now on.