Today I...February 29th

Today I...


...am sharing this photo of one of the street signs in Old Montreal along with a few business signs. I love how all the signs in Old Montreal are kept similar. No neon signs are to be found there, they're all well lit wooden signs to keep them in tune with all the heritage buildings.

...am very pleased with all the work I got done.

...made an appointment with an optometrist, which I am quite happy about.

...am going out to dinner with my brother at our favorite sushi bar, Maïko Sushi If ever you are in Montreal and looking for a great sushi bar, this place is for you! Just make sure that you make reservations if you're heading in on a Friday or Saturday night, otherwise you may be in for a very long wait before you get a table!

...am looking forward to seeing my Sweetheart tomorrow!

...am not so much looking forward to what may be a bit of a messy traffic situation when I leave for work tomorrow as there is another snow storm headed this way. 'Tis the season!

Today I...February 28th

Today I...

...am sharing these two photos of my favorite Old Montreal art gallery with you: Le Bourget. I love to pop in there for a look every now and then, but not too often as there is no way on God's Green Earth I can afford any of their pieces!

...am finally back to normal, phew!

...spoke with my Sweetheart just after lunch. He was in the middle of inspecting part of the Lafontaine tunnel, walking along on top of it. I always find it quite amusing when he picks up in the middle of an inspection and says something along the lines of 'Oh hi! Yeah, I'm standing on top of such-and-such a bridge or tunnel. And yes, he does stop inspecting while he talks :oJ

...got my list of groups that will be coming to the Oratory during the novena and on the feast day of St. Joseph done. It's nine pages long so far, it may get another half-page or so longer, but we'll see. Now I'm working on the bus lists for the tour guides we'll have welcoming the groups to the Oratory and giving them little information sessions before they get off their buses. Oh and I got my seating plans done too! I'm getting along in my work, hopefully it will mean that I will be going less crazy that usual during the actual novena period :o)

...am enjoying watching Quinn watch my platys swim along in my fish tank. I have three of them now and they're by far her favorites and mine!

Today I...February 26th

Today I...

...am resurfacing for the second time. I've been run through the emotional wringer this past week and have not felt much like blogging at all, but I have done my best to keep up with your blogs.

...spent a large part of afternoon out and about in Old Montreal taking pictures. It was very therapeutic, although a bit chilly. Before I went out though, I took this picture of my two lovely ladies, Quinn and Magique, on my bed. I seem to recall someone (Kim?)mentioning that my new duvet cover looked rather barren without them when I posted a photo of it a week or two ago, so I had to remedy that :o)



...am sharing these two photos I took at the Sulpicien Seminary on Notre-Dame Street with you. The Fathers left their front gate open today, so I couldn't resist going through and taking a few photos there.



Can you see the sparrows in the shrub?



I'm going to try my best to blog more this week. I'm feeling quite a bit better, so I should be able to get another post up on Tuesday, unless my Sweetheart comes over of course :o)

Skywatch Friday

This week's Skywatch feature is a shot of Downtown Montreal under a bright blue Winter sky. To see more Skywatch photos from around the world, you can drop by the Skywatch Blog.

Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by :o)

Today I...February 22nd

Today I...

...am resurfacing. I've been having a bit of a rough week for a variety of reasons, but figured I should drop in and thank you for the birthday wishes and let you all know that despite a few bumps in the road, I had a very nice birthday weekend with my family (Sweetheart included of course).

...am sharing another song from the Twilight: Breaking Dawn soundtrack with all of you. Ignore the vampires and the movie from if they're not your thing and just listen and feel the music, it's amazing. I might share another song from the soundtrack with you later this week :o)

...am going to leave it at that for tonight. I have a migraine and am quite tired, so I'm going to wait for my Sweetheart to call me back and will then head off to bed.

Today I...February 18th

Today I...

...am having a run-of-the-mill 'Today I...' post with no pictures as I am in a bit of a hurry!

...got my vacuuming and dish washing done this morning.

...spoke with my Sweetheart for a bit to see what time I could head over to his place at.

...went out for lunch with my mom and my brother for my birthday (it's tomorrow)

...had my brother help me with a few errands as I needed a bag of kitty litter and I'm not strong enough to carry those very far on my own.

...got myself two new fish and a new aquarium light with a timer as my has been burned out for nearly a week now.

...had a look around my kitchen after my brother left to see what trick he had played on my this time and found all my spice bottles turned upside down.

...turned my spice bottles right side up again.

...am going to be heading out to my sweetheart's in a little while. I'm going to make us roast beef and veggies for dinner and am then dragging him to the grocery store and making darn sure that he gets ingredients to make me waffles for my birthday breakfast tomorrow!

...am fondly remembering how this time last year I was on the train heading to Toronto to visit my Sweetheart there for the last time before he moved back to Montreal. Time flies!

Skywatch Friday

This week's Skywatch feature is another picture from love Mont-Tremblant! I will try and get out to take some more pictures this weekend if the weather cooperates, but from here in Montreal this time. I am long overdue for a nice photography walk!

I hope you all have a nice weekend, a great way to start it off would be to stop by the Skywatch Friday blog to have a look at all the other amazing Skywatch photos that are on display there!

Today I...February 15th

Today I...

...am back with more before and after photos from my big clean-up this past weekend! I'm sorry for the delay in posts, but Sunday I ended up having a girls' evening with three of my friends, Monday night was choir practice and last night I spent a lovely Valentine's Day evening with my Sweetheart :o)

So, my bedroom is done! I put the finishing touches on it on Sunday by buying a new duvet cover and pillow sham set and putting them on my bed. Getting a duvet into a duvet cover is quite the challenge for me since I'm quite small. I actually have to climb into duvet covers with the duvet to them all the way into the end!

Anyhow, here is my bedroom before I decluttered it and got my new duvet cover set:




The duvet cover I had in the 'before' pictures belonged to my parents before it belonged to me. It was about 10 years old and was getting old, faded and frayed. The box and garbage bag in front of my mirror were full of stuff that I either gave away or moved to other rooms in my apartment. Once it was empty, I filled it with the dishes and food that I hauled down to the laundry room and my riding boots went into my cleaned out hall closet.

Here is my bedroom now, with the new duvet cover set and the box and boots cleared out! A big thank you to my grandparents who bought it for me for my birthday :o) How do you like it?

Today I...February 11th

Today I...

...cleaned and de-cluttered my entire apartment, and I mean my ENTIRE apartment. Every pantry, closet and drawer that needed it. The only exceptions to this were my night table, photo drawers and the storage areas beneath my counters. My next few posts will contain before and after photos, or simply after photos (because I didn't take before photos of two of my closets since they were just so, so cluttered). So, today we have before and after photos of my kitchen, particularly my kitchen cupboard!

Here are the before shots,





...and here are the after shots!





And here is what I did with all the stuff I cleaned out of those two cupboards:



I brought the box down to the laundry room and plunked it down on the sorting table. It's what everyone in my building does when they have stuff to give away. I'll bet the Tostitos and nacho dips I put in there will be the first things to go! Oh, and if you're wondering why one of the pantry doors was on the floor, it's because it broke clean off the hinges while the previous tenant was clearing his stuff out of my apartment before I moved in a year and a half ago. I hid the door between my fridge and the wall this afternoon :o)

I also hauled away at least five bags of stuff that I threw away while cleaning and filled four bags of clothes and things to give away. I carried two of those bags to the goodwill bins up the street on my way to the grocery store and will bring the other two bags over to the bins tomorrow. I will also go out shopping for a new duvet cover, shower curtain and some towels tomorrow.

Skywatch Friday

This week's Skywatch feature is another, more cloudy photo taken at Mont-Tremblant two weeks ago. The weather was sunny all all morning, but clouds and some chillier, windier conditions moved in towards the end of the day, fortunately just as the chair lifts were getting ready to close down for the day.

To see more Skywatch photos from around the world, you can stop by the Skywatch Friday blog.

Thanks for visiting and have a great weekend :o)

Today I...February 8th

Today I...

...am sharing this wonderful jazz singer I discovered yesterday. As you can see from the album cover, her name is Emilie-Claire Barlow and she's Canadian!!! That's always a big plus for me :o) I'm mostly a classical music fiend, but really, I'll listen to just about anything and quite enjoy jazz of this kind. She actually reminds me of Diana Krall, for any of you who know of her.

...had a good day at work.

...went out to run a few errands after work, namely to use an SAQ (Quebec liquor commission, like the LCBO in Ontario. Basically a store that sells nothing but booze) gift card that my mom gave me for Christmas to get myself a half bottle of Grand Marnier. I wanted a full size bottle, but had no clue that the stuff was so darn expensive!!! This shows you how often I buy booze :oJ

...popped into Renaud-Bray (French language equivalent of Chapters, Indigo or Barnes and Noble)to get a Valentine's Day gift for my Sweetheart and walked out of there 84$ and small change later with my Sweetheart's gift and card plus an absolutely perfect picture frame for my apartment sprucing up project. It's actually a collection of frames put together to for a big one, so I'll be able to fill it with a whole variety of my pictures. It's going to go above my couch in the living room, I can't wait to set it up!

...am hoping to get started on my sprucing up project Friday night or Saturday during the day :o)And yes Gill, I will try and post before and after pictures!

Today I...February 7th

Today I...

...am not feeling so great. I have a weird headache, I think it's from spending too much time leaning my head in my hands during a meeting this morning. A two and a half hour meeting. I really hate meetings, especially our bi-weekly departmental meeting which is always too long and incredibly boring and apparently hazardous to my health :ox

...had a bit of soup when I got home to see if my headache was getting worse because I was so hungry. I think it may have been, but the jury's still out on that.

...finished coping all of my contacts from my Yahoo mail account to my Gmail account. I started shifting all of my stuff from one account to another yesterday when I went into my Yahoo account to discover that it had 'eaten' the two e-mails I had left in my inbox and had sent everything from my 'keep' folder into the trash bin. I was not impressed and fished everything that had been in my 'keep' folder out of the trash and sent it back where it belonged and then promptly sent an e-mail to all my contacts telling them that they could now only contact me through my Gmail address. I had been having a few issues with Yahoo lately, namely messages not reaching their destinations and yesterday's fiasco was the cherry on the sundae.

...printed out a series of e-mails my Sweetheart had sent me that I had found particularly touching and added them to the folder of similar e-mails of his I keep. Yes, people do still keep their old love letters :o)

...am looking forward to beginning the little face lift I want to give my apartment. I was getting tired of it and the rent went up which made the situation worse, so after talking with my Sweetheart on the weekend and thinking about our conversation, I decided that the thing to do was to clear out some clutter, ask for a new bedding ensemble for my birthday and some new towels and other little home decor odds and ends and give the place a few touch ups! I have been feeling very good about all this since making the decision and am looking forward to the finished product!

Today I...February 5th

Today I...

...am sharing these two pictures from my cousin E's wedding with all of you. One is a detail of her wedding dress and the other is a close-up of the bridesmaids dresses. It is E's and her husband C's second wedding anniversary tomorrow, time sure flies!

...spent the day with my Sweetheart. I headed over to his place last night after dinner.

...woke up highly relieved that the neighbors' child either slept through the night, or slept elsewhere than in the master bedroom. We didn't hear him until nearly 9:00 A.M.

...am more than likely going to order my dinner in. I sold my old iPod Touch to a friend for 60$, so I have some unexpected cash on hand :o)

Today I...February 4th

Today I...

...am sharing this picture of the barrel that the sugar shack at Mont-Tremblant keeps snow in for making maple taffy. It is a real treat to be able to have maple taffy in the dead of Winter, let me tell you! We normally only get it at the very end of Winter into early Spring!

...had a nice, quiet Saturday.

...slept a good, solid ten hours. I was very tired, it was a build-up from Wednesday night when I was at my Sweetheart's for the night and his neighbors, who are Chinese and had come home after spending several months in China with their baby, kept us up pretty much all night. Or more likely their poor jet lagged baby did. I don't know what possessed them to travel with a baby who didn't have a sleep pattern established yet someplace where he would end up with 12 hours of jet lag, but it sure made a lot of other people in the condo building just as miserable as he was!

...decided to make some bolognese sauce, it's simmering now and boy, does it smell good!

Skywatch Friday

This week's Skywatch photo is this view from the top of Mont-Tremblant this past weekend. Breathtaking views like this one is the main reason that I love downhill skiing :o)

To see more Skywatch photos, you can stop by the Skywatch Friday blog. Thank you for visiting my blog and have a lovely weekend!