I Want to Go Tile Shopping!

This weekend my friend and I made plans to go to this giant tile store in the city (discount tile store! woo-hoo!) but it was CLOSED. On a Saturday!! Why on Earth would a tile store not be open on a Saturday? That is like, optimal tile-shopping day in my opinion. And then all the other tile stores were closed by like 5pm and it was already 4pm so we never went tile shopping. Yes, I am terrible at planning tile-shopping trips.

Planning a bathroom reno is hard. Way harder than I expected. See, if you gave me 5 choices, I could totally pick out one! But right now I have unlimited bathroom options and I am drowning in choice!! I change my mind every single day. I think if I can pick tiles, perhaps I will gain a vision. I am 100% behind white or light grey tiles for the floor and shower, so then other choices and switcheroos would be super easy. Neutrals for the win!

But here are my thinkerings so far and I want you to weigh in!

1. Extending the tile:

What if I extended the shower tile all the way on this wall behind the toilet? That might be different and fun! Plus then I could always stare and smile at my pretty shower tile.

2. Beadboard or board and batten or wainscoting or something fun like that??

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 I love this look, but my bathroom is super small and it might not be big enough to bother.

3. Paint colour?

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Sometimes all I can think of doing is to paint the bathroom some super fun colour, like hot-pink! Because I am a single gal and this may be my only chance to paint a room a super girly colour (of course I would repaint for resale...let's not be silly). But then I start to doubt my idea of getting a dark vanity because I don't know if it would look as good with bright paint as white would. And trust me, when you are comparing the awesomeness of hot pink versus navy and yellow, it would be nice to know that both go with the vanity.

4. Should I replace the medicine cabinet with something larger and offers more storage? Or what about open shelving with pretty baskets? Why do I have so much crap in my bathroom? These are the ideas that keep me up at night.

Besides the 600 design decisions I am agonizing over, I am also trying to figure out budget. I can guesstimate the cost of a vanity and tile, as my friend just did a similar reno and she advised me on the awesome deals she scored at the tile store that closes on Saturdays. But I have no clue on contractors. I don't want to tile the shower myself because I have never done tiles and you don't want to screw up where water damage could be involved! And now that people know I am renovating, contractor friend of friends are coming out of the woodwork and I am wary to working with friends or family because it can be hard to be honest with their work.

Oh, but in good reno news, I found out the pool on the 9th floor has a change room and said change room has a shower and a toilet! yay! So I can stay clean during my reno! But hopefully I will have a toilet because I don't know if they lock that room at night. haha. Maybe I should befriend my neighbour?

End of story- if I end up with 5 contractors who make me board and batten out of tiles and paint the walls hot pink and navy stripes, you can totally understand.

Design is hard.

Why Being Bald is Awesome

For an update on what-in-the-world I'm talking about- click here

So, I am nine weeks into my treatment. Nine weeks of rubbing stupid vaseline onto my head, sitting for long periods of time (now up to 35 minutes!) and then washing it off, only to have it get on everything and stain it. And really, I am not noticing any changes. I thought for awhile my peach fuzz was getting fuzzier, but it aint. In fact, I think I have defuzzed a bit.

It makes me sad. It's been putting me into a bad funk about having lost my hair all over again. Therefore I decided to write a list of why being bald rocks and I hope that this list will trump my sucky list that keeps playing in my head.

1. No shaving
2. No sweaty gym-hair
3. I can do my hair the night before
4. No wet hair in the winter
5. Wanna see if a hair colour looks good on you? Just try it on
6. I won't go gray
7. Random people stop and ask me how I get my eyebrows so perfect. Which is...odd. haha. I hope it's a compliment?
8. I can put on false eyelashes in 5 seconds flat
9. I still have my health
10. I can get tattoos of eyes on the back of my hair to freak my future children out
11. I can put my wig on my cat and call him pretty
12. I know my friends love me for me and not just because I am ridiculously good looking
13. I can't get lice
14. I can see the back of my head when putting curls in my hair
15. I only have to wash my hair every few weeks
16. Long hair today? Short hair today? Easy peasy lemon squeezy
17. No bed head
18. No hair on my face when I sleep
19. If it is in stock, I can try out a haircut before taking the plunge!
20. No roots
21. No visible dandruff
23. I can hide my tattoos at work, but impress people with my awesomeness at the beach or gym
24. I am aerodynamic

25. If these kids can rock out AND battle cancer, why can't I rock out just for being bald?

My Tips: Eating Healthy Made Easy!

FYI- This post is completely my opinion and not sponsored in any way.

Trying to lose weight or maybe even gain? Or can't figure out why you are gaining weight when you eat "totally normal" amount of food? There is an amazing free web tool that can help!! www.livestrong.com.

With Livestrong, you can enter in all your details (age, weight, height, lifestyle) and then tell it how much weight you want to gain or lose per week and it will calculate how many calories you need to consume in a day to attain your goals!

So that is step 1. Step 2 is actually tracking your food intake and exercise using MyPlate to make sure you stay on track with calories. You just look up what you eat and enter how much you ate and it will track your calories!

Now say you ate an entire pizza for dinner. You enter it here:

Then it will show up here (this helps you see what time of day you may be overindulging)

Then you can track your overall calories here. The bar will turn red when you over-do it!

Finally, you can use this section to monitor fats, salts, and other delicious things.

You can also use the program for tracking your weight, water consumption, and other important things. The one downfall is building recipes ingredient by ingredient, but they now have a recipe tool so you only have to build it once and save it!

AND DID I MENTION THIS PROGRAM IS F-R-E-E?

That's right folks, there is no harm in trying it out! They do offer a Gold membership for a fee, which offers a few more options, but I love the free version!

I just thought today I would share this because we have probably all jammed a lot of junk in our tummies over the summer and now it is time to hunker down before Christmas cookies come to town. :P

The other news, my favourite food ever is Chicken Dolsot Bibimbap and The Toronto Star just tested the calories and it is saddening. Check out the article- you MAY recognize the person interviewed!!

My Trip to the Shawville Fair!

Usually when it is a long weekend, I sit at home and wonder where all my friends went. But not this year! This year my friend Jeni invited me to her hometown in Shawville, Quebec for the Shawville Fair. Any this isn't some silly small town carnival, it is a huge fair that attracts tens of thousands of people each year!! I was very excited to attend!

We rented a car and left Friday after work, arriving in Shawville around 11pm. The first night was low key and we mostly hung out at her house. But the next day (after a glorious sleep in) we headed out to the fair! Her mom had entered some baking and flowers arrangements in their competition and we walked around to see what she had won (quite a few blue and red ribbons! She is a superstar!) and then we toured the barns to see poultry, bunnies, cows, and horses. After that we sat and watched some sort of awesome horse costume contest. I told Jeni this is CLEARLY how dressage was meant to be done.

We loved the pirate hat on the horse

We took a break from watching the horses to take some fun photos. It was a hot day, so in between beers, it is important to distract yourself.

We also went to the petting zoo! But we just went to look. I ain't wasting my food monies on donkeys and sheep.

Either Jeni just saw someone she knows, or she's hitting on a llama

But, of course, the most important part of a fair is the food! I made it my mission to eat everything, but I failed big time (I will have to go back next year for the deep fried mars bars). Over the course of the weekend I did enjoy some pizza, ice cream, milkshake, beavertails, poutine, and mini donuts! I have the drawstring pants on today to prove it.

This was a SMALL ice cream!

That night we hung out with Jeni's childhood friends who were a great bunch, but I got sick! I don't know what it is, but I always have a day of feeling sick on vacation. Jeni thinks it may be stress-related, and I think it is over-indulging (even though, let's face it, I over-indulge all the time). In the end, we theorized maybe it was the beer. So when I am in Mexico in a few weeks, I'm gonna stick to straight up tequila.

The next day, we had a day of music! First we went to see Jeni's father and his band, Thursday Morning, play! They were super awesome and even though I don't usually listen to bluegrass, I was tapping my foot the whole time. It was super duper hot and I felt bad for the poor band up on stage trying to play instruments!

Rockstar!

That night we went to the midway with some friends who had kids (the joy of overpriced, probably-gonna-break-down-and-kill-you rides had long passed for the adults)

Then we went over to the stage to have a beer and watch the headliner, Terri Clark, sing! She is a pretty big Canadian country singer so we knew a few songs and enjoyed watching some of the show!

On our last day, Monday, we went to the bank because I ran out of junk-food money and laughed to find out the city was OUT of $20 bills and I had to take out $50s! Then I used the $50 to buy a water because I'm a high-roller like that.

That afternoon we went to the demolition derby! It was a lot of fun watching these cars smash into each other and luckily there were no injuries (compared to watching horse musical chairs on Saturday when some lady broke her ankle on a bad dismount). It was SO hot and dusty! The fire department kept wetting the dirt, but every now an again a huge cloud of dust would fly into the crowd. We were so dirty!!

I think this is a true "farmer's tan"

Then, late Monday afternoon we had to wash our feet, pack up our bags, hug the parents goodbye, and start the long drive back to the city. I am going to miss the countryside and fair!!! (But maybe not the dirt)

My New Face Accessory!

No Mom & Dad, I didn't get any facial piercings (putting you through 5 years of my tongue-ring phase is probably enough for your lifetime) but I did finally get my new glasses! yay!

I found the whole process pretty intimidating. First, I considered all my options for styles before going to the store:

Should I go for something practical?

Something that clearly articulates who I am?

Or maybe something hip and trendy, like the celebrities wear?

In the end, I went with something simple and fun! But before I reveal, I will walk you through the process. I went to Lenscrafters because they have a HUGE selection, which turned out to be a blessing and a curse! I took a friend and I must have tried on 100 pairs. The store employees gave us a box to put the "maybes" in and left us to ourselves, which I enjoyed (I hate pressure to buy). So every time we liked a pair, they went in the box. At the end I had about 5 or 6 pairs that I liked. Then we went through them one by one to compare and we worked our way down to only 3 pairs. Then we did quick comparisons to see which was best (i.e. quickly switching up on my face). Lenscrafters will also take photos of you and put 4 side by side so you can make a decision, which was awesome but we didn't bother with.

Eventually we were down to two and I was torn because I loved one pair, but I wasn't sure about the black frames. We left the store to wander and shop and my friend kept telling me she loved them on me, they just took getting used to (she wasn't sure about the black at first either). Eventually we went back and I tried them again and had Lenscrafters take photos this time. I was finally sold! It didn't hurt that they were $100 less than the brown ones I liked. haha. Lenscrafters is super fast and I was able to pick them up in ONE HOUR! I had no idea you could get glasses that fast!

Since I only am going to wear these for work (to prevent eye fatigue from my giant computer screen) I was nervous for my boss and coworker to see them, but they both loved them! In fact, my boss raved for a good five minutes. So, even though Lenscrafters has a 90 day return policy (no strings attached!) I think I will be keeping these puppies:

I took these photos at work because that's where my glasses will live. And my work computer takes surprisingly good photos of me.

So here are my tips for glasses shopping
- Decide right away whether a large selection or small selection is better for you! A smaller store might be nicer if you are indecisive
- Don't bother shopping around. If you can't pick one after trying on 100 pairs, no other store is going to be different. The problem is you!
- Bring a good friend who will be honest with you. I brought someone and also was sending photos to another friend. Too many opinions confused me, though
- Take photos to help stay objective
- Look out for sales! My lenses were 50% off
- Make sure they not only look good, but are comfortable. Mine are super light and I adjusted to wearing them very quickly
- Remember that you will get used to a new style and won't think so much about it a week or two later. Kinda like some of my tattoos. haha

Did You Do Some Hard Labour, This Labour Day?

No? Because I know one guy that did 32 years ago!

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Actually, Terry's run ended on Sept 1st of that year, which happened to be Labour Day. He had run 5,373km in 143 days to raise money for cancer- ON ONE LEG!

I am not asking you to run a marathon today, but I am asking you to help me honour Terry Fox by helping raise money for cancer research in Canada. One way you can do this is to donate to my team as we prepare to go 10km at the Terry Fox Run on Sept 16th. Our team goal is $1000 and so far we have raised $325! And I still haven't sent my annual email to family and friends yet, so it is a great start!

To donate, please click this link or contact me at CaseyinTO @ gmail.com

TO DONATE TO TEAM AMAZING CLICK HERE!!!

I hope you had a happy and safe long weekend! I have been out of town so you will have to wait until tomorrow for some fun new stuff!

Hugs and Butterfly Kisses,

Casey