Nature Museum Date Night

Happy Monday! 

I hope everyone had a restful Christmas and a great start to the new year! Mine was busy to say the least, and unfortunately, also included catching the flu. So there you go, that's my excuse for such a long absence! 

We spent Christmas with Ryan's family this year, and had a really nice and relaxing time with them in Richmond. After that, we headed down to Kingston, for a holiday visit with my family, before taking the train back up north to Quebec City for New Year's Eve. I'll be posting more all about that later this week, but since I've been either away or sick for the past month, I'm a bit back-logged with posts! 

So in any case, today's post is about a date night that Ryan and I went on back in the first week of December. Since I now have evenings free from work, we took the opportunity to swing by the Nature Museum for a little date. 

The museum happens to be less than a 10 minute walk from our apartment, which was great since I recall it was a bit colder that evening. Every Thursday, after 5:00 pm the museum has free admission to all of its usual galleries, so if you happen to be free during that time, I would highly recommend checking out the museum. 

My favorite exhibit is probably the mammal gallery, although I'm also a really big fan of the dinosaur gallery too! It took us just over an hour to tour three galleries (mammal, dinosaur, and water) before we decided to head home for dinner! All in all, a great date night activity! Bonus for being free too! 

I'm Back!

So after over a month of being MIA, I'm finally back, and will be making a conscious effort to post regularly! In my defense, the past month has been crazy busy, and I honestly haven't had a whole lot of free time to just sit and write! The good news is that from now on, I'll only have one job instead of two, which means more time to write! However, that being said, having one less job also means one less source of income, so...yeah, it's definitely a bitter-sweet kind of thing. 

Anyway, I suppose I'll start off by saying that Ryan and I are officially settled in our apartment and couldn't be happier living downtown! I'm loving the way our place is taking shape and even though it's still a bit of a work in progress, I'm quite content with the way it's going so far. 

We did encounter a mini disaster of sorts when we tried to stain our IKEA dining table and chairs. I'm getting over it though, since I have since purchased a navy tablecloth to hide the mess! Essentially, we bought the wrong kind of wood stain, and instead of creating a beautifully rich walnut color, the paint turned out very streaky and formed horrible globs everywhere. I know, I know...those of you with experience are telling me "you should have used X paint or Y paint" and "you should be sanding it between coats". Trust me, I spent far longer than I would have liked, researching all of this stuff! With the price we paid for the table and chairs, and with how the paint turned out, it's really just more economical to cover it all up for now..at least until we're ready to tackle the problem again! 

In other non-decor related news, something that Ryan and I have both been enjoying in our down time, is the convenience of being able to walk three blocks to our local dog park! Rocky absolutely loves it, and it's nice because he gets to meet lots of other dogs and get plenty of exercise running around off-leash! He's even been lucky enough to be at the dog park at the same time as his old buddy Bane, a two year old mastiff, who was at the Humane Society with Rocky at the same time that he was. Ryan and I had even seriously considered adopting Bane, that is, until Rocky cemented his place in our hearts! 

I don't want to ramble, so I'll end here for now, with the promise that I'll have more posts this week! I hope you all have a fun (and safe!) Halloween! 

Updates!

So I know I've been absent from posting lately, but there has certainly been a lot going on these past few weeks, and it doesn't show any signs of letting up for awhile! It's been the good kind of busy though, with lots of exciting new changes and things to celebrate (wedding shower)! If you've been reading my blog regularly, you'll know that Ryan and I will be moving at the end of September, so we've been pretty preoccupied with that lately. We've been in three different apartments in the past two years, so we are definitely ready to settle in to our new apartment for at least a couple of years! 

Ryan also started his fall term of school recently, so his schedule changed from what we were used to all summer. Luckily, his school schedule isn't too crazy, so the transition hasn't been too overwhelming (yet)! I recently got a second job at JCrew so I'm really excited about that! I've been a big fan of JCrew since long before it came to Canada so I'm really looking forward to building a career with the brand! 

And finally, on Friday, September 18th, we did something that I honestly hadn't planned on doing for at least another year...

WE GOT A DOG!

His name is Rocky and he's amazing! I am already so in love, and Ryan can certainly testify that I've turned into a bit of a mamma bear when it comes to our new doggy! 

He's a German Shepard / Siberian Husky mix and he's a very handsome fellow! We got him from the Ottawa Humane Society and couldn't be happier! He's about 3 years old and has a great temperament from what we've noticed so far. We saw his ad posted on Thursday and when he quickly was marked as 'adoption pending', I was very upset and worried. Luckily, we got a call from the Humane Society on Friday, saying the first person who had him on hold hadn't picked him up, so that afternoon, Ryan went to get him! 

We've been on quite a few long walks these past few days and it's been wonderful! We're really looking forward to being able to take him to the dog park and for long walks along the canal once we move downtown! 

Welcome to the family Rocky!