216 Days until Disney (219 Days until OKW)
227 Days until our Wedding!
156/159 Days until FP+
36/39 Days until ADR's
Life Updates
We've been spending most of our time outside lately, it's been such nice weather here (except for last Wednesday, when we had a crazy storm and it rained for like 16 hours straight and came with insane wind - there were gusts up to 100km/hr - which is about 62mph for you Americans. There were trees blowing over, traffic lights were out, it was a mess). We did finish laying the bricks around our front flower garden yesterday though, now I need to decide if I want to leave it with just the one layer or if I want to add a second layer of bricks..
Two summers ago, we planted a small Asiatic Lily in our flower garden, and that thing is now multiplying and is going to be huge this year! I love easy gardening where things just spread on their own
We also finished our planters at the end of our walkway by the sidewalk, I love Gerber Daisies so much!
Our vegetable garden in our backyard is now planted as well, and has already started sprouting
We don't go too crazy with our veggie garden, this year we planted beans, peas, carrots, spinach, lettuce, cucumbers and a few watermelons. Our raised bed garden will not be large enough for everything once it starts to grow, so I'm going to try and get the cucumbers to climb a trellis, and I'll guide the watermelons out of the garden into the rest of the yard.
On Friday night, Luke and I went to an art sale for a local artist we're big fans of. She's really into pop culture, and all of her artwork is based on comic books, television shows and movies. She creates her originals by attaching actual pages from comic books or novels onto a canvas or wooden frame, and then painting over top of that. We've been following her work for a few years, and figured this was the perfect time to actually go check out her studio - and we ended up buying so much! All of the Avengers, Star Wars, Calvin & Hobbes and Harry Potter paper prints below were basically 95% off her regular price, so how could we say no? It's hard to tell the size from the pictures below, but the Calvin and Hobbes ones were 4"x6" and the rest are more like 11"x14" (so a decent size!)
I did buy one print at regular price, but she was including a free frame with it, plus it was a print I've been eyeing up for years now...
She has also turned her artwork into a variety of other items - such as coffee mugs and puzzles (she also has throw pillows, phone cases, coin purses, etc)
She's also had some artwork turned into clothing, which is all amazing. I did buy her last pair of Star Wars leggings from the clearance rack. They still weren't cheap, but they are really great quality! They feel so good on, I can't wait to wear these on our next Disney trip!
She also sells some really fantastic Harry Potter clothing, which I think I need in my closet...
Luke and I are not big drinkers at all, but we stopped by one of the best beer stores in the city the other day and decided we needed to represent the Canada Pavilion and the Germany Pavilion haha. Actually, La Fin du Monde is a fairly regular staple in our house these days, but Schofferhofer is a bit more difficult to find.
We are now only a few weeks away from going on our annual vacation to New Brunswick! Pretty much my entire family is still there, including my dad, so it's a trip I always look forward to. Unfortunately this year's trip will be a little sad, as we are burying my grandmother while we are there (there was way too much snow on the ground in March when I was home right after she passed away). But, I will get to see all of my friends from high school and my family that week
My mom has also decided she wants to do an engagement party for Luke and I while we are all in NB, since I've told her no bridal shower or bachelorette or anything like that. And speaking of our wedding...
Wedding/Disney Trip Updates!
Our Converse wedding day shoes arrived! Mine are a much brighter blue in person than they appear in the picture. I also plan on switching out the shoelaces, I want the more traditional Converse look with the white laces. Luke's are the basic Converse style in black.
We went for supper last weekend with a couple Luke has been friends with for a long time, and they confirmed that they are 100% in for attending our wedding, so Luke now has his side of the wedding party complete after asking him to be a groomsman.
This now puts us up to 15 people confirmed to attend our wedding. Since we are going with the Escape package from Disney, the max we are allowed is 18 so we are almost to our max already! One of the 15 confirmed is our photographer though, who does not count against our 18, so we still have 4 spots remaining. We've invited more than that, so now we wait to see who confirms.
We've now paid our $1000 deposit to Disney and signed the contract, so now we are waiting to hear which wedding planner we've been assigned. Once we find that out, we can start making the actual decisions for the wedding - like which bouquet I want, which of the allowed Escape cake styles we want, cake flavours, etc. We also need to start thinking about our dessert party menu, but we're a little stuck on that. We know we want to avoid cake/cupcakes, since we will be having our cake supplied by Disney right after our ceremony, and then more cake at Homecomin' (we chose the Moonshine cake, yum!). We think we want to ask for a savoury option at our dessert party, maybe La Cellier-style poutine or cheddar cheese soup...but that will depend on the price they quote us.
We've been going back and forth on it for awhile now, but we have decided to add a few extra days onto our trip and fly down on December 30th now instead of January 2nd. One of the biggest selling factors in that decision for me was the fact that there is a direct flight from Edmonton to Orlando that is only offered on Saturday's - it'll be nice to not have to transfer planes while I'm lugging my giant dress with me (because that thing will not be going into my checked bag). We haven't booked a hotel yet for the extra nights, but chances are it will be offsite. I'm fine with being offsite for those nights, we still have our 11 night stay at Old Key West from January 2-13.
Since we were now going down a few days earlier, Luke and I decided to submit volunteer applications to Give Kids the World. We figured the craziness that is New Year's Eve at Disney would be too much for us (especially staying off site), so we set up a volunteer shift from 3-6:30 on NYE and another one on New Year's Day from 11-2:30. I'm actually really looking forward to this!
Luke purchased his park tickets for the trip while the Canadian resident discount was still in effect (as did quite a few of our guests). He went with a 10 day park hopper, since that was the most days he could buy. If we need to add more days to his pass, we'll do that once we're there. My annual pass is valid until the end of February 2018, so I'm covered for everything.
We also sat down and did a complete list of what we would like to try and get for ADR's on which day for the entire duration of our trip. This post is getting long now, so I'll share that in another post