Pictures on a Saturday

Today was an different and special Saturday, Hadley and I had a chance to meet with another photographer Jarrad and spend the day experimenting with lighting, lenses and whatever creative ideas came to mind. I was behind the camera for most of the day holding holding lots of reflectors, but I decided to jump in front of camera for a few pics considering I'm wearing a new purple shirt that I love. I swear I'd wear it everyday if it wasn't weird.

Jarrad's Pics

The Secret - A book to read!

I'm currently watching Oprah today and the show is way more interesting than I expected. First of all I should say that's it's Friday afternoon, I sort a ducked out of work early today and I'm just feeling over saturated tonight after a very emotional previous weekend with a funeral and a hectic few days at work this week filled with lots of change and new things to learn.

I caught the last 15 minutes of Oprah were she seemed to be talking about a book called, "The Secret" There were quite a few statements that caught my attention, here are some I remember.

1. In life too many people go against the flow and make things a struggle, instead of trying to make it upstream and fight the current they need to turn around and go with the flow. They said that the ancient people never thought life should be so hard. ( Not sure who the "ancient people" are but I'm listening anyways)


2. That instead of trying to do things we don't love we should let go and find what it is that we're extremely crazy about. Oprah made a statement that herself, Bill Gates and many other successful people didn't make all their money because they sought out to make money. Instead they found a creative niche were there was no competition already. Oprah even quoted a bible versus supporting this argument, I don't remember which one.

So I'm interested to read more, I think I'm at the place in life right now were I embrace the idea of trying to find and follow your passion. For a long time growing up I tried to make very logical decisions that I knew would be best for me, and I know I default to this. However sometimes making the logical decisions feels very difficult like I'm dragging myself upstream and I'm interested to know why.

I've read the book, "The Road Less Traveled" which I truly loved and cherish at one point in my life, but the book seemed to have a strong focus on self-discipline. Self-discipline evokes mixed feelings for me. In some ways I think it's the only way to go toward living a structured life that's has stability yet when I think of a person who has total self -discipline I don't think of them as that open, and maybe missing out on the certain spontaneous random things in life that only a lack of self-discipline can bring.

So I've read one book were the focus was self-discipline and now I'll read another that says don't fight the current, happiness is when you decide to ride with the current.

Well I hope I got it right, I'll have to pick up, " The Secret" relatively soon.

Valentine's

Happy Valentine's everyone, so far I've had a wonderful day complete with a manicure, pedicure, and full body massage, so nice!!! Now I'm not allowed to go near the kitchen as Quentin and Darryl (our tenant who lives with us) are making dinner for Carly and I. This is so hard not being allowed in the kitchen, geez maybe I have control issues. Hope you all have a wonderful night!

Lou Lou likes me!

I submitted a photo the other day to the magaine Lou Lou's street style section and currently they have me right up there as the first entry, sweet that's fun!

Time with the family

This last weekend was one of my more interesting, my family from the east, Toronto and Winnipeg all came for my Grandma's funeral. It was great having the opportunity to spend time with my 2 cousins especially considering they're both older than me and have had the opportunity to accomplished so many things that I consider to be still years in future. Children for one, Jacqueline has twin boys who are 6, and Katina has 4 children between the ages of 7 and 14.
It gave me a fresh perspective on having children and I really enjoyed having my second cousin Ashton along for the weekend. At the age of 11 she was incredibly adorable and so full of curiosity yet very well behaved and a pleasure to have along for whatever excursion we took. I'm definitely feeling inspired having women in the family not too much older than myself with such great families, I'll have join the club one day soon.

Word Cloud

I found this on a friends blog, it puts together random words from your entire blog. I have to laugh as I read down the list, did I really write those words that often...

Somber Night

I'm sure she won't want me to feel this way, but I'm sad tonight. My Grama finally took her last breaths today and although this day has been very expected this past week and I'm glad she's finally free, I'm really sad to see her go.
She was the last of my grandparents, I suppose that marks something in your life, and I'm wondering tonight how she must have been when she was my age. When I imagine her from when I was little it's mostly of the house in Vancouver. There she maintained gorgeous rose bushes and a really spectacular garden, admist an impeccably clean and organized yet warm and welcoming home. I was fortunate enough to be treated like a royal princess at her house, even sleeping in my own princess room with white frilly linens and a royal purple chair. I miss that house, and sometimes I realized I'm trying to run my house in the same spirit. I even have a pretty girly room with the same purple chair that somehow I claimed a few years back.
She loved glamour too, furs coats which were at the height of fashion in her era and pearls and fancy evening purses. I remember as a little girl spending friday nights at my grandparents place opening all the drawers in her dresser and examining the specialty evening purses that she would take with her to the ballet.
Ballet was another huge part of her life, she lived breathed and was one with Canadian ballet culture in the 50's. This love has somehow transferred to me as well. She has given me an heartfelt appreciated for the beautiful art. I will always hold my breath while watching Swan Lake, or be really excited for the second act of the Nutcracker at Christmas.
I wonder what those days must have been like, were everyone dressed up on Saturday nights and went the Queen Elizabeth theater for entertainment. It must have been very sophisticated and elegant.
I know she's gone, but I'll always have her. I know exactly how to make her famous meat loaf dinner, and I really only prefer to make it in the same orange cast iron pot that I claimed from her house years ago as well.
Anyways thanks for reading my post, to write this helps me remember and keep it fresh.

p.s The family is hoping that tonght she'll finally have a chance to finally get mad at my Grandpa for leaving first, hopefully they will be together.

Lazy about blogging

Hmm I feel bad, I haven't really felt the urge to blog lately. I've been mostly reading everyone else's blogs though, and some reason I find it more interesting.
For a personal update I've been trying to focus most of my energy at work, I moved to my Mom's office and since then we've been figuring out the details of having 6 people work together instead of 2. It's finding itself to be more challenging than I expected but it's exciting thinking of the potential. In case you don't know me, I'm a realtor so is my Mom and brother and we work in Cloverdale. So I'm really enjoying trying to figure out a system so that everything runs smoothly and hopefully we'll be able to grow and at the same time increase the efficiency and quality of our work. Hmm this seems very Buis 300 or something when I write like this but it will be interesting to see how the year shapes itself.
As for New Years resolutions which I was planning to post but then I had to think about whether or not I really intended to keep them. Well I wanted to eat healthier in the New Year, I felt like my cravings had taken hold of me instead of my having control over them.
So I've decided to eat less at night, and I've drastically reduced the amount of carbs and fat I eat. I try to have a salad everyday, and no cheese at night after dinner. I can have pickles and sugar pea snaps or turkey cold cuts, but no crackers or dessert after dinner. (Tonight I cheated and had 3 pieces of Toblerone chocolate but they had a beautiful display of Valentines day chocolates at the IGA and I thought a little couldn't hurt.)
So this make shift diet of mine seems to be working, I've lost about 10lbs since January which seems to be a lot but really isn't since the first 5lbs is mostly water I believe. I thought about counting points again but I seem to have an internal count when eyeballing food now and I think I'm doing okay.
p.s I try to make Redriver with berries, and then plain yogurt with brown sugar every morning, I swear it's the best breakfast ever!

Global Warming

As I was driving to work this morning I heard on the radio that today we're to turn off all our powered devices for the 5 minutes before 11am. The purpose of coarse is rase awareness for environmental issues.
So here's a new theory that I haven't heard before, global warming is caused by an increase in the sun's irradiance. This increase causes the ocean to emit large amounts of carbon dioxide which we misinterpret as the cause of global warming. By comparing us to Mars and also seeing it increase in global temperature they've found evidence to support these conclusions.

Of coarse it's just a theory and one that comes from Russia none the less, but if you read the article it states we're currently at our global warming peak and by 2055-60 our earth will hit a mini ice age.
Yikes I guess I shouldn't hope to invest in a summer cabin in Tofino for my grandchildren, they might not enjoy the beaches at that point.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=eabbe10d-3891-41eb-9ee1-a59b71743bec&p=1