This month gave me a bike ride on Thanksgiving day, hanging out with some new people, our first visit to Ikea, a flight back to Nova Scotia for a wedding and a 2 year-old’s birthday and my first look at the mountains.
Daily Booth
Nova Scotia
Things I’ve Noticed
Here are some things I’ve noticed about Alberta in the two weeks since I’ve been living here. The first is that there are so many stores! If you walk 5 minutes in pretty much any direction you will find yourself at a store. Everywhere I look there is a mall or a strip mall. I find it a little bit crazy and unnecessary. It’s nice that I don’t have to go far when I need to buy something, but I think it’s just a little bit too much. I know it’s good to have competition, but with so many...
Farewell to Nova Scotia
Today’s the day I finally leave Nova Scotia and head out to Alberta. My plane leaves at 6:45am so I am up bright and early. While I’m excited to leave, there are a few things I’ve heard that I’m a little scared about. I’m told that in the winter Edmonton gets really cold. So over the last week or so I’ve been looking at snow clothes that I want to buy haha. I also heard that the service workers are really rude. That all they care about is making money and not so much about being friendly to their...
August in Pictures
I start off with a few more pictures from our camping trip and some Buskers. August was also the month when we packed up our things to be shipped out to Alberta. Because we had everything packed, we went out to eat a few times. At one restaurant I took Winston’s picture but then the owner of the restaurant ran over saying “I wasn’t ready!” and got in the picture with him haha. I got to spend some time hanging out with my nephews and my parents. One day I went to a Springhill Coal Mine with my parents...
Clam Harbour Sandcastle Competition 2011
My favorite beach in Nova Scotia is Clam Harbour Beach and every year they have a sandcastle competition. I don’t get to go very often because it’s about a 2 hour drive away from my home but I was able to talk my family into taking me there this year. Here are some pictures from the competition.
Peggy’s Cove
On Monday we were experiencing the tail end of Hurricane Irene here in Nova Scotia. What do Nova Scotians do when it’s windy out? Head out to Peggy’s Cove to look at the waves. Peggy’s Cove is probably the biggest tourist attraction we have here in Nova Scotia, and if you ever come to visit you should really check it out. I really shows the power of the Atlantic Ocean. The landscape here is so different from the rest of Nova Scotia and the waves can get pretty huge. One thing to remember if you do visit, make sure...
Buskers 2011
I went to check out the Buskers a couple of times this year. There were some acts that I saw before so I decided to skip those ones and just watch some that were new to me. Here is a video of my favorite act this year. He was a mime. The performer is the man in the shorts with the big gloves, the rest of the people were volunteers. One of the volunteers was making the sound effects for the boxing match.
July in Pictures
July was a busy month, as it usually is. July in Canada starts off with Canada Day which was beautiful again this year. Thanks to the nice weather we spent a lot of time walking around the city. I got to spend some time with my family at the summer home for a weekend which included boat rides, fishing, a birthday party and the beach. We discovered new treasures on the Halifax waterfront including a local celebrity and a dessert restaurant. And we ended the month off with a camping trip to celebrate our 8th anniversary as a couple....
Canada Day
Canada Day was on July 1st. It was a beautiful day. One of the hottest we’ve had all summer. I started my day off with watching the Tattoo Parade which I try to do every year. After lunch I went out to the commons to enjoy some activities with my nephews. Unfortunately my oldest nephew fell and hit his head pretty hard and didn’t want to do much afterwards. The one thing he did want to do was go on the bouncy castle but the line was huge so he didn’t even get to do that. I felt bad...
June in Pictures
I planted a seed from an apple. It has been growing pretty good. It came up really fast too! I always dreamed of having an apple tree in my yard and being able to eat the apples. But that will have to wait until I have a yard to plant it in. So for now I will just dream. We did a lot of walking around Halifax since the weather was so nice. I like to act like a tourist sometimes and take pictures of my beautiful city. We visited Public Gardens as well as the Old Burying Ground....
May in Pictures
Let me start off by saying sorry for not posting last month. I was either busy doing other stuff or just had nothing to say. As for the month of May, it involved a lot of plants. I bought a strawberry plant for my boyfriend, an aloe plant for myself, and a space plant. They were all started using seeds. I also planted an apple tree later because I’ve always wanted an apple tree. So far only the strawberry plant and the aloe plant has started sprouting. Hopefully the other ones will grow too. May was also the month...
February in Pictures
February included lots of snow which resulted in a bunch of days off from work. The Canada Winter Games took place this month and I was able to go watch some of the Speed Skating competitions. The Museum of Natural History also has a T-rex replica on display so we went to check that out and look at the regular exhibts too. My boyfriend was kind enough to give me some beautiful flowers for Valentine’s Day, which are surprisingly still alive. As part of the Canada Games they also held free concerts almost every night just down the road...
So Far So Good
How is the New Year treating you so far? For me it’s been good. On New Years eve we threw a party at the apartment. Counting my boyfriend and myself we had 13 people in here which we didn’t think was possible. The next morning was a bit rough but once I got the sickness out of the way we spent a few hours playing the New Super Mario Bros. for the Wii with a couple that spent the night. The next day I was hoping to go skating on the Canada Games Oval but unfortunately my boyfriend badly...
Christmas is Coming
You can really tell that Christmas is coming. Trees and Christmas lights have started popping up everywhere. Trees are outside of the grocery store, in the lobby of my apartment building, in Santa’s wordshop at the mall, and I even saw a few of them at the casino last night. I recently made some shortbread cookies in the shape of candycanes. It was my first time making them. I wanted to test it out because I plan to make some more to give away as Christmas gifts, except this time I will put some icing on them. Last weekend...
Parade of Lights
The day started off like a perfect day for a holiday parade. We had our first bit of flurries (that I saw) which I found fitting for Christmas. When we headed out for the parade it didn’t feel that cold out which I was excited about because I hate being cold. We left early because we had planned on going to Dairy Queen to get some blizzards since I had a coupon, but once we got there we found out it was closed. So we ended up getting to the parade earlier than we had planned, but we found...
It’s Been a Busy Two Weeks
I’ve been meaning to blog since my last post but I’ve only been off for a few days out of the last two weeks. Christmas is slowly creeping up on us and since I work in a toy store I’ve been getting a lot of hours. The bad part about that is I haven’t been available to teach. They called me one day but I had to tell them I wasn’t available. In other news, I saw my first flurries today! They lasted about 10 minutes and didn’t amount to anything, but it was exciting nonetheless. Tonight is also...
Canstruction
Canstruction is an event that is held every year by Feed Nova Scotia. Teams of people build structures using cans of food. It’s pretty neat to see the way they use different colored cans to make colorful structures. When the event is over, the cans of food that was used to make the structures are given to food banks and meal programs throughout the province. Here are some pictures of my favorite ones from this year.
Pumpkin People
The other week I went to see the pumpkin people in Kentville with my brother and his family. Every year the town puts up there pumpkin people all over the town and it brings in a lot of tourists. Here are some of the pictures I took. To view them all go here.
Nocturne Update
As I had mentioned, Halifax had it’s Nocturne festival on Saturday. We were lucky enough to have it not rain on us which was wonderful. The first event we went to was called Huffing and Puffing. We were actually trying to get to the Circus Spectacular which I talked a little bit about in my last post. We only ended up at the Huffing and Puffing one because they were in the same building. What it was, was a video of a guy blowing up a balloon. He blows it up until it breaks in his face. And then...
Nocturne
Tomorrow is the third annual Nocturne: Art at Night event. I went to it last year and found it pretty interesting. Basically what it is is a bunch of artists around the city showing off their artwork. There are always so many venues set up around Halifax and Dartmouth that there is no way you would be able to see all of them. And it’s not just art like paintings and stuff. It’s art of all kinds. One that I really want to see is a circus show with “unicyclists…illuminated dancing diabolos, the twirling devil sticks and tightrope artists…aerialists,...
Fisherman’s Cove
On Monday we took the bus out to Fisherman’s Cove. It was Labor Day so most places were closed. We were actually shocked by the amount of people who were there. Before we left, we weren’t even sure if it would be open because of the Holiday but there were people everywhere. They were inside the buildings doing some shopping, inside the restaurant eating, and they were on the beach flying kites and walking in the water. I wouldn’t say there is a lot of see there, but the scenery is beautiful. The bus ride itself was very scenic....
Hurricane Earl vs. Halifax
On Saturday Hurricane Earl swept through Halifax causing a lot of power outages and damaging many trees. I was without power from about 10am to 7pm which left us with the question, what do we do now?! We decided that it would be a good time to clean up the apartment. After that we took out those things they call books and read for a while. By the time supper came around the sun was out shining again so we turned on the BBQ and made some burgers. After supper we headed out to survey the damage. I already...
Vacation
Last week Winston and I went on vacation. We took a week off just to relax and have fun. We had planned on going camping from Monday to Friday but the weather wasn’t on our side so we cut it short on Wednesday. We got to do most of the things we wanted to do at the campground which included biking, hiking, and canoeing. One day Winston and I took a bike ride/hike up to a camp site that our friend said he was going to be staying at. It took us about 45 minutes to get there only...
Fashion and Design Festival
Last week I was looking around on Twitter and noticed that someone posted a link about an outdoor fashion show. I thought it looked cool and decided to check it out. It turned out that it was the first annual Fashion and Design Festival and Halifax was their first stop. It was a little disorganized but I forgave them because it was their first show. On the website they said the show was going to start at 7pm on Barrington St. but when we arrived we didn’t see anything happening. My brother looked around and noticed that there was...
Buskers and Iceland
Every year in Halifax there is a festival called the Busker Festival. I try to make it down at least once every year and this year was not an exception. They had a lot more going on this year then I remembered in the past which was exciting. A lot more vendors and shops set up. I wasn’t that impressed with the actual street performers though. I will admit that I didn’t see very many of them. But of those that I did watch, they seemed more interested in begging for money than they did in actually entertaining us....