Arts in Saint John

Last night Greg and I went to the Saint John Theatre Company's presentation of The Rocky Horror Show at the Imperial Theatre - it was great!!

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It was student night and tickets were $10 instead of the $40 for the other nights to encourage students to attend. So not only were the preformers entertaining but the crowd of costume'd teenagers was a sight as well. Bravo to those who dressed up!

It was the first time that either of us had been to the Imperial Theatre and it's by far the most intricate, ornate and beautiful theatre I've been in. I didn't bring my camera so here's an internet picture which doesn't really do it justice but will give you an idea:

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Also, a friend from school was in the show and she was AWESOME - YAY for Joanna!!

Famous Science Friends

A wonderful guy co-worker from SuperNOVA is still rocking science, it's just gone from teaching grade school students to shooting protons for cancer therapy - amazing. I'm not going to try and explain it, Nick can do it much more eloquently and hilariously:



The video is really well done as well, I hope you enjoyed the nerdery as much as I did!

Well said sir - SCIENCE!

Apple Picking!

Greg and I visited the Kingston Peninsula on Sunday, taking in the BEAUTIFUL weather and the loaded apple trees.

Interesting donkey (?) art on the shed

Cute AND helpful signs. The different apple
trees were marked with different colours.

Lots of ridiculousness...not sure what the deal is with the figures

Lots of fallen apples, the filled in the paths

There were spider webs EVERYWHERE, thanks little guy!

Our haul

View from the top of the orchard

This place also has grapes

And a beach, where I practiced taking photos

Some other strange things at the orchard/beach

On the way back we stopped at a little market where they had
LOTS of pumpkins. Greg picked out a few for birthday pie

So now that we have lots of apples and pumpkins I will be trying my best to make some delicious treats - hooray!

Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival

I mentioned Greg and I headed to Fredericton to check out the Harvest Jazz & Blues Festival but I neglected to post photos, so here we go:

Where we spent much of the afternoon

We caught a few of these shows

There was a pig roast...I was amazed AND
grossed out all at the same time

There was also a guy in a chicken outfit,
not sure what that was all about.

Dan and Sarah were our lovely hosts for the day/night

They were lovely as usual

We went to see David Myles and Steven
Page at the Playhouse, it was great!

The show was supported by CBC as was
obvious by the glowing logo on the wall

Pinterest

I have been holding off on sharing my Pinterest account on my blog because of my ever expanding wedding board...it might have generated a few questions. But now that the engagement cat is out of the bag I can happily share it with you.

If you haven't heard of Pinterest it's basically a way to 'collect' pictures of things you like from any website (except Facebook) and organize it into categories (boards) you see fit.

Here's a screenshot of my account:

Check out Pinterest, you will be sucked into the million and one things you can make, wear, save up for and more.

The Time We Got Engaged

This past weekend was particularly awesome, not only did I get to see some great live music at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival (post to come about that), hang out with great friends and enjoy beautiful fall sweater-weather but Greg and I got engaged.

Hooray!!

On Saturday morning Greg gave me beautiful flowers, a wonderful ring and a mimosa and pancake filled breakfast.

We had been working with a jeweler (Jeneca Klausen) from Saint John for the past few months to design the ring so I wasn't super duper surprised because I knew what the ring was going to look like and that a proposal was in my near future but I was very, very, very happy with how everything went.

Info on the ring: the band is silver, the setting is gold and the stone is a rough cut diamond. The band is pretty thick because of my less than dainty fingers and also I'm not a dainty person.

Since we've been planning this for awhile now we've been able to set a date for next September, near the end of the month. Hooray for fall sweater-weather weddings!

Thank you to everyone who's passed along their congratulations so far. We're pretty darn excited!!!

You can see more of Jeneca's work here.

Fun Friday (Music) Find

I'm not sure how I stumbled on this band, I was listening to terrible pop music on youtube and it came up as one of those 'recommended songs' so why not give it a go!

They are called Cocoon and sound super cute - nothing like boy-girl harmony to peak my interest!

Here are a few adorable covers:

#1 American Boy (Estelle):



#2 Empire State of Mind (Jay-Z & Alicia Keys):



#3 Rehab (Amy Winehouse):



And because their own music is cute here's one called On My Way:

Making Jam - The Second Attempt

Last time I didn't actually blog about the jam that I made. In my first attempt I tried my hand at blueberry jam but it ended up with a consistency closer to sticky cement rather than jam. It tasted good, but you just had to heat it up before you could even think about spreading it on toast. For the first attempt I used this recipe.

So for my second attempt I was definitely going to try a new recipe and found something with lots of instruction and advice. Check out the recipe I used here (while the page is entirely in comic sans I will forgive the author because my jam turned out!).

This jam adventure ended in much, much, much better results. I was able to make 4 jars of strawberry jam and although I initially thought it was too sweet once it set the intense sugar taste faded a bit - thank goodness!

The kitchen set up - lots of pots!

2 cups of crushed strawberries

Cooling and hopefully setting

A little bit lighter looking from a different angle

Close up - the fruit looks like it floated to the top a little bit

A bit blurry, but it set well (hooray!!)

Crazy jam lady (with post-gym hair)

Omnomnom! It was super tasty!

There will be definitely more jam making in my future, perhaps just with less sugar!

Fabric Fabric Everywhere!

On Sunday I spent about one hour in Fabricville. That's probably more time spent in one store than I ever spend in an entire mall. I actually felt exhausted by the end, but it was worth it.

After many chats with customers and employees alike, putting away all of the boards/rolls that my fabric was cut from and being asked questions by other customers (I thought wearing a purse would indicate that I was indeed not an employee, but I WAY putting things away) I walked away with a ton of fabric for only $40.

The pictures I've posted are roughly 21 meters of fabric...for $40. I'm definitely not an expert when it comes to quilting or sewing but I do know that when you buy materials for a project it seems a little bit of fabric can be quite costly. I am VERY happy I discovered the bargin boards at the back of the store and all fabric was only $1/metre - I was a very happy crafter!

So here is my haul:

The stacks

Browns

Yellows

Red/Pink

Blue

You can bet that I'll be posting what I make from all of this fabric when I make it. I have plans and I'm really excited!!

Saint John's Second Market

After the first scheduled attempt was cancelled due to Hurricane Irene the Queen Square Market went ahead today with nothing but blue skies overhead.

The Telegraph Journal wrote an article with more info on the market way back on August 28 - read it here.

Greg and I were pretty pumped about the market, it's even closer than the regular market, which is saying something given that's only a 5 minute walk down the street. The Queen Square market was about more than just food, there were crafts, pottery, flowers, a guy talking about compost, and of course lots of fresh veggies - pretty standard. But the idea of the market being in a different part of town where people might not venture is pretty great for the city.

Here are a few things I saw:

Check out his beautiful guitar, and neat-o stands!

How the space was divided up and identified to vendors

Candles that look like food?

I'm not quite here yet, but SJ is growing on me

JAM!!!!

A few shots to help visualize the space if you're unfamiliar:

That's a statue of Samuel de Champlain
(or Sam de Cham as people call him here)

Wood powered oven for pizzas

My friend Andre got to hold the pizza flipper!!

I hope this market becomes more of a regular thing, maybe next summer? It was great to have it outside, but I have a feeling people might be hesitant to buy into it given the unpredictability of SJ's weather!