dust and dirt be gone

so...we now have a vacuum!

we were all giddy and excited the night we got our vacuum - it was like christmas all over again! it was pretty actually pretty funny (and somewhat lame), but that's not important. what is important is that our floors are now clean and can be stepped and sat on with confidence.

i've been trying to practice taking pictures with my new camera (wedding present from justin, yay!) since i've only ever used point and shoots before, so here are some shots of our new dyson (yup, it's pink!) that i took before the inaugural vacuum. :) p.s. i'm still trying to get familiar with and figure out how to work this camera, so please bear with me!

cooking corner: first dinner in our condo

this post is little late since we've been living here for a couple weeks now, but in any case here is what we ate for dinner our first night eating in:


^ beans and beef


^ eggs and mushrooms

we just added some rice to eat along with these dishes and that was it!
not bad for our first meal and it should only get better from here. :)

now a mrs.

we're married!!

our videographer and friend put together a SDE for our wedding day which totally rocked everyone's socks off. check it out here! :)
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for more details check out our wedding page.

cooking corner: lentil pasta

i've never cooked lentils before...until today.

i have a new housemate who just moved in at the end of last week and she graciously cooked dinner for me yesterday, so i decided to return the favour and cook dinner for the two of us tonight. since she doesn't eat meat, i was originally going to make monterey beans and cheese, but when i went to my cupboard i realized i had no beans. nor did i have enough rice for the both of us.

what a fail.

anyway, i discovered a can of lentils i bought because i wanted to try my hand at cooking them and i decided that tonight would be the night. i looked up a recipe for lentil pasta online (since i happened to have pasta in my cupboard) and then i looked for the one that would be the easiest and most time efficient to cook. :P i eventually found one that matched my criteria although i modified it slightly since i didn't have all the ingredients and i was too lazy to go to the store, haha.

i started by chopping up an onion and tossing it into a small pot with extra virgin olive oil. then i added some dried sage and salt (no pepper because i didn't have any, oops) and then a can of tomatoes once the onions were browned. i then brought everything to a boil and then turned down the heat so it would simmer for about 20-30 mins. at some point during this time i opened my can of lentils and rinsed them out. once i decided the tomatoes were ready, i added the lentils to the little pot and let that cook for another few minutes. i then added the little pot to a bigger pot, which held pasta i had cooked while my tomatoes and lentils were cooking, and mixed everything together before serving.

i wasn't sure how it would turn out since i was missing some ingredients and since tonight was the first time cooking lentils. fortunately it was a success and actually quite good if i dare say so myself, haha. and it was so easy to make! yes, i think i'll have to try this recipe again sometime. :)

o n e

we have exactly one month to go before our big day! :D things are continuing to come together as we start tying up loose ends in preparation for our wedding! i gotta say, FH has been nothing short of amazing throughout the whole process - he has been so supportive of me being back at school and not in toronto, and he really stepped up and has done a lot. i am so grateful and thankful for him, and i can't wait for him to go from future hubby to hubby. :)
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for more details and updates, check out our wedding page.

hamilton, the place to be?

...ok, no i don't believe that statement for a second. BUT since coming to this town in september of 2009, i've randomly run into three people from my past. pretty crazy stuff. but even more crazy is how, upon reflection, each experience has gotten slightly more embarrassing each time. here's what i mean:

meeting #1: noob on campus
this one, being the first, wasn't actually that bad. it was my first day of orientation and i had no idea where i was going when i turned the corner and *BAM* there stood a friend i hadn't seen in literally 5 years. totally unexpected and i had no idea he was even at mac. anyway, i've since had dinner with him and his gf a couple times throughout the year, so that has been good. :)

meeting #2: elevator randoms
this time i was going to my friend's place to meet up with some mac friends for dinner. i got into the elevator and pressed PH and then a stranger came in with her head down. she looked kinda familiar but i was like, nahhh that can't be her, there's no way. well she raised her head and it turns out that it was her afterall. haven't seen her in 5 years either so it was nice chatting with her a little bit after getting off the elevator. too bad this was during the brutal heat wave that hit hamilton, so i was sweating like a pig the whole time. plus i had just power walked to my friend's building since i thought i was running late. lovely. i'm surprised sweat wasn't dripping off my face and onto the elevator floor. hahaa. gross.

meeting #3: hospital cafeteria cougher
so today i ran into the third person - someone i used to go to high school with who apparently just started her first day of residency at the hospital i'm doing my placement at. totally random! too bad i was still recovering from this mother of a cough i've been trying to battle with for the last week or so and with every word i said a coughing fit started. i literally coughed like a maniac while she stood there trying to get words in edgewise. i also tried to cough into my elbow, but i mean that only works for so long. ah well, i'm sure she found it lovely and i'm sure the rest of hospital thought my coughing fits throughout the day were endearing as well.

hmm, i can only imagine what the next random meeting will be: bathroom stall with a broken lock? gahhhh.

tgif

i've never been more thankful for a friday before. this was my first week of term 3 placement working in MSK (musculoskeletal) and general medicine. while so far it has been interesting, it has also been pretty overwhelming with the crazy number of patients on my preceptor's caseload, the learning i have yet to do in order to function better in this environment, and everything else that comes with this placement being my first level 2 placement (read: more responsibilities and higher expectations. gulp.)

hopefully things will get better as my placement progresses, but until then i'm trying not to feel overwhelmed (although currently failing miserably). i guess it doesn't help that i have a million other things on my mind too - from placement, to wedding planning, to looking for a place to live, to everything else life has been throwing my way as of late, things have been crazy.

and i am exhausted.

airplanes

this song (airplanes - B.O.B. ft. eminem & hayley williams) really caught my attention when i heard it on the radio. not only is the music great, but the lyrics are good (and not all nasty and inappropriate), and i really like hayley williams' voice.

anyway, i found a couple of great covers of this song on youtube that i liked enough to share with you guys. enjoy!


i actually think this girl has an awesome voice and is pretty musical/creative. singing a rap song and somehow making it sound like it was supposed to be that way? i love! i also love the fact that her intro sounds just like backstreet boys' "i want it that way" (bahahaha, AJ). i just wish she didn't look right into the camera as much. it's creepy.


perhaps not as creative as the first cover i posted, but i thought this was a really solid cover overall. also, i'm not sure why this video is cut off, but i can't be bothered to fix it, haha. you can still hear the music though so whatever. :P

and the planning continues

wedding planning really does take over your life the closer it gets to the actual day. lately my weekends at home have been filled with all things wedding related. for example, this weekend we did the following:

- finished registering at our two stores
- gave out a couple more invites
- replied to some RSVPs that came in
- choose and confirmed our wedding cake
- visited waterloo to shoot some footage for our wedding video project

(thanks to nevin for coming out with us despite the awful pit-in-your-stomach feeling waterloo gives past students who once walked its sidewalks and sat in its classrooms. and also thanks to ray, our awesome videographer, for being so awesome and good behind his video camera! i'm looking forward to see how it all turns out!)

oh yah, last night i also updated some stuff on our wedding website and made final decisions re: our bridesmaids dresses which (in my opinion) are looking great!

so now things are slowly starting to come together and i'm getting really excited - exactly two months to go! :)
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for more details and updates, check out our wedding page.

cooking corner: beef soup

i made this for dinner a couple of weeks ago before the heat wave started. it was a chillier day which left me craving for some kind of soup. i had an idea of what kind of soup i wanted, but (as per usual) i didn't really have any clue as to what i was doing even when i was at the store searching for ingredients. i ended up deciding on stewing beef, potatoes, carrots, celery, and mushrooms. (i didn't buy any onions since i already had so many - i bought another bunch without realizing i already had more than a few hanging out at the back of the fridge. oops.)

anyway, when i got home i boiled a pot of water, threw in the stewing beef along with the vegetables once i had finished peeling and chopping them up, and hoped for the best.


^ vegetable remains. not sure why there's a mushroom in there.

hmm on second thought, it might have been better if i had thrown all my food into the pot before adding the water so i knew how much water i would need, but oh well. a few shakes of worchestershire sauce, some salt, and 1.5-2 hours of cooking time and this was my result:


^ my beef soup 1 hr into cooking time.

it actually tasted pretty good and my housemate described it as "delicious" (success!) so i'm glad that things worked out. phew. :)