puppy update

today i received new puppy pictures from our breeder lianne; i am so excited that she is so on it with updates on emi. apparently, emi is trying to open her eyes! she also included three photos of her face; we are so excited about this because we had yet to see her face - the only photo that we had of her was the one i posted in a previously entry. ironically enough, jesse was going on last night about how badly he wanted to see a picture of her face. i guess he was worried she had some sort of face deformity since lianne hadn't originally sent us a picture that included her face, only her back haha i think he was being slightly paranoid because although she is still all squished and the photos are not the best quality i think she is pretty damn cute. enjoy!

look at those claws!

she's so much tinier than we imagined

too cute!

we cannot wait to bring her home! we were actually surprised by how small she is; for some reason, i expected her to be bigger. i found a great dane growth chart on a website and it said that when we bring her home she should be between 20 and 30 lbs! does a puppy still count as a puppy if she weighs more than most full grown dogs? i think so!

diet

so, since we are going to mexico may 1st to 8th for maddy and brian's wedding, it is coming down to crunch time for getting our bods into shape for the beach. i was talking to my manager about how i would love to drop about 5 lbs, just to tone up, before we go and she told me about this colon cleanse she does every couple months. at first, i wasn't sure. i am not a believer in these fad diets that claim you will loose ten lbs in ten days; the reality is, you probably will loose ten lbs in ten days but you will just turn around and put those 10 lbs back on over the next ten days and in twenty days you are back where you started with nothing to show for your efforts. anyways, she printed the diet off for me and after reading it i think it would be a good idea to do in preparation for mexico. what's the worst that can happen? i loose 10 lbs for mexico and then, when i gain that 10 lbs back while in mexico staying all inclusive (lets be real, its inevitable staying all inclusive), i will be back where i started instead of up 10 lbs!

heres the deal. the cleanse was created by one of my manager and her husband, a doctor at the clinic where i work, cardiologist friends for his patients who need to loose weight quickly and healthily in order to qualify for heart surgery. it is not one of those sketchy cleanses that you hear all the celebrities promoting where all you do is drink some weird beverage-like concoction of maple syrup, lemon juice, water and cayanne pepper all day for a week, although it is sort of a liquid diet; basically, the bulk of what you are going to be consuming over the week detox is this natural, veggie soup you make and drink as much of as you would like over 7 days in combination with a daily food menu. this "daily food menu" is as follows:
day one: eat all the fruit (minus bananas) you want, drink as much soup as you would like
day two: eat as many veggies as you would like (minus corn, beans and peas), drink as much soup as you need
day three: combine day one and two, eat a large sweet or regular potato for dinner, drink as much soup as you like through out the day
day four aka "brenna's day from hell": eat as many as 3 bananas, drink as much milk as you would like, eat as much soup as you need. disgusting, i will be sticking strictly to soup.
day five: eat as much as 10-20 oz of chicken, fish or beef and at least six, large, fresh tomatoes, consume as much soup as you need
day six: eat as much meat, brown rice, veggies and soup as you would like
day seven: brown rice, veggies, chicken, fish, fruit and soup

also, you are allowed to drink black coffee (good thing i recently converted), tea, water, and non sweetened fruit juices. basically, you are cutting out alcohol, simple carbs, carbonated beverages etc. you are supposed to loose six pounds by day four and twelve pound by day seven. my manager says she does a modified version of this diet and only does day one through four, takes five to seven off, eating healthy, then does day one to four again. i think we are going to attempt to do the full week next week, eat normally until maybe two weeks before we leave, then do the modified version my manager suggests. jesse seems game but i am not sure if he will be able to stay strong with the lack of protein. i think it will be manageable since you are allowed so much soup, i think that i am going to make it chunkier rather than a thin, drinkable liquid - i just think that it will be more satisfying this way.

i will keep you posted on this diet attempt through out the week; i have a sad feeling we will be unsuccessful simply because we love food too much... we will see.

watch "girl walks into a bar", please

watch 
watch watch
watch watch watch
watch watch watch watch
watch watch watch watch watch...

seriously, check out this movie, girl walks into a bar! i normally don't blog about this sort of thing, though i am debating broadening the range of my blogging topics, but i think this is such a cool concept. my best friend, michelle dawley, is dancing in the first ever internet exclusive movie. i know you are probably thinking that this is some ridiculously low budget, low quality movie but it actually has a pretty exceptional cast: danny devito, rosario dawson, josh hartnett, alexis  bledel, zachary quinto... and the list goes on! the movie is sort of the same idea as valentines day or he's just not that into you; the story appears to be a hodge podge of seemingly unrelated plot lines and characters that eventually all come together in the end. the director, Sebastián Gutiérrez, stated that "With Girl Walks Into a Bar, the cast and crew came together to create something different – a high quality, really fun character-driven film that we could present to audiences for free using a new distribution model"; you can watch all ten pieces of the movie on youtube - i think this is such an amazing idea. maybe if this trend catches on we wont have to pay $25 bucks to go see a movie anymore...




check it out! if you pause it on 1:06 of the trailer you will see michelle on the left strutting her stuff haha

puppy

jesse and i finally bought a puppy!
i am soooo excited.

honestly, i am just surprised that jesse finally caved - i never thought i would break him! we have been looking at dogs for a while now and ever since we moved in to our new place it has been a frequent topic of conversation (a topic that has probably annoyed jesse more than i am willing to admit). we have been researching breeds and trying to find a type of dog that would fit our life style but it was harder than we had expected. neither of us were wanting to get a small dog (since we both don't believe anything less than 40 lbs is a dog, instead, an oversized rat with hair) but most of the breeds we liked were incredibly active, working dogs.  for the most part, we liked the shepherds and collies but we knew that it would be irresponsible of us to adopt a working dog at this point in our lives considering we honestly just don't have the time to give a  dog like that all the exercise it needs to be physically and mentally healthy. so, since neither of us wanted a small, low maintenance pup and both of us felt guilty keeping a naturally active dog cooped up during the day while we are at work, we finally decided on the perfect breed for us: the great dane!

great danes are large and lazy. i know, they are obnoxiously sized but honestly, they have such amazing temperaments. i am sure you are all thinking that we have no idea what we are getting ourselves into with this giant breed but believe me, we do. my dad's parents have always had great danes. i grew up with them and they truly are gentle giants. basically, a great dane is an over sized lap dog. all they want to do is love you and cuddle you and laze around. they become incredibly attached to their owners, another thing we loved about the breed. also, they are really low maintenance (minus the massive poop); it is actually recommended that they get no more than 15-30 minutes worth of exercise a day! perfect for a young working couple! The only down size to our breed of choice was the fact that they are almost as obnoxiously expensive as they are large...

so, since jesse really wanted to adopt a brand new puppy and we were aiming to get a pup in may, that meant we had to constantly be checking kijiji for expecting dogs and newly arriving litters of pups that would be available to be brought home early may. well, since i am addicted to kijiji i found an amazing litter of puppies for an even more amazing price - nearly half the price of most dane pups. i will be the first to admit that almost everything about the breed is snobby; the breeders, the standards and the price. luckily, i found one of the most down to earth breeders out there who was not trying to rip of potential puppy parents, simply trying to find a good home for her pups. the reason she was charging so much less for the litter was because none of the pups had the proper colouring to be show dogs. although great danes come in 7 or 8 different colours, only 5 are considered showable: fawn, brindle, harlequin, black and blue. the puppies that our breeder had were all either merle, boston merle, mantle or white (all of which result in mixing harlequin and blue danes). all of the puppies are healthy (they come with a health guarantee) they just weren't of showable colouring. so, instead of charging potential buyers the price of a showable dane (anywhere from 1500- 2500 dollars depending on the blood line and colouring) she charged enough to make a profit after she paid for their shots and up bringing until they were old enough to be separated from their mother.

merle great dane pup

too adorable

this is what ours will look like when she is full grown

since lianne, the breeder, is located in edmonton, she sent us pictures of all the available pups and let us choose which one we wanted. although my grandparents had brindle and fawn great danes i had always loved the merle colouring so i was immediately drawn towards the merle puppies. luckily, they had a female merle still available when we decided to send our deposit (her pups went fast, she had 11 originally, 7 when i emailed her in reply to her kijiji posting at 6:30 pm and 4 when we committed at 11 pm that evening).

so here she is: emi. we have decided that we are going to call her "emi"which means blessed with beauty since we think they are such beautiful animals; we wanted something very feminine considering she will probably be a giantess...

emi is the pup closest to the top.

the breeder is keeping us posted with photos as she progresses and i will obviously put them on my blog for all my loyal followers (aka. our parents).

birdcage

we went for dinner at jesse's parents house tonight; it was really good to go over to eat there again. considering i practically lived at their house before we moved out it seems weird not seeing them on a daily basis. dinner was awesome; we had roast, potatoes, biscuits, broccoli and carrots - delicious.

after dinner i got yet another decorating gem from val - an amazing wooden birdcage! i had been complaining that we had zero decorations for a while. for some reason i have had a really hard time finding things to go on top of our kitchen cabinets. i almost feel like i have some sort of mental block when it comes to buying decorations for the main floor; maybe, possibly,  subconsciously i think i shouldn't purchase anything until we do the renovations considering i will probably end up changing my mind but, in the mean time, i feel like our house isn't really a "home" yet because of this. anyways, i was saying that birdcages are super in this spring (i have seen them everywhere: anthropologie, pottery barn, crate and barrel, winners, etc.) and val told me she actually had one hiding in her basement. i love it! it looks absolutely perfect in my opinion.

i love that it says "chateau"

here are the beautiful sunflowers that val randomly dropped off at our place this week!

oh, and, since i told jesse that we haven't added any pictures of us in our home yet, we decided to take a cute little self portrait to share with our dedicated readers.

we call this "'eye' love you".

baby brother

so, it seems as though my entries are beginning to sway away from home renovations and their progress. probably because they are not currently progressing, so i have little to write about on that front, but what are you going to do? haha so this afternoon at 3 o'clock MST my brother's basketball team will be playing their first game in the canadian national tournament: the university of saskatchewan huskies vs the university of dalhousie tigers!
last year my brother's team entered the tournament as under dogs and ended up winning the entire thing. this year, they are entering ranked 3rd in the country and we are hoping that they will leave champions once again. the point of this entry is to wish my brother luck and show him support since jesse and i are unable to go to his games this year. last year, we were fortunate enough to be able to go as a family; my mom, dad, sister, jesse and i all flew to ottawa, stayed with my grandma and spent three days on the edge of our seat while they defied the odds, beating 3 teams ranked higher than them to capture the cup but this year, with just couldn't afford it. since the tournament is going on in halifax, the flights are almost twice as expensive as last year; also, we have no family there so we would have had to pay for a hotel for 4 nights, which we couldn't really justify with the new home and upcoming wedding.

regardless, GO HUSKIES. i am so proud of my little brother (if you can call him little since he is over 6'5 and approx 200 lbs). he has worked so hard to get where he is; not only is he at the top of his sport at a national level, but he is simultaneously getting his engineering degree, which is no small feat.

he is normally a lot less hairy

clearly, we had fun celebrating the win

good luck this weekend duncan, i love you and am very proud of you.

wedding

so, as promised in the opening entry of this lovely little blog, i said that at some point i may discuss the upcoming wedding - this post is going to do exactly that.

lately, with the buying of the home (no one ever tells you how much work the actual buying process is, by the way), moving into the house, the ongoing renovations and the constant pile of homework i am slowly but surly being buried alive under, i have have been neglecting the wedding plans. to be honest, i find the whole thing overwhelming. there is so much to do and, especially in my case, so little time to do it in. everyone told me i had bitten off more than i could chew attempting to finish school and planning a wedding; i can only imagine what our friends and families were thinking when we told them we were buying a house on top of that. now i have to finish my last term of university, plan a wedding and deal with all the responsibilities that come with buying a new home all the while working +24 hours a week. well, somehow, i am doing it all... with a lot of help from jesse, of course.

so here is where i currently stand on the wedding front; i have booked my venue, purchased my dress, chosen the bridesmaid dresses, booked the caterer and looked into hotels. i have pretty much decided on the center pieces and wedding favors, but i am still debating on most the decor. i don't have a dj, but i do have a first dance song. i have not ordered the wedding cake, but i do have a cake decorator. we still have to book a commissioner (is that what you call the person who marries you? see... i am still clueless on many aspects of this whole wedding planning process). while i feel like i have a conquered most of the major aspects... i still have a ton of things to accomplish.

we have decided to get married at the Cochrane Ranche House and we are incredibly excited about the venue. to be honest, we did not think we were going to be lucky enough to get married here but, thankfully, another couple had booked two dates in september and cancelled one last minute, leaving it free for us to snatch up. we are really excited to get married so close to the mountains since the majority of our family is not from calgary and rarely get to experience how beautiful they are; we figured if they were going to be traveling all this way we may as well take advantage of the amazing scenery... if it is a nice day that is. We are planning on having the ceremony outside on a hill over looking a tree filled ravine, weather permitting of course. Thankfully, there is another room we can use for the ceremony if the weather is not cooperating, as it rarely does in calgary and the neighbouring areas; the room has floor to ceiling windows so even if its horrible weather we will be able to stay dry without sacrificing the view. Either way, the reception room is absolutely beautiful, so i will be happy regardless of whether or not the ceremony is inside or out.

Hall of Vision; our reception room

so... we booked that in august and honestly, since then, we haven't really accomplished much. i purchased my dress in october from Blissful Bridal; i would seriously recommend them to anyone looking for a good quality, reasonably priced wedding dress. i had looked at a few other places that people had recommended and was less than impressed with their customer service; all the previous places i look were 1) incredibly expensive considering the quality and 2) made you feel rushed and like you were waisting their time when in reality, you were just trying to find the perfect dress. blissful bridal was the exact opposite; all their dresses were under $1500 and they encouraged you to try on as many dresses as you wanted. i liked them so much i am actually going to get my bridesmaid dresses from their as well; you get 20% off your bridesmaid dresses if you purchase your dress there. i ordered it so early because they told me it took 6-8 months to come in then an additionally 2-3 months for alterations but it came in 6 weeks so now it is sitting in a closet at my moms place.

at that point, i felt pretty accomplished. i figured i have the place picked, the dress picked and the guy picked... really, what more do you need? apparently, a lot more. we were told we had to book a caterer about 6-8 months before. the ranche house only allows you to choose from four different caterer's and thankfully, we found one we liked: Gourmet 2 Go. They are a cochrane based catering company and we are really excited to work with them; their meals sound delicious and they are going to be doing a really neat, original dessert that plays off their famous local ice cream that will go really well with the wedding cake. i am getting really excited about the wedding cake. jesse's mom is a cake decorator so, luckily, we get to choose exactly what we want. it really means a lot to us that she will be making the cake.

at this point, i feel far from accomplished. we still have so much we have to do. i am still debating the wedding favors; we are for sure going to go with these really cute, hand made soaps that val, jesse's mom, found at a local farmers market but i am still debating whether or not we will also be doing custom shot glasses. neither of our parents were really sold on the idea of the shot glasses but it is something both jesse and i really want to do. i feel like, for the most part, we tend to be swayed very easily by both our parents opinions on almost everything, but for once, we are both standing a pretty firm ground on this one, which is why i think it is important to research it. at this point we think we may do both. i do agree with our parents that giving our grandmothers a shot glass in memory of our wedding is a little odd, which is why i like the idea of the hand made soap, but i am not willing to put a kibosh on the idea all together. i really want to do both so i am hoping that we can make it happen.

i am thinking something like this - obviously not in blue though.

lately, i have been looking into the table settings. i have decided that i want something fairly simple: elegant and rustic. a few months ago my mom and i purchased these really beautiful hurricane lamps that we are planning on filling with river rocks, to match the wall in the hall, then sticking a pillar candle in the centre and possibly wrapping some ribbon around it.

i really want to do my place settings all white. i may add a coloured sash to the chair covers, but i am not sure. if i did i would want it to be a sheer fabric either in purple or bronze since those are the colours i have decided on. i like the idea of plain white with the white candles and the natural, river rock. i think don't know why but i really love the simplicity of it all. i hate when people go over board on wedding decorations - the bride and grooms faces and names splattered all over the walls, bombarding the visitors with their overly enthusiastic love for each other; in my opinion, that's nauseating. if i invited you to my wedding i am assuming you know my name, i shouldn't have to write it on every surface possible for you... but to each their own i guess.




i know there is still so much i have to do... they say that making lists make people feel better; the process of writing things down creates a feeling of organization and crossing things off as you accomplish them provides satisfaction and alleviates stress. lets see if it works...



things to do for the wedding:
* hire a commissioner
* hire a dj
* order bridesmaid dresses
* order jesse's suit
* order the suits for the grooms party
* order wedding favors
* order bridal/grooms party gifts
* make centerpieces
* order our wedding cake
* write our vows
* make and send out invitations
* decide on a reserve hotel rooms for the wedding party, family and guests
* write various speeches
* organize the rehesal dinner
* purchase all the alcohol
* make place settings
* order the chair covers
* order flowers

that is all i can think of at the moment but i am sure there are some things i am forgetting and even more things i didn't even know you had to do. i think the next major project will be making and sending out the official invitations. i find this part to be the most stressful aspect of the entire thing. we purposely went with this venue since it was only able to hold 112 people; we have 12 people, including ourselves, in our bridal party so that leaves another 100 spots for guest. we knew when we got engaged that the guestlist would be an issue. i feel a constant, nagging pressure about the guestlist. it seems like the invitation requests are never ending... i know that 112 people is no even close to enough which is completely ridiculous. since we have two separate groups of friends, plus old friends, plus our massive families and their friends, 100 spots fill up very quickly. every time i go for coffee or dinner with an old friend i get the "i better be invited to your wedding" or "i am so excited to see your dress at the wedding" or "oh, the wedding is going to be so fun". its incredibly stressful. i hate having to decide who is "worthy" of coming and who is not. on top of that both of our parents have a lengthy list of people they would like to come. this is what i think is the most stressful. its hard because these people are important to them, so they want them to be there to share in the experience, but to us, they are not exactly on the top of our list, and in reality, it is our special day and we probably have people we would rather be there but we still want to make them happy. it has gotten to the point that i am so overwhelmed with the guest list that i have actually stopped looking at it - i have not looked at it since august. i just don't know what to do. either way, we will be disappointing people.

wow, i have successfully ranted the longest entry yet. i obviously need to blog about my wedding more often.