Very scary isn't it?
Our annual pumpkin carving contest (M always wins)
Assessing his loot after the fact
Eat them I guess.
Lately it seems everything is about the economy. Every ad, newspaper, public affairs TV program, magazine, blog I watch or read discusses it, provides tips or simply expresses concern. The Canadian economy right now is somewhat holding up and things are not nearly as bad as they are in the US, but here I am, caught by this anxiety bug as well, feeling the shadow of that dark cloud hovering around us. After all, every economist says it will likely get much worse around here in the next year.
Right now, M and I are good. We're managing, everything's OK. But things could also be better. We could save more instead of being caught into this wave of wanting and pretending to need more and more stuff all the time. I like clothes for both me and my son, and however thrifty I am it adds up, M is a gadget and sports equipment person, it's expensive trying to eat healthy and organic, we like eating out from time to time, we very much treasure our shared wanderlust that makes us go on small and big trips alike pretty much whenever we feel like it. But there you go, we're making more money than the average family, but we're still in a financial situation that definitely has room for improvement.
We do have savings, but they were mostly put in mutual funds that play the stock market game, so like they did for a lot of people, they've pretty much shrunk in the last few months. And yet here we are, adding another major expense to the mix by... (drumroll) planning a wedding.
I feel uncomfortable about it, I'm not sure why. The frivolity of it versus the very hard times many people are facing right now? The money we're saving for it that could rather be put aside for rainy days? There's something about spending that much money (however small is our budget compared to the majority of others I've seen) on a single day that I still find a little hard to swallow.
My dilemma is, on one hand (I've said it before), I want to be married to M much more than I want to get married to M. On the other hand, however, I do find myself daydreaming about it more than I thought I would, and I do want to make this occasion a special celebration, even if it's non-traditional and a little quirky and very do-it-yourself.
I never used to worry about this before, but recently hearing of a lot of horror stories about honest, well-meaning people who pretty much found themselves on the street is making me a little nervous. I guess it's hard to ignore now that we would only be a few bad news away from the "catastrophic scenario" we're all dreading. You never know what could happen, I'm a consultant and therefore have little job security (thank god the company I work for right now is not really impacted by the financial crisis and is even thriving). It's just not that far-fetched to think that within a matter of months, M and I could both lose our jobs, take longer than usual to find other employment (we're both very employable in our fields, but you never know in a difficult job market), need to dig into our savings, and then have trouble paying the mortgage, the credits cards, the loans we now reimburse without blinking...
Chances are everything will be fine, I know. But I feel vulnerable right now, like just a slight deviation from our current situation could potentially spell trouble. I feel a little guilty about not being more of an adept of the "simple living" philosophy, about caring about how I look and desiring some fine and fun and pretty things in life, about the choices M and I make as active consumers. I feel a little bad that the wedding is also part of that scheme, and that I do want to make this day really special, that I would much rather impress our guests a little than underwhelm them, and that I want to somehow keep up with what I've (and they've) seen at other weddings, at the expense of building up a more comfortable financial "safety cushion" for our family.
I guess if the catastrophic scenario ever came up, it would always be possible to review and adjust the wedding planning. Nothing is set in stone... No, nothing is ever set in stone and should be taken for granted, including the current (relatively) positive state of a financial situation.
Snow. There was a very thin blanket of it on the ground this morning. Not everywhere, and already in the process of melting, but still. Even for here, that's friggin' early!!! I have four large pumpkins spread out on the front lawn, waiting to be decorated tomorrow night, and I'm not even sure they will be salvageable. It's October, for god's sake! Oh well, I've seen on CNN that some parts of New Jersey, Pennsylvania and upstate New York (which are all, hello, several hours south of here) had one foot of the white stuff, so in our case, it's not that bad.
I thought LP would be supremely excited to see it (he was way too young to remember it from last year), but in the end, not so much. He looked at it, called it "mousse" (foam), and then went back to his real, full, and exclusive object of interest since last night: a live goldfish brought back by M from a two-day off-site company meeting in Quebec City (he rescued it from the meeting's decor). We asked LP how he wanted to call it, and he very decidedly and excitedly shouted... "Kuwi"! We looked at each other with puzzled glances, and tried to make him change his mind, but he kept repeating the same, completely meaningless thing. So Kuwi it is, I guess.
Who cares about the first snow when you've just had your very own first pet?
So, how did it happen that M and I became parents before marrying? What’s the dish on that? Did we get, hmm, surprised by LP’s arrival?
Before LP was born, I was spending a lot of time daydreaming, trying to envision how he would be like. I hoped he would have certain traits, of course, but I was being really careful not to get carried away. It's just that I've seen a lot of parents disappointed: fathers who wanted a ruff little boy who would play all kinds of sports, and had a shy, intellectual kid instead, or mothers who dreamed of a little girl they could play doll with, only to end up with a tom-boy who never, ever, accepted to wear a dress and proper shoes.
I wanted my son to be free to be himself, not to push him into something we liked but he didn't. It's no secret that I had always imagined I would have a girl, and little boys were completely foreign to me. I felt like I should start with a blank slate, and forget all my preconceptions about raising a "mini-me".
Well, my son is very much a boy, and totally drawn to anything sports- or car-related. He's certainly very active, and people often remark that "oh my, he's such a little man"... I can't really say: we have no point of comparison, and well, obviously, it's little girls that are now foreign to me. Are girls more prone to stay in place longer? Less likely to get all messy and dirty? Is their attention span greater? It's tough to even consider these questions without entering into the slippery territories of generalizations and stereotypes.
All I know is despite all my caution, I am struck all the time by how much LP is like us, in both the good and the bad. He's definitely his own person, and in time, I'm sure he'll find hundreds of ways to be different from us (and to put it in our face). But I can already see all the outlines of his personality, and gosh, the apple didn't fall far from the tree. I include both M and I in this tree, since even though we are not completely alike, and have many distinctive qualities (he's more of a night owl, he likes speaking in public, etc.), one of the things that brought us together (and made me think we were soul mates) was that we had remarkably similar characters, interests and values: he's actually the person who was the most like myself I've ever met in my whole life. It's not a vain thing about the necessity of finding my own image in a partner, it's more about someone who felt "different" all her life and then finally found a kindred spirit...
LP is both very verbal and bookish, extremely curious and interested in (too) many things at once (he's still very young and that one could change though). He really enjoys cooking and baking with me with, and simply eats anything, having practically never displayed any kind of reluctance to try new or different foods.
Then there's his sensitivity... I felt it in him from day one, and I'm so convinced it explained a lot of his extreme fussiness as a baby... He's showing so many signs of high sensitivity, it's dizzying. It makes me love him even more, because I can so understand how it is and what it feels like, but I also know that especially when it's so obvious at such a young age, it's not necessarily a good thing. A lot of his personality seems to be derived from that trait: the wonderful super-expressiveness, the very strong intuition, the extreme empathy (for example, he was inconsolable the other day after seeing an injured tiger cub in a book, and I didn't say anything, it was just based on the expression on the animal's face on the drawing)... I guess as a mother who shares the same trait, I can at least understand him and try to both protect him a little and undermine the negative sides (I'm pondering a post solely about this... More to come).
Even his poor sleeping habits, which both drive us crazy (there's a trend towards improvement but it's still up and down, after a month and a half of sleeping through the night he's back to waking up a couple of times and crying...) are completely unsurprising, because how can you teach someone to sleep well when you've never slept well in your entire life? M and I never have.
There's no doubt I would have loved my son just as much even if he had been completely different from us, not caring at all about what his father and I are into... But it's a real pleasant surprise to end up with a kid who's exactly like what I could have wished for in my wildest dreams... If I would have let myself do such a thing. ;-)
Today is M's 36th birthday. I wish you a wonderful day, my companion, partner, fiance, baby daddy, best friend... May this next year be filled with little joys, big trips, discoveries, and happiness.
I love you, my tattooed golfer, my biker who pulls off a suit beautifully! I can't believe how we've grown. You were 29 when we were first introduced, 32 when you first kissed me, outside in the park during that glorious first day of spring, 34 when you stood by my side while I huffed and puffed and delivered an absolutely perfect baby boy who looked just like you (sorry honey but he now looks just like me!)
In the last year, you've given me the two best presents ever, which I both love for the symbol they represent: first, that stunning, eye-catching piece of bling that now permanently sits on my fourth finger, which I still look at in awe every day, and second, that inked art on your skin, which spells the initials of everyone in our little three-person-unit.
It's both fantastic and a little weird that we've somehow managed to truly become adults, not just two people playing house, but a real functioning family, don't you think? I'm so glad you're here with me. Couldn't do it without you. To many, many, many years together!
Lately, in bridal magazines and on wedding blogs, I’ve noticed the triumphant return of a flower we would call "mal-aimée" in French (or ill-loved): the carnation. Poor innocent flower, forever associated with bad taste and all things cheap and tacky.
But apparently, carnations are in again, and popping up everywhere in both small, thrifty weddings and extravagant ones. And when grouped together in a tight round ball or pomander of a single hue, they just look perfect, like a beautiful, lavish fluffy pompom. Hold the baby’s breath, though!
We’re gradually seeing a new trend occurring at our house: the long weekend nap. I still can’t rely on the fact that it’s going to happen for sure (case in point, two Sundays ago when I decided to launch a big cooking initiative and LP woke up crying after 35 minutes when I had my hands full with 5 things at once), but his naps are becoming more and more normal.
Up until then, I simply didn’t know what it was to have a child who slept. Naps? Starting at around 4 months, my son stopped sleeping for erratic long stretches and started to nap twice a day, for about 30 minutes at a time, 40 when I was lucky. Nighttime? Usually, he’d had woken up 3 or 4 times by the time I was going to bed, exhausted and feeling like I just didn’t have ANY time for myself. I later read that this was completely typical of intense/sensitive children, plus we’re a family of poor sleepers, so even if we never found a solution, at least this gave me somewhat of an explanation and reassurance that it was not due to our poor parenting or something.
But things started to change a few months ago. What was it? He naturally became more able to comfort himself? The development of his brain allowed for fewer periods of light sleep? He finally understood that even if we weren’t there, it didn’t mean that we had disappeared forever? Probably all of the above, and I’m not complaining.
I couldn’t say everything is now perfect, and I bet it’ll never be. But it’s amazing how his recent improving sleep habits directly result in a notable return to an increasingly “normal” life in our house. In the last few weeks, M and I found ourselves cuddling on the couch while watching TV on several occasions, each time telling ourselves that wow, it felt good not to be on edge all the time anticipating that our son will wake up and have a complete meltdown within the next half hour so we’d better not start anything. That relaxed feeling of having a couple of hours at night for doing our own stuff is awesome…
And so are the long naps. Yesterday we had my dad and stepmom over for breakfast, and then M went for his last motorcycle ride of the season. I put LP to bed shortly after lunch, and felt a little giddy about having the house to myself. I didn’t feel like cooking, cleaning or doing something useful; all I wanted was to lounge around and be lazy for a change. Well, LP slept until 4, and it was absolutely wonderful. I love being a mother and it’s no doubt the most important thing in my life, but having time for myself is just…incredible. It’s been so rare in the past 20 months that I appreciated it to the fullest, and swore to myself that I will never take it for granted anymore.
I watched all the TV shows I had taped with our DVR during the week, flipped through girly magazines (including the new fall crop of wedding planning ones, which I find exciting because of all the vibrant colors (my wedding will be in September)), put my feet on the coffee table and slowly sipped some warm tea. Best of all, I was totally zen, and in my case, that is absolutely priceless. I always thought that the weekend was nothing more than a state of mind…
When my well-rested, flushed-cheeked toddler finally woke up, he joined me on the couch, still all warm and smelling like sleeping babies smell. We munched on crackers and watched Ms. Stewart make some glittery Halloween crafts. When it was over, he said: “Bye-bye, Martha!” and off we went to get some local, fresh fruits and vegetables, probably for the last time this year. All in all, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect Sunday.
I've recently started to copy past parenting-related posts over at Babble Playground, a Facebook-like community for parents. I've decided to do so after a really nice and personal e-mail exchange with April Peveteaux, the blog editor at their sister site Babble, who suggested the idea. So from now on I will cross-post relevant stuff, both here and there.
I do have my own blog page there that is part of my profile, but there's also a feature that automatically makes posts appear on a collective homepage among recent posts by other bloggers, which I guess can bring more readership... It's my idea behind it, anyway: here at Blogger I'm one in a million blogs who discuss everything and anything, but over there, I'm one of a few blogs discussing one topic that is of major interest for readers. I'm curious to see if it will have an impact at all.
Ms. Peveteaux told me that before the end of the year, they plan to begin highlighting blog posts from the Playground directly on Babble's homepage, and later devote an entire page to bloggers, including some selected from there. Babble has 1 million readers per month! I've always said that my mid-term plan was to be able to earn a living writing things that are a little more personal to me than software user guides, and, you know, this is a tiny first step.
Go check it out if you want, it's a great resource! You need to sign up to be part of the Playground, however.
Prince Liam the Brave
Of all the Internet friends I've made in the last year, Gretchen Witt is certainly the dearest to me. I've blogged several times before (including here and here) about her 4 year-old son "prince" Liam, whom I'm totally in love with, and who has been battling a very nasty type of cancer called neuroblastoma for way too long (their blog here).
I haven't updated about Liam since a small mass of tumor cells were found on his kidney (his original tumor site) in July. Since then, he's had surgery, two rounds of chemotherapy, and has now started antibody treatments. He's doing well, showing no evidence of disease, and I'm crossing my fingers very hard for him, thinking about his family in New York every day. What I love the most about Liam is his indomitable spirit, and he continues to be happy and full of energy and amazement for the world around him.
As a personal favor, Gretchen asked me to help out with an organization she's founded, called Cookies for Kids Cancer. In honor of her admirable strength and resilience, I will bake cookies and sell them in the next few weeks, paying all baking supplies and packaging materials from my own pocket, and matching up the total sales as my personal contribution. I plan to start baking tonight, and to officially launch my initiative on Saturday, when we'll be going to my sister's baby shower and there will be a lot of people from my social circle there in one place. I'll keep you posted about it!
I know she would much rather be an ordinary mom and not have to go through all of this, but Gretchen is my absolute hero, because she cares and fights and proves that there are positive outcomes to this nightmare that pediatric cancer is! While dealing with her own very difficult situation, she still feels responsible for the future of all kids diagnosed with the disease, and her only goal is to collect funds in order to ramp up pediatric cancer research, which is severely lacking all over the world. I was once a pharmaceutical journalist and I know very well that big money put in research really produces results after a while, if not a cure... But the industry is typically not interested in investing in this type of research, since overall the potential patient pool is low and thus so is the potential profit. But this is unbearable! No child should suffer this much or lack treatment options just because of greedy shareholders! There is hope as research does exist outside the commercial brand names, but funds are needed as support (when a drug is first created, there is usually a 15-year span before it is put to market, if it ever makes it there (over 95% of candidates don't). Still, it is the only way science can go forward, and there's no need to be cynical about it as little miracles and feel-good results happen every day). Gretchen is very aware of this and has decided to take matters into her own hands, one cookie at a time!
Anyone can help! Please visit the website linked above, where you can make a secure online donation or plan a bake sale yourself. This means SO MUCH to me.
The Conservative Prime Minister Steven Harper was re-elected last night, as part of another minority government (the third one in a row).
The good news: With the Liberals being so weak right now, a Conservative victory was completely unsurprising, but at least they did not win a majority like the polls previously indicated. I feel much better knowing that they will continue to be kept in check by the other parties, since they will need their approval before passing legislation.
The bad news: The campaign lasted 5 weeks and cost $300 million, and here we are now, exactly at the same place where we stood yesterday. Same Prime Minister, same government, very few actual changes in representatives, at least in Quebec. And since it's another monitory, it means the circus will be in town again very soon, most likely within the next two years.
Those blogging tag games are so much fun! BudgetSavvyBride tagged me into this one, where you must reveal 6 quirky things about yourself. Here it goes:
1- I put on lip balm at least a hundred times a day. I've done it compulsively for as long as I can remember. In my defense, I have the driest, most irritable lips I have ever seen, and they become all red, crackled and blistered if I don't protect them, even only for a few hours. If I go anywhere without my chapstick, I feel completely lost, overwhelmed and a little panicked for a split second before coming back to my senses, it's very much like an addiction!
2- In the house, I can deal with some dust and little hand prints in mirrors, but hardly any clutter. I can't sit still and relax until everything is put back into its place, it's like the clutter clouds up my mind. This drives M crazy, and he repeatedly had to ask me to come have dinner with him and LP last night while I buzzed around putting random objects away, my hands full with toys, water bottles, bananas, mail, a tiny scarf, shoes, bibs, a magazine, etc. I guess it's beneficial in the end, but really annoying for others.
3- I need to read everything. All that's written on food packaging, inserts on medicine packages, flyers delivered to my mailbox, any promotional stuff given to me... M is the same, and sometimes we just look like a bunch of weirdos sitting at the table, with him absentmindedly reading the cereal box and I, the nutritional information on the peanut butter jar.
4- I've always been so sensitive that my mom forbade me to watch a lot of things on TV as a child, even totally harmless stuff like a Canadian family drama from the early '80s called "The Littlest Hobo", about a stray German Shepherd who wandered around helping people and saving lives. Each week he would meet a new family, bond with them, and still at the end he always left, something which, despite being completely unsurprising, brought me to heavy sobs for hours and hours each time, until my mother simply banned it from our house. Over the years I have become a little thicker-skinned, but I know there's still stuff I just shouldn't watch. I love Grey's Anatomy, but it's really pushing my limits.
5- It's really important for me to eat healthy: we only have soy milk and whole grains in the house, I get very few over-processed foods, we rarely eat red meat (but have loads of veggies and fish), and I try to buy organic stuff whenever possible. It's a standard I like to maintain for my family, but I also have a much less holy side. I'm a sucker for junk and trashy food, and I can sometimes (although rarely) overdo it. Chemical-orange mac and cheese from a box with hot-dog slices are a real delicacy to me, as are Cheez Whiz and good old Quebecois poutine. I'll only go to McDonald's a couple of times a year, but when I go I'll totally pig out with nuggets and a Big Mac and fries and a Coke AND a McFlurry.
6- I sometimes read the end of a book before finishing it, and I actually like it when people recap a movie I haven't seen yet. I don't mind at all, it won't spoil it for me, I just like knowing how it ends.
Here are the rules:
1. link back to the person who tagged you
2. mention the rules on your blog
3. tell about 6 unspectacular quirks of yours
4. tag 6 following bloggers by linking to them
5. leave a comment on each of the tagged bloggers blogs letting them know they’ve been tagged and
6. you can now display this charming dalek image Songy at Style Discovery created when tagged!
On Saturday afternoon LP refused to nap like he sometimes does when he's out of his routine, so when we made it to the restaurant for dinner he was both cranky and restless. Unfortunately, we reverted to our well-rehearsed strategy of taking turns distracting him and walking him around, while the other wolfed down the presented course.
I immediately noticed that old couple at a table nearby, intensely looking at us. They were certainly in their eighties, but looking robust and alert, and were out-on-the-town having mussels in Thai broth at a Belgian restaurant. When I passed by them with the little one, the woman reached out by saying my name. This was unusual as I left my hometown 14 years ago, but not incredibly surprising, since this is a small, fairly isolated region where people have a very strong sense of community, and where everyone knows everyone. My dad having been a doctor there for over 30 years, he's something of a semi-public figure, and I don't know how many times I've been greeted by people I didn't know as "la fille du docteur Laforte".
We started making small talk. The old woman was smiling, clearly emotional, chatting up LP, gently stroking his hair and his face. Then she said: "If only Yvette could have been here..."
And it all came back to me, I immediately realized who she was. She had been the best friend of my paternal grandmother, who's been gone for 6 years now.
Yvette was nothing short of extraordinary. Coming from a remote village where her parents had her stop school in fourth grade to help take care of the family, she married my grandfather on December 31, 1941, simply because on the next day, all single men became eligible to be sent overseas and fight in WWII. They moved to an industrial town where my grandfather Leo spent his whole life doing a very physical, difficult, health-undermining job at the aluminum plant. She gradually became blind in her twenties, which did not stop her from raising 13 kids, who ALL turned out to achieve their parents' dream of pursuing higher education.
My blind grandmother was a dynamo. She knew her house by heart and moved without assistance. She cooked for her brood (albeit terribly, sorry grand-maman!). She loved playing cards (and cheating!), with only a little help from someone who could see. She sung and played various instruments, most notably the accordion. She was loud and opinionated, and always aware of what was going on in the world. In her place, the public radio was playing in the background at all times, and she was constantly listening to audio tapes of books and magazines sent over by some charitable organization.
I can only imagine what it was like for my dad growing up in this chaotic, cluttered house, full of kids of all ages wearing mismatched outfits, probably always trying to hide their mischief from her. Unlike the "good Catholic housewife" of the time, she would rather spend time with the children (hers and later, her kids') than clean, and she didn't really care about going to church. I'm pretty sure she did believe in God, but she never hesitated to vehemently criticize the overbearing nature of priests or their hypocrisy.
She had a ton of grandkids, but she made each of us feel special, always telling us about how "beautiful" we were (she could see our inner beauty very well). As a child, I often preferred listening to the adults' conversations than playing with my cousins downstairs, and I remember how much of a woman of her time she was, understanding and embracing all the major changes going on in the society during that era, never judging, never putting her hand in the sand. She used to say that she loved all of her children, but she was still very happy for the newer generation of women, who had access to modern contraceptives.
When Leo got sick and died within a matter of a few months (I was then 15 years old), she began to slowly falter. It was like she was losing her eyes all over again. For 50 years my grandfather had quietly guided her, driving for her, writing for her, describing everything for her, being her adoring and faithful shadow. Eventually she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and placed in an hospice-type facility.
I remember my last conversation with her, when she was already confused but still in contact with reality. I had not seen her in a while, but she recognized me immediately, after I only said "bonjour". We talked normally for a little bit and then, I knew that she had slipped when she started to refer to me as if I were my cousin Annie. She then made a surprising confession: Leo had not been the love of her life, but another handsome boy had rather stolen her heart, then ripped it apart. She had married my grandfather a little out of revenge, at least at first, since he had been her brother's best friend, always looking at her with the hopeless glance of someone who loves in silence. But, she added, she had made the right choice after all, since Leo had proved to be such a wonderful husband and father. Plus, she concluded, the other guy had died of a heart attack at 42, anyway. I've always remained a little troubled by this revelation. But it also made me feel strangely closer to her, even though I'll never know whether it was intentional or a simple lapse of memory...
I miss you, grand-maman. Your friend was right. It would have been great to introduce you to my son.
LP with his new favorite person in the whole world, my dad
We're off to my hometown (500 km, or 310 miles north of here), in order to celebrate the Canadian Thanksgiving (long weekend) with my dad and stepmom. As the tradition is much less observed in this part of the continent, apparently what we have as far as a plan is reservations at a mussels-and-fries restaurant...
LP only went up there once when he was 6 months old and I do want him to know where I come from, at least to some extend. He really has not seen this grandpa enough because of the distance, so let the good family times roll...
LP likes to pretend talking on the phone a lot, with his toys, or even by putting his hand to his ear. When you actually give him the phone and they're someone talking on the other side, though, he's much less game. Either he giggles, or he looks semi-frightened and pushes the phone away. Most of the time these days, when we ask him if he wants to talk to someone (including to me last night), he just thoughtfully and assuredly says "nonnnn...", very much like, "thanks so much for presenting me with this opportunity, but really, I won't bother".
But a few days ago he's had his most "real-sounding" conversation so far, with his paternal grandmother in Quebec City. He not only said "allo", then proceed to correctly identify her (Louise), but he also made a connection that wherever she was out there, it probably meant that his grandfather was also nearby.
Now let's not talk about his immediate, life-or-death, inexplicable, ineluctable attachment for his grandpa too much, as I do not wish to hurt M's mom feelings over her only grandchild repeatedly turning his back on her to enter into a world where only him and his grandpa exist (I'm kidding, she mostly just finds it funny), but LP and M's dad together, it's serious stuff.
So making the best of all his words while having her on the phone, he immediately asked: ..."Un autre? (Gr)and-papa?" (Literally "another one" but in this case more like "someone else"? Grandpa?), which she greeted with a burst of laughter we could both hear from the other side of the room.
She finally gets to talk with him on the phone for more than two seconds, and all he wants is to use her to get through you-know-who? Gosh, that's rude. Who taught him these friggin' manners? Seriously, I'm so relieved she's being such a good sport about it. He loves you very much, you know, Louise (sheepish grin)....
For our wedding, the venue is the most important thing to find, and it can make or break the reception if you ask me!
It’s also the largest part of our budget, around 40%. Food is very important to us, and it’s the only real splurge we’re allowing ourselves to have. Mind you, it’s easier to plan it that way when you have small number of guests, probably around 30-35 in our case. Splurging for 150 people would have been pretty much impossible, food lover or not.
What I had in mind was a small, quaint and charming restaurant, where the food is really, really good, well presented, inventive, fresh, with a great attention to details, etc… I also think that finding a restaurant with great ambiance and a nice decor will already give your party some “oomph” without you having to work too hard and spend too much on it.
I’ve never been, but I was really interested in the
Source: nymag.com
But then I have this crazy idea in my mind which keeps coming back. It came back even stronger a few days ago, when I saw a Sprint TV commercial filmed there. My crazy idea is to have the reception at the Empire Diner in
Source: nyc-architecture.comM and I love going there, so we already have a personal connection with the place. It’s also a true
Here's the inside, nicely decorated -for the Holidays-, but it gives an idea of how it could be once festively dressed-up... Source: columbia.edu
On the “yes, yes, yes” side:
-Fabulous vintage decor that very much suits our tastesOn the “not-so-sure” side:
-Small (long and narrow, true to classic diner-style), with multiple small tables (and bar stools) instead of a few bigger tables
-Although I’m sure the food would be good, it would still be simpler and very different from the gourmet, just-a-tad-sophisticated experience I had in mind…
What do your guys think?
I think we may have found our wedding photographer! I’m so excited about this. Her style is wonderful, artistic, quirky and emotional as opposed to very traditional and stiff. She's used to shooting weddings but at the same time she does plenty of other types of work, and in my mind that's actually a plus. She offers packages which completely correspond to what we had in mind (M wants to obtain and work on the pictures himself, and we’ll make our own album at some point. It may seem obvious but actually from the research I’ve done very few photogs were willing to hand you out a CD with the pictures, rather charging you $$$ for editing and processing them while keeping the originals). And her rates fall perfectly well within our budget, more comparable to what you can usually find here than in
She lives in see confirm that it is a good fit for us! She seems so nice and I have such a good feeling…
Yay! Since it’s a small, very DIY wedding, we will not have to deal with that many vendors (no videographer, no DJ, no florist, no baker, etc.), so finding the right photographer at the right price is a big part of making it happen… If it works out (crossing fingers), we will then only have to find a restaurant (admittedly the biggest piece of the whole wedding puzzle) and an officiant, and that’s it! Everything else will rely on our own hands, and hopefully, on the helping ones of people around us.
Here in Quebec there is a very popular rotisserie chicken restaurant chain called St-Hubert. Their delivery cars look like this:
15/10 UPDATE: In the last few days I've noticed that a lot of people were brought to this blog while looking for a pumpkin patch in the Montreal area. In order to help them out, I wanted to add that the one we went to is in Saint-Basile-le-Grand, on the South Shore, right on Route 116. It's nice and fun and inexpensive, even though the wet summer we had was not the greatest for the crop. I definitely recommend it!
LP to M: "Non (citrouille) papa, courge" (No, (not a pumpkin) daddy, a squash)...
I'm not that crazy about this hat, but he insisted on wearing his "ca(s)quette de Bo(s)ton", and even fetched it from the drawer himself...
There’s a collective wedding blog out there called Wedding Bee. Any blogger planning a wedding is entitled to be part of the "hive" and can apply to become a "bee" starting from 7 months before her wedding. I was not totally addicted to it like I know a lot of girls are, but I still liked it for its diversity: there are all kinds of bees from very different backgrounds, with different styles, budgets and wedding planning mindsets (there is even one from
I checked it out today, for the last time. The site has just been sold to eHarmony, which at first kind of puzzled me (why would a dating site want to buy a wedding planning blog)? It turns out, the issue is pretty controversial, and reading about it opened my eyes to all the questionable business practices of this company. They refuse to offer same-sex matches, and until very recently refused to match candidates from different ethnic or religious backgrounds. They are also associated with a fundamentalist Christian organization called Focus on the Family, which according to the words of one former bee “promotes unscientific conversion therapies of LGBTQ people and homosexuality as a mental illness.”
For me, the homophobic stance, the anti-mixity stance and the fundamentalist Christian values (I’m not religious but I can absolutely respect people’s religious views, just not the extremist ones) represent very ugly things in this world, and are a deal breaker. One of the bees who just got married to her same-sex partner decided to quit the hive, and so are many readers who took to time to explain why in comments. The hive is pretty shook up right now! Apparently they do not want to change anything about the site’s former style and editorial content, but in the long run I can hardly envision this happening. I would have been curious to see how it eventually plays out, but it’s really over for me. I feel I need to put my money where my mouth heart is.
Those comments are what surprised me most, in a good way (you can read about it all here). Who knew so many people cared so strongly about such issues? I just love a good, heated, yet respectful discussion. For some reason, seeing such a multi-faceted political/personal/social debate on a blog usually devoted to something as admittedly frivolous as wedding planning made me really happy and somewhat proud of my fellow community of bride-to-be’s.
One of our occasional guilty pleasures is to watch Gene Simmons’ Family Jewels, which I must admit is quite a good show. I’m not that crazy about him as a performer, but there’s just something very… normal and endearing about his family.
These are people who live in a Beverly Hills mansion, have cameras filming their daily lives and are still just a little bit over-the-top, but despite all of that I just love their un-outrageousness. Compared to the Osbournes, which, don’t get me wrong, I used to love watching, these people just seem so sane and friendly. The kids (Nic, 19, and Sophie, 16) are cute and smart, their mom Shannon is beautiful and witty, and everyone seems to genuinely love one another… They also have a very ironic, tongue-in-cheek way of making fun of Gene, which I find hilarious. These people (and by that I probably mean
The last episode we watched was about them all sitting together on the couch watching old home videos (again, no small feat for any family with teenagers today!), and it was all at once touching, sweet and funny to see the kids grow up before our eyes. There they were, having obviously had a completely normal childhood, with little school recitals and afternoons by the pool with their smaller cousin. It’s kinda stupid I know, but I was all teary, because ever since I’ve become a parent, there’s nothing I find more bittersweet than how fast kids grow up.
We have a few videos of LP, taken with our not-so-good digital camera, which has this added feature of recording 45-second video snippets. We rarely think of using it -even less so since M bought his big and shiny bells-and-whistles camera- and it’s terrible, because even though I hate boring home videos that drag on forever, I know that little bits of past reality are just so powerful at rekindling memories and conjuring up emotions. They’re moving, tangible proof of things that were, and they become more and more meaningful as the years go by. It made me suddenly realize that LP is growing up too, and we don’t get to shockingly realize it day-by-day because we’re always near him, but as it is we don’t really get to freeze any of his precious moments either, and it’s a shame.
At this point, M and I just looked at each other, both wearing that emotional look on our faces. I said: “We need a video camera.” I was sure that he was thinking the same thing. But simultaneously, he said: “LP needs a little sister.”
WHHHAAA? I’m so nowhere near there… It’s so out of the question right now. NOT ready! If you get closer, I’ll whisper something in your ear: I'm afraid I might actually never be.
Image Source: Martha Stewart Crafts
Source: Martha Stewart Crafts via www.nested.com
