Parks Canada Xplorers Program for Kids

During our Eastern Canada Road Trip, we discovered that Parks Canada has a special Xplorers Program for kids and families. At some Parks Canada locations, they will give your children an Xplorers booklet filled with fun activities and tasks to accomplish. During your visit, your children complete some of them and at the end of the visit, they receive a certificate and a little "dog tag" style souvenir that shows where they went.

We discovered this while we were on Prince Edward Island. I wish we had known about it at the start of our trip because it would have been so nice to have stopped at Canada Parks in each province that we visited! We got pretty close on our way back home, though!

End of Summer & PhD Party!

To celebrate Ken's successful PhD defense, my fabulous sister-in-law and mother-in-law put together an "End of Summer/PhD Party" and got a bunch of our friends and family together to play games, enjoy food, and celebrate!

My sister-in-law was in charge of the games and she came up with some really fun ideas! With the help of my brother-in-law who brought this awesome rope, she planned for a game of tug-of-war.

She also created this giant Twister game with spray paint! We used an app to "spin" and then had fun watching everyone get twisted up!

A Mommy Daughter Photography Date

One of the best things I did with Talia this summer was to take her out for a "mommy daughter date" to take photos. I've written before about sharing my favourite hobby with her and I recently told you all about how I've been able to re-embrace my love of photography with a new, lighter camera. Well, now I'm combining both of those!

For our outing, I wanted to introduce Talia to digital photography with a DSLR, so she used one of my older DSLRs and I used my new mirrorless Fuji X-A3.

Photo Credit:Talia

It was fun to play with my new camera and I loved that I didn't have to deal with any hand pain throughout our time together. The best part about it all though, was seeing Talia get into it! The first photo in this post (above) is one of my favourites.  Talia had gotten low to the ground to photograph this dandelion (below) and I wanted to get a photo of her. She quickly tilted her camera up at me and I love the way that shot turned out!

An Announcement & A Project (Printable Iron-On Shirt Designs)

It is very exciting to announce that after many years of University, Ken is finally finished school! I don't think I'm able to put into words yet, what this journey has been like. Someday I hope to write more in depth about it, but for now I'll just let the T-shirt do the talking! To celebrate Ken's successful thesis defense, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law threw a party. Ken and I made some T-shirts for our family (and learned a few things along the way).

Re-Embracing My Love of Photography with the Fuji X-A3

This is the story of my love of photography, my biggest physical struggle to date, and a camera that allowed me to re-embrace my love of photography.

I started to love photography when I got my first point & shoot film camera at 12 years old. In high school and university I took photography classes, working in dark rooms to develop my own film. Ten years ago I bought my first DSLR camera. I dove into that hobby and learned everything I could soak up about photography and began doing photo sessions for families, babies, couples, and events like weddings, and other parties. I loved it!

His & Hers Wood Watches (& Giveaway)

This year for his birthday, I gave Ken a wood watch from JORD that he had his eye on. That watch has been a big conversation starter; everyone is interested when they notice it's made of wood! I can tell it was definitely a successful gift because he will often make a comment to me (even 6 months later) about how much he really likes it. As you can tell from the photo below, JORD makes men's watches AND women's watches and we now have "His & Hers" watches!

I was really excited to find the Cora Zebrawood & Turquoise watch because the face is one of my favourite colours! I think the grain of the zebrawood is really unique as well and I love the Swarovski crystal markers because they add an extra touch of femininity to it.