Obsessed with Notebooks

Happy Monday, friends!

Today I'm sharing one of my guilty pleasures - my obsession with notebooks (or any kind of paper products in general). The first thing I do any time I walk into Chapters, is head towards the notebook section.. and it usually takes everything in me not to . buy every cute and pretty notebook.

At my desk, right now, I have four black notebooks, a blue notebook, a brown notebook, various cute pads of paper from the Target dollar post, and the following notebooks that are pretty enough to photograph.

They all have different purposes. I'll use them to write notes about things like weight loss/gain, food plans or meal ideas, journals, photo shoot ideas, lists of things. I love lists. However, I do have to admit that I have one or two notebooks that have absolutely nothing inside because I think they're too pretty to write in.

I'm curious if there's anyone else out there who also gets ridiculously excited about cute notebooks or paper products? No? Just me?

This one was a little hard to photograph because it's so bright, but this is a hot pink/hot orange notebook that I use for practice brush lettering..



This one is a little different than all of my other notebooks and journals. I bought this one about 6 years ago and decided I didn't want to use it. Randomly last year I opened it up and decided I wanted to try it out and I probably completed half of the book. Essentially, this is a journal prompt book that gives you all kinds of different things to do. I'm terrible at explaining things - look it up on google if you're curious what I mean.



This is my mint ring-bound planner that I absolutely love it.



And because I love planners, I have an Erin Condren life planner (no I don't use both all of the time. I use my Erin Condren all of the time, and use the ring-bound planner some of the time because it's smaller and easier to take with me on the go.



And I saved my favourite for last - my Webster's Pages Travelers Notebook. I think this is so gorgeous, and just want to stare at it and not write in it at all.

One more picture because I love it so much.

That's it for my notebook and planner collection for now. I may share pictures of ALL of my notebooks some day. Maybe. Considering I have such a love for all stationery items, including pretty pens, and note pads, etc. I will probably need to do a part II.

Do you have a love for stationery? If you do, please share what your favourite items are.

Sweet Potato Hash

Sweet Potato Hash

A few months ago, my dear friend Sarah invited me over to her place for brunch. She cooked me this amazing dish and I was in heaven.. to be honest, I've thought about it numerous times since then, but just kept forgetting to make it. On Sunday, when I was creating my food plan for the week, I thought about this delicious brunch and decided I wanted to make my own version of it. I checked with Sarah on the ingredients she used and then took it in my own direction.

Here are the items you'll need for this recipe:

• Lean Ground Pork
• Sweet potato (1 large or 2 small/medium)
• 5-6 Parsnips
• 2 Bell peppers
• 1 bunch of Green Onions
• Eggs (2 for each person eating this dish)

Recommended seasonings/flavour-enhancers: 

• Sea salt
• Pepper
• Garlic powder
• Cayenne Pepper
• Taco seasoning (optional)
• Frank's hot sauce (or sriracha)
• Olive Oil (1-2 tbsp)

Okay, lets get started.

First step is to cook the ground pork. I actually cooked and completed this step prior to deciding I wanted to photograph these steps and write up this recipe post... so I don't have any pictures to share. But that's fine, just cook the ground pork as you normally would. I seasoned mine with garlic powder, a few tbsp of taco seasoning, sea salt, and pepper.

Next step, grab your potato and parsnips. Peel them and get them ready for grating.

If your sink looks like this, then you're probably done.

Toss some olive oil in a pan and put it on the stove - don't turn it on yet.

Once you have your naked tater and 'snips then go ahead and chop off the ends and start grating them down - warning, it will look like mozarella cheese, second warning, it does NOT taste like mozarella cheese.

Grate, grate, grate. Grating is great.

* if you have a food processor, now is the time to use it. Don't waste your time and almost grate off your knuckles, like me. Also, please note, I'm already insanely jealous if you don't have to grate all the taters and 'snips.

Once you're almost done grating, turn your burner on low-medium heat and get that pan nice and hot.

Throw that shit in the frying pan and take a big swig of some diet coke - or whatever tickles your fancy. You just did a lot of work. Treat yo 'self.



Ahhh, refreshing.



Chop up your bell peppers and green onions (my hash was looking bland so I chopped up a red pepper too) and throw it all in. Add as much Frank's as you like.

Mix it all around. Mix. Mix. Mix.

Throw in some garlic powder, sea salt, pepper, more frank's, more taco seasoning, and some cayenne pepper. Basically, if you don't like spice - skip the frank's and cayenne. Once all of the ingredients have gotten to know each other, throw in the ground pork and let it cook for another 5-10 minutes.

SIDE NOTE:

I cooked about 5 portions so that I'd have it prepped for my dinners for the week - the next few steps take place after I have removed enough for one portion (it was actually enough for 2, I couldn't finish it).

Transfer to an oven-friendly pan/dish. Make little wells in the hash for your eggies. I wanted two eggs so I made two wells and cracked the eggies right in.

Throw the pan in the oven on low broil for 5-6 minutes. If you want your eggs to be runny then keep an eye on the pan so the yolks don't fully cook. If you like solid yolks, leave in the oven for 8-10 minutes.

Dish up and ENJOY.
Optional toppings: goat cheese and salsa. I've tried it with both and it's perfect every time no matter what.

If you have a cat like mine, you will need to keep a close eye on your hash. Three seconds after snapping this photo, Penny hopped onto the table and tried to devour my dinner.

If you try out this recipe, please let me know what you think! Tag me in your pictures on instagram or twitter - I'd love to see how yours turns out!

The One Where She Rambles About Nothing

*steps up to the mic*
Testing, testing.. is this thing on?

I feel like I've had about 42 things that I've wanted to share with y'all over the past few months, but now I find myself sitting here, staring at this blank white page on my screen, and the words just can't seem to flow. The struggle, it's real.

Sometimes Quite often I will find that I ramble to Justin about literally nothing and I'm pretty sure that he would appreciate if I had an outlet (other than him) to talk about the random crap in my brain. To be honest, I don't think he wants to hear about my opinion on which celebrities shouldn't be dating, and why blueberries are such an underrated fruit. But, since this is my first blog post back, I'll spare y'all for now. But I make no promises about what I will or won't blog in the coming weeks.
You have been warned.

Anyway, for some reason, out of the blue, I decided to log into Blogger today to check out my blog. I haven't posted anything in 53 weeks... that is insane. A lot has happened in the past year. So many things actually. Lets recap a few things, shall we?

• Justin and I got married on October 17th (YAY!)
• We moved to a new apartment downtown (oh how I missed living downtown)
• We adopted two kitties (Kokanee and Penny - they're little shits adorable)
• I got a promotion (not like I ever talk about my work-life here anyway)
• I got to see Juliette THREE times last year (Vancouver, Dallas/Fort Worth, and Halifax)
• I got to see Lindsay in March (... and I get to see her in less than ONE month)
• Lots and lots of other little normal life things... you really didn't miss anything. But if you want to see more of what I've been up to then you should probably be following me on Instagram.

And because posts without photos are really boring, here are a few of my faves from our wedding:

*All of our wedding photos were taken by the incredible Candace Berry Photography.

Juliette's visit to CANADA

I am the worst blogger in the world, I know. BUT I am finally getting around to mentioning that one of my blog besties came to Vancouver a month ago, and we had the best weekend.

We vlogged the entire time she was here and I just got around to putting all of the different clips together to make the most hot mess vlog, ever. It's long.. like over 10 minutes long.. but if you want to see some of the things we did, then please enjoy.




I got pretty sad when I was putting this vlog together, because I miss Juliette and we had SO MUCH FUN.. but SURPRISE!! I get to see Juliette TOMORROW because we are both flying to Texas to spend the weekend with Lindsay for a very much needed girls weekend. And I know what you're thinking, and you're right - it'll probably take us another month to blog and vlog about that trip too. We are mostly sorry in advance.

#TripletsTakeTexas this weekend. So. Excited.

If you feel like looking at a bunch of pictures and reading a recap of Juliette's adventure in the land of poutine and maple syrup, please go read what she had to say about it.

See you again soon, blog world.
Probably

The Prodigal Blogger Returns

I miss blogging.

There, I said it. Maybe now that I've put it in writing, I'll actually get my butt in gear and get back to posting regularly. Ha, yeah right.

The fact that this draft has been sitting in the depths of blogger-dashboard-draft-hell is probably an indicator that I'm not fully committed to returning to the land of blogging full time... but I'm feeling the blogiverse pulling me back in. So, I'm going with it.

If you're new around here, or if you just forget what my face looks like, this is a somewhat recent photo of me:

Where do I start? What do I say? What do I update you folks on? Well, on May 1st, Justin proposed, which is basically old news at this point, but that's kind of the last life event that you all know about... so lets do a quick recap, and maybe a picture dump, of what things have taken place since then. And, I'm opting to do bullet points, because I like them, and they're super easy (that's what she said):

• Justin and I moved into our own apartment
  (we were living with my best friend, Amanda, before that)
• We bought a brand new card (!!!)
• I am teaching Justin how to drive (this will probably be a blog post later)
• We took our first mini-vacation together (only to Seattle for a day)
• We've planned/purchased our plane tickets for Christmas in Nova Scotia, and Juliette's wedding in California. This means I get to meet and hang out with Lindsay & Sami (used to be Sami's Shenanigans)
• We've decided that we're getting married, next October, in Halifax instead of Vancouver (my parents are pretty excited about this)
• I've finalized my bridal party (and they all said yes!)
  

I'm sure there are probably 42 other little things that I could fill you in on, but why bore you with that nonsense? I'll just let all of these pictures do the talking, and hopefully I'll make an appearance around here again soon to fill you all in on the major life updates. Stay tuned.
Warning: You are about to see 1,274,682 selfies of us...

 This is what our living room/kitchen looked like the last night in our old apartment 

Justin was sick of packing

Remember Jennie? She and I made that Sketti vlog that one time. Well, she's MOVING BACK TO VANCOUVER AND I AM SUPER EXCITED.

Teaching Justin to drive, and not scared for my BRAND NEW beautiful car at all

Asking my girl to be my bridesmaids - ha!

Exploring Seattle

So.

Many.

Selfies.

Beautiful new car - I'll try and get better pictures of this beaut.

These are our 'Holy crap we just picked up our car!' faces

That's all for today, folks. I'll try and post again this week. Try being the key word here.