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Blog Carnival

June 30, 2009 By 7 Comments

This post is a part of 20SB’s Looking Back Blog Carnival, and Ben & Jerry’s is awarding free ice cream to lucky bloggers and readers!

Click here for more information, if you are confused.

This post is from November 18, 2003, when I was in grade 11, aged 15 turning 16 later in the month. The contest asks me to give readers an idea of what I was like when I started blogging, and my friends, this was me. Every single blog post I wrote contained approximately one hundred exclamation points, was 1/3 caps lock, and I was excited! about! EVERYTHING!@@#(!

Well I was having some trouble signing in to blog but I figured it out just as I was about to give up.

As you may have noticed from my sisters blogs, this weekend was CRAZY!! Absolutely insane!!
Friday – I went to A’s work and then we drove around to wait for the guy shes likes to finish work (she works with him) and then we “conveniently” passed by him while he was waiting for a bus to catch and we gave him a ride even though it was 100% the opposite direction from her house! oh boy. He thinks I am mental, I was so mad hyper@
After we went to S’s house cuz he was having a party and we stayed there for a bit then went to McDonalds with T and … someone else i really cannot remember who at the moment. Anyways. It was a very fun night. Then me and A we re talking on her webcam to her fridn T who thinks i am absolutly mental but it was SOOOO funny! It was right wicked. Then we went to the football game which ( :( SADLY) our school lost
:( It was all so upsetting, and a very close game. Good try boys.
Saturday night we were supposed to have a family night for erica but SINCE SHE NEVER CAME HOOOOOME we had one without her (we had one cuz it was going to be our last night together as a family). BUt she came home in time for dessert. (typical).
I have to go unload the dishwasher and pick somehting up at Stefs house but I will finish this extra long blog later.

To be continued …
much love, UGZ

Laugh away, my friends. But don’t make fun, because you know you all would have written a post exactly like this if you were a boy crazy 15 year old whose best friend had a car! Names altered to protect the innocent. Except Erica. Where were you Erica? Why didn’t you come home for your family dinner?

Filed Under: blogging, humour, random

New Header!

May 8, 2009 By 6 Comments

Hi Blog friends!

It seems like we are all still recovering from a busy last week, and sadly that reflects on our lack of posting. I’m sure we’ll get right back into the swing of things really soon!

I posted a new header photo so be sure to check it out (aka click out of google reader :) )! All of our photos in it are from the wedding, and we still have lots of photos to show you.

Check back soon!

Filed Under: blogging, Uncategorized

Blog Swap: Hope Dies Last

April 22, 2009 By 8 Comments

As you will notice from other 20Something bloggers, today is Blog Swap Day! Fiveblondes is very fortunate to welcome Hope Dies Last to our comfy little home today. Enjoy, and check out her wonderful blog while you are at it!

Hi! I’m Hope and I am taking over 5 Blondes today as part of the 20SB Blog Swap! I usually post over at Hope Dies Last about love, relationships and the like. Today, I thought I would do something different. I thought I would address an extremely controversial topic. And I thought I would do it in the lion’s den; I’m insane like that. This is an age-old issue, a hotly contested matter as old as time.

Yes, people, I am talking about that divisive battle of the blondes versus the brunettes*.

I stand before you—here on 5 (beautiful) Blondes–as a representative of the world’s brunettes. Our hair colour is described as mousy and we are often depicted as boring and common. Hair dressers and stylist urge us to ‘get some highlights’ assuring that this will add a glow to our faces. And the best compliment a brunette can receive is that her hair colour is the shade of a decadent 1000 calorie chocolate bar.

Blondes, on the other hand, are considered bubbly, vivacious and they are even supposed to have more fun. Their colour is described as strawberry, golden or platinum. Why are blondes getting all the money making (and deliciously healthy) adjectives?

But–you know–brunettes have also been called mysterious, exotic and sophisticated and we never have to worry about being the pun of any (bad) blond jokes. Plus we all know that in a battle between Serena Van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf, Blair would win each and every time.

History (and pop culture) has shown us that blondes live lives of sad excess; of debauchery. Think of Paris Hilton, Tara Reid, Nicole Richie and even Anna Nicole Smith. The most famous blonde of all time—poor Marilyn Monroe lived a short tragic life; a victim of her own (bottled) hair colour.

Brunettes have also never had to rely on the Hollywood machine to stand up for them. I can’t think of a brunette movie that rivals “Legally Blonde”; the basic premise of which was FOR CRYING OUT LOUD PLEASE TAKE US SERIOUSLY.

No, brunettes are always taken seriously.

We stand tall even when our hair colour gets all the nutty adjectives like almond and walnut. We stand proud in knowing that Brad Pitt chose a brunette (granted I am on Team Aniston on this one) over a honey hued blonde. We stand united and every time a blonde steals the limelight with her gorgeous luminous hair, the bond between us grows stronger and stronger.

And one day—I am certain–we will take over the world.

Are you a bubbly blonde or a mysterious brunette? Who do you think will ultimately win this battle?

*For the sake of my argument, I have not included the jet black or red haired amongst us. Everyone knows they are all far superior.

Filed Under: blogging, blonde, Guest Post, question

Tuesdays with Micaela ~ Cooking with Kento.

March 24, 2009 By 13 Comments

Kent and I went out for lunch on Saturday and had spring rolls for an appetizer. We enjoyed them so much that on the way home we stopped at the grocery store to buy ingredients to make spring rolls for dinner. They were so good and so easy to make that I would totally recommend making your own over paying $10 for two spring rolls at a restaurant. Unless of course you are going to Kent’s restaurant, which you should support 100%!

You can pretty much put whatever in them but this is what we put in them:
chicken (basted with butter and cilantro)
carrots
celery
alfalfa sprouts
bean sprouts
cilantro
garlic
salt and pepper

Kent just started working at a new restaurant which unlike any he’s worked at before, requires him to wear a tall chef hat instead of a short one. He hates it. I don’t know what’s funnier, the hat itself or the fact that his mom irons it for him every morning! I guess in a month that will be my job. I’ll let you decide:

My dad (who reads our blog! Hi dad!) tried on the hat too and I think it suits him better than Kent. But maybe it’s the jam on toast and the moustache. Then again, he did keep it on for much longer than Kent did. He also makes a mean bacon and eggs.

And one more thing before I head off to religion class – some family blog love!

Our cousin Lindsay just started her first blog called One Million Little Thoughts which everyone should check out and leave comments on to get her motivated! She did a “100 things” for her first post so she is obviously a natural.

My last post on things that I love inspired my cousin Lara to write her own post, current L-O-V-E-S on her blog, Crazy/beautiful/blog. I only share one of the same loves as her despite being family… can you guess which one?

Filed Under: blogging, food, micaela Tagged With: ,

Five blondes, no mass suicide pact.

March 10, 2009 By 16 Comments

I have written in three other online spaces since I started blogging, around 2003. Two were public, and one was secret. I have always loved writing online, and with my sisters. A good thing, considering only a very select few people read the blogs and 4 out of the 8 or so readers actually were the girls. I have been compiling the entries to print out and make into a sort of journal or book, because I don’t want to lose that part of me and I would love to have it in a tangible form. I am excited because I loved myself back then (don’t worry, I still do but I’m just feeling nostalgic). I used way to many exclamation points, I was way too dramatic for my own good, I could write anything and no matter how bad it was I thought it was the deepest, truest thing ever to be written, I laughed, I loved, I was caring and selfish all at the same time, and (with much editing) would love to have it to give to my grandchildren some day.

Here is an excerpt from an entry in my livejournal from January 11, 2006.

i just watched the virgin suicides again, what an excellent movie.

it’s funny how it is just like our family, the story of five blonde daughters and their “mysterious existence”. the neighbour hood boys become obsessed with them and cherish even a discarded piece of paper, had it been used by one of the girls. That reminds me of the story [family friend, let's call him R.] told me, of how when he was younger and used to go dirt biking in our back forest but every summer would come to my house and ask my dad for permission. All my dad asked of him was to drive slowly down the driveway so as to not disturb/injure/scare his daughters and we would see R. making his was ever so slowly making his way down the driveway, literally going about 5 km/hour and we would laugh. he confessed to me later, when we became friends, that he always hoped we would be outside when he drove by so he could see one of us.

and even when he drives by my grandmas house, he always slows down to drive the speed limit, some sort of unspoken rule.

okay enough about that.

what i am really thinking?

i love the progression from thinking i need to write things down so we will have something to talk about, to thinking i need to write things down so i don’t run out of time to say them.
maybe that’s my favourite part … or one of them anyways.

Erica’s comment: Yes, we’re so similar to the movie aren’t we? Now about that mass suicide pact we have…

So, there is no mass suicide pact. Don’t worry. Maybe a pact to take over the world as soon as we all start exploding with babies, but that’s about it. God we are going to have awesome family get-togethers someday! We can watch our kids do all of the same crazy stuff that we used together.

And then a little about my budding relationship thrown in there, it was written about a month after Tim and I started dating. Aww! All I can remember about that time was how much fun we always had together.

Filed Under: blogging, blonde, Family, love, random, relationships, sisterhood

Not my destiny

January 9, 2009 By 14 Comments

Let me tell you a bit about my blogging process.  You’re dying to know, I can feel it.

This morning I got to work and thought to myself, Self, you should blog today.  So I opened up Admin and clicked “New Post” with no particular subject in mind. That was, oh, 10AM.

It’s now 4:30 and I’ve made pretty much zero progress, except to write about how little progress I’ve made.

So I’m going to close with this (as I obviously was not destined to write a full post today):

We were delighted and honored to be nominated for the 20-Something Bootleg award for Best Group Blog :)   If you nominated us, we thank you.  Now there’s the matter of winning (we are nothing if not competitive).

We have some items that we have been planning on holding a giveaway for.  So if we win, we will give away these fantastical eletronic items (and likely other some other equally fantastical things) to the wonderful readers of our blog.  And if we don’t win, well, we’ll give them away anyways – we’re just that happy to be nominated :D

You need to be a member of the 20 Something Bloggers group to be eligible to vote – so naturally you need to be a 20-something and you need to be a blogger.  If you’re not either of these things, we won’t hold it against you ;)

Vote!

Aaaand, let’s make this a “questions” post.  Have any questions for any (or all) of us?  Ever wondered if we secretly hate each other?  Which one of us is the “black sheep”?  Who’s the easiest to share a room with?  Ask away!

Filed Under: blogging, question

Hey Canadian bloggers…

November 12, 2008 By 13 Comments

I wanted to help spread the word about the Canadian Blog Awards.  Last year mom and I separately discovered the awards webpage on the same day, which also happened to be the day after the nominations closed.  Don’t you hate it when that happens?

Anyway, if you’re a Canadian blogger you should definitely hop on over there and take a look. There are 27 (yes, 27!) catagories – check out their criteria right here.  I’ve started to nominate some of my favorite blogs already!  Nominations close on the 22 of November and there are 2 rounds of voting after that.  What are you waiting for?  Get nominating!

PS:  I’m really bad at keeping up with my Twitter fans.  Are you following me and I’m not following back? Tweet me or let me know in the comments! @ericablonde

PPS. And because this post isn’t long enough yet and I can’t stop adding to it, go here and comment for a cause, and then go here and laugh your butt off.  And sometimes be grossed out.  Either way, it’s a hilarious new site about crafts *evil grin*

Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: , , , , , ,

One Year Later…

July 16, 2008 By 10 Comments

On July 13, 2007 I sent this Facebook message to my sisters:

WOULD you guys like to set up a collaborative blog? I not just a blog for blogging’s sake, but something we can monetize and make money off of. Ad revenue could be worth our time.

Quite honestly I think we have pretty exciting lives that others might find interesting. Mom’s a terrific writer and could have a section. If we can each commit to writing at least an article a week, we could have some fun.

I can register the domain name 5sisters.ca right now for $20 for a full year. Doesn’t include hosting but I can look into that. We likely will need to invest a little bit into having some graphic design work done, unless we can manage it.

Interested? Have a different suggestion for domain? Let me know…

And so Five Blondes began. As you can see, my initial idea had a different title. After a quick day of tossing around names, Micaela came up with the name “FiveBlondes.com”. Katelyn worried that if she were to dye her hair brown again she would “wreck EVERYTHING”, but we all decided that it was a risk we were willing to take.

On July 17th, I blogged (warning: really boring). Then I introduced myself, followed by Micaela, Katelyn, Leah, and Lauren. Sorry for the lack of link for Leah, I can’t find her intro.

It wasn’t until the beginning of 2008 that we really began to ‘bloom’ as a blog. We moved off of WordPress.com and went self-hosted, joined some blogging networks, and gained what I would say is a good readership. I guess what we’re trying to say is…

Thank you to our readers, to WordPress, to Entrecard, to BlogHer, to Project Wonderful, and to each other!

Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Picture Every Day for a Year

July 5, 2008 By 11 Comments

So after getting my new camera:

I’ve decided that I’m going to take one picture a day for one whole year. I’m going to try to find a theme to do each month, but I need one to start off with! Any suggestions? It can be anything!

I’ve made a flickr account, and once I get a theme I’ll put pictures on it, and put the address up on here so you all can look at my super exciting life…which includes driving to Ottawa a lot, and working!

Edit-by the way, the cameras name is Sophie Dallas, because there is an SD in the type name.

Filed Under: blogging, internet, lauren, photography, random

Tagged, by Leah.

June 7, 2008 By 3 Comments

Bonjour all my friends and family, and greetings from the West of Canada.

I will write a totally, awesome, picture-filled post once I can figure out where my camera cord is, but for the meantime here is my tagalicious blog.

What was I doing 10 years ago? I was 11. That means I was in between gr.’s 5 and 6 (approximately?) and that is the summer my family took a trip out East. We drove to PEI and back with our camper, visiting fun and exciting things along the way like my mom’s cousins in Maine, the Bay of Fundy and Anne of Green Gable’s house. It was the first time I broke my baby toe (tripped over a rug while packing up the camper) and my second ever bee sting (right smack dab on my broken baby toe while running to the bathrooms in a campground in New Brunswick). That summer I got a new backpack, which I absolutely adored. It was navy and white striped, canvas material and had anchors on it. Erica got a hat that summer that was, sorry Eri, pretty ugly and it costed her $26.50 and we all made fun of her for days but she loved it and wore it forever.

What five things that were on my “to-do” list for today.
1) Spy for lynx’s and cougars outside my bedroom window (Tim and I were staying in Panorama, B.C. and saw one right outside our bedroom window the morning before) which was done periodically between 6.45am and 8.45am.
2) Clean the condo and check out. And not forget anything there. I always forget at least one thing.
3) Drive back to Calgary and watch for wildlife on the way (we saw two bears, many deer and a moose on the way back.)
4) Pick up Tim’s dry-cleaning with him in town.

5) Hang out with my family in Elbow Valley. We played Cadoo with cousin Ethan, and BrainAge with Aunt Lisa, Uncle Jez, and Ethan (I got the highest score out of everyone – 1032 which is pretty good in this house), Tim and I cooked dinner for everyone, drank wine, had good conversation, played MORE BrainAge, did dishes, called the Pub and talked to all my friends, and now I am getting ready to go to bed after a nice relaxing shower.

Snacks I enjoy? Popcorn, cookie dough, aaaanything with chocolate, dry cereal, Oreos dipped in milk, and chocolate milk and pepsi to drink.

Things I would do if I was billionaire? NEW WARDROBE! For sure. I would fly my whole family and friends to El Mango Moon in Costa Rica, then to South Africa then Australia and pay everyone to come and hang out with me so they could take time off work and just have fun and relax and be cool. Then I would pay Vera Wang to help Mom make Erica’s wedding dress and all of our bridesmaid dresses. Then I would buy me and Tim a verrry nice car, perhaps a Porsche Cayenne, or a hybrid SUV. I wouldn’t buy us each one because I like it when we go everywhere together. Then I would buy my Mom and Dad a convertible, maybe a Bentley if they wanted or a BMW. Then I would buy my all of my sisters new (or old) cars. I would donate A LOT of money to the Sexual Assault Centre where I worked this past year, so they could do some amazing things for all the women in Guelph. I would also donate money to the Gerontology Students Association at UOG so they could have an amaaazing year. I would also hire Jessica Claire to do Erica’s wedding photography. I would do a lot of other cool things, like hire the Dixie Chicks to sing at Eri’s wedding, and maybe Rascall Flatts and ACDC for the Stag and Doe. Okay, apparently I would throw Erica the hugest, most amazing wedding ever that even Prince Harry would want to come to. Lauren – he can be your date!

Places I have lived. Thorndale, Ontario; Oakville, Ontario, St. Joseph de Beauce, Quebec; Guelph, Ontario; Nakina, Ontario; Llano Bonito, Costa Rica; Calgary, Alberta.

What types of work have I done? Strawberry field worker, Marlene’s cashier and beer seller extraordinaire, front desk and pro shop worker at our golf course, Beer cart and kitchen staff at the golf course, I did banquet catering for a local caterer, a nanny for my cousins in Oakvile for a few summers, Cook at a fly-in fishing lodge for a summer, I worked at a day camp in Quebec for a bit of a summer, Server and Bartender at Le Duck, worked on the family farm “sloppin’ hogs,” and as a Public Educator at a Sexual Assault Centre in Guelph. Oh yea, I was a snowboard instructor at Cobble Hills. Probably other ones too that I forgot about already.

That is it my friends! Untill next time, keep fit and have fun!

Filed Under: answer, blogging
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