I’m a Winner!

Filed Under agriculture, farming, life, money, university, writing | 3 Comments

This morning mom called my office within the first five minutes of me getting at work.

Mom: “I checked my email this morning and there was an email from your prof Owen, want me to read it to you?”

Kate: “Sure, I guess” (thinking that this will be about a course that mom was interested in and wondering why she would want to read the email to me)

Mom reading the email: “I have some good news, and because I don’t have Katelyn’s email address I’m contacting you hoping you will pass this on to her. Katelyn’s
“Dairy Days” video won a bronze award ($100) in the Canadian Farm Writers Federation annual writing and broadcasting awards last weekend”

Kate: “Woo Hoo $100!”

Well I guess the rest of the conversation doesn’t matter because woo hoo I won!

The Canadian Farm Writers Federation (CFWF) is a group of ag journalists, which includes reporters, editors and broadcasters in business and government, specializing in agricultural communications. The CFWF represents over 350 members who belong to organizations all over Canada. In conjunction with their daily reporting, they put on a competition annually, which includes categories such as “television, radio, and daily, monthly and weekly press reporting; media release; press column; press editorial and press feature.”

I won the bronze award in Television News Reporting. I made the video in my Agricultural Communications course at Guelph in my last semester there, it was one of the assignments that we had to complete. The topic assigned to me was ‘Dairy Days’, which is a program put on for Oxford County students in grade 4 to get a first hand look at dairy farming. I did research before the event (there was not very much information!), contacted people to interview, attended the event with our production team who get footage of the event and edit the video, interviewed people at the event, put together a script, taped voice overs (my fave part!), and then got to watch the final video.

My prof entered a bunch of videos from the class and amazingly enough our classes work came in 1st 2nd and 3rd! The must make him feel good as the prof.

So I’m guessing you want to see the video now right? Ok no laughing, I do look kind of silly… but here you go! And feel free to take a look around at other videos on Youtube added by “AgriComm” that our class produced, I do have another video on the site, see if you can find my other one.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hNbBYT_Oig]

If that does not work please go here DAIRY DAYS

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Sep

26

Furniture Shopping

Filed Under furniture, life, london, money, personal, shopping | 7 Comments

I believe, in the near future, that furniture shopping will be the death of me (and my money).

Scott and I went furniture shopping last night to browse and get an idea of what’s out there and how much it will cost. We went to 5 stores (!!) in 1.5 hours. We call it speed furniture shopping, see how much you can see in a small amount of time. We hit up Bad Boy, Leons, The Brick, Sears Home Store and Teppermans.

We learned that we don’t like any couches out there and that couches are actually pretty expensive. For couches we found the best deals at Teppermans, and found some pretty reasonable prices in the clearance section. Sadly this was our last store and we did not have enough time to look at everything and they even started turning lights off while we were there.

We learned that we both like dark coloured wood for furniture. For example see this kitchen table that we liked, which is on sale for $498 for the table (including a leaf you can add in, ) and I think 4 chairs.

For bedroom furniture we also found a few that we could tolerate, which were dark wood. We also don’t like bulky sets, which is good because it is not practical for us, as we are renting a house for the first bit of married life, and we will expect to move a few times until we settle down. The set below costs $1299 for 6 pieces (headboard, footboard, rails, nightstand, mirror and dresser). The price is in the lower price range, basically the only one we could afford if we bought a full set.

Don’t even get me started on mattresses. We got nowhere with those. I seriously have no idea how to decide what to get, because I know I will have no idea if I will like it or not, unless I am sleeping on it.

Lucky for us the house we are renting has a fridge, stove, dishwasher, washer and dryer. If we had to buy those we would be so poor. Oh wait, we already are..

Sep

20

On the To-Do List: Just Keep Up

Filed Under Work, erica, health, internet, life, love, money, personal, relationships, thoughts, university | 1 Comment

I’ve been quiet lately. For good reason: I’m both exceedingly tired and exceedingly busy!

Last week marked the beginning of my last ever school year. Well, school half-year. Or, technically, half of a half school year. Anyway, I’m taking 3 evening classes (each worth a half-credit) so I can finally get that darn piece of paper indicating that I am a university graduate. I survived.

Unfortunately, these evening classes coupled with work are draining my reserves. My week starts out like this:

10-6 work; 7-10 class.

This is my Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday schedule until December.

When you think about it, December really isn’t that far away. This means that I’ll only have the time from now until December to keep up with an increasing workload, reading for 3 classes, assignments for said classes, and study for various tests and exams. Not to mention the other things going on, such as my dwindling social life, and the fact that the new seasons of Grey’s Anatomy and The Office start next week. Thankfully, on Thursdays.

Sep

6

Look out world here they come!

Filed Under Family, Wedding, farming, friends, life, money, music | Leave a Comment

Wedding Update: The wedding invitations are in the mail! Last night I sat myself down, printed labels out, stamped (those are our stamps above, so cute right?!) and sealed them! I think the invitations look pretty good and I hope that others agree. I’m very excited to get the reply cards back!

In total we are inviting around 216 people, hoping that only 200 can come, since that is the amount of people who can fit in the hall. We have a great mixture of Scott and my friends, my relatives, Scott’s relatives and a few of our parents friends. Most of the people coming are from Ontario, but we do have family coming from Alberta and hopefully a friend from Vancouver if she can take time off of school and make it down!

On Saturday is our Stag and Doe. A Stag and Doe (aka: Jack and Jill. Buck and Doe) is a party held by the bridal party, which is, I guess, a kind of fund raiser for the bride and groom. But in reality it is an excuse for family and friends to get together before the wedding to have a great big party! Stag and Does are very common in our area, and may sound weird to the rest of the world but they are so fun! Ours will be held in the driveshed on the farm and we are having a live band play and roasting a pig. We have the driveshed all cleaned out, and cemented the last part that needed to be cemented. Scott and his dad are buying beer today and we still need to go out and get all the rest of the alcohol.

Dress Update: Yesterday my Oma and my mom spend some time attaching the lace to my dress. I was excited to see it and even more excited to try it on! Sadly it is a bit short so mom will have to add a few more lace pieces to the top of the dress to lengthen the bottom. But overall it looks great, but wow it is hot! It is a good think the wedding is in October because I don’t think I could stand to be in the dress in the heat. I would be a sweaty mess, yes that is a nice image isn’t it. No dress pictures until October but if you check out my mom’s blog she does updates about the dress once and a while.