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Loving My City

December 12, 2011 By 3 Comments

Yesterday my roommates and I had a roommates date, where we went shopping, and saw New Year’s Eve. The movie was amazing. It was made by the director of Valentine’s Day, but in my opinion it was wayy better than Valentine’s Day, mostly because even though I love Taylor Swift, I couldn’t handle her in that movie. My sisters and I love these kinds of movies, where there are a lot of different plot lines, but in the end they all connect in some way. Kind of like Love Actually, one of our favourites.

Before the movie, we met Keira at the mall, then headed to one of my favourite stores in the Byward Market, Zone. This store is amazing, and has absolutely everything for decorating a kitchen, living room, office, bathroom, and bedroom. My mom bought these for me when I moved in to my residence room to make it prettier:
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They’re not made to hold jewelry, but I needed somewhere to hang my necklaces, and it worked perfectly! Rhian loved mine so much that she bought her own set to take back to Australia with her. At Zone they even have butterfly wall decorations that look identical to the ones on Serena’s wall on Gossip Girl- my favourite! Don’t be scared away if the website is in French- the company started in Quebec, and this is it’s only Ontario store. I am buying a Christmas gift for Micaela this year, and I literally called her when I was in the store and needed some guidelines because I was so overwhelmed! If you’re ever in Ottawa, I would definitely recommend going to the Byward Market, and would for sure recommend going to this store, which is also just a short 5 minute drive from Prime Minister Steven Harper’s house! Which yes, you can drive right up to and is absolutely beautiful.

After our movie, our bus stop was right by Parliament Hill, so Rhian got a roommates picture in front of the Parliament Buildings, which are crazy awesome during the Holidays.
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Sorry about the picture quality. I probably should have propped my camera on the fence. If you’ve never been to Parliament Hill, you can go right up to the building, as well as walk all the way around it. It’s pretty awesome, and is one of the things I’m going to miss most about Ottawa when I graduate and move home right before Christmas. Moving home has it’s downside (not cheerleading, leaving my friends, leaving this amazing city), but I’m also super excited to be able to see my nieces and nephew whenever I please!

Filed Under: ottawa, shopping, university

Just so this doesn’t turn into a baby blog…

October 4, 2011 By 3 Comments

Sooo, believe it or not, there are actually a few people in this family who don’t have kids, or who aren’t pregnant! You wouldn’t know though, because there are no posts written by us lately.  Honestly? It’s pretty much because my life isn’t as exciting as it would be if I had a baby to take pictures of and love all day.  As some of you may already know from twitter or…you know, knowing me in real life, I live in res at school now.  120% easier than living in an apartment if I do say so myself.  I live in the international and upper year residence, so my roommates are from the Netherlands, Australia, and Aurora (Ontario).  So you wanted to know what we all look like when we’re at a bar? I thought you’d never ask.

Please excuse the sweatiness that is me.  This was my facebook profile picture until my friend Michelle unearthed this one from the same night:

So much better.

In other news, I haven’t bitten my nails since I’ve been in Ottawa! So for a month, I’ve been growing my nails, and pretty much painting them a new colour every 3 days.  At the beginning of last week I bought a green OPI polish, and when I took it off, my nails were tinted green, and THEY STILL ARE. Seriously.  My nails looks diseased if I leave them unpolished.

Other than that I’ve just been doing the usual, school work, cheerleading, growing my hair, trying to decide what to do with my life.  I went to a career fair today at school and mom’s dream job for me was there- CSIS, so I chatted with them for a bit. It went alright.

Oh! I’m going home this weekend for Thanksgiving and I couldn’t be more excited to see the kiddies! Ottawa had an American Apparel warehouse sale for a few days last week and I went (twice) and got so many cute clothes for Hailey, Bri and Casey, and only a pair of shorts and a shirt for myself.  But helloo, they were all $4 a piece! I’ll try to post some of the finds when I get home on Friday!

Enjoy this abrupt conclusion, and I hope you’ve enjoyed this post with a huge picture of my face, and random information about my life.

Filed Under: job stuff, ottawa, personal

Pinterest Challenge

September 13, 2011 By 6 Comments

After reading about the pinterest challenge on Young House Love, Micaela suggested on our facebook group that we do the same thing!  Now that was August 2nd. More than a month ago, and finally, I give you our first submission!

My pinterest is chalk full of pretty pictures of wedding plans (yea, for me, the furthest person from marriage), food, clothing and accessories. I’m always looking for ways to DIY accessories, and when I saw this bracelet, which has all of my favourite colours in it, I knew I should make this:

 

I went to Michael’s and got my supplies:

1 big chain

4 different colours of embroidery thread

1 package of clasps

The full price of all of this was about $10.

Since there was literally no way I could find of taking this chain apart, I decided that it was juust long enough to fit around my write twice.  

At first I made it into a necklace to see how it would look:

But it had a lot of embroidery threat at the back which you can’t see right now, and it looked like too much threat all in one necklace. Here is the finished product:

 

I wish I had had a better chain, but that piece is the only good one that I found. I found it on a random rack and couldn’t find the rest of it’s family ANYWHERE, so I had to settle for that. Worked pretty well though, and I love the colours!

 

 

 

Filed Under: fashion, ottawa

Life in Ottawa

March 5, 2011 By 3 Comments

Since I’ve gotten back from reading week I haven’t done much of anything in the way of schoolwork, but now that I’m realizing that I have a couple of papers due early next week, I’m buckling down and getting them done.  Reading week was amazing at home. I really just hung out with my family and played with Hailey and Casey, saw my friends a few times, and worked as a ski instructor almost every day.

I decided a couple of months ago that I’m going to go back to school for another semester.  It was a hard decision because I was planning on going home for the summer and not having to leave my family again or go back to school, but I kind of need to, so I’m getting more and more used to the idea every day.  One upside is that I’ll get to be on the cheerleading team for another semester, and go to another Nationals competition.

Also, my friend Amber recently moved to Halifax for an internship, and I’ve persuaded her to keep up with the blog that she started for a class, so go read it here!

Filed Under: life, ottawa, university

Winter Thoughts

January 10, 2011 By 4 Comments

Christmas and New Years just snuck up on me, and now that second semester is here, it feels like it should still be October, when school was just starting, Hailey was still under a year old, Mic was still pregnant, and winter hadn’t even started yet. It’s not that Hails and Casey growing up isn’t an awesomely cute thing, and that the new year starting isn’t a good thing, it’s just that I feel like I’m not ready for 2011 yet. For me, 2011 means growing up, and moving, and that when people ask what I want to do when I’m done school, I should have a legitimate answer. I feel like even now, when people ask me that and I have no answer they look at me like I’m crazy, but it’s true! I can’t help but get frustrated and closed up when people bring that question up, and it’s definitely what I dread most when meeting adults and at dinners with adults/people related to me, and believe me, it always comes up. Anyways, in true Lauren fashion, this post is filled with random thoughts that I’ve thought of during class this morning, and am filling my hour break with writing.
First off, here’s a song. I just downloaded it, and I fell in love with it the first time I heard it. Yes, the video is extremely boring, but it was either this or a blurry picture of Lee Brice playing the guitar. So here it is, Beautiful You, by Lee Brice.

I mentioned that I have an hour break today. Well, this semester I have a super weird schedule. Mondays I have four classes- 9:30-10:30, 11:30-2:25, 2:30-4:30, then 6:05-8:55, Tuesdays I have one class- 2:35-5:25, and then my next class isn’t until Thursday from 6:05-8:55. So I have a lot of free time if you’re not counting Mondays. This week was especially boring. I know I could take all this time and be studying and doing my labs and such, but because of Scotiabank’s annoying holding cheques rule (more on that later), I couldn’t buy my textbooks yet, so spent most of my time reading my syllabus for each class, watching movies, creeping facebook, and hanging out with friends. The fact that my Thursday class was cancelled last week because my prof was sick didn’t help either. That would have given me a lot of statistics work to be confused over. So Scotiabank- their slogan is “You’re richer than you think”. I agree with that, because I have money in my account, but because they are holding my cheque and can’t buy textbooks or anything yet, so I think they’re taking that a bit too seriously. So right now I’m feeling poor and hungry, but tomorrow when they hand over the money (a week and a day after I deposited the cheque), I’ll finally be able to eat at school and buy my textbooks.
I was at my friends house a couple of nights ago watching a Sex and The City marathon on COSMO, and we realized something. Life is not at ALL like Sex and The City. Well, I guess we knew that already, but we really started talking about it during 2 episodes. In the first one, Samantha got picked up by a guy walking by her on the sidewalk. In the next one, she got picked up sitting alone at a bar. Of course the whole “that would never happen to me!” conversation commenced. Earlier in the week I was discussing this with another friend, who then challenged me to talk to as many guys as I could by the end of the week. Well, by the end of the week I had talked to 5 guys. 3 were on my cheerleading team, 1 was gay, and the last was my friends ex-boyfriend who stopped by to pick up their dog for a walk. I decided that I failed that challenge. It seems so easy for some people though. I have never had a boyfriend in my 21.5 years of life, but some of my friends have had 5-10 boyfriends, and gone on countless dates. A few, even a couple of days after they had broken up with their long term boyfriend. Personally, I just don’t get it, but maybe that’s just me.
Last thoughts: a blog and a picture from a new years party!
This adorable couple is expecting their first baby any day now! I love reading this blog and looking at the pictures. Enjoy!

Sorry about the red eye ladies, but you know that if I tried to fix it I would wreck the whole picture. The blonde, brunette and redhead best friends!

Lauren

Filed Under: friends, lauren, life, ottawa, personal

Cheerleading Nationals 2010

December 5, 2010 By 6 Comments

For me, December brings both a huge load of cheerleading, and a huge load of school. Last Sunday my team went to a small competition in Montreal to compete. We have a lot of rookies this year (about 20 out of 36), so most of our team had never been in a cheerleading competition before. The competition we went to in Montreal was a chance for our team to get out the jitters of performing on a floor in front of an audience. We did well at that competition, placing first! They also have stunt competitions, where a small group of either 4 girls, a girl (top) and a guy (base), or 3 girls and one guy can compete a 1 minute routine of stunts. I decided to do it this year with a group of girls on my team. Our top hurt her ankle a week before the Montreal competition, so we had another girl sub in, and she did amazing!

^The whole group- Dani on the left, Erica in the front, Kristyn on the right, and me in the back

This weekend we had Nationals in Brampton with all the other universities and colleges in Canada that have cheerleading teams. We’ve had a lot of injuries these past few weeks, and one so bad that we had to get a sub for Nationals, and the new girl had to learn the whole routine in a week, which she did amazingly by the way. I’m so proud of our whole team. We did our best, and we had fun, and I can’t wait until next semester for our next competition together.





^At the end of the routine

Filed Under: Cheerleading, ottawa

Thanksgiving

November 25, 2010 By 4 Comments

Although Canadian Thanksgiving was a few weeks ago, I have a couple cheerleading friends on Facebook from Texas who go to school in Ottawa, and I can’t help but notice them planning their annual American Thanksgiving feast this weekend.  Because we only did this briefly for our Canadian Thanksgiving (and because I love lists), here’s a list of what I’m thankful for this holiday season (in no particular order):

1) My cheerleading team

Being a part of a cheerleading team basically means that you have 35 other people who you are with for 2 hours, 3 times a week, who you have to get along with.  You can’t really fight with them, because one of them may save a part of your body from being injured.  We try not to hurt them, and they try not to hurt us, but it happens sometimes, and we get over it.  We have to learn how to work together, and even though I’ve only known most of these people for 3 months now, being with them feels like being with family.  Over the past couple of weeks we’ve been getting stressed out and frustrated at things that aren’t going as planned, or people getting hurt, or school assignments, but as soon as someone sees one of their teammates start to well up and start crying, there is always someone there to help- I know from many experiences.  Someone is always there to lift your spirits, and say ‘why don’t we try it again, and maybe we’ll try something different this time?’, and it always helps.

Below: My team! This was taken last week after practice.  5 points if you can find me!

Carleton Cheerleading

2) School

This is my last year at Carleton, and although there has been construction going on during all 4 of my years here, I’ve just been realizing that we have a beautiful campus, and I’m lucky to have gone here.  I’ve met all sorts of awesome people- most through the cheerleading team, who have made my time here even better.  I’ve had my fair share of stressful living conditions and ‘friend’ drama, but the library or the ‘couch room’ as I like to call it, have made a great getaway for me.

3) Food and Shelter

I’m pretty sure this is a given, but as I said before, I’ve had my fair share of stressful living conditions.  That being said, I’ve always had a place to go if I wanted to get away from it all, whether it be a family friends house, or one of my friends apartments.  As for food, when I was home this past weekend I made some banana chocolate chip muffins.  And since, well, I love them, I brought some home with me.  The other day I brought 2 to school. One to eat on the way to school, and one for the middle of my class when I’m feeling tired and want to sleep right there on the desk.  On my way to school I passed a couple of guys asking for food/money.  I learned somewhere not to give them money, because who knows how they will spend it- I know all people on the street asking for money aren’t looking to spend it on bad things, I’m just saying- if I’m giving my money to someone who is hungry, I expect them to spend it on food.  Since I had a muffin on the seat next to me, I decided to give them that.  Well, in the end I don’t think they ate it, because when I gave it to them they looked at it like it could have been poisoned.  But hey, I tried, right?

4) Family and Friends

And lastly, the most obvious one.  Something that mostly everyone is thankful for, and needs no explanation.

Lau and Kate

Filed Under: Cheerleading, Family, ottawa, university

Road trip to Ottawa

November 13, 2010 By 3 Comments

I feel like I’m living like a university student right now, but I have a kid.

(looks like she took a chomp out of the coffee table, but really the dog did that)

I finally made the trip and got to Ottawa. It’s the farthest Hailey has ever been from home. We’re having fun staying with Lauren (other then the dog waking Hailey up from her sleep) and touring around with my aunts who we drove up here with. The weather has been perfect, we even had a picnic on the beach in Ottawa yesterday, mind you we were definitely not in swim suits. Today I’m hoping to meet up with a university friend, visit the parliament buildings, maybe do a hike, go for dinner and then head back to Toronto and then tomorrow all the way home.

This is a pretty short post because Hailey is feeling a bit grumpy this morning so we are going to get a move on. Happy Saturday!

Filed Under: Hailey, ottawa, travel

Warm Feet

November 10, 2010 By 7 Comments

Yesterdays post was about warm hands, so I’m going to make this one about warm feet!  You might remember last year I was having a dilemma about which winter boots to buy.  Funnily enough, that post was called Cold Feet, and it is very fitting that this post is called warm feet, because since buying my boots my feet have been toasty warm!

I ended up getting these Mephistos in black.  Although they kind of look like a sleeping bag, my feet have never looked smaller (well, as small as a size 11 can look), and have never been warmer in the snow and slush.  They fit like a comfortable running shoe, because that is what they used to be.  Mephisto’s Allrounder running shoe was so popular, they decided to add onto it and make it a boot. Best decision they ever made.

This year for christmas I decided that I wanted nice leather boots, that were also waterproof and comfortable.  The search started, and I started to get irritated.  If the foot fit, my calf was too big for the boot.  If all I needed was one size up and they didn’t have it, my calf fit perfectly.  I have size 11 feet with larger than normal sized calves, which doesn’t translate well to buying a nice pair of boots in Rideau Centre.  On Monday I decided that I was going to buy boots that day, and went into a store I wouldn’t regularly go into- Aerosoles.  I’d never even gone in that store before, but my first time in there I found the perfect boot. They had size 10 AND 11, and these boots have a calf extension zipper.  And you know what? The circumference around the calf is so large without it, I don’t even need it!  It is nice if I am wearing a pair of pants that don’t tuck in with it zipped normally though.  So to sum all of this up. I love my boots!

Kate and Hailey are coming to Ottawa this weekend with 2 of our aunts and I couldn’t be more excited to see them and show them Ottawa!  Kate hasn’t been to visit since I’ve been in school here, and I think that a visit with Hailey is the best way to make the first visit memorable.

Filed Under: Christmas, fashion, ottawa, shopping

some good things…

November 5, 2010 By 4 Comments
I had an annoyed day yesterday, so here are some good things going on!
  • On Tuesday I went to the Ottawa Gymnastics Centre with some girls from my team to work on our cheerleading stunts.  I got hit in the nose and it started bleeding. It hurts, but it makes me look tough! I guess this isn’t really a good thing, but we did get the stunt to stick. :)
  • This past weekend I went home and it was AWESOME!  I did a bit of everything I love doing when I go home- hanging out with family, playing with Hails, going out and spending time with friends, and playing with the kittens!  Being at home makes me so happy, but I love coming back to school and cheerleading.
  • I was super sick last week, pretty much until Sunday.  I had to leave church on Sunday morning because I couldn’t breath.  But starting Monday I felt amazing!  Good thing, because I had to make the 6 hour drive back to Ottawa.  Since getting hit in the nose I haven’t been able to blow my nose though, and it’s making this getting better thing not work at all.
  • I found this video on facebook.  Some students at Carleton made a video for the project ‘It Gets Better’ and it’s posted on the site.
  • This video and this blog.  I would like Coco Rocha’s life and wedding please.
  • Becoming better friends with the new girls on the team. I love them all already!
  • This picture:

Hailey looking around me to see where Kate went

  • And this picture:
  • Getting to cheer at the Ravens home tonight!  The theme is Carnival, and there are going to be buskers and everything.
  • For the next month I have plans/people visiting for every weekend :) Tonight,  my friend Owen is visiting, next weekend, the Aunts, Kate and Hailey are coming, the weekend after that I’m going home to pick up the van for the competitions, the weekend after that I have a competition in Montreal, and the week after that I have Nationals in Brampton!

I’m going to be posting 2 posts on my days, since I’m doing the themed photo posts, so stay tuned for my next post tonight!

Filed Under: Cheerleading, life, ottawa
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