To Cut or Not to Cut?

I've been thinking a lot about getting my hair cut. I feel like doing something new and crazy...and drastic. Now unless I want to get hair extensions--which I don't--that means going short. Short crops are really popular in Scotland right now and I keep seeing all these cute cuts. I've tried to find pictures but none of them seem just perfect. Heres what I'm thinking of:

a little too messy for my taste, but I like the cut

Now here I am with my current haircut. You can't really see the style very well but you can see the length as well as my facial features to help you determine whether or not a short cut would look good on me. Please be honest!

I'm So Happy, So Very Happy

I talked to my parents today and got some good news. First, a little background info...
When Amy and I go home in September we plan on spending a few weeks at home and then moving to Waterloo (an hour and a bit from our parents) to find an apartment and jobs. Our sister and her family have graciously agreed to let us live with them for a month or two while we figure things out. The thing is, we have no furniture. No bed, no couch, no bookshelves. We also won't have a lot of money to furnish our apartment with. Our parents got a new table a few months ago and kept the old one for us, but a table and a few chairs does not a furnished apartment make!
When we talked to our parents today they said they moved our furniture into our sisters basement. At first I thought they had moved my hope chest and maybe my bed but my dad started talking about a couch and coffee table and some cute lamps. What!? Who's couch? Whose coffee table? Whose cute lamps? Well, apparently we've received some nice hand-me-downs from one of our aunt and uncles (and her parents) who just built a new house and all moved in together. This made me so happy! Theres still lots that we will need, but its a good start and I'm just glad we won't be sitting on boxes when we move in.

Is it bad that I am living in Scotland and the idea of moving home and decorating my first apartment sounds more exciting to me right now?????

Top 5 Vacation Destinations

My cousin Emily just blogged about the top five places she wants to go on vacation and it inspired me to make my own list.
Before I moved to Scotland I had never been out of North America. My family vacations consisted of long drives to visit relatives. I'm not complaining about that (these vacations did include several trips to Phoenix, St. Louis and Colorado) but they didn't really give me the chance to see the world. Part of the allure of moving to Scotland--instead of somewhere in Canada, like we first considered--was the idea that we would get the chance to travel around Europe quite a lot. Unfortunately, life got in the way and we haven't been able to do as much traveling as we hoped (we've still got 4 1/2 months left, though!). So without further ado, here's my list:

1. Australia/New Zealand - I know they are two different countries, but I also know that once I pay the nearly $2000 to get over there, I won't be leaving until I visit both of them. For that reason I think its OK to consider them as one on the list.

2. Iceland - I've been interested in Iceland for a long time. I'm a little ashamed to say, but I think the first time I really thought about Iceland was after Oprah did a show on women around the world and Iceland was featured in it. There are mountains galore in Iceland and I LOVE mountains. Theres also the Blue Lagoon. Enough said.

3. Greece- Ever since watching Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants I've wanted to go to Greece. I want to see the white houses on cliffs, people riding on scooters through the winding streets and the eat real Greek food. Oh, the food!

4. France- Who doesn't want to see the Eiffel Tower? But besides Paris, there are lots of other places in France that I would love to see like Nice, Cannes (the film festival is in May and I SOOO want to go!) Monte Carlo, Versailles...

5. Italy- Rome, Pisa, Venice, Cinque Terre, the beauty of Tuscany--I want to see it all. I've already been to Pisa and Florence and had a fantastic time. The gelato alone is worth the trip!

That was surprisingly more difficult than I expected it to be. I basically want to see the world, so it was hard to narrow it down to five countries.

What five countries do you want to visit?

10 reasons why this flat is NOT my home

My BFF over at Lucy's Life is having a House a Home giveaway. The idea is to come up with 10 things in your house that make it your home. I don't have a house so I told her I wouldn't be participating in her giveaway. However, I said that I could probably come up with 10 things that show that this flat is not my home and she said that would be alright. Here's hoping I win!

1. Who doesn't have a favourite TV show? I have quite a few. This year I've had to watch my shows online because they are a season behind on most shows in Scotland. There are a few shows on tele here that are fun to watch but the one shown below is not. Hollyoaks is sort of like a soapopera mixed with 90210, with even worse acting. I miss shows like Jon and Kate Plus 8, Survivor, Oprah, The View, Ellen...the list goes on.


2. I miss my bed. This twin bed is comfortable enough, but its small. I miss being able to stretch out while I sleep. You can't tell in this picture, but my bed is about 30 cm away from Amy's bed. I miss my own room.

3. This is Joey. He's cute, but he's smelly. He is especially smelly when his owner forgets to clean out his cage for three weeks. I don't mind Joey being in the flat but I can guarentee you that I will not have a rabbit in my first home.

4. This is the wall above the couch in the living room. The eye sore on the left is an ugly metal TV stand that was put up to hold a projector so that Neil can watch tele and movies using the wall opposite as a big screen. As you can see, the projector isn't even up and when it was I think we used it once. He had a little trouble getting the stand in the right place and put a few extra holes in the wall. I like the idea of having a home theatre, but I would have bought a nice shelf to put the projector on, maybe along with some books or candles or something. The real reason I am showing you this picture is because of the big blank space beside the ugly eye sore. If this were my flat I would add some pictures to this wall, and perhaps some paint.

5. Theres nothing wrong with the washing machine, except for the fact that its in the kitchen. Well, really, theres nothing wrong with it being in the kitchen, its just weird. You know you're in Europe when your washer is in the kitchen.


6. This is the inside of our tiny freezer. As you can see, its pretty full. Most of the stuff isn't ours, and a lot of it has been in there since before we moved in in September. I can't really say to anyone "Yo, clean your stuff out of the freezer if you're not going to use it" because thats not my place. It just gets annoying when we are grocery shopping and have to limit our frozen stuff because theres not enough room. Theres always room for some Ben and Jerry's Chunky Monkey, though!

7. This is our tiny fridge. It's basically a bar fridge...for four people. We share milk and butter but thats it so this sucker gets pretty full. We have to limit our fridge food too when we are grocery shopping. We basically live on bread, pasta and potatoes because they don't have to be refridgerated. Although, if you saw the tiny cupboard we have to keep our food in...oh, never mind.
8. This is a picture of an open window. ALL the windows in the flat are ALWAYS open, even in the winter and the heat is never on. This makes for one cccccoolddd flat. I get cold really easily as it is, but when its 2 degrees outside and the windows are wide open, I freeze. I like the idea of letting some cool, crisp, fresh air in, but opening the window for an hour is good for me, not all day. I go around closing the windows all the time, but they always end up back open!

9. When I first decided to take a picture of these lovely dead, dried roses it was to say that they need to be thrown out but because they aren't mine I can't really do anything about it. But then I thought about the fact that my mom loves fresh flowers and often has a beautiful bouquet on her table. These dead flowers remind me that this is not mine, or my parents' home.

10. These are the DVDs in the flat. I could probably find five or six that I would enjoy watching, but most of them don't interest me. This is not my home because theres no Sweet Home Alabama, The Notebook, Tristan and Isolde, The Holiday or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang among the collection.

I just want to say that even though I've just complained about 10 things in the flat that bug me, I really do love living here. None of those things are major and I feel that God blessed Amy and I with a great flat and flatmates.


Cheers!

A Sneak Peak

Think about bagpipes while reading this...

In exactly 332 hours 15 minutes and 49 seconds (well maybe not exactly) two of my good friends will be landing at Glasgow International Airport for a 12 day Scottish adventure. I've already decided that I will do several blogs about the trip instead of one humongous blog that probably no one finishes reading, like I usually do. I'll try and write in my travel diary every night so that I will remember all the events of the day. It's been difficult trying to plan out the trip when we're an ocean apart, but I think we've managed to do a good job. We've started booking some hostels so I thought I'd give you guys a sneak peek of the first several days of the trip.

Day one will consist of:

~Airport pick-up around 10 am
~stop at Glencoe for the best Highland scenery~fish and chips in Fort Augustus (home of Nessie)
~tour of Eileen Donan Castle (used in Made of Honor film!)


~drive on to Isle of Skye and stop in Portree, the islands capital (also in Made of Honor)
~drive on to our hostel with great views of the coast of the island

Day 2

~drive around Isle of Skye stopping at whatever looks interesting
~end up back in Fort Augustus for the night (perhaps another fish and chips dinner!)

Day 3

~drive across Scotland to Stonehaven to tour Dunnottar Castle


~drive along the east coast of Scotland stopping at any fishing villages that look cute
~depending on the time, we may stop at St. Andrews, the home of golf, and a great little town (Prince William went to uni there!)
~end up back in Edinburgh

The next few days will be spent in Edinburgh walking the Royal Mile, touring Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace (where the Queen stays when in the city) and probably some shopping, among other things.
We are going to visit Northumberland in Northern England, but we haven't finalized our plans for that part of the trip yet. It will include a trip to Alnwick Castle, used as Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films. It's also the second largest inhabited castle, the first being Windsor Castle. Can you imagine living there???


Well, thats it so far. I'll give you updates as soon as we finalize plans for the second part of our trip. It will probably consist of some day trips from Edinburgh to the borders, St. Andrews if we didn't get to see it at the end of our road trip and other small villages along the east coast below Edinburgh.

I can't wait!

Goosebumps

One of my favourite female singers is Carrie Underwood. I have been a fan of hers since she auditioned on American Idol. In my opinion, she's one of the few singers that sound amazing both live and recorded. A while ago I found this Youtube video of her singing the amazing "How Great Thou Art."

It gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it.

Enjoy :)

Cake Disaster

A few years ago I came across a website called uglydress.com. Naturally I clicked on the link hoping to have a laugh at some hideous prom and wedding dresses. There was a story on the website about a wedding cake that is just too good for words. My friend reminded me of it today so I thought I would share it with you.

First of all, here is the picture the bride sent to her baker:

So, it's not the cake I'll choose for my wedding, but its not horrible. Maybe it's for a Scottish wedding.



Now here is the cake the baker delivered on the wedding day:

Are you kidding me? There must be something seriously wrong with the baker. If I were the baker I would rather not bring anything to the wedding than show up with this hideous cake that looks like it was decorated by my four nieces. If I were the bride, I would rather not have a cake than have this ugly excuse for one. When I first saw this picture I think I stared at it for ten minutes in disbelief. I wish I knew what was going on in the bakers mind. The bride ended up suing the baker and I'm thinking she probably got her money back.

I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did the first time I saw it.