jardin d'hiver

Are you ever in constant struggle about what your style is? I can't figure it out half the time: do I like modern? Traditional? New traditional? Who knows. 

Well while in Tremblant, we stumbled upon a gorgeous little place called jardin d'hiver. Mark noticed it first and thought I might like to check it out while he took the kids to a park across the street.

As soon as I walked through the door I thought THIS is it. Whatever this is... (modern country?) this is what I want my style to be. I loved everything in this place. The colours, the textures, the beautiful dishes and linens. I actually thought of just making them an offer (albeit piddly) to live there. 

I was so overwhelmed I didn't even buy anything. Not one thing. So when I got home I starting searching on etsy and found quite a few comparable things. It was quite fun looking for this stuff! Now if only someone would buy it all for me :).

Summer Vacation 2013: The Rest Stage

After the crazy Iron Man, Mark was able to relax and we were able to enjoy ourselves in the beauty that is Mont-Tremblant. I think I've been there once before, but I don't remember it being so beautiful.

We stayed in this house which was nestled in off the main road surrounding Lac Mercier. We were about 200 yards from La P'tit Train Du Nord which is an old rail bed turned into the longest linear park in Canada.

At our end, the trail took us into Old Tremblant Village (which I much preferred to the new town for its quaintness) where we went to the beach and had a picnic. It was so cute because about 10 minutes into our visit to the beach a few daycares came with all of their kids around the same age as Leo wearing life jackets and one by one they trotted down to the sand and into the water.

The rest of the week was filled with boating, lounging, eating (lots of pasta and pizza for some reason!), deer spotting, biking (yes Mark biked even more!), house spying (there was a gorgeous house along the trail pictured below), local beer drinking, and gondola riding.

When it was time to leave, both Mark and I said that it was the first time that we just didn't feel ready to go home. Oh well! We'll just have to make a point of going back some day!

Summer Vacation 2013: Mont-Tremblant for the Iron Man

Like many people, my husband Mark has a bucket list of things he wants to accomplish over his lifetime. On that list was to do a half Iron Man. He finished one in 2009 in Calgary. I don't remember the training being too bad, but we didn't have any kids. I do remember being exhausted after watching him for six hours and all I did was stand on the sidelines!

About a year ago one of his friends talked him into doing a full Iron Man. I'm sure there was alcohol involved in the decision. So suddenly completing the Iron Man was now on his bucket list. There was one coming up in Mont-Tremblant so that was the target.

Here's the thing: the training is pretty crazy. Several hours a week. Mark would be up at 4:50 every morning doing something and would be gone many a weekend riding his bike west of the city (did I mention that training started a month after I had Mila?). I had my days of swearing and breaking down. It wasn't always easy looking after two very young kids for that long, but over all it wasn't too bad. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

Fast-forward to August. The training is done and we're off on the seven hour drive to Mont-Tremblant. Once we got to the cottage we were renting, it was like the past 11 months of training woes had disappeared. Mark was ready for the race, we were on vacation and I was so proud of him for coming this far and for working so hard to accomplish something of this calibre. I thought he was crazy, but proud.

For those of you unfamiliar with this race, let me break it down for you: there is a swim, bike and run. The swim is 4k, the bike is 180k and the run is a full marathon at 42k. The average time for this race is about 12 hours. Yes you read that right. The average time for the bike alone is 6 hours! So it was interesting with the kids to say the least. Thankfully I had Mark's parents there to help.

Leo and I decided to take the shuttle to the swim portion of the race at 7 am to try to catch Mark on his way out of the water, but unfortunately the bus took longer than we anticipated so we didn't get there on time.

This is what we would have seen had we made it to the water! All photos following are care of Iron Man

We did however get to see him on his way out for the bike which was nice. We headed back on the shuttle, missed our stop, and got a bit lost. Mark's Dad found us and we headed out to another spot to see Mark on the bike again.

We headed home soon after to get the rest of the crew, pack a lunch and head back out to the same spot to see Mark again on his way back from his first loop on the bike ride. He said it was nice because they were climbing a pretty steep hill so seeing us gave him some extra encouragement.

The next and last leg of the race was the run and there happened to be a nice spot pretty close to our house where we could watch. The kids needed a nap so we sat out the first pass-by, making it down in time to see him the second time through... or so we thought.

We were a bit off on the timing so we had to wait another hour to see him on his way back. By this time, it was 5 pm, it was hot, the kids were cranky (I was cranky) and the shuttle buses were packed to the gills. We had intentions of seeing Mark cross the finish line, but there was no way it was going to happen. I cut my losses and headed back to the house with the kids to watch the rest of the race online and have dinner while Mark's parents jumped on the shuttle to try to get to the finish line. I was pretty upset we couldn't get down there, but I knew it was the right decision.

Mark finished in 12 hours and 12 minutes which was amazing, but part of him thinks he should have pushed harder to finish under 12 hours. Regardless of his time I couldn't be more proud. It's so inspiring when you see the people out there racing... All walks of life and they're doing this. It makes you believe you can do it too.

Mark was fortunate to have his childhood next door neighbour Neil by his side pretty much the entire race. It would have felt much longer if they were alone doing this!

So that was the long-winded story of our Iron Man experience. We stayed an extra week in Tremblant which was so much fun. I'll share more about that in a later post.

updated blog design

Happy Monday! Hope you had a nice weekend. We're back from a very awesome trip to Mont-Tremblant, but more on that later this week. Until then, I thought I'd show you my new blog design if you haven't seen it yet. I was craving something a bit more clean and simple and I'm pretty happy with the result.

That's it for now! Have a great week!

kids canvas totes

If your kid is like mine, he's obsessed with cars, trucks and basically everything that moves or says vroom. I found these little totes this week from a shop called TaiwoandCo. Aren't they the sweetest? Gah! I'd love one of each for Leo.

miss mila - twelve months

Well it has come and gone - my little baby is now one. She is turning out to be a little firecracker. She has no fear. She's already making boys cry. She's got a glint in her eyes that tells me I'm. in. trouble. But I love her to pieces, so I guess I'll just deal with whatever comes my way.

Mila's First Birthday Party

We had a little party for Mila's first birthday on the weekend and the weather could not have been more perfect. It wasn't a big group but fun nonetheless and Mila seemed to have a great time with her friends and cousins.

We weren't going to do much in terms of decorations--hang a few crepe balls here and there; a few balloons and of course a cake but then I got an offer I couldn't refuse. My friend Tara, who lives in my neighbourhood, is starting an event company and asked me if I would be interested in having a dessert table at the party. She'd get some photos for her website and portfolio and I'd get a beautiful table full of delicious sweets. Um ok!

I didn't really know what to expect and basically let her go with her ideas. What an amazing job she did! Everyone loved it. There were vanilla cupcakes, a french orange cake, salted caramel truffles, raspberry, vanilla and chocolate filled macarons, sugar cookies shaped like a 1 and even a smash cake for Mila.

Can you say yum?

The party was fantastic and I'm so thankful to Tara for her beautiful work. She doesn't have her website up and running yet but if you're interested in working with her you can email her here.

friday faves - kitchen

I was poking around on etsy this week and found a few things I've been loving for the kitchen.

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I love hanging prints in the kitchen. This one would be so sweet above the stove.

via

I think this ipad stand is such a fun idea and would likely use it for watching movies too since I've been using my laptop to prop up our ipad instead...

via

I'd love these super sweet bowls for mixing super sweet things

via

on the menu this week

It's a short week so less cooking (ya right...). I had a few veggies in the fridge I had to use up so here's what's on the menu this week.

Tuesday

Pasta with lentils and kale

I made this last time and it was just ok, but I have some kale to use up so I'll have to add more garlic and onions or something.

Wednesday

Baked Falafel

My friend C made this and she said it was really tasty so I'm looking forward to trying it this week.

Thursday

Tacos with spicy, smoky lentils

I'm very excited to try out some recipes from The Southern Vegetarian I received in the mail recently. It's a good way to kick up your veg dishes a notch. This week I'll try these tacos on Thursday.

... and the Roast beet salad w/sea salt granola with salmon on Friday

 What are you munching on this week?

Channelling my Inner Maverick

These little Ruche dresses pop up on my facebook page all day and I love them to bits. However for me, wearing these dresses makes it tough to a) breastfeed and b) go through the day without flashing my butt to passers-by as I run after my kids (maybe I need the bloomers). I love this dress. I think I'll have to add it to my wardrobe in spite of my challenges.