Happy birthday to my partner in silliness!

10 random things I love about Steve

1. His ambition.  He is always striving to better himself and learn new things.
2. The way he looks in jeans and a button up shirt.
3. He’s a good listener.  When someone is talking to him, he always gives them his full attention.
4. I don’t think you’ll ever hear someone say a bad word about him.
5. His love of silliness.
6. When he’s wrong, he’s not afraid to admit it.
7. That he gets super chatty when he’s had a drink or two.
8. How he explains things.  He can make even the most abstruse topic understandable.
   
9. That he’s now a cat person.  He wouldn’t have guessed that before meeting me 🙂
10. What an amazing father he is already.  My heart fills up with love watching him with Wesley.

 

Steve, I love you oodles and bunches!

Read Full Post »

I forgot the best one…

❤

And while we’re at it, here’s a message found on a wall in Stone Town:

Read Full Post »

You know he’s a keeper when….

…he wakes up early and fills up the car with gas for your day trip to Kingston because he knows how much you hate pumping gas.

Read Full Post »

You are loved

Dear You,

You are lovely.

Love, Me

Read Full Post »

Another decade

Last Wednesday I turned 30 and I was spoiled rotten. Steve woke me up with breakfast in bed – pancakes, fresh fruit, maple syrup, and daisies.  Oh and a Kimba.  He was very interested in this whole eating in bed thing.

 

And the fresh flowers thing…

Actually what woke me up was the sound of my cell phone vibrating on my bedside table.  I awoke to a message from a mysterious number, a message from my 30th birthday faery.  The rest of the day I received emails from this faery, some with clues to find my birthday present, and some to give me hints about what surprises were in store for the evening.  Also, throughout the day I received text messages from friends and family wishing me happy birthday.  Steve had suggested people text me because I would be checking my phone often (due to the faery) and because a lot of my close friends are not in Ottawa.  It was a thoughtful touch because it really did make me feel loved all day long ❤

I had no idea what we were doing in the evening, just that I needed to wear comfortable shoes and that I should dress up.  Comfortable shoes and dressing up don’t always go together but luckily I have a pair of heels that I love and are quite comfy to boot!

Our surprise evening consisted of appetizers at Must Kitchen, a restaurant neither of us had ever been to before, then a drop-in salsa dancing class at Caliente, and then dinner at Vittoria Trattoria, all in the market.  So much fun!  Neither of us had ever tried salsa dancing before so we just learned the basic moves, but it was fun grooving out to the sexy tunes 🙂  It’s definitely something I’d like to try again.

I thought it was going to be hard to say goodbye to my twenties, but 30 isn’t looking bad so far.  With a new year beginning, a new decade before me, and a new life inside of me, I’m definitely feeling very introspective lately.  I joined Mondo Beyondo again to embrace this mindset and see what intentions I want to set for myself this year and in life in general.  Last time I did that we ended up in a VW love bus traipsing across North America!  And I started this blog.  I can only imagine more wild and wonderful things are to come.  So I’m really looking forward to my 30th year 🙂

 

Read Full Post »

A Treasure Hunt for Nerds

Yesterday was Wonder Boy’s birthday.  Leading up to it I worried that I’d used up all my surprises on our anniversary, but I had one more in store – a treasure hunt!  I’ve had this idea for awhile but never think of it in time to prepare one.    You make a treasure hunt that ultimately leads the person to their present.  I thought I’d share the clues in case other people have a geek in their lives that they’d like to do a treasure hunt for.  Some of the clues are your run of the mill riddles and word games, but I did try to come up with some nerdy ones on my own.  It was a lot of fun following Steve around and watching the wheels turning as he figured out each clue 🙂

I started by handing him this on a card:

And then gave him his first clue.  I made the first clue easy to start things off slow.  Also I just needed a clue that involved keys because I bought him some cute robot key toppers for his birthday and hid them with the next clue 🙂

Any treasure hunt for nerds has to involve a Spock quote, I think:

 

Clue 2 solution:  computer keyboard

 

Clue 3 solution: “Find your next clue under couch cushions.”   To make it a little harder, I hid the clue (along with some mini chocolate bars! yum!) inside the couch cushion, since our cushion covers unzip and come off.  Steve had no trouble finding them, though.

 

I got the idea to make one of the clues in morse code.  To pull it off, I was able to find two free morse code fonts.  One of the fonts didn’t work for me, but the other one did.  Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that the font had an error where “F” and “L” are the same.  But that just added another element of decoding to the clue and Steve was still able to figure it out 🙂

Clue 4 solution:  “You’ll find your next clue taped to the bottom of the bathroom trash can.”

 

Clue 5 involved some word scrambles, which I love.  I’m obsessed with the iPhone app “Word Warp.”  I play it every night in bed to help fall asleep.  This one turned out to be a little too easy.  I’d make it harder next time.

 

Clue 5 solution:  envelope / microwave / kitchen

Clue 6 solution: clock

While Steve was figuring out one of the earlier clues, I sent him an email with the subject line “Clue 8”.  Steve and I both love Pink and I got us tickets to one of her concerts for Steve’s birthday two years ago.  This could work for any artist of your choice.  To make it even harder you could go with song lyrics instead of titles.

Note:  Instead of attaching the image, I copied and pasted it right into the email.  Something messed up in the transmission and Steve received the email with a bunch of garbledee-goop text in place of the image.  But being the nerd that he is, he was able to take that garbledee-goop and somehow make it turn into the image.  So actually the clue worked out even better than planned because it involved a nerdy unexpected step to figure out 🙂  If I had any idea how to recreate the garbledee-goop mistake, I would tell you, but I have no clue what happened.

Clue 8 solution:  “Raise your glass”  – I hid the next clue in a wine glass in our cupboard.

I wanted the last clues to be a little harder so I deliberately made this one pretty vague.  Also I really needed an excuse to use this image!

Clue 9 solution:  I hid the next clue in our oven, along with some tasty homemade apple cinnamon donuts (recipe here) – I would have made a pie if I knew how!

*Warning: the next clue is cheesy and may have TMI.

Steve calls me “silly-bum” and has since we first started dating.  Actually he first started calling me “silly-toes” and it graduated to silly-bum later.

Unfortunately this clue totally backfired.  I hid the clue in my pants at an opportune moment in the hunt a couple clues prior and Steve grabbed my butt while we climbed the stairs to find one of the clues and felt the paper there.  The image is from the web-comic xkcd.  If you’re nerdy and you haven’t read this comic, you must live under a rock.  Come out from under your rock and go read that comic now.  It’s brilliant and hilarious and you’ll wonder where it’s been all your life.  Even if you’re not nerdy go read that comic.  Maybe it’ll erase the TMI I just shared with you!

I needed the last clue to be the hardest one of all.  It also needed to be super nerdy.  So I turned the clue into binary using this website that has a binary to text converter.

Last clue solution: the binary reads –

“When you’re away from home, travelling the world
there’s a place where you keep all your clothes.
You’ll find your present waiting there
who knew it was right under your nose!”

Answer:  suitcase

Steve was even nerdier than I thought with this clue.  Instead of typing out the binary into the converter like I thought he would do, he scanned the clue and used OCR software to turn the image into text.  Then he copied the text into the above website with the binary to text converter.  What a geek.

Finally Steve got his presents – the Planet Earth dvd series in Blu-ray, and a Tardis USB hub.  The latter is seriously nerdy – it even lights up and makes the sound that the Dr. Who tardis makes when it’s taking off.  Steve loves it 🙂

Happy treasure hunting!

Read Full Post »

An idea to surprise the sweet tooth in your life

Steve has the sweetest tooth of anyone I know.  I learned very quickly that baking him yummy things was one surefire way to make him feel loved.  I saw this idea on Pinterest and filed it away for a special day.  On tuesday after our yummy meal I told Steve that dessert was upstairs in the bedroom (tee hee, it was fun watching his reaction to that one!) :

 

I had fun going to Bulk Barn and choosing candy.  There were a bunch that I haven’t seen since I was a little kid.  Steve was particularly excited about the coke bottle candies.

We finally decided how to celebrate our anniversary tonight.  We’re going to a drive-in movie!  It was one of the things we did when we were first dating and we haven’t been back since.  The candy will be a perfect movie snack 🙂

What other ideas could you do to surprise that sweet tooth in your life?

Read Full Post »

Two years and counting

Photo credit: Mike Dickson

Yesterday was Steve and I’s second wedding anniversary. We decided ahead of time that we were too busy to celebrate on the actual day. Instead, yesterday morning we woke up bleary-eyed and sleepy, wished each other happy anniversary, and then played ultimate frisbee for four hours in the rain. It was the finals so you play two games in a row. The rest of the day? I hobbled around and gave Steve a glimpse into the far future with me when we’re aged nonagenarians (I was going to say centenarians but decided I shouldn’t push Fate!). We’re going to celebrate properly this Friday, we just haven’t decided what we’re going to do yet. Last year, our first anniversary ever!, we decided to start a tradition – one of us writes a letter to the other about the past year, and the other plans what we’ll do to celebrate the anniversary.  This year we decided to modify the tradition and both of us will plan what we do. But we haven’t come up with anything yet.  I do, however, have a bunch of little surprises planned for the week.  But shh, don’t tell Steve 😉

Read Full Post »