Greenery and Wedding Preparation Update

Amanda and I made our second annual trip to the greenhouses together. Like last year, we took a photo together amidst the plants to commemorate the visit.

I don't remember all of the plants we picked up, but they did include a chocolate mint plant that Amanda is hoping to train to grow around the rail on our balcony. She had good luck doing it last year, so hopefully that'll carry on!

In other news, Amanda and I were really productive on the wedding front today! We picked up our marriage license, arranged for my tux rental, and picked up the jacket for Amanda's engagement ring that will make it into a full blown wedding ring. It changed the nature of her ring -- it became much bigger and blingier, but Amanda seemed to like it a lot.

We've got more work to do and not a lot of time to do it, but we were definitely heading in the right direction today. Hopefully tomorrow will be just as productive!

Unknown Photo Locale?

I don't remember where Amanda and I were when we took this, but I really like how the photo turned out!  Oh, wait.  Yes.  I do remember!  We took this photo together in Whitecourt just before having lunch at McDonalds on our drive home from Edmonton. Amanda and I drove around Whitecourt looking for a non-chain place to try, but many were closed on Victoria Day, so we gave up and went to McDonalds instead.

Anyway, I like the photo -- Amanda looks really cute and the colours are great. With the exception of the black pickup truck poking into the photo between us, it feels like a very balanced photo to me. ...It'd be nice if more of my photos turned out this way.

Even more Edmonton.

Amanda and I took this photo next to the ice rink in the West Edmonton Mall. I still think it would be incredibly cool to go skating there one day. Perhaps we'll take a trip to Edmonton at some point where we don't need to cram the entire mall into a single day, and can actually take a more leisurely approach to the mall and Edmonton as a whole. I mean, our trip basically involved Olive Garden, Ikea, Toys R Us, a small portion of Whyte Avenue, a branch of the EPL, and the mall. It was a lot of fun -- we just didn't see much in the grande scheme of things!

Circle of Cuteness

I took this photo of Amanda at Bed Bath and Beyond in the West Edmonton Mall.  You may notice that me taking pictures of Amanda/Amanda and me in mirrors is kind of a trend.  I thought Amanda looked really cute, and I thought the mirror framed her face nicely.  So I asked her to freeze where she was while I got in position to take the photo.

We spent a fair bit of time looking around while in Bed Bath and Beyond, and I joked about all the stuff I wanted to add to our wedding registry -- the most expensive towels in the store and other ridiculous stuff as well.

At any rate, we got a great photo together and purchased a bunch of Amanda's favourite candle-branded scent stuff for her car.  Win-win!

Random Mall Kissing

I have no idea what area it was, but Amanda and I took this photo together in the West Edmonton Mall last Sunday. We took in the entire mall, and stayed for supper and to watch Star Trek: Into Darkness in the IMAX theatre.

We visited the Prairie Mall yesterday to pick up a chain Amanda had repaired, and the contrast was amazing. I commented that the Prairie Mall would comfortably fit in one floor of one phase of the West Edmonton Mall. The really interesting thing is that our local mall seemed reasonably large to me during my years of living in Tumbler Ridge.

So I guess what I'm saying is that Einstein's theory of relativity applies to malls, too!

Art and Feeling Artistic

While we were at the West Edmonton Mall, Amanda and I stopped in at DeSerres. I love shopping at art stores like this. For the few minutes I'm in the store, I feel incredibly artistic and motivated to draw, sketch, paint, knit, and sculpt. It's an amazing feeling that far too often only lasts until I reach the outside of the store after paying for my new art supplies.

But the intent is always there. I'd love to draw and sketch on a regular basis, and even write my own webcomic someday. I really enjoy painting and I spend far too much time considering the oil paints available and what I'd use them for. On this trip, I ended up with a few new tubes of paint (sadly, one that duplicated a colour I already had in that particular brand), and some sketching pens in various colours. On the way home I used them to sketch the scene I saw while Amanda was driving. It turned out fairly okay, but I really haven't done much with the pens since.

The paints, unfortunately, have just been put with my other painting supplies until the day Amanda and I have a place where I have room to paint. It's okay though -- I'm enjoying my daydreams about the landscape I could paint with the new colours I picked up.

Oh yeah. Amanda and I took a photo of us kissing outside of DeSerres. I think it turned out pretty good, especially since I managed to get the logo in frame as well to show exactly where we took this photo.

Waiting in Aisle A, next to row B

Amanda and I also visited Ikea while we were in Edmonton. We took this photo together while waiting to pay for a lamp, small vases for centrepieces at our reception, and the tray to a baby high chair called antilope because Amanda's brother-in-law asked us to pick one up.

Glorious Moment

So... While Amanda and I were in Edmonton, there was an amazing moment. We went to Southgate Centre and looked around for a place to park. We drove by the Foci parking (two Ford Focuses next to one another) and by some other vehicles until we found it: the Yari parking area.

There were two Yarises parked there already: a blue one, and a clone of my car. So I demanded that we park behind the clone car. Amanda was driving, as she did for much of the in-Edmonton driving, and she agreed to park where I asked.

Why was I so insistent?

So I could then ask her to take this photo. My Yaris is the one on the right.

Well played Edmonton, well played.

Edmonton-Bound

Amanda and I took this photo together on our first stop on the way to Edmonton. Our trip, while good, was marked by waiting for tables at restaurants. Amanda joked that she'd have to post about my attitude in IHOP, and I'm kind of happy to see that she didn't.

Off to Edmonton

Amanda and I are off to Edmonton tomorrow, so this blog may go unupdated until Monday. Bt hopefully we'll take some great pictures together while we're there!