Our Little Getaway Part 2 {The Wineries}

    As I mentioned yesterday, one of the days we were away, I got to go on a wine tour of the Naramata Bench, and I have to say, it was fabulous! Now, I am by no means a wine connoisseur, but I sure had fun anyways :) I went with a bunch of other wives from the firefighter training weekend and I didn't know anyone else there, but it was nice and I got to meet new people, try new things, see new places. I also had a blast taking pictures (both with my iPhone and my good camera) of everything, so if you feel up to it, scroll down as I give a little picture tour of some of the wineries we visited. In all, we visited eight out of the twenty-four listed on the Naramata Bench Winery website and one other that is not which is called Ruby Blues. We visited La Frenz,  D'Angelo Estate, Hillside Winery and Bistro, Laughing Stock Vineyards, Black Widow Winery, Lake Breeze, Elephant Island, and finally 3 Mile Estate. Whew! That's a lot of wine! And a lot of grapevines! Go grab a cup o'coffee or tea (or maybe even wine!) and get ready for some eye candy   :)

The first one we went to was La Frenz and this is the entrance to the tasting room (I knew from this point on it was going to be a good day ;) Rustic pergola, wine barrels and acres of grapevines...

Our Little Getaway

         First of all I want to apologise again for another impromptu blogging hiatus, life has been BUSY! Of course it's that time of year, end of school, field trips galore, lots of house hunting etc etc etc. But, one thing hubby and I have been lucky to do this past week, was enjoy an (almost) week long getaway. On the 15th Pat and I celebrated our 9 year wedding anniversary and it just so happened that last week was a B.C Fire Training Officers Association Conference in Penticton B.C. So, as my hubby is the training officer for his department, we got to go :) And it was fabulous! Although hubby was busy every day with training courses, I had a lovely time just soaking up the peace and quiet (we left the kids at home in the capable hands of their Gramma Sue during the week and Gramma Dusty for the weekend) and got to go on a lovely wine tour of the Naramata Bench with some very nice ladies and a couple handsome guys to drive us around. Tomorrow I will share with you a more in depth tour of some of the wineries we visited, so stay tuned!

We were pretty surprised when we opened our room and saw this loveliness, king size bed, fireplace, jacuzzi tub, it was fantastic! (sorry, bad lighting + iPhone = grainy photo)

At the far end of the room was some french doors that led out to a private patio and a central courtyard with a heated pool, hot tub, kid's playground, and pub.

 I should probably mention that my hubby and I haven't gone away together for more than one night since before our kids were born, and that's 10 1/2 years ago people! Even though Pat had his courses, we still got a bit of time to spend together, we went to see Ironman 3D (the closest theatre to where we live is an hour away so this was a real treat to go to a movie in a movie theatre!) As my first official 3D movie experience, it was an awesome movie to see! And even just having time to talk without a million interruptions  was heavenly  (I'm sure many of you parents out there can relate!)   :)
 Tomorrow I'm planning to share my photos and experiences of the winery tour I went on and later this week  some Farmers Market yumminess, so stay tuned!

Happy Monday and have a great week!

P.S. Anyone looking for more information about the hotel we stayed at can check out their website HERE

Mom's Day

I hope all you mothers had a wonderful day yesterday. I know I did! We had a very busy weekend and so I'm not going to bore you with all of the details, but I did take a bunch of fun pictures that I wanted to share with you.
      These first few pics were taken with my phone and didn't upload as clear on here as they appear on my phone :)

Such a cool big rock!

Something to Ponder

I've needed this reminder lately :)

                                                                      {source}

Creative Crop 2013

Did you know last Saturday was (Inter)National Scrapbook day? No? Well me neither ;) until I got a nice email from the people at Big Picture Classes informing me of this special day and inviting me to participate in their annual Creative Crop.


                                                                       {source}

Basically we were given 10 different "challenges" of different techniques to scrapbook and with each layout you submit a picture of, completing this challenge, you had a chance to win some pretty awesome prizes (well, pretty awesome if you are a scrapbooker ;) So, since my scrapbooking has been pretty non-existent lately, I decided to attempt a couple of the challenges, and you know what? It was great! I ended up finishing three pages, two are a double layout and one by itself. The double layout is a bunch of pictures I've been wanting to scrapbook for awhile, they are about Gabe's first solo ski attempts.  (the challenge with this one was, we were given a sketch of the layout we were supposed to use and then use our own pictures and stories within that layout)

I'm so excited!

Have you seen this magazine? I picked this up a little while ago, brought it home, and couldn't put it down! If you are an aspiring crafter (like me :) this will totally get you pumped to create stuff. I love magazines, especially most of the Better Homes and Gardens Publications and I know I should just look at them online or whatever, but nothing (yes even Pinterest!)  beats thumbing through a magazine (or a book :)

           I picked this up a little while ago, brought it home, and couldn't put it down! If you are an aspiring crafter (like me :) this will totally get you pumped to create all sorts of crafty stuff. I love magazines, especially most of the Better Homes and Gardens Publications and I know I should just look at them online or whatever, but nothing beats thumbing through a magazine (or a book!) 

I was really saddened a few months ago when I realized I hadn't seen one of my favorite mags for awhile.