The whirlwind month of May

This might be a long one since I haven't done a proper post in awhile besides my last post celebrating the fact that I got my Visa. While I was home in Canada I kept myself busy while I was waiting for that precious piece of paper. Despite it being a longer than expected trip it was a great chance to spend alot of great quality time with family and friends that I wouldn't have otherwise had the opportunity to do.

I spent a good bulk of my time in St Catharines with my family and catching up with friends in the city. I headed to Toronto for part of my stay for slumber parties with my girl-friends and early morning getting ready for work dance parties -thanks Leah and Michelle for hosting me in Toronto!

While in Toronto I also made sure to pack in lots of my favorite things. Real Thailand for my favorite meal - Kand Ped Nuer, coconut rice and thai iced tea, Quesada for a chicken burrito, a beautiful yoga class at Kula yoga studio, dinner at the Red Room and an Orange Julius.

From Toronto I headed onwards to spend a week in Ottawa with my bestie waiting for her sweet baby girl to arrive. We used every old wives tale in the book to will her to come out...she decided to wait until the day I arrived back in the UK to bless us with her presence. I'm so happy she's finally here and can't wait to meet her and snuggle her in person in the fall...until then staring at her on Skype will have to do.

James joined me in Canada towards the end of the month where we met up in Kingston to spend time with his family and have an early celebration for the birthday boy with delicious gluten free brownies from

The Silly Yak.

We organized a lightning round catch up with friends on our favorite roof top patio, The Pilot in Toronto. Thanks to everyone who came out to catch this limited run engagement - it was so great to see you all!

We rounded off our trip celebrating Bryce and Mallory and their beautiful wedding on Toronto Island and then partying the night away to at C'est What - congrats you two and kudos for throwing an awesome party!

Cheers to weddings and cupcakes!

Adding some British Flair to the wedding festivities with a fascinator

Not really happy about this whole wedding party business

Now that I've been back in London for a week, life has resumed it's normal schedule I've hit the ground running looking for a job in the UK. I've registered with all of the charity recruitement agencies here and have started submitting my application for things. Fingers crossed I get something soon!

We've also been busy collecting furniture for our lovely little abode. We trolled Portobello market this week-end and found ourselves a lovely coffee table and added to that a couch that we found online and a wardrobe from IKEA. Slowly but surely it's starting to be a comfortable cozy home. Soon it will be all ready for all of the guests that have already made their reservation at Hotel Dixier. Bookings are now being taken into the fall so if you plan on visiting, which we hope you do...book your spot soon to avoid dissapointement!

Best email EVER!

I opened my email this afternoon and found the following message:

'Your visa has been issued. Please allow a minimum of 3 days for Priority or DHL to deliver your documents and before tracking your package with Canada Post or DHL. WorldBridge will contact you directly if you chose to pick up your documents in Toronto.'

All I can say is what a sigh of relief! Partially because it means I get to fly back with James to the UK at the end of the month and more importantly (sorry James) because it means I won't miss the Take That/Robbie Williams concert!!!!!

Can't wait to see them perform this live!

Life update

The excitement is building about moving into our new flat - only a few more days now!  We went out on the week-end and bought a bed and a few odds and ends and we now have the beginnings of a fully functioning home! Before pictures coming soon and I'llpost pictures as we start to decorate.

Unfortunately there have been some unexpected hick-ups with getting my Visa (I'll spare you from the painful details) but long story short I need to go back to Canada to do this...grumble grumble grumble stupid UK home office grumble grumble grumble... So after having only been in our new place for a whole week I get to fly back to Canada for an undetermined amount of time to apply for my Visa...and I'll miss the royal wedding! Fingers crossed that it doesn't take too long because I absolutely no negotiation must be back in the UK for June 8th....I have a date with Take That and Robbie Williams that I would be devastated to miss!!!!!

The silver lining in all of this is that we did have plans to come home at the end of May for a friend's wedding and to meet a friend's sweet little baby so with this change in plans it just means that I'm home a little longer than planned.

I will be home on Monday April 25th and will be based in St Catharines with trips to Ottawa and Toronto planned and would love to squeeze in as much quality time with friends and family as possible!

21 sleeps until moving day!

Less than a month until moving day and we're so excited to move into our new place and to start nesting and making it feel like home! After 10 months of living with family and what will be a month and a half of living on a friend's living room floor we are soooooo looking forward to having a space to call our own again! We're so grateful for having the family who is willing to put a roof over our heads and friends that don't mind having us as room- mates and we promise to pay it forward to the next person that needs our help.

While I'm twidling my thumbs waiting for my residency paperwork to be sorted out and approved so that I can start to look for work I've been dreaming up how I want to decorate our new place. Since we're living on one income and working with a tight budget (thank you London for being a redonkulously expensive city), we're going to be getting crafty and creative! 

We're lucky to be inheriting a ton of stuff from some our friends/current room-mates who are moving back to Canada in a few months including a ton of kitchen stuff and a mattress so we have a good start. Hooray for not having to sleep on a blow-up mattress! We also plan to bring back a bunch of stuff when we visit Canada in May - I can't wait too be reunited with our zester, my cake decorating tools and any other of our kitchen gadgets that I can stuff in my suitcase.





I think we've settled on 'DIY repurposed vintage' as our decor theme. That's my fancy designer speak for free/and or cheap second hand things. Between IKEA, Freecycle, Craigslist and Portobello Market we're hoping to find everything to furnish our home sweet home.

I've been searching the interwebs looking for pictures to create an 'Inspiration Board' and to make sure James and I are on the same page decorating-wise. Thanks to the Martha Stewart website for all the pretty pictures, great ideas and step by step instructions on how to make them happen! 

I plan on unleashing my inner DIY diva on this flat! I'll be posting pictures as we go sharing the trash that we turn into treasure and how my DIY attempts turn out. Here are some of the pictures I've collected for inspiration so far.

If anyone has any recommendations for good home decorating websites/blogs that inspire you, please share!

 







London as a Local - Dalston Farm Shop

As we get to know this city we now call home, I thought I'd start a feature on the blog to highlight all of the interesting places and things we come across that you wouldn't necessarily see as part of 'Movie London' and the typical tourist attractions. It might be a great restaurant, a cool local business, a lovely outdoor space, a fun festival or market or anything that happens to catch our attention. I hope that if you ever find yourself in London Town that you'll check some of them out.

For the first installment of London As A Local I'd like to introduce you to the Dalston Farm Shop. Yes you read that right - it's a farm in a shop!

James and Katee and I came across this little gem a few week-ends ago and I just had to share. We popped into the shop while we were wandering through Dalston and got a tour of the space from one of the people working there.

The people behind the project have taken a run down shop space and have transformed it into an urban farm. They are raising and using the water from the fish tanks to fertilize the soil that they are using to grow a variety of herbs and lettuces hydroponically. 

The tilapia fish tanks in the front of the shop

Some of the herbs being grown

Fish aren't the only animals in the shop though - they are raising chickens on the roof who are laying eggs daily that are selling and soon there will be pigs in the back garden. You'll be able to buy 'shares' in the pigs which will eventually yield you some tasty tasty bacon!

The chicken coop on the roof

The Farm Shop a great way to repurpose an abandoned space, bring the community together and teach people about urban farming. It's showing people that you don't need acres of space to exercise your green thumb.

You can check out their website here http://farmlondon.weebly.com/.

An Ode to Portobello Road

In honor of our soon to be neighbourhood, I thought I'd post a clip from one of my favorite childhood movies, Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Portobello Road - where you can buy anything your heart desires and have multicultural dance-offs in the streets!

Enjoy this vintage oldie but goodie!

London- Week 1

Life went from 0 to 60 in the matter of a week!

Two weeks ago we were sitting in Manchester wondering where we were going to end up, where James was going to get a job, if he was going to get a job in Europe or if we were going to be heading home to Toronto with the last four months havin been one verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry long vacation.

Thankfully, James was offered a job and we were able to make the move to London. We couldn't be happier! James got through his first week of work last week and is loving it. The office, the projects he's working on and the people he's working with are all great.

While he's been at work it's been my job to find a place for us to live...a full time job in and of itself!!! Flat hunting in London is NOTHING like trying to find an apartment in Toronto or Kingston. Most apartments are rented through letting agents, who are similar to real estate agents in Canada. Apartments, or flats here, are small, expensive and usually not very well maintained.

The search to find our new home sweet home was feeling like a pretty fruitless and frustrating exercise but I finally lucked out and found us a a great place in a fantastic area!

As of April 18th, James and I will will be calling a lovely studio flat in Notting Hill home! It's in the lower level of a Victorian house and is a 20 minute walk to James' work and a 5 minute walk to Portabello Road and Portabello Market. Hotel Dixier will be open for business on April 19th and we can't wait for guests!

Since we don't move in until the middle of April so we're crashing with friends until the big move and planning on how to make the flat feel like home.  There are lots of antique and vintage furniture stores near our new place and we're excited to go hunting for one of a kind finds. And when I say we, I really mean me...James can already see me mentally furnishing our new place and he's a little frightened!

Now that the apartment issue is settled we have to focus on getting me my leave to remain so that I can start looking for work. In the meantime, I plan to play the part of a tourist and do some sight seeing during the day while James is at work.