Bienvenue à Montreal!

This city is beautiful. I've had a fascination with it since I was a little girl. Probably because it's as European as a city as I've ever been. Last weekends trip was a short getaway. My mom, a friend, and myself spent two nights (one full day, two half days) in the city and shopped, ate, did a bit of the touristy things, and searched every shop for the British candy we can never find in the states. But mostly, we just walked. A lot.

We went to Montreal's China Town and it was my first time there. LOVE! It was great. We found amazing Asian bakeries, gawked at the Hello Kitty things in the shop windows, bought dragon's beard candy from a cart on the street, and I tried my first real bubble tea.

 Dragon's beard candy. Almost like a peanut toffee rolled in this spun dough.

This store of junk and oddities completely stole my heart.

I was so inspired by the artwork. Both in the gallery windows, and on the street. I took quite a few photos to use as inspiration for when I got home.

The food. Oh, the food. We had amazing cheese platters, hot chocolate, crepes, poutine, pasta, croissants, cupcakes, and macaroons. It was magical.

 My very first macaroons!

 

 I bought cupcakes at two places. The third place that I wanted to try ended up being closed for Canadian Thanksgiving. We missed that holiday memo...whoops. It was called Cocoa Locale and is a one woman bakery that is supposedly fantastic. Next time.

Poutine! I searched high and low for poutine with vegetarian gravy and each place I got a lead on ended up either being incredibly difficult to find, or not actually having the vegetarian option they said they did. So, for the first time in years, I ate chicken gravy. Blech...it makes me ill to think about but it was delicious. I probably ate about a third of this before my brain got the best of me.

It sounds odd, but being in Montreal just made me want to go to Paris. I don't know what it is lately, but I feel like I just need to be there!

A Day off & Some Thrifted Finds

I always have Fridays off from work. But it seems that i'm always going into the office anyway. If they want to pay me for the hours and i have nothing else to do, i may as well right? Well today i decided to really use my Friday off. Except i got a call only a couple hours into it and found out that i had to call in for a conference call that ended up lasting for over and hour and half smack dab in the middle of my day of rest, cleaning, and body maintenance (meaning the face mask, body lotion, and leg shaving that never ends up happening during the week). Even so, i ended up having a decent day off. 

I cleaned up my closet and gathered a bunch of clothes that need to be mended, altered, or button replacements. These are a couple of dresses that i found thrifting recently. The aqua and floral one is a handmade vintage piece that i absolutely fell in love with! The other is a suede-like cut out dress from French Connection. They are both far too big for me - by at least 4 sizes, but they were each $4.99! 

I found this last sculpture thrifting last night after work with my Mom. I passed by it - tried to take it down from the shelf it was on way up above my head and decided not to since it was really heavy. After walking around i decided to go back for it and get some help taking it down. It's odd, but i think it's just weird enough for my tastes. I ended up paying $6.50 for it. It has a name and date scratched into the side  - it was done in 1980. I'm going to do some research and see what else i can find out. 

I got both of these a while back and they've had a main spot in our room ever since. Most things that i pick up end up wrapped in a box within days. Christopher and i are still house hunting and since i've been buying things left and right for "one day", we quickly ran out of room. This painted canister and the set of cat nesting dolls, however were too cute to pack away just yet!

Here's to days off, even though for me they end up boring and lonely far too quickly.