Side Project: AnnandaleArt.com

My parent's backyard and their dog Levi!

I have not posted in a little while because I have been so busy establishing myself in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. I've been trying new things like yoga and I have been super busy getting into a new routine balancing work and having a personal life. 

Even though I am trying to take a little more time for myself I have been busy working on a side project, curating and managing a website that showcases my mother's incredible art work. I have been working on the website since August and I am so happy with how well it is doing! Mom is painting away, busier than ever! If you have ever wondered where I get my crazy workaholic drive it is from Patricia Bruce! 

My lovely mother and some of her pieces. 

Her queue is filling up as Christmas approaches, if you are looking for a memorable custom gift for someone you know she can help you out with custom art! 

A wedding gift hung in a family friend's home. 

Check out her new website here: www.annandaleart.com

Another painting of our backyard! (sorry about the glare)

Monday Motivation: The Power of Princessing at the Apple Blossom Festival

Once upon a time I was an Apple Blossom Festival Princess. The year was 2009 and it was my town’s Centennial. I wore the crown, the white dress and the gloves and represented Middleton, NS with pride.

Now let’s Flash-forward 6 years to one of the craziest days of my life, Apple Blossom Festival Saturday 2015 a day that tested my mind, body and my soul a little bit. Jet-legged after a strange night of chips and dancing I set out to help promote an upcoming event at the restaurant that I work at in both of the day’s parades. It was crazy. As you can see, I was a little Frozen as “Elsa” on a very warm Spring day.

For the shorter parade early in the day there were other superheroes and princesses with me in the parade. For the Grande Street Parade I was the lone princess and met with hugs and “Elsa, Elsa” cheers everywhere I went. As crappy as I felt it made my day to light-up so many children’s (and adults) ABF.

With that being said, I was in the costume and made-up from 9am until 5pm and then I returned to Boston Pizza to waitress for the rest of the evening. Unfortunately there was no time to remove the makeup and the hair extensions so I looked a little strange and definitely not like myself until about 10:30pm when I finally returned home.

The next day I was sweating glitter when I hit the gym.

It was totally worth it; all the hugs, the smiles, the long-squats to talk to kids and the jogging to catch-up to my float (I had to constantly play catch-up because so many people wanted to take pictures and hug me).

Why did I do it? I’m not a weirdo. I may be a giant Disney nerd, but threatening I am not. I did it for multiple reasons. Attention is near the bottom of the list. Originally I did it to help out a friend with a marketing/promotional event; I know how hard it can be to get people to do things like this to promote bringing in business so I figured I would do anything to help.

The reason I owned it, even though I felt horrible and would have rather stayed in bed was because as a kid all I wanted was to go to Disney World. Seriously, that was it. My family would go to local festivals but we never had the chance to go on a family vacation, my parents could not afford to lose the time working at their small businesses. As an adult I have experienced both Disneyworld and Disneyland and I know how special it feels to be acknowledged, even for a moment, by your favourite characters. You may get older, but that feeling never does.

I know for a lot of children here in the Annapolis Valley festivals like Apple Blossom and the Annapolis Valley Exhibition are as close as they get to a family vacation or even a family outing. To bring a little bit of Disney magic to them here at home brought me out of my horrible mood and truly inspired me to suck it up and get on with the show. You never know what might come from the light in the eyes of a child or an adult for that matter!

You might think I am being a little silly, but taking part in the Apple Blossom Parade dressed as Elsa brought back a unique feeling that I had only felt once before when I was Princess Middleton 2009. On our Apple Blossom Tour of the Annapolis Valley we visited my first school, Annapolis East Elementary School. We were working our way down the Valley visiting each of the Princesses’ hometowns and I still feel that my stop was the most special. I was a town employee; I coached tennis and worked in the day camps during the summer and while I was in high school I refereed minor hockey and was heavily involved in sports so many of the children knew me or had a connection in some way.

We arrived at the school about 30 minutes after I spilled a glass of chocolate milk over my slim-fitting, easy to manage Princess Gown so my mother had to meet me with a dress we had all started calling “The Monster” because it was huge. Seriously, it was big and heavy and took one or two small children out every event that I went to.

That's me in the middle in "The Monster" back in 2009.

After changing dresses we were ushered into the school like true royalty. I was introduced to the children and I swear they cheered louder than any other group of students during school visits. Sorry to the other Princesses who may be reading this, in Middleton we are a competitive bunch and these things matter to us. Instead of a normal Princess Q&A that other schools did a bunch of my tennis students pumped some tunes in the gym and we danced with all of the children. There were so many children yelling “Katie, Katie” and fighting to dance with me that I thought we were never going to be able to leave the school that day. There were some tears.

Someone even made me a Barbie! 

In those once-in-a-lifetime moments it did not matter to me that I was not the Queen because it sure as hell did not matter to those kids. As I led them in the “Y.M.C.A.” cool went out the window and I made a mark on those children’s day and maybe even a little more.

My experience with the Apple Blossom Festival this year was very similar. I would say about 90% of the children really knew in their hearts that I was not Elsa, but they did not care they were just happy to be acknowledged with a smile, wave, hug or a couple of quick words.

The whole time I had one quote in my head, a little something I have been trying to incorporate in my personal and professional life for quite a while now:

“They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”-Carl W Buechner

So here is my Monday Motivation for you, go make someone feel something that makes you proud to be human.

BTW here is what my day looked like... 

A photo posted by Kate Bruce (@kategbruce) on May 31, 2015 at 10:28am PDT

Fundraising For Coldest Night of the Year: Cookiegram Results

A couple of days ago I blogged about my fundraising efforts as Team Captain for the Valley Credit Union Icebreakers for Coldest Night of the Year 2015. *More on that here*

I needed to get a little rest and back into my routine before sharing the results, I am so excited I raised $316 for Open Arms in just 48 hours. Yes, I was up until 3am with my wonderful sister, aunt and cousin baking/decorating 171 cookies; but it was worth it!

After a long Wednesday night and a minor fender-bender Thursday morning I made it to work and the cookies genuinely seemed to make everyone happy. Who doesn't love getting a nice message and a sweet treat for a good cause, right?

I'm already planning for my next fundraiser to help Camp Brigadoon, some friends and I are taking part in "Wine & Dash" this Spring.

For now, I am focused on my winter fundraiser. You can help the cause by donating to the Annapolis Valley's Coldest Night of the Year in support of Open Arms by clicking here.

In 48 hours I sold 171 cookies and raised $316 for #CNOY here in the #AnnapolisValley. It wasn't easy, but I am so thankful for @beckiebruce driving down from #Halifax and helping until 3am! #charity #grateful #thankful #ColdestNightOfTheYear

A photo posted by Kate Bruce (@kategbruce) on Feb 12, 2015 at 2:07pm PST

Fundraising For Coldest Night of the Year

One of the biggest challenges I think in marketing these days is how much is expected of a Marketing

Department. Big or small today marketers have their hands in pretty much every pot at the office. I’m not complaining, I would rather be immersed my organization than caught unaware. Marketing can range from doing traditional roles like creating advertisements and strategies to event planning and employee recognition. I think most of the best marketers are also the best front line employees because they have the finger on the pulse of what is going on and can jungle multiple asks and campaigns while being part of traditional daily front-line operations.

With that being said, for me one of the biggest challenges of being a new employee at a business in a new industry is not having that bare basics knowledge about daily operations that someone who has worked one has. With that knowledge comes respect, for example while I was working in Marketing for McDonald’s Restaurants I gained the respect of the employees I was training and teaching because I understood their roles and what a day in their shoes was like because of my experience working as a “crew member” in high school. That traction was so valuable to me and to the people I was working with.

​

Taking on my new marketing role with a financial institution has been a challenge. One of the most challenging things I have been asked to do is to take on being Captain of our Coldest Night of the Year fundraising team and organizing our organization-wide fundraising efforts. I am so proud of our team for their amazing work so far. I am used to organizing events, motivating a corporate team is a little different. As you can see on the website listed below we have had nearly $800 in donations and that does not count all of the money donated at our branches by our members. I appreciate how hard it can be to follow the lead of someone new, especially when that person is new to their role and industry and the team here has welcomed me whole-hardily.

Me in my Team Captain CNOY toque

Unfortunately I am a desk jockey and do not have the opportunities to fundraise like our amazing staff.  They truly are amazing for all of the support they have thrown behind making our team successful in supporting Open Arms and the “homeless, hurt and hungry” here in the Annapolis Valley. To help in my own way I am pulling some sweet Valentine’s Day treats from Pinterest and making customized Cookiegrams to be sent between branches and around our area.

In the past 16 hours I have already raised $100 and I am sure there is more to come! If you live in the Annapolis Valley and would like to order some red velvet or sugar cookiegrams please email me k.bruce@valleycreditunion.com! 

If you would like to help support our fundraising efforts but do not want the cookies you can donate by following this link:https://secure.e2rm.com/registrant/FundraisingPage.aspx?registrationID=2677155&langPref=en-CA

It is going to be a cold night. It has been ridiculously cold lately with wind-chills making it feel like the temperature is in the -30s. There is not another group of people that I would rather be freezing with than the incredible people I work with. I am so impressed with their ability to juggle so many tasks and come out on the successful side with grace and excitement to take on the next challenge.

Dear Winter...

Dear winter,

Please stop. Kindly move along and allow an early spring to begin.  I appreciate that this is not the worst winter on record, that there has only been a slightly annoying amount of snow and nasty so far this year compared to others but I have had enough. After living in a part of the world that experiences all of the awesome parts of winter (and celebrates them) without it’s crappy grossness.

This is the first East Coast winter I have had to experience as a true adult and I am not enjoying it. I am out of winter wear; I’m really struggling to recycle my warm outfits to make it through an entire week in office appropriate clothing. Seriously, I would be all right if we could make 80s pant suits fashionable again at the office. I would be totally fine wearing shoulder pads for a little extra warmth. I keep a pair of wool socks stashed at my desk at ALL TIMES just in case my toes loose all their feeling.

I’m not a big baby. I can deal with the cold, but the cold isn’t what is annoying. It is being wet and cold day-in-day-out. If I spend any more time in my bathtub trying to thaw I think I will develop scales or turn into a mermaid.

The worst part?

Having to shovel snow before going to work. It is nearly 3pm and we still have not been plowed out. From the neck up I am totally ready to go to work. From the neck down, sweatys and my trusty wool socks. There is NOTHING worse than waking up and getting ready for work, shoveling a ridiculous amount of snow, cold winds blistering your skin as more snow falls from the sky and then working up a thick layer of sweat from tearing apart small mountains of snow that is packed down by ice.

Owning a dog I now know that I need to have winter boots to live in Canada. But, they are all so god awful that it pains me to think about spending money on them.

To be clear, I do not hate winter. I think I just hate winter in the Annapolis Valley. Last year winter in the Kootenays was awesome! World-class skiing and amazing winter celebrations made it all bearable. I feel like living away from the Valley for one winter really has changed how I see it now.

As I sit here stewing, waiting to be dug out of this relatively small amount of snow that kept me home from work today I really just needed to get a rant out. Again, I do not hate winter but I really cannot wait until this gross one is over.

Middleton for Kraft Hockeyville 2015!

I am so excited! My hometown Middleton, Nova Scotia is in the running for Kraft Hockeyville 2015! Here is a little video from Valley Credit Union’s Head Office of myself, and a couple others doing the “Kraft Faceoff” Challenge with Oreos. I am pretty pumped that I won; I was horrible at it during the practice round.

I am so happy to be living close to home during this exciting time for one of the most special places to me. More on that to come…

Here is the Youtube video:

To support Middleton’s bid check out the Kraft Hockeyville nomination page and use #MiddletonNSforKraftHockeyville and #khv_middletonnsforhockeyville.

Pick A Puppy!

Television channels that were originally dedicated to promoting and playing music have been the source of endless jokes here in Canada because of their lacklustre attempts to meet their mission statement over the past few years. I have been a champion of knocking MuchMusic, CMT and the like for allowing YouTube to takeover the music video scene. It all started so innocent with spinoff shows that were relevant to music and then these channels just gave up and started airing shows that have no business on airwaves that should be representing a genre of music.

I could rant about this all day, but this blog is a little bit of an apology to the CMT network. On top of being a little critical of our Canadian music television channels for checking out of the music game for a majority of the day, I had been especially hard on the CMT network for their television show “Pick A Puppy”. I still think it is crazy that there is an entire television show dedicated to families picking out their dream puppy, but after a couple of weeks with free reign to pick my own puppy I have come to the conclusion it is much more difficult than I originally thought.

My afternoons have been spent visiting my Grandmother’s ten new additions to the family and I have been having an impossible time deciding on the puppy I want to bring home forever. We have it narrowed down to three but time is ticking down. People have begun visiting and claiming their own new little furry friends and I feel a little hopeless. Boy? Girl? Who knows! It is between two big boys and the tiniest little girl. One of the boys is a little bear who can fall asleep anywhere. The other boy we have named Ruxin, he is slightly whiny and has a white tuft on his stomach. The smallest girl is adorable. She does her own thing and is never with the other puppies (they kind of pick on here). My grandmother babied her to ensure she received enough food during the first few weeks; she is still small but she is incredibly feisty. I call her Gadget and I think she might be my favourite.

I have no idea how this is going to turn out. Will we end up with a big, lazy boy or a small energetic girl? Will they all end up massive black labs in the end? One more time, who knows?

We will see in the next couple of weeks! I am so excited to bring our little lad/lass home and baby the crap out of them!

My indecisiveness can be summed up in less than 500 words and I have been spending hours each week with these puppies. I maintain that there is no reason to have an entire television show devoted to the puppy picking process.

A photo posted by Kate Bruce (@kategbruce) on Nov 11, 2014 at 8:27am PST

Puppies!

Well it has been an exciting few weeks! I finally visited Disney World last week (more to come on that later), I’ve been working quite a bit and super nesting in the new house!

On top of all the travel and craziness almost a month ago something very exciting happened, my grandmother’s Golden Labrador had puppies! 10 beautiful puppies are my obsession right now; I think I may even get one! There are six female and four male. It surprised all of us that all ten are pretty much solid black! The litter of Yellow Lab crossed with Chocolate Lab is black!

The puppies are now beginning to be fun. Their eyes are open and they are moving around. Some are a lot chubbier than the others so they kind of look like little seals flopping around and the leaner ones are walking. Soon they will be playing and exhibiting their personalities, I can’t wait!

This is my Grandmothers dog’s second litter of puppies. The first litter we crossed the Yellow Lab with a Standard Poodle for Labradoodles, it was much smaller with six puppies. Four of the Labradoodles were yellow and the other two were black. They were adorable!

I’ll update the blog with puppy cuteness, as they get even cuter! If you know anyone in Nova Scotia looking for an adorable Black Lab puppy feel free to email me!

Back In The Saddle Again: Moving Home to the Annapolis Valley

It has been a crazy week and a half! I've listened to more country music than I have in years in the past 12 days and heard the word "koozie" more than anyone ever needs to. 

In the past 20 days I have moved across the country from BC back to my hometown; Middleton, Nova Scotia. My life is still in boxes; my parent’s house has not been a great place to set up shop. Good news though, we move into our PMQ on Friday! 

I started working again until I can lock down another radio job but that may take a little while. I have been way too busy, but hopefully things will calm down soon.

Living at home has been a little overwhelming. I went from being the queen of the house with my gigantic bedroom to being less than a guest. My sister and brother are both at home right now so all of their crap as been piled in the bedroom that is now mine and there is legitimately only a path to and from the bed for space in the room. Some of the stuff is mine so I have been taking on the Bruce's hoarding problem slowly but surely. The clutter is a one-day at a time battle. 

There are a ton of topics I would like to take on in the blog, things that I find so funny or interesting that I can write about. Stay tuned and soon you maybe hearing about all the Annapolis Valley problems you can handle!

The big one on everyone's mind is something that actually drove me crazy after moving to BC, something I could never get used to, adding the area code to phone numbers when making phone calls. That is about to be necessary here in Nova Scotia and it is a very controversial topic. It bothers people almost as much as going to the Dartmouth Costco instead of the timeless Bayers Lake Costco. That is hot topic for another day... 

The Annapolis Valley Exhibition has come and gone. I was a distinguished guest and Judge for Exhibition Idol. I took in the rodeo and many a meal at the Ex. My jeans are a little tighter this week as a result. 

I took in two flicks at the Valley Drive In over the weekend, "Into The Storm" and "Expendables 3". 

I've dined at 2/3 of my favourite places in Halifax (Habaneros and Boneheads); Press Gang will be on the docket for our next fancy trip to Halifax. Yesterday we visited to go car/motorcycle shopping so it was a quick half-day trip. We managed to get a quick walk on the Waterfront in and introduced Butters to Theodore the Tugboat. 

I have been a busy girl getting my fill of my favourite things here at home. Now I am off to celebrate Armed Forces Day at CFB Greenwood. Kevin is working security, he was a little sad that he would not get to witness the kids suiting up for the different events. 

Next blog will be giving you the low-down on Armed Forces Day and then hopefully I will touch on one of my favourite new places in the Valley!

Nova Scotia's "Storm of the Year"

Storm photo cred to Robert Bruce, FYI Dad's not impressed... 

Where there once were three there are now two.

I’d like to start this blog post be stating no animals, humans or heavy machinery was harmed in the making of this blog post at any time.

Yesterday I joked while getting my taxes done about the amount of snow days there are in my home province Nova Scotia. We laughed about how rare they are here in our region of British Columbia. This is my first winter away from home (and out of school for that matter) and it sure looks like I have missed a doozy.

This photo is from my parent’s farm in the beautiful Annapolis Valley. We moved onto our farm when I was in second grade. One of the first things about moving to the farm was explaining to people where had moved based on how many silos were in our backyard, we were the only farm with three in the general area. No more. If you have ever been to a party at my place I'm guessing the silos were a big silver beacon to help guide you to a good time (hopefully).

Brooklyn (or small part of the world) is a pretty windy place. No mosquitoes, no bees… few bugs and now fewer silos.  Today things apparently got a little more windy than normal. So much so that one of the towering pillars that set our little farm apart from the others down the road has blown down. 

Am I questioning the structural integrity of the silos? A little, but from what I have heard this storm is blowing VERY strong winds in a completely different way. But, let’s be serious it freakin’ windy. Rumour has it that the gusts are going way over 100 kilometers an hour… way over. In a place that is windy on the nicest of days I can’t imagine the gust that took down the silo.

Kootenay friends, this post is for you. Enjoy the warm day we have, we surpassed the high by 10am and worked our way up to at least 12 degrees during my show. I went to the gym with bare arms and legs today, skies out, thighs out. We lost power for less than an hour this week and marveled over the novelty of working out in the dark and not being able to have our subs toasted (maybe that was just me, I thought it was pretty cool).

As nice as it is, and this may justify a big “F-U” from everyone in Nova Scotia (if it didn’t before). I miss hunkering down for a good-ole Nor’Easter. Cranking up the radio and fighting over what to listen to KRock, AVR or Magic, stocking up on food and booze to get through the indefinite period of isolation, trying to read books by candlelight without catching on fire and neighbors sleeping over in our wood fire heated home were some of my favourite things. Getting stormed stayed away from home during hockey tournaments was even better (most of the time).

Again, no animals or humans were hurt when the barn roof caught the silos fall. 

Stay safe Nova Scotia. If you are managing to read this blog post during the storm good for you for having your electronics charged! If you still have power I am in doubt that you are feeling true “Storm of the Year” pain.  For all you without power I will not live-Tweet whatever happens on Big Brother Canada tonight… I promise. 

If your talking to John Bruce about this, do this girl a favour and maybe leave this blog out of the discussion. He wasn't to impressed that Robert put the photo on Facebook, I doubt he would have kind words about this blog.

I hope you ordered your Chinese food... here's Frankie!