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

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

Learning From My New Hood: More On Moving!

We finally bought coffee today so I have a feeling that means good things for my neglected blog. 

I have learned a few things about moving this time around that never have been an issue before. No two moving experiences are the same; moving back to my hometown (well the next town over) has been a very strange experience. Let me explain (for a little background click here).

In the months before leaving the Kootenays I learned an important lesson, one that you should learn from watching one episode of Hoarders; that buying lots of crap is the enemy. This time around I am not bringing anything into my house that I don’t want long term, this is annoying the hell out of my relatives/anyone with things they want to get rid of and give away. Yes, it is important to get things together in your living space in order but this time I am putting my foot down and waiting it out.

We have picked up some important things for the apartment from my family like a bed and mattress; we bought a couch, TV, fridge and oven but other than that things are pretty bare bones around the house.

The strange thing is I have no desire to buy anything large. I would like a new dresser and vanity but everything I want right now is small. I have a new obsession with decorating that I have never had before. No, I have not been spending hours on end on Pinterest (I actually just set my iMac up yesterday and have been spending barely anytime online).  

Joss & Main has become a weird love of mine as well. I could spend every dollar I make for the next ten years on that website. Seriously, I welcome all housewarming gift card gifts.

My question for you is what is the first thing you bought for your house? Did you get excited about it?

The first thing we bought for our new house was a set of dishes that made me as excited as the boys were that day when they bought their new toys (Kev’s new car and Butter’s new motorcycle). It was a great call then and I am still very happy with it now. My first BIG buy for the house was the couch and reclining chair. I was happy that I managed to get it delivered to the house and set up before the boys got home in time for our weekend guest. Folding chairs were not cutting it. 

What is your favourite thing about moving?

Clearly for me it is looking at the walls and the space and all the potential we have for decorating and making our little cookie-cutter lodge our own. Seriously, it is like being in elementary school and getting to decorate baked goods for Halloween.

What is your least favourite part of moving?

Mine was waiting for things to arrive (specifically my car). Honestly, I am not sure that I would ever ship my car again. For the first couple of weeks I felt like I was back in high school. No car (well other than my parent’s mini-van). No space. No freedom. I am so happy that is over!

Life still feels like a vacation (kind of) at this point. It is weird to think that this is what real life is like. Everything is coming together slowly, the boys are settling into their routine with the Air Force and summer is coming to an end.

On a happy note, the neighbourhood kids are back in school now so the hours that they are screwing around on our lawn have been cut down. I sound like a horrible person saying this but it is so nice to have kid-free afternoons. Generally they do not speak to me (I do not make eye contact) but they love the boys. The neighbourhood children would follow them into the house if they could. The posse of children seems to know exactly when we are coming and going during daylight hours and always greet us. Toys appear on our lawn (sometimes intact), other times large sticks and other children’s debris show up too.

If I ever go missing it maybe because of a children’s reenactment of 2008’s “The Strangers”. You may or may not remember this classic Liv Tyler film that basically comes down to the following:

Anyway, I think the coffee will help with focus for the next blog. This one has been all over the place. There is so much to talk about! I know I skipped over some great events and happenings here in Nova Scotia on the blog and I am hoping to be more diligent in the future. I have to update my social profiles to my newly out of the radio world details so the blog maybe a work in progress for a little while.

Now to drink my embarrassingly bad cup of coffee without cream and sweetener, I may have the appliances to do the job but nothing else is clicking right now. After two years using k-cups my ability to brew a pot of coffee at home leaves a lot to be desired. Struggles.

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!

Daily Dose of Weird May 13, 2014- Nova Scotia's Proposed Ban on Breakfast Sandwiches and Driving

My home province is the feature of today’s Daily Dose of Weird. This story makes me laugh because it is so ridiculous. I have never been in an accident because I was eating at the wheel, but before I cut out wheat I definitely was guilty of eating delicious breakfast sandwiches and driving. To be honest with you my go to driving food is chicken nuggets, not much safer when you factor in dipping sauce.

I would love to see the stats on how many morning accidents are happening in Nova Scotia. It must be absolutely staggering to warrant this response. Although, I am guessing there has not been more than a handful of occasions when people have been pulled over using electric razors… one of the other problem distractions plaguing Nova Scotian drivers. Check that, it might be one of those “only in Nova Scotia problems” that happen around our province frequently.

On a serious note, shouldn’t the argument be to ban all sandwiches while driving if we are going this far down a crazy path? What about the rush hour double-cheeseburgers? The late night grocery store clubs--- they are all equally distractingly delicious.

So much silliness! For more click here to see the full responses from a Nova Scotian Police Officer who should have his own comedy show. 

Thought of the Day... Board Games and Babies

I have an embarrassing love for board games.

Seriously, I will take you on--- any game, anytime, anyplace.

Today I came to the realization (after many hours at Walmart over the weekend trying to prepare for spring cleaning) that the only reason I am even remotely interested in having a child is to have an extra person to play board games with.

It is the one thing that having a child has over having a dog. If you have read some of my blog posts you know how badly I want a dog.

Kevin and I play games all the time. He’s the King of NHL; I'm the Queen of Madden. He usually wins at rummy; I win at Monopoly Deal and crib. Generally it is a toss up who will win at Yahtzee.

Board game nights are one of my favourite things about visiting my parents in Nova Scotia. Growing up we only had two channels until I was in sixth grade; daytime living was watching movies and farming. Nighttime was my time to shine, family game nights. I started so young when I started playing cards that I would cry whenever I had to pass up a king; it was a “K for Katie”… I was fifteen. Just kidding.

Anyways, my sister can’t take how competitive I get while Robert (my brother) and Kevin team up on me. She usually is the Banker.

Over the weekend we tried to find more games to play for two. It is ridiculously hard to find games that really are good for two. Some are okay, but games like Monopoly are horrible with two people.  

There is my thought of the day.  Sorry, mum.

And to think, as Kevin and I walked across the street to the grocery store tonight a man eyed us up and invited us to a rave. I was still fully decked out in workout gear and freshly home from work. I guess pink shorts mean you want to party on a Tuesday night in the Kootenays.