Woman in Real Life

With the Victoria Day holiday yesterday, our weekend was increased to a lovely total of three days. I'm not gonna lie - a lot of that time I spent doing laundry and attempting to get the kids to clean their rooms. It takes me longer to persuade/threaten/beg them to clean up than it does for them to actually do the tidying. We need to work on that for sure.

Now that the warm weather is here, we are making every effort to get out and enjoy the weekends. In addition to visiting the lovely Cheltenham Badlands on Saturday, we also visited with friends/relatives at their beautiful country home. Each time we go there, I long for a house in the country.

The last few days have been a whirlwind of activity (hence the mini blog break). I am writing now from the regal Omni King Edward Hotel in downtown Toronto, where I am staying for SheBlogs Media's LINK2013 blogger conference. I have my own lovely room, and it's so peaceful I don't even know what to do with myself.

Here are a few photos from our weekend. My husband and I saw Bill Cosby this weekend at the Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls. Another casino comp earned by my mom.

This weekend was mainly consumed by my son's soccer tournament. I have no thrifty finds today and I haven't prepared a menu plan for the week. We did, however, fit in a quick trip to the mall on Saturday morning and a lovely visit to my husband's cousin's house last night.

We have enjoyed another busy weekend so far. Yesterday, we travelled to our hometown of Hamilton, Ontario for the very first Veggie Fest, Hamilton's vegetarian, vegan and raw food festival. I am generally willing to travel for food.

We met lots of lovely people, like Jen from Apiecalypse Now (awesome name!), a vegan bakery in Toronto. Jen's baked goods contain no dairy, no white sugar, no lard, no chemicals, no GMO...and the list goes on. So what's left? Just delicious, animal-friendly treats, such as sausage rolls and cookies. More about that later.