{The Condo} "Construction" So Far...

This is going to be a long two years...

Construction on the condo was originally slated to begin in March but then was later delayed to May. Fences and hoarding went up and they only closed off the parking lot it's being built over in July. Finally in August they brought in drilling and earth moving machines and this is where they were at a few weeks ago:

Photo by The Toronto Blog

I passed by during Labour Day weekend and it was just earth/pavement and trucks everywhere.

I'm getting antsy but we still have a long ways to go!

{Snapshots} Summer's End

Just some photos from the last few weeks of summer! I can't believe it's almost fall!

I stopped by my local Value Village and found these beautiful bowls. Only a few scratches on the smaller Friendship bowl, but I swear the orange one is brand new. There is no evidence of use inside or outside the bowl!

The orange one is the same size as the other two Pyrex bowls I picked up last time, so I'm glad I found the smaller one as well.

Somehow, within three weeks I picked up four pairs of shoes. The striped espadrilles were not on my shopping list but at 60% off, they got on the list.

I didn't think I would be going to the CNE this year, but I had forgotten that with a concert ticket for the Molson Amphitheatre you get access to the CNE grounds as well, so of course we went to try out some of the food.

I cannot even believe the details on this sandcastle (literally)!

Little person on another sand sculpture.

I think this was the 'Lumberjack' poutine?

Pulled pork poutine. I preferred the fries of the Lumberjack poutine but the meat/sauce of this one (different food stalls).

Red velvet funnel cake. Yum!

The Fray. Five songs into their set I realized I had seen them years and years ago! Lol, whoops!

The Fray. Still amazing live.

Isaac ran to the back of the amphitheatre and was singing in a crowd of people. Of course it was the complete opposite side of where we were... For one or two songs he also sat down with a keyboard in the crowd.

Packed venue! I hate the Molson Amphitheatre though and it was crazy windy that night.

Kelly Clarkson.

Kelly and her backup singers also ran into the crowd to sing on a mini platform.

Isaac and Kelly singing 'Don't You Wanna Stay'.

Airborne Kelly.

Kelly Clarkson.

Sometimes Spider-Man needs help too.

The CNE midway and the CN Tower.

The CNE midway. I love the colours here.

This guy was a rockstar getting the rubber chickens into the pots! His friends though, not so much.

The Dufferin gate.

{I Heart} Girls' NYC Weekend Blurb

For a while now I've wanted to get some photo books printed of the various trips I've taken instead of developing individual photos and getting massive photo albums for them. I love seeing full bookshelves and having organized photo books on them would be just lovely!

So when I won Kait's Blurb Giveaway right before our girls' trip to New York (seen here and here), I figured it'd be the perfect test trip since I was going to print multiples and I could see how both softcover and hardcover were. I don't think it made much of a difference (only a few bucks), but I Googled for a coupon code as well (I think I found 20% off) and placed 2 separate orders since Blurb only allows for one promo code to be used per order.

On the left, the ImageWrap hardcover and the softcover on the right. I chose the Standard Landscape size (10 x 8 inches).

Sadly I'm not made of money so the bride-to-be and I got the hardcovers with premium paper (in lustre finish) while the others got the softcovers with standard paper. Only softcovers with over 80 pages can have text on the spine and I made them to be 60 pages, hence the lack of text on the top two copies.

Inside!

The photos are a bit grainy so I think I need to use a higher resolution on my camera if I plan to make more of these books.(Though I'm not sure if it's because of my camera settings or the printer...)

For the most part, I had a ball of a time playing with the pre-set layouts as well as creating some of my own.

I like that you can cram as many photos as you want on a page, without having to pay for each individual print if you were to develop them normally.

Next time I need to scrutinize every photo edge though. I found a few of these slight gaps throughout the book.

I even listed the things we ordered at Marea, otherwise we will never remember what we ate despite having all those photos.

Mandie's a rebel and uses Hipstamatic instead of Instagram, but I picked my fave ones from her photos and put them chronologically across two pages.

On the back cover I listed our itinerary and put the photo I took of the map of Central Park. 
No matter how many times I refer to this map, I always take the wrong path! (And I don't mean just on this trip.) Oh well. We still got to where we wanted to go, we just took a bit of a detour.

I was pretty impressed with the packaging! Those babies did not budge in the box at all.

I was really impressed with the speed! I submitted my orders on the Friday before the Canada Day long weekend and had the books in my hands 10 days later! I thought it would take at least 3 weeks! The quality of the books were great as well, though after reading through the forums I'm not sure if the graininess of the photos were due to my photo resolutions or the Canadian printers.

I definitely want to make more books and have a neat little collection, but I take forever to sort through photos, let alone formatting them in the different layouts.

Have any of you started a collection of photo books?