Holiday Shopping!

We are the 25th of November already, and can I just say “holly crap time is flying by”! We are exactly one month away from eggnog, gingerbread cookies, Santa and most importantly... gifts! Right?! (Oh don’t deny it, opening gifts on a cold Christmas Morning, in your comfy pjz and sleepers with a warm cup of coffee, sitting besides the ones we love, is pretty awesome!)

With a month away, gifts are on our mind. This is also the time of the year people succumb to the “daddy I want a puppy for Christmas! Pleeeease!”
So mommies and daddies sit together and talk it out: do we, don’t we. Often going to the local pet store to go and find the most adorable furry face there to surprise their child on Christmas morning.
So are you ready? Here goes my rescue Shhhpeel!

As most of you who know Ricardo and I, will already know we are pretty huge supporters of animal shelters and local rescues. We are currently housing our third foster pup who is, well, short of perfect!
If you are considering a dog for Christmas.... please Adopt, don’t Shop!

Here are a few reasons why:
* You are giving a living, breathing, loving creature a second chance.
* Because of foster moms, like moi, you are not bringing an unknown dog into your home. Foster moms will be able to tell you all about character and will be able to place the pup with the perfect home, whether that is with other dogs, cats or children.
* When you adopt, included in your adoption fee are basic shots as well as spaying and neutering
* You are helping stop puppy mills! Pet store puppies are almost always puppy mill dogs.... (Remember that the next time you go and visit you local pet store)
* ... and the list goes on!

Talking from experience, our cats and dogs are all rescues and we couldn’t love them any more than we do. They complete our lives; they are part of our family! And in the meanwhile, when a sad pup is looking for a safe and loving home to crash until his or her for ever home comes along, our doors are open.

For Christmas this year, adopt don’t shop!

Birthday Boy

Happy Birthday,

my wonderful husband!

I love you so so much!

Mini morning blog of props

Aren’t I just totally terrible?! One week in the blogging world and fail !
How do all those wonderful women, whom I read their blogs every day, have time to … blog? They have 5 kids, and a house, a husband and friends, a social life and a job and STILL find the time to blog!!!! Impressive! I bow down to you!

Here is my 'mini catch up' post of what I have been up to:

Friday night we had dinner with my husband’s lil’bro Carlos D. Sadly I think it was the first time we’ve done something only us three. It was so much fun and I promise it will happen more often.
We had dinner at a Brazilian restaurant named Le Milsa. For those who have never heard of this place, it is pretty much every man’s dream restaurant. Why you must ask?
Because men walk around all night with GIANT slabs of all sorts of meat, going from table to table till you just can’t take it anymore. On top of being in meat heaven, there are almost nude dancers shakin’ all around in sparkly bikinis and feathers. My boys had a pretty big smile on their faces all night!

As for last night, Vero brought us to this little bar in St.Henri that is attached to the Brasserie of St-Ambroise (where I had the most amazing beer ever!!!!!! Apricot beer, Yum!) to watch one of her friend, Matt Stern, perform.
Let me tell you ladies, he is the best kept secret right now. Get out, find him and go watch him play. He is seriously the next Jack Johnson or John Mayer. He’s got the looks, the charm, the smoothness and he is ubberly talented…. Even bought his CD!
What’s awesome about attending things like last night is you often discover a few hidden gems that have not yet been discovered. Elaine Ryan was the second act. She sang folk. She had the most amazing voice, the best personality and her songs were filled with very meaningful and honest lyrics of commentaries about the world of today. No taboos no fakeness here, she laid it all out, and I loved it!

I am leaving you on this and I will be back this afternoon!

Wedding Madness!

Ricardo and I tied the knot October 3rd of this year. He proposed on Halloween night the year before dressed like a pirate! How perfect is that?!
Since, well pretty much the day we met, I knew he was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with; the idea of marriage was often discussed. Our thoughts; money, savings, a house first or a wedding, until….
We concluded, whether it would be a small or a big wedding, whether we were rich or poor, we wanted to be married now and that was it!
And off we went planning our own wedding with no help and everything done by us. For the past year, I had been obsessively working on our wedding. I thank God we have such amazing friends that have helped us along the way (you know who you are, I love you guys!)
And so began a year long process of projects, ideas, planning, creating, painting, gluing, sewing, and so on! Along this path of craziness I discovered, ‘hey! I really like doing this and I have more ideas than I will ever be able to use for my own wedding’ so … maybe, hopefully this will be one of my future career endeavours!!!

Before I show you pictures of our big day, I will leave you with a teaser, a picture of my wedding bouquet while it was still in the process of being created!

Wanna read and see more ????

Organized Chaos

On any given day, if you walk into my office, you will find chaos, disaster, the biggest mess you’ve ever seen … call it what you want but creative people are almost always messy yet somehow always know where everything is. My chaos is very VERY well organized!

My husband walks into my office, and it goes like this every time:
R: “How the heck can you work here, I don’t even know what color your desk is?”
K: “What do you mean, it’s not thaaaaaaaaaaaat messy, plus I need everything out. What if I want a different color string, another shape of button, a piece of candy, a glass of water…. A creative girl has to be prepared… I can’t waste time running around getting stuff!”
R: “Ok, fine….but tell me, where’s your iPod, right now, right now?”
K: “Under the pile of cut string, that’s sitting on my agenda, by the right of my keyboard of my laptop”
BINK! There it is!
R: “Man you’re good!”

My desk at its cleanest!

I like, no I need, my creative space to be messy but I hate when the rest of the house is. I love having all of my art materials all over the place. I hate when everything is neat, then I search. Give me my mess and I know where everything is. I like shifting from one project to the next yet I don’t like that I never finish the project I am working on before starting the next. I would love to sometimes change the gears of my brain, maybe put it in slow motion for a change. I need to learn to focus.
… and perhaps kick the puppies out of my space, once in a while, or else I get this: :)

Mika, Clara & Tchix (current foster pup)

I live in a Zoo!

Most people laugh when we say this, but we really do live in a zoo. We invite our friends over, and after about a grand total of 2 and a half minutes they almost always say “Now we get it, this is definitely the DePretis-Machuca Zoo!”.
Anyone looking for love, a waggy tail, a sloppy kiss and lots of chew toys just need to stop by our place!

Now, while I wish we lived in the country, in a huge house with lots and lots of land, we, for now, live on the bottom floor of a duplex in the city. You would think this, space, would make us a bit more reasonable and perhaps rational as to welcoming the entire animal kingdom in our home, but no!

Clara

Mika

My package was me and my 9 year old golden retriever Clara. Ricardo’s package consisted of him and his cat Roberto. When our packages mixed and melded together to become a family, we quickly expanded. We got a puppy, our boston terrier, Mika who is now two years old and a black cat named Diego.
On top of this we have two fishes, which started as four but the cats are taking care of them slowly : ( , we had a lizard, an abandoned kitten and now we have entered the world of fostering. We foster one pup at a time, helping them find their furrr-ever homes!

Diego & Roberto

It is always a full house, there is never a dull moment

and there is always tons of love and cuddles to go around.

New to the Blogging World

Let’s get started!
Before my creations, business cards, a webpage and figuring out everything else, I am attacking the blogging world.
While I love and follow many blogs, once I get hooked to a good blog I back track to figure out what I am reading…. What dog? Who’s that? She has how many kids? What does she do as a job?
To avoid such confusion and questions, when hopefully I actually have people reading my blog, I will start off slow.
For this first week, every day I will blog a little bit about me.

this picture was taken when we first started dating. We headed up to Mont-Tremblant for lunch and took this picture I love so much

I am in my mid twenties and have recently married the most amazing man in the world (and will slowly post some of our wedding pictures). Our story, while being quite funny and cute all in one, will be kept for another day.
I am a creative artsy busy girl. Anything I can get my hands on. One week I am painting glass and our stove has turned into a mass productions of baking wine glasses (weird endeavour that was very short lived) and the next minute I am scrapbooking half my life worth of pictures, to sewing everything felt and buttony (yes, I like to invent words). I am a bit neurotic and jump from one thought to the next, I never stop moving and my music can never be loud enough in my studio.
For now I work a boring desk job at a company while I figure out just what I want to do with my life and studies in painting, sketching, sculpting, print making and art history.