a (amazing) week in review

This is a little dramatic, but last week was one of the worst weeks of work I've had; worse than when I worked six full days in a row, two weeks in a row & worse than my first week of working after graduating when I felt on edge for fear of missing a mistake. You know when you just have "one-of-those-days"? It was like a recurring theme last week at work & for the first time (that I've ever noticed, anyways), I had visible bags under my eyes! Whaaaaaaat! But as my work week ended on Saturday (with a much more calm shift, yay!), I thought about how I had festered all these negative emotions inside & realized that I had so much to be thankful & grateful for. So I decided to write about the many silver-linings of my week that completely changed my attitude.

I went into the beginning of the week feeling well-rested & well-fed (from our short weekend trip to Vancouver/Chilliwack), especially jolly (from the second Singing Christmas Tree rehearsal on Sunday with Ola), and happily content (from seeing a beautiful sunrise on my way in to work because I'm a sucker for sunrises & sunsets).

After the first of three one-of-those-days days on Tuesday, I was feeling exhausted but it quickly dissipated after a great evening out with Niresha! We had an indulgent dinner at Bar Bricco, which consisted of a glass of Lambrusco & both the meat & cheese tasting platters (:

After dinner, we walked over to McDougall United Church to be serenaded by The Bahamas, aka Afie - which was earfuls of amaaaaaaazing. And just to remind us how down-to-earth he is, he played the drums for the girl who opened for him! Silly Afie (:

The rest of my non-working time was spent crocheting parts of our Halloween costumes among other small DIY projects for other parts because we had a Halloween themed multiple-friend-joint birthday party on Saturday; & any amount of crocheting/crafting/DIY project-ing will help me feel better most of the time. Plus, the regular Thursday night get-togethers with a few gals from church leave me feeling encouraged more often than not.

Thank goodness I had Friday off so I would catch up on sleep lost to over-time I had worked & to get some errands done. I shopped the Oak + Fort & Noul warehouse sales (& how can you ever go wrong with a sale?!) with Lauren & her adorable baby, Connor, who, by the way, somehow looks like a cute & mini old man & spent some time taking in the comforting smell of baby. I read somewhere once that women are actually positively affected by baby smell...& I believe that, after holding the many babies that have been popping out around me in the past few years! 

Zion & I then decided that spending our Friday night at RGE RD would be a great idea...& who am I kidding, you can't go wrong with RGE RD. We indulged (again) & ordered the RGE RD Trip, which is a chef's choice, six-course meal, with the beverage pairing...& I'm salivating just remembering our meal! My favourite was the first course, which was just so simple: fresh, ripe, sweet locally grown tomatoes, drizzled in basil oil, perched perfectly on a few flavourful & savoury croutons, topped with fresh basil & house-made ricotta...& all of that placed on a small salt block for personalizing the amount of salt per bite! It was served with one of the very few wines that both Zion & I enjoy with no complaints: Jaume Serra Cristalino. The following pictures really don't do it justice so if you haven't been, it is a must-eat-at type of restaurant in Edmonton! Have the exclamation marks convinced you yet?! 

Even though the amount of wine I had gave me a headache the next morning, because, yes, I am your typical Asian lightweight, I still went into work happy (: Right after work, we went to our friend's house for a Halloween themed birthday party for the October-babies. Candy + fun company can't really be anything but great (: My favourite costume of the night was our friend JY's: Walter White! Does anyone else get pangs of sadness when thinking about the fact that Breaking Bad is over? 

By this point of the week, I really didn't think that this week could get any better...& then it really did. After church on Sunday, we spent the evening making homemade mandoo/wontons with one of my favourite people (funny sidenote, I call her mandoo! Ha!) & then, of course, eating the mandoo & hanging out with L, J, & Addie (:

Tummy time for Addie (:

The delicious cherry on top of this humungo sundae of joy was receiving a gift from afar via L & J: Beta 5 chocolates! Thanks, D, for sending them & for the heartfelt note (:

Now that I've actually typed the recap of my week out, I'm ashamed of my lack of perspective - God has given me so much that my life is practically brimming with amazing people & simple blessings yet I overlooked it all because of a few bad days at work. Is this how journalling helps keep you sane? I'm glad I decided to review my past week because to be honest, even as I sat down to write this post, I had teeny bits of negativity left behind from certain incidences & circumstances at work but how insignificant & small those look now. As a side note, my weeks aren't always this exciting - some weeks I log a good 30 hours of crocheting while watching back-to-back episodes of Scandal :P Note to self for future difficult days/weeks: zoom out & look at the bigger picture, H! 

If you've made it this far in this post...wowza, I'm impressed you read all that! I hope you have a great week picking out the positives in your life (: