two weeks in nicaragua

What to say. HM. There's just too much. I will try and point out a few highlights of the trip because to write everything would be really time consuming and possibly boring for you.

I like numbering my points...

1. Managua - Greg's home

Arriving in Managua without knowing Spanish or having the Nicaraguan currency or any advanced planning, made our initial landing very very interesting. We made it though! We were tested and passed with flying colours. Greg picked us up with his friend Victor and from that moment on we began our two weeks of drinking, learning and resting. All 3 were necessary and inevitable.

We stayed in Managua for the first week, where we drank as much as we possibly could and spent the rest of our time listening to stories of the revolution, war and an ongoing time of crisis...from the comforts of a hammock. It was more than eye opening. We met wonderful people who devote their lives to bettering the lives of the people of this amazing country and not once did we feel like outsiders. We were invited with open arms everywhere we went, AND THE FOOD! We were fed constantly. We loved it. ha ha. It's true.

Thanks to Greg, Victor, Robert, Karen, Hubert, the Canada House, Trudy, Kai, Kent and so many more people for our fabulous first week. It was intense but unforgettable.

2. Granada and the bus ride to the Pacific Ocean beach.

A few day trips took place during the first week. The first was to Granada, a colonial town just an hour away from Managua, with stunning architecture and beautiful views of Lake Nicaragua (the only fresh water lake in the world where sharks live). We took a tour of the Cathedral of Granada, an art gallery and took a walk along the lake. In between our mini tours we would hide in Dario Hotel (owned by Greg's brother) to escape from the heat. It's just too hot for our Canadian acclimatized bodies.

The second trip was by bus to the Pacific Coast. Victor took us on the public bus for almost 2 hours to see the beach and all the small villages along the way. It was a crazy ride up and down a mountain with cars passing us on a narrow winding road. To me it's completely chaotic but to everyone else on that bus this was normal. I love it! The beach was beautiful. We were there for only a few hours because we left late and the bus ride was fairly long. Still we had a great time and felt like we experienced something real.

3. Corn Island

After a crazy first week we reserved a couple seats on a flight to Big Corn Island, which is fifty miles northeast of the Atlantic Coast of Nicaragua. For 4 days we stayed at Greg's parents house, which was right on the water on the south end of the Island. The word "big" is used lightly here too since it has a 14 km circumference. The house was big and beautiful and our friendly neighbours kept an eye on us and helped us any time they could. They were amazing to have around. Elizabeth, a new best friend of mine, cooked us yellow tail and plantains one evening and it was DELICIOUS. You have no idea. Rod and I visited 3 different beaches during our stay and relaxed, drank flor de cana, rested, watched tv in an air conditioned room, swam, ate and played with the neighbourhood kids. It was our only "vacation" during our vacation. We felt quite privileged to have spent any time on this little piece of heaven and with the angels that live there.

Thanks to Greg's parents, Elizabeth, Lester, Lubit (not sure on the spelling), Lubit Sr (still not sure on the spelling), Victor and Karla and anyone else that made our stay so great.

My notes here seem really brief but if you want to know any more about our trip, then just give me a call and we'll chat over a coffee. I can talk about it all day long! Right now, on this blog, I just wanted to share my overall experience with you because it is a story that needs to be told.

no baby, you're money...

As promised, I'm officially breaking my blogging record and blogging twice in one week. Shocking, I know.

There's good reason, last Sunday, while Beans and Robo flew away to Nicaragua for two weeks (MISS YOU GUYS!), Benny and I flew back from five days in Vegas, baby, Vegas! Two great friends were our reason for going, as the got married (off the strip, thank you) the Friday that we were there. But first...Vegas, baby!



Our first night that we got in we basically checked into our hotel and changed and high five'd while Ben threw me in a cab to meet the rest of the ladies for Melinda's stagette night and he ran off to be with the boys for Mike's stag. The ladies, I must say, kept it together...I mean, there was minimal grabbing at the Australian strippers and for the most part, I'm pretty sure everyone was present and accounted for. ha!



After getting the crazy's out the first night in, we (Ben and I) kept it pretty chill for the rest of our visit, with a LOT of lounging by our pool (ahem, Paris hotel rules!) and meeting up later in the day once we all had our poolside time in for eats or slots or laughs.



Oh, did I mention already that Melinda & Mike got married last Friday? AWW YEAH! Congratulations to the both of you, you both looked beautiful and so happy and there was so much love there for you that day that really nothing could've made it more perfect (in my eyes)...



Thanks again to the both of you for including Benny and I in your special day and congratulations, you two!!! Vegas, baby, Vegas!!

the first of many parties for shabina...

Okay, so I'm a little late in my blogging about Shabina's shower, but I have a REALLY good excuse! I've been out of the country for the past week attending our other friends' wedding! And GAMBLING! :D Don't worry, I'm sure I'll eventually blog about that trip too!

Back to my original reason for blogging...two of our dearest and awesomenest friends are getting married before the year's out, and I had the pleasure of attending the first of the many parties for both Shabina and Ronnh in celebration for their wedding day.



This party, Shabina's bridal shower, was hosted and organized by her longtime friend, Anne Sanderson (I just like to say her full name, it rolls off the tongue). She seriously went above and beyond the call of duty, organizing all of us to attend, making an AWESOME cake for the party (FANCY cake) and made sure there wasn't a minute unplanned with eating, games, presents or cake. Thanks to Anne for such a good time!



It was a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon filled with good friends, lots of love and tons of laughter. Thanks to Kinder for all the yummy food and of course to Anne for getting us all together. And although I had to fly out of town for Shabina's following event (last Saturday's surprise stagette), I'm sure I'll see all you ladies very soon at the next party for Shabina & Ronnh!



Congratulations again, Shabina & Ronnh!!!

show and tell #1

Today I've decided to show some of our work of 2007. All invitations are of weddings that have come and gone, cuz I think that's only fair to the couple. Totally fair. This is a lot like show and tell. I used to hate show and tell because of my fear of talking in front of people, but I'm 30 now and I'm hiding behind a blog. So much easier. These aren't necessarily our favorites. I think it's hard to pick favorites since we designed them all and I love all of our designs. These were just easy to get to and NOT on our website already.

1. kelli and mark: pocket invitation with tabs. very bold. very them.
2. michele and rocco: 2-fold invitation with fun pin stripes.
3. sara and alex: customized ready to wear design. amazing photography and fantastic colour scheme.
4. shannon and mark: a very creative 1-fold invitation with an illustration by shannon harvey. The rsvp was to be coloured in by the guest before it was sent back. i love creative invitations.

benny did it again

He's amazing. Benny worked really hard to create a display shelf for our office and we appreciate it SO much. He has no idea. Our new shelf looks really amazing in the corner of the blue room. I can't wait until we have a meeting so we can tell them about our new shelf.

"And if you look to your right, you'll see a shelf made especially for us by Benny Krich" says Brina

"He made it especially for us" chimes in Albertine.

"Especially for us" repeats Brina.

Thanks for stopping by!

time to travel

Just yesterday Teenie and I were talking about how fast the year has gone by so far. 9 months almost done and MAN has SO much happened in such a small amount of time. Time flies the fastest when you're having fun...isn't that how it is? ha ha

Well tomorrow Albertine and Ben are off to experience Las Vegas and on Sunday Rod and I are off to Nicaragua for 2 weeks. We can only continue to be awesome and creative and fun if we let ourselves do things we want to do. And so we'll travel. So there.

Anyways. I'm just trying to explain why the blogging has slowed down a bit. We're trying real hard to get 'er done.

Hope you're enjoying your rainy Tuesday. Over and out.

courtice dutch imports (a.k.a. mom and dad schenk)

I'm so proud of my parents. They started this co-op dutch import company in their basement and every month they pile it all in the van and set up shop at the Whitby Durham Homes. It was SO amazing to see them at work. I took a few pictures because I thought it would be nice to have for the website I'm making for them, well the website I'll make for them one day when they have time to sit down and discuss it.

Here are some fun pics of their portable store. The gouda is a big seller and so is my mom's raisin bread. MMM! It was delicious right out of the oven. Ya. I know people.

Have a great day!

our hearts of wildness

When I got home from work today there was a package waiting for me in my mailbox. I knew it was coming but I am still excited it's here. MY WILD AT HEART DVD BOX SET!! It makes me want to watch our episode again...and it also make me want to remind you that you wanted to watch it. Remember? Maybe you should put a reminder in your cellphone calendar to take the time to watch our Canoe/Camping trip at Pitt Lake Episode #3.

Because you all aren't as lucky as Teenie and I, you can only watch it online at www.knowledgenetwork.ca/wildatheart.

It's been over a year since we filmed the trip that changed our lives. For Benny's birthday weekend extraordinaire, they're heading off to the same location to camp and canoe. I guess being a part of that show really did make an impact on Teenie because she's actually going camping!! I got what I wanted. I win.

I am off to Ontario for a week to visit family and "meet" the boyfriend's family. Wish me luck!

a big pile of gratitude

You'd think after 4 and some years in business wedding invitations would get old, and looking at our invitations from previous years would get boring, but I must say I'm constantly amazed by all the work we have done and the amazing people we have met. We've got to know couples from all over the world and in a strange way this has made us feel a little closer to places we've never visited.

Albertine and I had lunch on Friday with the Blue Olive Duo and had a good time reminiscing about starting a business and making it work and finding the time to build your business into what you always wanted your business to be...although this image in our head is constantly changing. Change is wonderful and scary and thrilling and causes anxiety, but how different would life be without feelings and drive.

We often look back to the beginnings of our business because 1. we are asked about it and 2. it baffles us how far we have gotten and how amazing we are. We're living this great epic of a tale! And the story continues. What wonderful adventures will Tean and Bean get into next? Wait and see. That's exactly what we're doing.

The support we have received from everyone that has crossed our paths since the beginning of BSD is overwhelming. We thank you for believing in us. We ARE better together.

family trip to ucluelet

On Friday, the family piled into a purpley/blue van and headed to Ucluelet, BC. It was a much longed for vacation/Deanna and Jimmy's wedding weekend. Mr and Mrs Gay, Benjamin Krich, Albertine De Leon and me (Brina Schenk) enjoyed 4 days on the island bbqing, laughing, tossing the frizbee on the beach, eating, drinking and enjoying the old growth rainforest. Beauuutiful.

We had neighbouring cottages at Reefpoint, which were very nice but strangely built close together, just like the suburbs I grew up in. I felt like there should have a been a plaza next door with a zellers, macs and shoppers drug mart in it. Still, it was very comfortable and we had lots of fun there.



[What my little bobo failed to mention in her beautiful introduction to this blog is how we spent our evenings out on the westcoast of the island. (This is teenie, by the way.) Apparently, we all had ingested too much clean island air, that-or we were all just beat from life that our vacation meant much deserved and needed rest (read: we were all snoring-I mean, SLEEPING, by 11PM!)-so, rather than go out and do it up and party like it was 1999, instead we (the family unit) opted for cooking our dinners on our bbq and sitting outside on our deck for the evening...counting down the minutes until the first one of us started complaining about the mosquito bites. That, or Bunny's stuffed nose, was our signal that it was lights out time.

Anyways...as my story goes, our first night on the deck was filled with bottles of wine and loads of BUD and our first introduction to our sneaky stellars jay friends hanging out by the tree near by. So of course, Benjamin (aka Lover of All Animals) finds some extra hotdog buns to feed our little pals (much to all the signs we saw the following day saying: DON'T FEED THE WILDLIFE). It was cute, it was fun, it was exciting! Our little bird friend came and ate and slowly built his confidence and hey, maybe even got a little cocky.

Cocky, you say? Not as cocky as our little Bunny(aka Snow White of Ucluelet)! Miss Brina Louise, herself, decided that it would be AWESOME if the bird ATE out of her hand! So there she sat: hand outstretched, bun in her hand, calling out for the bird...waiting, waiting, waiting. But what? Bun in the hand not good enough? Hey! Let's try feeding it from our MOUTH!!! yesssssssss, THAT's the ticket! Sigh, lemme tell ya, I haven't laughed that hard since Towlie.

If you're ever by our office, remind us to show you the video of Bah-rina. It's a good time. had. by. all.

Teenie out.]

Over the weekend we managed to get out there and do some West Coasty things. Rainforest trail CHECK, Long Beach watching the surfers CHECK



Our main purpose for visiting the island was for Deanna and Jimmy's wedding. And what a wedding it was. Gorgeous location, fanastic couple and guitar hero. My brother Trevor would be very impressed with the guitar hero part. All three of us rocked out. Thanks Dee and Jim! A weekend to remember.



Our perfect weekend ended with a yummy italian sandwich and coffee on Commercial Drive.