This is the 18th year for Kitchener’s German Christmas festival, the Christkindl Market. For four days City Hall is buzzing with a whole pile of vendors selling food, gifts, and artwork. Tonight was the official opening of the event, which included the lighting of the tree at Zehr Square. We walked down with our neighbours Caitlin and Cam to see both the festival and grab some food.
It was pretty chilly Thursday night but it was nice to wait around to see the tree light up for the first time. We went inside and saw the huge amount of vendors and let our hands thaw out at the same time, all while enjoying some fresh beer nuts. I’ve only been to the festival a couple times in the past and I don’t recall it having so much to see and do before. You could easily spend a few hours seeing (and eating) everything there.
On our way out we grabbed a meal down the street at Imbibe. If you haven’t been, you should probably go right now. My wife and I shared a slice of Candy Cane Cheesecake after dinner and promptly fell into a coma.
If you’re around over the weekend, definitely check it out. It runs until 9pm Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
The Black and White Challenge has recently been making the rounds of Facebook and Instagram. The idea behind it is you post a black and white photo for five consecutive days and then nominate someone to do the same. I kind of broke the rules and didn’t nominate anyone in particular. I figured if anyone wanted to do it, they were free to do so. The rules were pretty loose and didn’t specify if you had to post existing or new shots but I decided to go with new.
My friend April nominated me; my five images are below. It was a fun little exercise to get myself shooting, especially since I haven’t done a whole lot with the camera lately. Over the last year or so I’ve been doing a lot more black and white processing than I used to, including going back to older shots and getting some new and fresh results.
The photos in order are my new computer set up at home, the inside of our front door, the Sun Life Financial building, a tree on my work’s property, and the Bay building at Conestoga Mall.
Apologies to Buffalo for that title.
Winter doesn’t actually begin for over a month yet, but temperatures have dipped and we’ve had a few days of snow that has made it feel like the middle of January. Just today it took me an hour to pick up my wife from work. That normally takes 20 minutes on a bad day; today 20 kilometers took an hour and a quarter. The drive was definitely frustrating and I nearly had a few run-ins with a couple pick-up trucks—tailgaters can kindly shove it—but there’s some weird crazy part of me that loves this kooky, nutty type of weather.
I guess you could say this post is part confession, part rant. I know not everyone loves this weather, and I totally get how frustrating it is when our days can be figuratively turned upside-down by it, but I still love it. The drop in temperature is refreshing to me and the change in scenery is worth the eventual backaches I’ll get from repeatedly shovelling my driveway. That being said, I still can’t wrap my head around how people act surprised and angry that this happens every single year. Summer is gone, so get over it already.
If you can’t see just a tiny bit of the beauty in winter, I think you’re crazy.