Category Archives: Lifestyle

Transformation Tuesday || How we painted our dated 1990’s stucco house exterior to achieve a modern update

Photograthy by Pam Kriangkum

One of the biggest transformations we’ve taken on this year was the exterior of our house. While we put our financial focus in the first two years on the interior: bathrooms, kitchen, windows and some flooring upgrades. This summer we finally tackled this dated 1990’s stucco with one of my favourite home transformations yet. For some transparency and as a disclaimer, we partnered with a local painting company Blue Nile Painting. Whom provided a discounted rate for our project in exchange for this review. I was not paid for their review, nor were goods and services completely covered. My opinions remain my own and I’m so excited to share this project with you. Now let’s get into the details and of course, before / afters of the house!

Going black was a bit of a leap… over the winter I developed a Pinterest board with exterior inspiration. With the modern boxy lines of our home, a dark exterior felt like a modernization. While a bright colour may have aged our home even more. Blue Nile consulted to help us come to a colour conclusion and I couldn’t be more happy. Sometimes you need the experts to weigh in to help you feel more confident with such a big impending change.

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Four Easy Tips For Dealing With Reactive Red Sensitive Skin

One of my first memories related to anything skincare was watching my Grandma apply her Olay night cream to her face and neck. I fondly remember our bedtime routine – the smell of the Olay night cream and how that routine made my Grandma feel… relaxed and cared for. Sometimes looking back I think this is why I absolutely love the ritual of skincare and how it creates those little self-care moments for you to stop, breathe and do a little something for yourself.  I’m so excited to partner with a brand I recognize from childhood, and have used for years myself, to share the new products with the same science-based reputation they are known for. If you’ve followed me for years, you would know I have had my fair share of sensitive skin issues when trying to find products that work for my skin as well as my family’s. I have winter dryness coupled with itchy, sometimes reactive, sensitive skin. While both my children have their own skin challenges: one with seasonal eczema and contact dermatitis. We have over the years adapted a few strategies for finding products that can fit into our lives and help ease some of our skincare issues. With our journey in mind, I’m so excited to share my four top tips I’ve adopted for living with my sensitive skin: 

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Parent Talk: 3 Tricks for Winning the Screen Time Battle #AD

Back in June I talked about Shaw’s newest product the BlueCurve Home app and how it was helping with the tablet time battle in our home. I’m excited to report back on how connecting and pausing as a family. You can read about that here: https://northernstyleexposure.com/sponsored/lifestyle-tablet-wars-parenting-tip/

The Tablet Time Battle

It’s no secret that I have a love/hate relationship with screens. Clearly my job as a content creator has me on my phone for way too many hours in the day. Unfortunately my kids see that. It has been my parenting mission in the last year to strike a balance when it comes to technology in our home and especially when used by our kids. The countless articles I’ve read over the years on the internet have been linking excessive blue light exposure to some negative potential impacts. Although I’m no expert I’ve tried to be mindful of some of the potential impacts screen time can have on my kid’s health. From a disruption to the bedtime/sleep routine, to digital eye strain or retina damage and the impact it may have on early childhood development. Blue light does occur naturally but I’m referring to exposure to screens of all kinds: TV’s, phones, and tablets. I’m happy to report on this front, I feel like I’ve had some big successes in our household with our daily screen time battle. So I thought I’d share my Top 3 Mom Tricks for beating back screen time usage: 

1) Know Where You Are At: Tracking, setting alerts and seeing usage is the first step to finding balance in the home. We set a limit, let’s say 25 minutes on YouTube Kids. I set an alert on my Shaw BlueCurve Home app. When Alastair reaches his limit, I get an alert on my iPhone. Plus, the app tracks Wi-Fi usage per device/ person. So if Alastair gets hold of his tablet without me noticing, I can see that usage on the app and can adjust our day according to my goal for screen time consumption. 

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Lifestyle || Tablet Wars || Parenting Tip

The “tablet time battle” is real. I honestly have a love/hate relationship with connected devices both in my life and my family’s life. Like most parents, I am very aware of the potential negative effects of too much screen time on childhood brain development.

Our kids received tablets for Christmas this past year, and while they have LOVED that gift, it has always brought with it some battles in the parenting department. Before I had kids I thought I would NEVER let them go on tablets. In my previous career as a Rec Therapist before becoming a blogger, I saw firsthand the negative effects of excessive gaming and internet bullying had on my teenage clients. The bullying followed teens everywhere and home was no exception because of the internet.

Fast forward a decade, I have kids and the tech world has exploded even more! I quickly realized technology is going to be in their lives via screens but, as a parent, I can hopefully guide them towards a healthy usage lifestyle. I’m so excited to partner with Shaw yet again to add a powerful tool to my parental toolbox.

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My Disneyland Guide 2019 || Tips, Tricks & All That Park Magic #Disneyland

I just want to start this off with the biggest THANK YOU to Disney Parks & Resorts Canada for hosting and partnering with my blog. If you follow along on Instagram, you may have noticed earlier this month I had the absolute pleasure to visit Disneyland, California Adventure and stay at the Disney’s Grand Californian Hotel & Spa. It was an unreal experience to say the least! I traveled with my little guy and my parents! Incorporating multiple generations into one trip really helped with some travel perceptive for sure. I’m so excited to share some tips, tricks and info on all the magic from this press trip. This wasn’t our first time by any means, some of you may already know although we are Canadians, Disney vacations have been our trip of choice for the past few years. So many of my tips and tricks have been garnered over time in an attempt to save you time, money and help you create the MOST magically Disney experience.

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I asked on this Instagram post if you had any burning questions you wanted answered in my trip recap blog post. The response was overwhelming! So I’ve decided to break up my posts to make them far more concise and helpful. I’ll follow up with a Q&A with very specific information requests later this week. And I’ll also do a favourites list of restaurants, photo spots, rides and attractions in the near future. Just hit the “TRAVEL” tab on the right side of this page to look for more travel posts.

Here are my top 4 Disneyland Tips and Tricks to help you and your family have an ideal Disneyland Park experience in 2019:

1) Before buying your park passes please check out the “offers” page on the Disneyland website. As an example, currently the “Canadian Resident Ticket Offer” is giving us a pretty great discount on passes. This offer ends April 11th 2019, you can take advantage of it by visiting  www.Disneyland.com/CanadaTicket or calling (866) 285-1422. If you book after that date I strongly encourage you to check the Special Offers page on their website for all available offers and discounts. It always feels great to save a bit of money when planning a trip.D0E5C8FF-FA23-441E-A277-D9D0D67C1A25

2) A common misconception of many first timers to Disneyland is that the “Fast Pass” line costs money. It is free! Anyone can access the quicker line up and it only costs money to have it conveniently located on your phone. My biggest piece of advice, work that Fast Pass System hard!  I’m not only saying that only coming from a mother with a little person that can’t wait in lines too long. As an adult, time is time and if you get great at working this feature you can experience far more attractions in your day. If you are new to Disney, there will be two lines at the front: Standby and Fast Pass holders. You can book fast passes on the app for $15 a day per person in the group by getting a Disney MAXpass. BUT you can still get fast passes without that $15 fee! They are located at “fast pass distributors” at each attraction that has a fast pass line. Basically in short, you can pay a fee to conveniently book them on your phone throughout the day or you can walk to each attraction to manually obtain one. Please note, some rides are more popular compared to others. And there are only a certain amount of fast passes available each day. I find unless you get a fast pass before noon for many of the “popular rides,” there will not be any more fast passes available that day for that attraction and you would have to line up in the standby line. Some of my must have fast passes include: California Adventure: Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission Break Out, Toy Story Mania and Radiator Springs Racer. Disneyland:  It’s a Small World, Madahorn, Star Tours, Big Thunder Mountain Railway and the Haunted Mansion.

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