Picnic Pairings

Summers are always jam-packed with events that your weekends can leave you as exhausted as your weekdays!
One low-key and cute date or hangout idea for those lazy weekends when you still want to do things but also want to relax is to go out on an old-school style picnic.

I honest-to-goodness feel so lucky that Nick likes to cook :9 Plus, I finally got to use my super-awesome picnic basket that I found for an absolutely steal at Kingston's Value Village (more on thrifty finds below!)

Picnic table spread

close up of the yummy food! 

After pigging out in the park, it's nice to go for a stroll to burn off some of those calories :)
I made sure to wear comfy flat shoes (brand new for $25!) paired with a cute summer dress ($5 steal from 613 Flea!) topped off with a matching polka dotted sun hat ($5 from H&M sale!)

Sun Hat from H&M

Mossimo dress from 613 Flea
TOMS from Plato's Closet Barrhaven

I love taking walks in parks because there's always something interesting to see. When these photos were taken, there were baby [Ryan] goslings everywhere!

baby goslings!

Unfortunately, the mama geese have been known to be pretty vicious and protective of their babies, so I stayed a safe distance away.

mama geese watching me in the background

Nick, however, was completely fearless of the mama geese, so I passed him my camera and he chased the goslings around and around until he got the perfect shot.

selfie time while we wait for Nick!

Love Perrin's striped dress too -- another great find from H&M! But the absolute best find of the day was a little calico named Ginger.

!!!

Her owners live close to the park and let her roam freely with an explanation tag on her collar. She was so sweet and it was a great end to the day to get meet her.

After the first successful park excursion, a second shortly followed. This time, we drove a little further out of Ottawa into the town of Perth. My favourite part of Perth has to be Stewart Park, which is where we ended up spending most of our time.

FCUK Dress from Ottawa VV -- $12 steal!

Bag from Zara sale

This poppy print dress has got to be one of my new-old favourites -- feels like it was fate that it fit me perfectly! The full skirt, fun print, and cross back (obscured somewhat by my hair in this picture -- oops!) make up the winning combination of the perfect summer sundress!

I absolutely adore this gazebo (please excuse the unedited phone pic) and we spent oodles of time here too, playing around with photos and me twirling in my sundress.

 Also got Nick to do some brooding, manly poses as well hehe.

One of the toughest challenges going out together is getting nice photos of the both of us! Although, I think by now I've at least semi-mastered the "balance camera on a trashcan, set timer and run" method, as demonstrated here :P

This is the second post now where I've heavily featured thrifted and/or second-hand items (first here) and it definitely won't be the last! I could go on and on about the benefits of shopping second-hand, from being able to find treasures (like this poppy sundress), to getting my dose of vintage/retro-style (without needing to wait for the next vintage show!) to doing my small part in reducing the amount of clothing that ends up in landfills -- it's just win-win all around! Plus, who doesn't like saving a pretty penny? ;)

Hope you enjoyed these photos! Thanks for reading :)