Month: May 2011

I was feeling pretty grumpy today. I accidentally turned my alarm off so I slept in and was super rushed all morning, plus when I was taking Georgie for her walk I discovered it was a perfect spring day, and all I wanted to do was go for a walk on the beach, not work all day. I had a huge nostalgia fit for the first summer I lived in my neighborhood; Sym was a baby and every morning I’d pop her in her stroller and walk around the Seawall from English Bay to Lumberman’s Arch, then cut through Stanley Park and get home just in time to give her lunch and put her down for her nap. Those were some of the happiest times of my life- I mean, the rest of my life wasn’t very awesome back then, but those times, with baby Sym, were the best. I really miss it…

ANYWAY.

Once the daycare kids had their lunch and went down for nap, I decided instead of sulking more, I should get myself out of my funk. The best way to do that? DANCING, of course! Last Friday Taylor and I figured out that instead of moving the whole couch out of the room, if we just separated the two halves and pushed them to opposite sides of the living room we’d have enough space to play Dance Central, and that is something I can do by myself.

please note my five-star performance on Push It
I had just enough time to break down and perform four songs, and wouldn’t you know it, now I’m in the best mood ever! I want to try to do this a couple of times a week- not only dos it cheer me up, it’s also super energizing AND it means I feel better about basically never going to the gym.

I had to have a quick shower and change my clothes after playing (it’s sweaty work!) so here’s my other new shirt from last weekend: bright madras plaid! It’s so ridiculous, I love it.

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Right Said Red
This is the first time in my life I have ever had red nails. This polish was really nice, it lasted for three days with only a single tiny chip, which is amazing when you consider I work in an industry where I wash my hands about 30 times a day.

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Lacey Lilac + Dollar Store Shitty Glitter
lol this manicure lasted about FIVE SECONDS. The glitter polish, although so pretty, was super thick and took about 357 hours to dry, so it was totally messed up almost immediately- I actually took the picture when it was still wet, like right after I did it, because I knew it wouldn’t last. I wish I could find awesome glitter like this that didn’t suck so hard! Any recs?

I know it seems like I haven’t been keeping up with this whole wear-one-coloured-clothing-item-a-week thing, but I swear I totally am. I just haven’t been taking pictures because it’s like HERE’S ME IN SWEATPANTS AND A PURPLE TANK TOP! and that’s not exciting. I still don’t have many coloured clothes and I had to spend a big portion of my shopping budget on new jeans (and as we all know, denim is a neutral). HOWEVER. I went shopping with my friend Carleigh today and got two new shirts, both button downs, both INSANE, like clothes a crazy person would wear.

This one is from Zara and it’s enormous and it has pockets, like pockets nt he sides for you to put your hands in. It’s super light and summer-y and I can’t wait until it’s summery out enough to wear it with some ratty old cutoffs like it’s meant to be (note to self: acquire ratty old cutoffs).

Mt other shirt is even crazier but I’m not going to show it until I actually wear. It’s also worth noting that the whole time we were shopping, everything I tried on was brightly coloured, except a grey tank top with a kind of Southwestern-looking geometric pattern in rainbow colours and a black coat, which I only tried on because the only other colour it came in was yellow, which I think looked weird with my blonde hair. Anyway I didn’t buy either of them.

I started anew tumblr this week, for pictures of rainbows, unicorns and hearts. You know, the classics. You can follow it here and best of all, submit pictures yourself!

After spending the first part of the week coming up with ideas for Sym’s “hippie” outfit for 60s Day at school today, she informed me that it’s actually 80s Day. This is what we came up with last night, from old clothes mine and some stuff her dad picked up at his work. It’s actually a pretty reasonable facsimile of my friends and I in the seventh grade. Which was in 1988.

sweater, American Apparel
tank top, Army & Navy Department Store
shorts, Old Navy
leggings, Army & Navy Department Store
legwarmers, made from socks from American Apparel
sneakers, New Balance
“scrunchie,” made from a headband from Claire’s Accessories

I’m ENRAGED you guys.

On May 1st I mailed three small packages: 2 to New York State and one to Memphis, TN. I sent to the ones to New York regular airmail, but I really needed to the other one to be in Memphis before the weekend. I opted to send it Express, which costs WAY more, just to ensure its timely arrival.

On Thursday I heard that one of the New York packages had arrived, and on Friday I heard the other one had. I hadn’t bothered to check the tracking on the Memphis package yet, and when I did I saw that it had been delivered on Thursday. “Oh good,” I thought. I never heard from the person I was sending it to but I figured she was just busy, but by yesterday I was wondering so I emailed her and asked. “No package yet,” she said.

WHAT.

I hopped over to the USPS website to see what was up and this is what I saw:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I’m seriously so pissed! I paid a ton of money for nothing! I KNOW I wrote the address AND phone number of the person I was sending it to correctly, and it’s not like she lives in some weird, obscure, hard-to-find neighbourhood; her apartment is a block from the Lorraine Motel, aka the National Civil Rights Museum. IT’S KIND OF HARD TO MISS, BEING ADJACENT TO A HISTORICAL LANDMARK AND ALL. It’s supposedly being returned to me, but who knows if it’ll ever arrive, I mean if the USPS can’t find someone in their own country and I don’t have a lot of faith that they’ll actually send it back to me. The worst part is that it was for someone’s birthday, which was on Monday, so now the whole thing is pointless.

THANKS FOR NOTHING, USPS.

One thing that’s always annoyed for me is that I didn’t really have anywhere to do my crafts. I mean, I did have places to work on them; I was always covering the kitchen island, the dining table, the daycare kids’ dining table, and basically any surface I could find with my projects. The problem was whenever I needed to cook or eat or serve food I’d have to clear those surfaces off. There was never anywhere for me to just leave my stuff out.

UNTIL NOW.

A couple of weekends ago I rearranged my side of the “office,” and using a little drawer unit I picked up at Ikea on Easter and parts of Sym’s old desk (which was also my desk for a while, before I refinished Old Yeller) I made myself a little craft table that fits in right next to my computer desk.
left side:

right side:

Awesome, right? I just need to get one of those plastic carpet protectors for rolling chairs so I can just roll from one desk to the other. I’ll be able to glide seamlessly from internetting to crafting. Living the dream, over here. Although the real best part is I no longer have to pack my projects away before they’re done, I can just leave them on the desk. This is especially nice for when I’m making oh idk, stuff out of tiny pieces of paper that tend to blow around when you move your work surface.

I got a whole bunch of new paper on the weekend so I’m kind of re-inspired to start making micro bunting again.

… because I need more of that. I’ve had all these micro buntings up on this magnet board for a while, but it was just propped up on a shelf and kept falling over and smashing stuff, so when I rearranged the room I put it up beside the window.

I’ve also started using mini-clothespins to put pictures up on the bamboo roller blind over my computer desk. This is the newspaper Sym made me for Mother’s Day.

And I put this corkboard up over my craft table. It was cheap and ugly, but I painted the frame to match my yellow desk and stuck all my message garlands up, along with some fairytale creature silly bands Sym gave me.

lol I know these are so cheesy but they actually make me feel better when I’m having a stressful day, like yesterday when I smashed a table into my face, splattered spaghetti sauce all over myself, stuck my hand in vomit, and got a handful of hair torn out.

It’s so nice and organized in here now! I love it. Well, my side is at least. Taylor’s side is another story.

I made this star headband for myself last night. I think it’s really cute!

Martian Manicure: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Mint Sprint + Essie in Turquoise & Caicos
I hated these nails. I painted then on Wednesday night, and spent all this time getting them perfect, cutting little bits of tape to make the lines perfectly straight, blah blah blah, and then as soon as I put the top coat on they went all weird! The lighter colour ran all over the place, it was super bizarre. Anyway they looked TERRIBLE so I had to take the polish off and start all over again. The second time I wasn’t nearly as careful so they didn’t look nearly as good, and I was so annoyed that I didn’t even bother putting a top coat on because I was hoping they would all chip off the next day.

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Peachy Keen + Winwax Pink Iridescent Glitter
I did this on Saturday, and while I don’t HATE it, I think it could use improvement. I only did two coats of the Peachy Keen and it could really use three or four, plus I was too impatient to let the glitter coats dry completely and kept messing them up. Basically I would only do this again if I had an entire day to devote to painting my nails.

I also bought some new polishes this weekend:

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Right Said Red and Peachy Keen, Nicole by OPI in Shell Me the Truth

Four cheap glitters from the Japanese dollar store. The pink and blue are Winwax, the really silvery glitter is Ever bi Lena (lol) and the less silver glitter doesn’t even have a brand. Quality stuff, obviously.

How I spent my Mother’s Day weekend:

• dancing
• shopping
• playing with dogs
• watching movies & tv shows with my two favorite people
• drinking beer
• painting my nails
• making adorable crafts
• receiving excellent gifts, like a giant handmade card, a cardboard narwhal and a new bottle of gin