march kawaii box

On the weekend I got the first Kawaii Box of my three-month subscription. I agreed to sharesies everything with Sym so I’ve split the contents of the box between what we each ended up with…

Sym’s picks:
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– melon plush keychain, this was her fave
– pink hair pin shaped like a bow? ears? something? this is cute but pulls like crazy when you take it out
– pink nail clippers (weird)
– pin, idk how she scored this when I’m the pin enthusiast, I mean she doesn’t even wear her denim jacket (I KNOW, like how are we even related???)
– “Love” pen
– 2 packs of stickers, one sheet of fat lil animals and 3 sheets of floral designs on clear vinyl that can be used to decorate phones, cups, etc

My picks:
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– adorable spring-themed sticky notes, shaped like lambs, flowers & chickies
– a roll of sticker tape, I like the idea of this but the design not my fave
– heart-print envelopes
– Hi-Chews! I love Hi-CHews and I especially love green apple Hi-Chews, but I can get this at the store by my house so I would have rather gotten a flavour not available in Canada, like cola or something
– pink quilted vinyl cardholder with a black diamond charm, I think this is kind of tacky but I like the charm so I might take it off and use it on it’s own

I’m not completely sold on this box, I’m hoping the next two have some better things, but Sym LOVED it (why wouldn’t she, she got the best stuff!) so I will probably continue my subscription regardless.

spill

One thing about the nicer weather recently (it is full, glorious spring) is that I am always out, always doing stuff, and always have my camera. The result is I have no time to write posts and too many pictures to share. I have stuff from earlier this week and even stuff from last week, but I’m going to skip over it all and post today’s pictures.

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Yesterday I had no clean bowls for Gwen’s breakfast so I used her Green Toys play dishes (they’re foodsafe!) and now she wants to use them for every breakfast. She set the table herself today. Fun story about these dishes: I ordered them along with a tea set with same-day delivery from amazon, but the tea set ended up not being available. They refunded my same day shipping, but still delivered the dishes so I got same day delivery on them for free.

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Oil on the surface of the water.

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I read online this morning that there was an oil spill in English Bay last night and so of course this morning I had to go see if the beach was okay. Usually I take the kids to Sunset Beach, where there are lots of rocks and sticks for them to “chuck it in the ocean!” but today we went to English Bay Beach. Up on the sand you’d never know there’d been a spill, but up close you can see the oily sheen on the water. Gross! It’s a “minor” spill so hopefully the damage won’t be too bad/the cleanup won’t take too long.

On English Bay Beach there are only things to chuck in the ocean at the waterline, and I didn’t want Gwen or her lil friend handling anything too close to the water so we just ran around in the sand. Gwen took of her jacket and boots and socks and couldn’t have been happier. She also tried to take off her shirt but I have to draw the line somewhere, I mean it’s spring, not summer!

Beach Bunny

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Growing up my family always had an Easter egg hunt, well really more of a general candy hunt. We each would get a basket of treats, a chocolate bunny, a paper egg filled with goodies, and one of those big chocolate eggs with Smarties inside (I’m talking Canadian Smarties here, not the candy that is called Smarties in the US, those are Rockets, NOT Smarties, get it together US tbh). They’d all be hidden around the house and to make sure it was fair my mom assigned colours to each of us. Our treats would be marked, usually with a ribbon in our colour- mine was blue.

With Sym I was never able to do that because when she was two we got Dougal, and big dumb dog = not hiding chocolate all over the house. Instead we’d just give her a basket full of treats, and for the past couple years that’s what we did with Gwen as well. This year Sym spent the weekend at her dad’s so it was just Gwen, and I decided to try doing a little Easter egg hunt with her. Sunday was so sunny and nice that instead of staying home we took everything down to Sunset Beach and had a little Easter celebration there.

Taylor went down to the edge of the beach near some rocks and hid everything while I took Gwen further along the seawall and then doubled back. We got there early enough that it wasn’t very busy yet so we didn’t have to worry about stranger kids finding Gwen’s stuff. She had a lot of fun searching for all the toys and candy hidden in the rocks and plants, especially once she realized just what was in the plastic eggs- Mini Eggs, aka her fave thing ever. She shoved about a hundred (actually more like eight) in her mouth at once and just drooled nasty chocolate drool all over herself. SO GROSS, GWEN.

five things | five

Some things I’m loving this week…

Heavenly Bodies
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These jewelled skeletons are so creepy cool and weird (read more about them here.

Gap relaxed t-shirt dress
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This dress is me in human form. The only way it could be more me would be if it was somehow sweatpants as well. At $55 (Canadian) I hesitant to get it but it’s 40% off right now. $33 is pretty alright for something I know I’m going to wear until it disintegrates off my body like Voldemort at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2. I got the black & grey striped version and I’m considering getting the plain black as well; you can find the solid colour here.

Why The Fast & Furious Franchise Deserves Respect
How much talk about F&F is too much? For me the limit does not exist tbh, and I have been L O V I N G so many articles. This one in particular is very comprehensive, contains a lot of great links to other good articles, and also this quote which is the truest thing I’ve ever read: “If you can’t find something to enjoy about these films, you’re probably a bore.” Furious 7 opens tonight and as much as I wish I could go see it we are babysitter-less (Sym is spending he weekend at her dad’s) so I have to wait a whole week (TORTURE).

Big Mac Shop
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It physically pains me that I can’t get these Big Mac rain boots. DAMN YOU SWEDEN.

Vet Ranch on Youtube

Fair warning: some of the videos are pretty gross and show graphic injuries and surgery (the one I posted above is mildly gross but there is no surgery/blood). This vet uses the revenue from the youtube channel (as well as donations) to save sick or injured homeless/rescue dogs & cats that would otherwise be euthanized. I think this is a really great use of a youtube channel and encourage you all to watch the videos, even the gross ones.

shipwrecked | sneaky sneaky

I realized the other day that my last three posts (THREE!) have all been super whiny & complainy. Ew, no one needs that. So this post has zero whining in it, except just a quick note that since my last post I’ve had terrible cramps AND I smashed my toenail into oblivion, it’s split right in half and bled everywhere. lol, who cursed me?

Sym’s dad told us there were some sailboats shipwrecked on Sunset Beach yesterday morning so after breakfast & coffee the lil ones and I headed down there to check it out. Gwen and her buddy had a lot of fun chucking rocks into the water, drawing in the sand with sticks, running around on the beach and basically just covering themselves with sand. It was mostly sunny but SUPER windy and cold! Once we’d all had enough of freezing our buns off I bundled them into the stroller with cozy blankets and walked around the Yaletown stretch of Seawall in the sun to warm up before heading back home (with one quick stop for cookies along the way).

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she literally could not be cooler

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all washed up

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her lil friend was like “Chuck it in the ocean, Gwennie! Go for it!”

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things found on PNW beaches

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don’t let the knit cap, sweater, jacket, boots and wool socks fool you, it’s very tropical here

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five seconds before the meltdown to end all meltdowns

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After Gwen figured out she could open up the corner cupboard in the kitchen (where most of the food was stored) it was GAME OVER, MAN. We had to rearrange the kitchen and moved the food into the kitchen island which was more secure. Sort of. She can’t completely open it but she can get it open just enough to be able to sneak things out if we’ve stupidly left small items too close to the middle of the cupboard. Basically we’ve been spending a lot of time vacuuming up granola and rice off her bedroom floor and the food cupboard is now DOUBLE childlocked.

She’s started saying a few new words, including cheese and toast. She actually says the whole of these words, NOT just the first sound (chee, toh) so that’s pretty cool. She had a follow-up appointment with the speech pathologist scheduled for this morning but I decided last week to cancel it so a child with a more serious speech problem could get in sooner. They’re going to follow up with us again in the summer to see how she’s doing, hopefully she’ll have made even more progress by then.

She’s obsessed with playing “This Little Piggy.” She hated it when she was a baby but now she would happily sit for hours playing piggies over and over on alternating feet. When she has a bath she likes me to sit on the edge of the tub with my feet in the water and the other night she was pinching my toes and the ran her finger up to my knee, saying “eeeeeeeeeee;” she was playing piggies on my foot!

One day last week she got ahold of a plastic cup of water- I think I left it on the kitchen counter. She carried it around for a while before spilling a little on the floor, and after that, all bets were off and she just dumped it out, shrieking with laughter. Since then she will take any receptacle she can find (containers from the recycling bin, dirty dishes from the kitchen sink, clean dishes from the dishwasher) and fill them up in the bathroom sink before gleefully pouring them out. On the one hand I don’t necessarily want to mop up pools of water all the time, but on the other it’s kind of an easy-breezy way to clean the linoleum. She did drop a mug and break it yesterday but like… we have too many mugs anyway.

PS don’t forget to check out my printables page for this month’s calendar! I’m going to try to do them every month (and have already done May’s as well, oops).