Author: Tanie

Okay so OF CORSE I got sick on the long weekend. OF COURSE. The worst part is I got sick from Taylor, not the daycare kids. Clearly offices are bigger germ havens than a house full of literally snot-nosed kids.

Luckily after that gorgeous, sunny Friday (which I am SO GLAD I took off, btw) the weather has been pretty crummy so I don’t feel guilty about spending the whole rest of the weekend on the couch watching tv and making friendship bracelets.

Yeah. I mean, I did do some other things; Taylor and I tried to go see Bridesmaids but it was sold out, and I walked my dog a bunch of times and we went to Starbucks when a skunk trapped us outside, but mostly we just watched shows, like half the first season of Deadwood and the entire third season of Parks & Rec, which I watched with Sym last night after Taylor went to bed. THE ENTIRE THIRD SEASON IN ONE SITTING. It was pretty glorious.

Anyway now I have to tidy my squalorous apartment; it’s weird how doing nothing makes such a mess.

Also, don’t forget today is the last day to enter to win a glitter garland! You have until 11pm PST to enter.

Long weekends are sooooo much better than regular weekends, and when you take a vacation day to make it a four day weekend it’s basically the best thing ever. Here are some of the things I did on Friday and Saturday

Beach!

Froyo!

Dog Bathing!

Dinner!

grilled barbecue chicken + corn on the cob + spinach salad + beer = the perfect meal

Photobooth Silliness!!

Apples to Apples!

French Toast Kebabs!

Cut bread into 1″ squares, mix into your favorite french toast egg/milk mixture- ours had cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Using a slotted spoon, scoop squares into skillet or griddle pan and cook. It’s best to do them in small batches and keep them warm in the oven- just heat it to 200-250°F and put a rimmed baking pan in it to hold your squares. I also put our berries (straw, rasp and blue) in the oven after I’d washed and in the case of the strawberries cut them, so they’d be warm. Once your squares are all cooked, thread them onto skewers, alternating with the berries (or fruit of your choice). Serve with powdered sugar and maple syrup.

Friendship Bracelets!

Thanks to Mimi, daughter of Design Mom, for the tutorial! I used to make these in middle school but I’d forgotten how, and her instructions were clear even to Sym, who is easily frustrated by new things.

Shopping for Raincoats & Fudge!

raincoat from Roots; fudge from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory

I also want to take a second to remind everyone who hasn’t yet to enter my awesome glitter garland giveaway. I was really worried no one would enter and I’d look dumb, so I’m very overwhelmed and grateful for the response! Thanks to everyone who has entered so far!

Hey internet! idk if you’ve been keeping up with my etsy, but I’ve started making some pretty fantastic glittery message bunting/garland/signs/what-have-you. It’s fun to make and pretty to look at and I’m going to share the “look at” part with you FOR FREE.

That’s right, I’m giving away a custom glitter garland to one lucky reader. You could get a name, a message, swear words, anything goes! I could also make shapes like hearts and stars and maybe even unicorns. MAYBE EVEN UNICORNS YOU GUYS. You also have your choice of nine excellent glitter colours.

All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post saying what you’d want your sign to say- to keep this within reason let’s keep it to messages of twelve letters/shapes or less. For additional entries you can tweet or blog about it and then leave a second/third comment providing me with a link to your tweet or post. Here’s a fun sample text you can use:

I entered to win a custom glitter garland from @taniewanie from http://unicornpara.de aka the best blog giveaway of the year!

(For blog posts I would leave out the @taniewanie and just say Tanie instead.) This giveaway is open to everyone IN THE WORLD, so non-North Americans don’t feel left out. Entries will be accepted until 11pm PST on Monday, May 23rd and the winner will be announced Tuesday morning. And remember, if you don’t win or want a longer message, you can always order custom glitter garland here.

I wish I had a picture of a “Good Luck!” glitter garland to close this post but I haven’t made one yet. So I’ll just say it. GOOD LUCK!!

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.