Author: Tanie

Symphony and I spent the afternoon watching Ponyo and doing crafts. Here are mine:

New buntings available in my etsy shop.

Last night I had this swell idea that I’d make brunch this morning, and in a crazy turn of events, I ACTUALLY DID. Amazing, right?

mini ham & goat cheese frittatas (recipe below), english muffins and tomato & cucumber salad

To drink Symphony had her favorite peach-pear juice, and Taylor and I had peach-pear mimosas. This mini-prosecco was exactly the right size for two.

You may have also noticed some fort action going on behind the brunch. Sym spent her morning making a weird, asymmetrical fort (with some help from me) while Taylor played videogames. Typical Saturday stuff!

Mini Ham & Goat Cheese Frittatas
5 eggs
⅓ cup milk
1½ tsp olive oil
1 slice deli ham, diced
1 tbsp goat cheese, crumbled
salt & pepper to taste (ham is already really salty so don’t overdo the salt!)

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
2. Whisk together eggs, milk, olive oil, ham, salt and pepper.
3. Coat a 6-cup muffin pan with non-stick cooking spray and fill each cup ¾ full with egg mixture. Sprinkle cheese crumbles into each cup.
5. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until frittatas are set and lightly browned on top. I rotated mine after 20 and took them out at 29.
6. To remove from pan, loosen frittatas with a knife and scoop them out of the tray with a spoon or small spatula- DON’T tip them out unless you want hot egg juice splashed in your eye.
Makes 6 mini-frittatas

Symphony got her term two report card today.

OH YEAH WHO’S SMART? MY GIRL THAT’S WHO. She brought up her math and science grades from last term, and has all Gs in work habits. Way to go Sym!

In other news, I’ve been TRYING to take pictures of my living room for a One Room at a Time post, but even with every light on and the blinds open there isn’t enough light to take decent pictures- at least not on auto. They turn out all crappy and noise-filled. So now I either need to harass Taylor into taking some with his fancy camera OR actually learn how to use mine. Daunting!

… seem to always turn to thoughts of nail polish. I’m not a big manicure person for most of the year, but for some reason in the spring I get really into it. In the last week I’ve bought nine new polishes O__O In my defence, some of these were chosen by Sym (cough*orange*cough) and a lot of them were on clearance. So that makes it okay, right? Right.

colours l-r: Disco Ball; Diamonds; Step 2 the Beat of my ♥; Virtuous Violet; Laser; Beach Bum Blu; Respect the World; Kiss Me at Midnight; Fresh Squeezed

I painted my fingernails with Laser this afternoon, and it is unfortunately one of those nail polish colours that doesn’t photograph well; in pictures it looks like a glittery blue, when in real life it’s iridescent blue/purple and way more awesome. You can kind of see the purpleness in the bottle though.

Oh and please pretend I took this picture AFTER I cleaned all the excess polish off my cuticles & the side of my thumb. I’m a nail polish spastic, okay? Also please pretend I don’t have a skanky hangnail on my pinky. Ugh, why am I so gross?

I also painted my toenails today- they were already light grey (OPI Moon Over Mumbai, my all-time favorite polish) but I was bored so I put a couple of coats of Diamonds over them. Of course, I wouldn’t want to post a picture of my toes because feet aren’t cute, particularly mine. So I cropped the toe out and left the polish! You’re welcome.

My thoughts have also turned to love, so here’s the one I love. This morning I told him to come take a picture with me so I could show the internet how cute he is, and he did this:

He’s so charming. Oh wait, he actually IS charming.

This golden bunting was a tiny project that ended up taking forever!

First I bought gold origami paper, but it was really bright and brassy and clashed horribly with my gold ribbon. Then I tried painting paper with gold paint, except I watered the paint down too much and the paper buckled. I decided to try ironing it but since I didn’t want to put the hot iron directly on the painted paper I had to go buy some parchment paper to protect the project (try saying that three times fast!). This helped to flatten it out enough, and after spraying the paper with some clear coat I was ready to start cutting triangles. Except… I didn’t. I left it sitting for weeks until I finally got around to finishing it yesterday.

Golden Micro-Bunting available on Etsy.

Today a bunch of people came over to make space shirts! It was messy but fun, so thank you to Colleen, Carleigh, Leanna, Katrina, Kristen and Jenn! I barely took any pictures because I felt silly getting in everyone’s face with a camera but here are a few:

Colleen (left) and Jenn (headless in the Hello Kitty apron) dyeing their shirts.

Leanna’s shirt (left) and Carleigh’s being worked on.

Jenn & Colleen left a little early but l-r here is me, Carleigh, Leanna, Katrina and Kristen in our finished space shirts.

For tips on making your own awesome space shirt, please see my tutorial!

When I was a kid, the idea of brushing a dog’s teeth or taking a cat to the dentist was something we’d never heard of. Even as recently as a few years ago, if someone mentioned they brushed their dog’s teeth the usual response was OH REALLY, CRAZY? I mean, it’s A DOG. Does it really need dental care?

YES. YES THEY DO.

Little dogs, like chihuahuas and pomeranians, are especially prone to having bad teeth, and unfortunately, Kichou was no exception. He’d had a few cleanings but his teeth were still a mess, and yesterday we (and Taylor’s credit card) found out exactly how much of a mess they were.

Adult dogs have 42 teeth. When Kichou went to the vet yesterday he had 37. Now he has 19. Those 19 teeth are in pretty good shape, whereas the ones he lost were in pretty bad shape, so the vet said they probably would have been lost even with preventative care. Luckily, he still has enough teeth (and the right teeth) that once his mouth heals he’ll be able to eat regular dog food.

I had to give him his meds this morning because Taylor was still at work. If you thinking getting a dog to take medicine is hard, try doing it when he’s just had oral surgery! I ended up wrapping him in a towel and squirting the meds into his mouth whenever he lunged at me, snarling. The opposite of fun for everyone concerned.

So please! Everyone! Take care of your pets teeth! They (and your wallet) will thank you.

On Monday night Taylor, Symphony and I had dinner in the fort, with a special guest appearance by Georgie.

Unfortunately on Tuesday morning some rough playing from the daycare kids tumbled the fort down. It’s a lot of work building Crazy Forts, so when they asked for a fort today I made a simple sheet & table mini-fort.

It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but inside it’s pretty spectacular. It’s impressive how much a string of fairy lights, some pillows and a furry throw can elevate a space.

Another month over, so let’s talk goals! idk if you remember, but my goal for February was to make better fod choices, and I think I did an okay job. I’m not saying I always ate healthy stuff for the entire month, but I did cook more instead of going out for every meal, had more veggies and less chips, and a lot of the sweets I ate I baked myself. I had breakfast more often and drank way more water than pop.

So that’s pretty good, right? So now it’s March 1st and time to think of a new goal, but unfortunately, I made so many other changes this month that I can’t think of any! Some of the other stuff I did includes:

I started taking vitamins again! I think this started mid-month and I’ve remembered almost every day. I’m also trying to remember to get Taylor & Sym to take theirs, but baby steps, you know?

I stopped using cleansers and moisturizers on my face and just use jojoba oil instead, and my face feels so much better! Before it was constantly vacillating between being too dry and itchy and too oily and blemishy, but now it’s just nice all the time.

I very briefly stopped using cleansers & moisturizers on my body, but felt too itchy and sticky so I went back, although I did start doing weekly olive oil & sugar scrubs, which leaves me feeling like I have the skin of a fancy magazine baby (real babies have weird bumps and crusty rashes, gross but true).

I busted myself out of a major appearance rut with EXTREME HAIR CHANGES, which you may have noticed.

… so with all these exciting changes I don’t know what to do for March! Of course, the logical thing would be to say this is the month I’m going to start going to the gym again but ahahahahahahhahahah as if that’s going to happen. Maybe I’ll spend this month visualizing myself going to the gym, and then by April I’ll be ready!

Crazy colours in my hair? Check

Black nail polish? Check

Cutting my own bangs? DOUBLE CHECK.

I think I’m having some kind of mid-thirties crisis O___O