Author: Tanie

Starting the day right: The Serpent Garden on my kindle, English muffin with strawberry & champagne preserves and a caramel americano.

This week has been really terrible, but you know what? IT’S ALMOST OVER.

I’ve been trying to stay posi, but with everything that’s going on it’s been really difficult. Last night, however, I talked to one of my current clients about everything, and her encouragement and support really cheered me up. I know she reads this, so THANK YOU 🙂 It really means a lot to me to know that not everyone I work with is thinking (and saying) terrible things about me.

This weekend I want to not think about work at all, and just focus on my family. Sym’s dad has a fight on Saturday, so she’ll be home all weekend, and the weather is supposed to continue sucking so I don’t really want to go out and do stuff. Instead I think we’ll do arts & crafts, watch movies and of course, our new Friday Family Fun Night tradition of Dance Central. We played this on NYE and again last friday evening, and it’s basically the best fun ever. If you have any sort of game system that has a dance game available, go buy it right now! Trust me, it is not a decision you will regret 🙂

Last night Symphony made these Harry Potter felt “Flatties” for her friend Stasi. Although I helped a little by cutting them out and spraying them with clear coat to stop the ink from smudging, she designed, drew and coloured them herself. She used the same basic body shape (modified from a gingerbread man cookie cutter) for them and paid careful attention to detail- I had to look up all the character’s eye colours and she took care to make sure everyone’s tie matched their house.

I haven’t been posting because I’ve been dealing with some work stuff that is just like, a total nightmare, I don’t really want to get into it but it’s making me very depressed. Suffice it to say that I just want to scrap this whole daycare thing and focus on going to the gym and painting unicorn pictures more than I ever before in my entire child care career. Also bumming me out:

Some stuff that doesn’t suck:
I have these little floor mats in my foyer that I cut into cloud shapes, but they were getting really old and in some places the cloud curves were curling up from a combination of use and being chewed by certain small dogs. I’d tried to flatten them back out by ironing them but that just made a hideous reek, so I was looking at buying all new mats. LAME. Then the other night I remembered I had a bunch of circles cut from another floor mat for a project I’d planned but never actually finished, and they were the same size as the curves on the cloud mats. I cut out the damaged sections and taped the new pieces in place and voilà!

The new pieces are a lighter grey and I didn’t want to try to line up the grooves so I put them perpendicular to the originals, but I think they look pretty good!

Georgie never sucks, even though this morning she puked up a bunch of chewed floor mat pieces all over my leggings.

Symphony and the giant gummi bear she got from the Christmas Elf’s second visit DEFINITELY don’t suck (This picture is from Saturday).

When we were at Ikea last weekend, Taylor and I picked up some dark purple Fagrik bowls which, with the red Waechtersbach mugs we bought in November, finished my sweet ~rainbow of dishes~

For some reason I thought it’d be a good idea to take this picture at night when it’s all dark in here, and now a bunch of dishes are dirty and I don’t feel like washing them to take a new, daytime picture. Deal with it.

HOORAY. I also have more rainbow steak knives– they were one of many awesome Christmas gifts from Taylor’s sister Jaime and her boyfriend Shawn.

Pro tip: If you want to give people lots of ideas for what to buy you, start a blog in which you just talk about the weird stuff you’re obsessed with.

Remember how on NYE we had this enormous feast of way too much food? Well, there was stuff leftover. Lots of stuff. But not like, old gross cooked food (well there was, but I forgot* to refrigerate it and it all got trashed), just stuff we didn’t even make. I threw some of it together for last night’s back-of-the-fridge&freezer-delight dinner.

frozen popcorn chicken (really more like mini-nuggets? idek, but it seemed like something Sym would eat) + sweet & sour dipping sauce (I know it’s DIPPING sauce but stirring food into sauce is the same as dipping, right? RIGHT.) + a partial red pepper + a jar of pineapple

While the chicken was in the oven, I threw the red pepper & pineapple in a pan with some olive oil, pepper and garlic.

Then I mixed in the chicken & sauce and served it over rice. This actually turned out better than I thought it would- I was worried the sauce would be too sticky and I didn’t have any onion- but tbh the weakest part was the pineapple. Fresh would have been better than jarred, but who has the time to chop up fresh pineapple these days? WHO HAS THE TIME?

*was drunk

Why no, I haven’t finished posting about Christmas yet! I wanted to share a couple of gifts, but not in like, a big braggy list, because the internet finds that gross. I mean, I got a lot of gifts, and they were awesome, but what I appreciate most is the thought that went into the things people gave me. I feel extremely lucky this year, and I’m so grateful for all the gifts my family and I received.

Taylor wanted to get me the Joanna Rutter fox & forest earrings I’d asked for, but they were unfortunately sold, so instead he got me a sweet little fox cub necklace, which, as it turned out, I’d posted on my tumblr way back in September. You can see it in the picture above, next to my star necklace (which was also from Taylor from a few years back). Also pictured is the wool shirt from Club Monaco I got for Taylor, because I’m wearing it. It’s itchy and warm and I love it, and I hope he loves it too.

Although she also got a DSi from us, my favorite gift for Sym was the four Outer Senshi felt dolls I made, to go with the Sailor Moon dolls from last year (she says I still need to make Tuxedo Kamen). Making these ones was a lot easier than last year- I already had the techniques worked out and the patterns and faces (I embroider the features onto a separate face piece and then sew it to the doll’s head) made. I saved all the patterns and I can use them to make other dolls (like the Felt Family I made for Sym’s birthday) in the same scale so they can be played with together.

I’m also very grateful and appreciative of this little fuzzy wumkins, she really is the most delightful dog 🙂

Way back in the olden days of the internet, I used to have my computer in the bedroom. Since Taylor works nights, he sleeps during the day and all my Photo Booth pictures had the ubiquitous sleeping husband in the background, sometimes also adorned with sleeping dogs.

This picture is so old, look at my dark hair!

Eventually I moved my computer onto an actual desk in the-room-formerly-known-as-the-library-now-known-as-the-living-room, and now it’s in the-room-formerly-known-as-the-living-room-now-known-as-the-office. The background keeps changing, and with the addition of Taylor’s new, wrong colour desk (not to self: PAINT IT) it’s changed again.

The bummer part is I actually kind of like it, but with my yellow desk, the dark brown bookcase and drawers and the white end table my printer lives on there’s already too much going on in here, colour-scheme wise. Anyway. With the addition of his desk, my pictures will now (occasionally) feature something new: WORKING HUSBAND!

You can’t tell, but his lap is actually adorned with the traditional sleeping dog.

Symphony made a little terrarium out of a Ferrero Rocher box (I have a million, thanks Christmas!) and some felt, and today she asked me to help her make some caterpillars for it.

Caterpillar Supplies & Equipment
Scissors, needles and thread. Green pompoms (Sym only wanted to make green ones- it’s our favorite colour), glue and googly eyes from my extensive googly eye collection.

These are easy to do- just thread your pompoms & glue on the eyes!

Sym also drew this little girl on orange felt and cut her out- she said she’s a little sister, and we had to bring her everywhere with us today. On one side she’s awake and on the other she’s asleep!

Sport, 92/104

This is it, the last book I read in 2010. I read a total of 92 books, meaning if I’d just read one more book per month I would have made my goal. So close!

Now I need to decide how I’m going to continue. Originally I was just going to keep adding to my 104 Books list, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe instead I should just start a new book list for 2011? Should I set a new goal or just read for funsies and see how I do? Should I make a rule to read only new books, or do rereads count? I guess I should figure this out! EDIT I decided to do a new list for each year, and made a new Reading Lists page (it’s also linked at the upper right of my blog, just above the header) to keep track of everything.

a full list of all this year’s books can always be found here

Today was Taylor’s last full vacation day (he has to work tomorrow night so he’ll need to get up early in the morning and go to bed in the afternoon) and for some inexplicable reason he decided to spend it at Ikea. Crazy, but who am I to argue 😉

We’d been talking about getting a desk for him, and I’d come up with an Ikea hack using some pieces from a tv stand that I’d disassembled as a desktop. We were just going to get some little shelves and legs to hold it up, but ended up going in a completely different direction! Taylor found an actual desk he liked that was on sale, so we got that in black. It was actually closer to the black-brown colour of the bookcase we already have in the office area and a little drawer unit Taylor picked out today, so I thought it’d match nicely. Except when we got home and opened the box it was the wrong colour!

Oops! So I guess I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow: painting a desk!
Taylor also bought me a new desk chair, hooray!

What I really went crazy on this trip was toys. I’ve been wanting to replace the crappy, chewed-up plastic toy food I have for the daycare kids, but I didn’t want to get wooden food (too expensive and easily ruin if Georgie gets ahold of it) and Ikea really came through! They had these plush food sets- breakfast, desserts, fruits and veggies– and I wanted them all, but unfortunately had some sort of a brain malfunction and forgot to buy the fruit and veggie sets! Luckily, Symphony’s grandma is going to Ikea on Tuesday so she’s going to pick them up for me.

I also got this little barn:

… that opens up to be a farm!

I also got farm vehicles and extra animals to go with it. I really like this set- I reminds me of a little house with furniture and bears my mom made me for Christmas once when I was a little kid. Of course, I probably could have made this stuff myself, but I then if the kids tried to play with them I’d be like this grumpy bull!