Author: Tanie

I’m late!

These are from yesterday. It’ll be a lot easier to get my pics up in time once I’m done working (still about a month and a half away, but only 19 days of actual work after today); last night I had to shower after work and after that fixing my hair and putting on makeup just for a few pictures seemed pretty pointless. It basically took all my energy to juts put on clean clothes.

This tank top is from the H&M ~best basics~ or whatever, I think it’s the same style as the black one I wore two weeks ago. These tanks are great: cheap as hell and sized weird enough that a medium fits me. The jeans are from Asos maternity, and I love them SO MUCH. They are a faded leopard print skinny jean with stretchy panels in the front pockets, which I like a lot better than the big waist panel. I love everything I’ve gotten from Asos maternity, actually, although my advice is to SIZE DOWN: I’m a US10 and their conversion chart says that is the same as a UK14, but that’s unwearably big on me. I got the jeans in a UK12/US8 and the fit is much better.

I’m still feeling pretty good, in spite of some insomnia (this morning I was so tired I snoozed my alarm for 40 minutes, which wasn’t good since it’s set for only 45 minutes before I start work). During the day I get physically tired and out of breath easily- I was cleaning the floors today and I had to take a break between moving things and vacuuming and mopping each room, and forget walking up hills! That particularly sucks because I live LITERALLY at the highest point of downtown, so coming home from anywhere is uphill. Last Friday I was so exhausted by walking home from the beach I fell asleep almost immediately.

Baby Laramie has been kicking and wiggling and moving like crazy recently and the other night she kicked hard enough for me to see my belly move! I still feel the most movement when I’m lying on my back, so I kind of want to do that all the time, but it’s starting to get hard for me to breathe in that position so I have to cut it out. I’m actually feeling a lot right now while I’m sitting up, which is awesome!

I’m getting really excited to meet this baby. Only sixteen more weeks, which really doesn’t sound like very long. Which means I REALLY need to get to work on all my baby plans for the house!

Sometimes being pregnant makes you do crazy things. Yesterday one of the daycare kids had some kind of Asian-y noodle dish for lunch and immediately I was like OH MY GOD IF I DON’T EAT SOME FREAKIN CHOW MEIN RIGHT NOW I’M LITERALLY GOING TO DIE. It was beyond a craving, it was a requirement for continuing to exist on this physical plane.

I could have made something myself, but that really seemed like a lot of work. Taylor suggested I order from some expensive place we ordered from once before but meh, the order minimum was more than I wanted to pay and tbh, it wasn’t that great anyway. I decided my best option was to get the cheapest & most convenient takeout I could find: Ho Ho’s Yummy Food on Davie St. It’s two blocks from my house and a “one topping” (rice or noodles with some kind of meat or veggie dish) is $5. SIGN ME UP. Of course I got the noodles I needed, topped with some sweet & sour pork. JUST LOOK AT THIS TRAIN WRECK:

SO GROSS SO GOOD. I basically inhaled it, and just to up the trashness factor, while I was eating I read book 2 of the Sweet Valley High The Sweet Life e-serial, Lies and Omissions. I read the first book on the weekend and they are just terrible. TERRIBLE. And why are the called “The Sweet Life” when everything that happens to every character is awful? The mind boggles.

Trash lunch and trash reading: the perfect combination.

I’m now accepting blog sponsors for August! Unicorn Parade has been growing by leaps and bounds and I’d like nothing more than for your blog or shop to grow with me.

I’m offering ads in three different sizes at prices anyone can afford, for all the information please check out my sponsor info page.

I’m also putting out an early call for guest posters for November- once the baby is born I won’t be able to blog as much (although when Sym was a newborn I was still updating my livejournal three times a day so…) but I don’t want to leave this blog to wither and die! If you’re interested just email me with your name, the url of your blog/tumblr/twitter/etsy (although it’s not required that you have one to be a guest poster!) and an idea for a post. Posts can be about basically anything, I mean you’ve seen the stuff I like to post about: coffee, daughters, dogs, no big whoop.

I won’t need the posts until mid-October so you have plenty of time to come up with an idea!

Sooooooo after I called them the ultrasound clinic in the hospital finally faxed my report to my doctor (which they apparently hadn’t done yet) and this afternoon I finally found out. This is going to sound crazy but I’m not super mad about the whole thing because it gave me time to get used to the idea of having a boy, just in case. I always preferred the idea of having another girl and I was worried I would be really disappointed with a boy baby.

BUT NONE OF THAT MATTERS BECAUSE IT’S A GIRL!!!!!

I know I said in this post that everyone who guessed right would get a special discount code to use in my etsy shop but I’m feeling extra magnanimous so instead EVERYBODY GETS A DISCOUNT! Use the code GIRL25 for a 25% discount on anything in the shop, including custom items (just convo me to get a reserved listing).

Friday night, after a cupcakes-and-pie based picnic at Sunset Beach Park with some internet friends. I brought my best picture face, now don’t you want to be my internet friend and have picnics too?

Neighborhood flowers in assorted purples.

On our way to brunch where we had…

Pancakes a la mode! Well, Taylor had strawberry crepes but Sym and I a la moded. Getting this for every brunch ever from now on for the rest of my life.

I can’t paint my own toenails anymore (without absurd amounts of discomfort) so I took Sym out to get pedicures on Saturday afternoon. She picked the colours, different oranges for both of us. Hers only cost $10 so I told her she could always come with me for pedicures.

Hot lazy Georgie in the dog park.

This is from today but it’s too cute not to post, Dougal getting some snuggle time with my giant pillow while Taylor sleeps.

ALSO because I know everyone is going to ask, I DON’T KNOW THE SEX OF THE BABY YET. I know, it’s crazy. I actually called the ultrasound clinic in the hospital to ask them how long it should take and they were all “It could take up to a week!” and I was like “:| it’s been two weeks already.” Anyway they said they were going to refax it (THEY FAX THE REPORTS YOU GUYS OMG HOW IS THIS TAKING SO LONG) so I waited a while and called my doctor’s office, but they said they still didn’t have it so they were going to call the clinic themselves and call me back but I haven’t heard anything yet. I really feel like this is a comedy of errors at this point and all I have left to do is decide whether I’m going to stage my sit in at the doctor’s office or in the ultrasound clinic because COME ON.

Lavender Lemonade Popsicles

I’d been planning on making these popsicles for a loing time, but I couldn’t figure out where to get lavender (I mean, there is tons growing around here, in the park and gardens, but I don’t trust it hasn’t been copiously urinated on by dogs and drunks), but I found bunches of organic lavender for sale at the farmer’s market last weekend! To make these popsicles I made a lavender sugar syrup, which was the same as any sugar syrup: water, sugar, special ingredient (in this case lavender), boil, cool, blah blah blah. I was also going to make my own lemonade but I was too tired this week so I used my favourite store bought lemonade instead.

All the pictures I’d seen on tumblr of various lavender lemonades had led me to believe it would turn out purple, but let me tell you THAT WAS NOT THE CASE. I figured food colouring must be involved, so I tried my best to get a light lavender, but it was really hard and they came out a little pinker than I wanted. I was only making a cup and a half of lemonade and even single drops of food colouring were too much, so I think this would work better if you were making a whole jug and had room for error.

Sym and I both agree the flavour of these is… interesting. I had a little lemonade leftover that I drank yesterday and I can’t say I loved it, but it’s better in popsicle form. I don’t think I’ll be using lavender again though.

One of my clients bought a dress on clearance at H&M without trying it on, and when it didn’t fit her she gave it to me, thinking the cut would work as a maternity dress. It does, but I think she was blinded by the $5 pricetag because the original colour? It wass white people skin colour. Here, let me show you:

Since I’m not super keen on walking around looking nude and the dress is 95% cotton, I figure I could fix this with some dye I had left over from my purple jorts.

First, I washed the dress so it’d take the dye properly, and plopped the still-wet dress straight into a bath of Petal Pink Rit dye to completely eliminate the original colour (you could skip this step if your dress is already a non-disgusting colour). I let it simmer on the stove for a while (like an hour) before rinsing.

Next came the dip-dye portion of the process: I mixed up some Fuchsia dye and instead of submerging the whole dress, I hung it over the bath with just the bottom half of the skirt in the dye and let that simmer for another hour, occasionally raising & lowering it to try and prevent a really harsh line between the shades of pink (I wasn’t entire successful at this).

Through the dipping and the power of osmosis the dye spread up the skirt, creating a light-to-dark pink gradient. How lovely!

l-r: original colour; after first dye & rinse; after dip-dye & rinse; washed & dried

supplies:
• a cheap cotton dress in a light colour
• one or more colours of fabric dye

tips:
• as always, if you’ve never dyed clothing before, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE PACKAGE OF WHATEVER DYE YOU PURCHASE
• be aware that the base colour is going to show through the dye, so use common sense when choosing colours: don’t put blue over yellow and expect to get blue, you know? Because it’s gonna come out green.

hahahah idek what is going on here

After the last couple weeks of crabby, terrible pictures I figured it was about time I made more of an effort. I coloured my hair & dyed this dress (I’ll be posting my half-assed diy tomorrow, so exciting!) this week and I actually put on all my makeup today*, so I guess I look pretty okay? I feel terrible though so this is kind of a fake-it-til-you-make-it situation, except it’s not helping much and I’m still feeling angry and sad and frustrated and annoyed and OH YEAH in pain. It isn’t being pregnant that’s bothering me, it’s mostly this whole ultrasound situation, like my doctor STILL doesn’t have the results and it’s been over a week so what the hell. That’s kind of why I didn’t do another post today, everything I tried to write about my pregnancy just sounded like whining so after saving like, fifty different drafts I ended up trashing them all instead (you can thank me whenever).

The “in pain” part isn’t related to that (well, the EMOTIONAL pain is), but is due to my own stupidity. Last night I dragged Taylor to the store to buy stuff to make brownie sundaes. I was wearing flip-flops and because I’m apparently the clumsiest person who ever lived I somehow managed to bash my messed up pinky toe (the one I break all the time) against a man’s shoe???? I DON’T EVEN KNOW. Anyway it totally killed and I was blinking back tears and limping around the grocery store and it kind of ruined my brownie sundae experience. Today it is all swollen and painful so maybe I broke it again? WHO KNOWS, it barely even counts as a toe anymore and it breaks if I even look at it funny. Maybe I should just get it removed.

Anyway here’s some sweet photobooth pics I took since the poor image quality hides all my flaws. For this week’s makeup experiment I put the Candy Apple Lip Butter over this screwy MAGENTA lipliner I have for some inexplicable reason.

Taylor was going through the pics of me he just took

until I pestered him into turning around

my belly for good measure 😀

*actually I put it on and then cried it all off and put it on again this afternoon, which is why this post is so late, so I hope you all appreciate my efforts

I stepped outside after lunch to throw something away and look what was waiting on my doormat:

A package from my girl Sara! In case you don’t know she’s the artist who drew my portrait over at the top of my left-hand sidebar (you may have also seen her portraits of other bloggers on their sidebars but I INVENTED THE PRACTICE).

Inside was one of her limited edition “Sea Weed” prints (get your own here) and a cute little note on the back of one of her cards. It’s taken FOREVER for this to get here (USPS is slow as hale apparently) and I’m so excited to have it!

I’ve been buying prints like crazy (like, SIX IN AS MANY YEARS!) and once I take down the wall of kid art in the dining room and paint, that’s where they’re all going to go, I can’t wait! Right now it’s a strictly daycare area (tiny table & chairs) but I’m looking forward to having a real dining room for people over the age of five.