Author: Tanie

This weekend was just a regular old two-day weekend but I did so much stuff it seemed like a three-day AT LEAST.

Saturday
For some reason every single thing in our lives was going on today, and we had to make some executive decisions about which to cancel and which to keep. Out: dentist appointment and extended-family brunch. In: taking Sym to two (TWO) birthday parties.

The first party was at 6Pack Beach, which is an indoor beach volleyball place out on a weird industrial park island in the Fraser River. Basically it’s a warehouse full of sand.

It’s also a mere three minutes away from the new Ikea (which they built next to the tiny 35-year-old Ikea), and as we had two hours and a zipcar at our disposal to kill I figured we should check it out. I thought it’d be really crowded and crazy (it was Saturday afternoon, after all), but it was actually kind of quiet! We went through the whole showroom and marketplace and paid for our purchases in under an hour, which I think might be our fastest Ikea trip ever.

It was mostly toys and blankets.

After we picked Sym up from her first party and drove back downtown to take her to the second. It was thankfully only a few blocks from our house, but even so I was so tired that I had to ask her dad to pick her up, and when they got back here Sym was pretty exhausted herself. Too much partying for one pre-teen to handle! After she’d gone to her dad’s Taylor and I spent the evening watching tv and eating pizza until he fell asleep on the couch and I had to drag him to bed.

Sunday
Obviously Sunday was Mother’s Day. Sym’s dad had asked me if I wanted him to bring her home early so we could celebrate, but they had some fun activities planned (rock climbing, running, shopping) and tbh, I didn’t want to do anyyyyyyything at all so I said they could have their day. They did stop by on their way out to go rock climbing to drop off my present, this beautiful planter which Sym put together with her stepmom, as well as a traditional Sym-style jumbo card..

^___^

One thing I was determined to do was weed my terrible disaster of a garden. I convince Taylor to help me just weed around my few remaining plants so we put on our gardening gloves and got to work. After a bit of weed pulling and looking around I discovered something amazing- ALL of my plants from last year survived! I thought they’d been destroyed by the housepainters but there they all were, buried under the weeds.

you can see a before here.
ALSO, my tiny hydrangea not only pulled through but has some little baby flowers growing!

I was so excited that I dragged Taylor down to the plant store to buy another fern and a bright pink hydragea (and also the tomato cage I put around my bleeding heart up there; once I pulled the weeds from around it the whole thing fell over).

Other than that my day mostly consisted of playing with the dogs, tidying around the house and working on some Etsy orders. Sym came home at around six, tired and wrung out again from another busy day. We had a late dinner (I didn’t take a picture but it was baked wild salmon*, brown sugar glazed carrots and mashed potatoes, SO GOOD) and I tucked her sleepy self into bed. Taylor and I watched Mad Men and then it was off to bed for me as well. It was pretty much the perfect weekend for me!

*I’m kind of trying out eating meat again? idk I just really wanted salmon.

I woke up this morning at 6:55, five minutes before my alarm was set to go off. I lay there for a little while, not wanting to get up and get ready for work, when I suddenly realized… it’s Saturday.

I have a super busy day ahead of me still; Sym has not one but TWO birthday parties to go to. One is at an indoor beach volleyball place (I DON’T EVEN KNOW) in the suburbs, so we’re going to drop her off and then Taylor and I are going to head over to Ikea (the newly renovated Ikea on a Saturday afternoon, we must be crazy). Honestly I don’t think we’re even going to buy anything, but it seems like a good way to kill two hours in the suburbs.

After that she has a second party that is (thankfully) only a few blocks from our house, so while she’s there I can come home and spend time with my favourite doggies, as well as (hopefully) break out my new gardening gloves and do some weeding in the remains of my garden. It’s finally sunny out and I really need to do something about my few poor plants that survived getting stomped by housepainters last summer. They’re looking positively STRANGLED.

YIKES. I’ve been putting it off because of the weather and there’s some plant back there that I think I’m allergic too, but I have to stop living in fear of rain and weeds. First though: coffee.

Last week I decided it was high time I did something about my atrocious roots (the problem with my going back to dark hair is my light roots are super obvious super fast, well that and UGH ALL MY DRY SCALP FLAKES SHOW UP NOOOOOO. Anyway). In addition, I decided I wanted my ends bluer, instead of the greenish teal I’ve been sporting.

Of course the only way to get a brighter blue was to use bleach, something I’d avoided the whole time I had blue hair (and also the reason it always faded so fast…). After I retouched my roots, I quickly blowdried and then mixed up some bleach. I divided my hair into two sections and tied them off with elastic, which made it easy to make sure I got all my hair and also to not get bleach all over myself. Using a tint brush and some foils I painted the bleach on the bottom three inches of my hair and then wrapped them up.

I swear I didn’t get teal foils to match, this is just what the had at the store!
I think I left this on for about 20 or 25 minutes. After I rinsed it out I decided I wanted it to be lighter and also go up higher, so I made the stupid choice to do a second bleaching, this time going about five or six inches up my hair for another 25 minutes or so. I would definitely suggest NOT DOING THIS unless you’ve made peace with the fact you might melt the ends of your hair clean off.

Luckily this didn’t happen to me (much…) because my hair is very strong. Once I’d rinsed out the second bleaching I painted/smooshed the blue dye into my ends. I used Punky Colour Atlantic Blue, because I like to use what I can buy at the drugstore by my house. I left it on for about a half an hour and then conditioned the HECK out of it (this is very important when you’ve just bleached and fried your hair- I condition the ends even when I don’t wash it).

And there you have it! I think I still need to blend the dark brown and the blue into the still-teal midlengths a bit more but overall I’m really liking it!

Two posts on my blog about my blog in one day? I think I need a life.

Everyone go check out my Tissue Tassel Garland Tutorial on Blogher! I mean obviously you already saw it here BUT SEE IT THERE TOO!!

In bigger news, after a lot of hemming and hawing and serious thought and soul-searching I’ve decided to give sponsorship a try. Sponsor ads will run on in the right-hand sidebar, and you can find all the sponsorship info here on the sponsor page (or click where it says “Sponsor” above the header). I’ve got three different ad sizes that are CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP and spots for the month of May will be HALF PRICE (because the month is already partly over).

Limited to two per month, the Super! size ads appear right at the top of the sponsor column in right-hand sidebar. Also included is an optional feature post or giveaway for your blog or shop.

Limited to five per month, the Regular! size ads appear below the Super!

UNLIMITED QUANTITIES AVAILABLE! The Babby! size ads appear below the Regular!

AM I KIDDING WITH THESE PRICES???? No, I am deadly serious. To reserve a spot please email me at taniewanie@gmail.com

Just a boring little Wednesday post about some boring little blog stuff…

My amaaaaaaaaaazingly talented and smart and funny and beautiful friend Sara who I LOVE drew this perfect portrait of me for my little sidebar picture and I am basically in awe.

THE BEST AMIRITE??? She even used the colours from my header for my hair/eyes/shirt so it would match my blog, and the highlights in my eyes/my beauty mark are little hearts! Sarah has a tumblr called Pageant Systems where she sometimes posts her creations so you should follow it and if she ever starts a proper site for her art I’m going to let you all know because I think she’s the best! EDIT: Sara has a new site for her art and stuff, you can find it here!

Speaking of people who are the best, I’ve moved my list of all my favourite blogs by amazing ladies to its own page called Daily Reads. You can always find it at the top of the page, above the header, and you should really check it out because everyone I know is like, the pinnacle of internet perfection.

On Saturday I was reading my Real Simple magazine when I got the sudden urge to make a cheesecake (probably because there was a recipe for cheesecake in the magazine). I’d never made one before but the recipe said it was easy so I figured I’d give it a try. I went out to the store for ingredients, but while I was there I discovered that the recipe on the cream cheese package is even easier. CONSIDER ME SOLD.

Then I came home and discovered I needed a springform pan and several hours of refrigeration time so instead I decided to go eat ice cream sandwiches in bed.

On Sunday, after Taylor and I had brunch we went to this store on Main St, Welk’s Discount Store, because I knew they’d have springform pans. I ended up with three; a 9″ pan by itself was $10, but a set with a 9.5″, a 7″ pan and a HEART-SHAPED pan was only $13. I’D BE CRAZY NOT TO PASS THAT UP! Anyway I was determined to make the cheesecake, but by the time we got home and took the dogs to the park and blah blah blah it was almost 4 o’clock and I still needed to wash the pan and ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhh just nevermind. Instead I read in the bath.

On Monday I was like THIS IS SO DUMB, I NEED TO MAKE THIS FREAKIN CHEESECAKE, I SPENT LIKE $16 ON CREAM CHEESE THAT’S JUST SITTING THERE. Once the daycare kids went down for their nap and I wasted some time on the internet I got down to serious work.

I don’t know if you’ve ever made the cream cheese package cheesecake recipe, but it LITERALLY couldn’t be easier: the crust is just graham cracker crumbs and butter, and the filling is cream cheese, sugar, vanilla and eggs. THAT’S IT. I’m always nervous when I cook or bake something new, that it’ll turn out gross and I will have wasted a bunch of time and money, but once it was about halfway done baking I knew it was gonna turn out, because it smelled SO GOOD. In fact, the hardest part about this was waiting hours and hours for it to cool so I could try it!

I’m not a master baker so it came out all cracked on the top, I’m sure there’s some trick or technique I could use to avoid this but I don’t really care- my cheesecake is about SUBSTANCE not style. It’s not gonna win any beauty contests but it’s delicious, and that’s what really matters.

I’m O B S E S S E D with this Alaskan Klee Kai, they are my second favourite breed after Pomeranians. I want Georgie to be bff with her and I can be bff with her owner and it’d be great, except her owner is one of those unfriendly dog park people who always keeps her headphones in.

Last week one of my neighbors/fellow dog park habitués pointed out to me that my dog is one of the few Pomeranians seen at the park regularly. It’s kind of true; while there are a couple of people who bring their poms into the off-leash area there are many more who walk them around the outside of the park and glare at all of us inside the fence with distrust.

Pomeranian crosses like Blondie here are a different story. She’s a total jerk though. But so pretty!
Sometimes people bring full-grown poms into the park that have clearly never been there before, or even around other dogs, and it’s always a disaster. The other park dogs will run over to say hello and the poms will start yelping and snapping, and the pom’s owner will grab them and swoop them up into the air, out of harm’s way. This is such a bad habit to get into- it prevents the dog from ever learning to relate to other dogs in an appropriately doggy manner, and by lifting it higher than the dogs on the ground, the owner is reinforcing their pet’s feelings of unearned superiority and alpha-ness.

I guess a lot of people with poms feel like they are dainty delicate puffs of fluff that need to be protected at all times, but this isn’t actually the case (I mean, except for those crazy small Lux Pup-style poms).

WHAT EVEN IS THIS??? I saw one of these tiny things irl once and it was like two cotton balls stuck together. It’s whole body was the size of Georgie’s head!
Poms are friendly, sturdy little dogs that love to play and run and chase, and a trip to the off-leash park allows them to do these things. Coddling them and preventing them from indulging in typical doggy behaviors leads to unpleasant, unfriendly, snappy yappy monsters that give all poms a bad name. The number of times I’ve had someone marvel about how friendly and non-yappy my dog is… that is how poms are SUPPOSED to be!

I’m obviously not a dog professional (so take all my thoughts with a grain of salt) but I do think I’ve done a pretty good job of raising Georgie to be a functional member of dog park society. Here’s how I did it:

1. I introduced her to all the dogs in the world.
I was lucky in that Georgie came from a good breeder with lots of different dogs and kids and people around the puppies, so she was already well socialized when I got her, and we had two dogs at home (Kichou and Dougal) for her to be friends with right away.

Classic babby Georgie; Kichou was her first bullying victim and she’s still pulling his tail to this day.
I think Dougal was an especially important friend for her because he is so much bigger than she is, and it helped her to get used to dogs of all sizes. We also have a lot of neighbors with dogs I know and trust so even before she was allowed to go to the park she was able to play in the back yard with a variety of dogs. Once she’d had all her shots I started taking her to the dog park across the street, which is pretty big and has quite a few bigger dogs that go there, and she quickly learned to love it. If you don’t have a backyard or dog park handy you could always look into a dog meetup or social group, although I think a lot of those are breed-specific and I don’t think that’s the best way to get a small dog used to being around big dogs.

2. Let her fight her own dog battles.
This was something that was sometimes hard, especially when she was really little, but unless it is a serious situation with danger of real harm coming to a dog, you have to let them fight their own battles! That is how dogs, especially young ones, learn and play and develop proper social skills, as well as learn their place in the dog world. There were some times when a bigger, more aggressive dog was hassling Georgie and she was overwhelmed and scared, but I never, ever picked her up in the dog park.

One time I had Georgie in the park when she was about five or six months old, and this bullet-headed terrier mix would. not. stop. hassling her. It was bigger and faster and stronger than she was and I could tell she was getting really upset and frustrated. She just wanted this big bully to leave her alone! She kept running over to me and begging me to pick her up but I refused. Eventually the terrier found someone else to pick on, much to Georgie’s delight, but get this: the very next time we went to the park, that terrier was lying under a tree and Georgie ran over, jumped on its back and started humping the back of its head! She told that dog “I AM THE BOSS OF YOU NOW!” and after that, she wasn’t afraid of it at all; in fact, they played together and had tons of puppy fun!

Georgie used to be P E T R I F I E D of my neighbors’ chocolate labradoodle Emily (she’s huge but still a puppy and therefore totally demented with flailing limbs everywhere), but the last couple times we’ve been at the park together they’ve played and chased together.

3. Let her play!
This should be the easiest thing, but it seems for some people it’s not. One of my neighbors got a puppy a few months ago and every time I see them outside it’s all “Rosie, stop, Rosie, come, Rosie, bad dog!” when Rosie isn’t doing anything but engaging in some typical puppy wrestling. Dogs wrestle and bite and chase; that’s how they play. If they are really uncomfortable or being hurt, YOU’LL KNOW. Georgie plays with all kinds and all sizes of dogs, especially in the park. Her favourite thing is when all the big dogs get into a big chase- she joins right in and runs after them like a little golden rocket.

GOLDEN ROCKET!
Sometimes she finds herself leading the chase, which isn’t her favourite, but she’ll just run under a bench and then rejoin the back of the pack. The only time I have to intervene is sometimes when she plays with little puppies- she’s kind of a bully (like that long-ago bullet-headed terrier mix!), and so if it seems like the other dog’s owner isn’t comfortable with her wrestling I’ll call her away and send her to play with a different dog. Usually though, I just sit down and let her do her doggy thing!

Her doggy thing is very goofy.

For lots more action dogs in the park check out Taylor’s flickr for May 5th and 6th

After what feels like weeks of horrible rainy weather I was happy to wake up today to a (mostly) blue sky.

It was so nice out I even wore a dress. WITH BARE LEGS (not pictured).

Today I was determined to bring my camera and not feel dumb about taking pictures. So I bought it, and I took four pictures. FOUR. And one was out of focus because I kind of started to fall over when the train started moving. OOPS. In my defense (for the lack of pictures, not the falling over), Taylor also brought HIS camera, which is big and fancy and takes much nicer pics than my little point and shoot.

Brunch at Locus on Main Street: creamsicle waffles for me, apple crumble french toast for Taylor.

After eating we did a little window shopping and also some regular shopping (EVERY WEEKEND, I don’t know what’s wrong with me). I picked up new gardening gloves for us both so we can (eventually) get to weeding around the poor stomped and strangled remains of my garden, and some springform pans (including HEART SHAPED omg) so I can attempt making a cheesecake (which is turning into a three-day process for me).

One of my favourite things to do whenever we are on the east side is walk down all the little side streets with all the little cute houses and yell WHY AREN’T ANY OF THESE CUTE LITTLE HOUSES MINE??? Like seriously, someone please buy or affordably rent me one. Bonus points if it looks like a tiny castle.

I had a ton of ideas for a ton of posts I wanted to make this week, but then I had this weird problem where I couldn’t access my blog from a computer in my house (if you follow me on twitter you may have noticed me having an ABSOLUTE HISSY FIT). It took two days to get the whole thing sorted out and now that I can blog as much as I want I kind of feel overwhelmed. So. Instead of all the other, better posts I was going to make this week, here are some pics of me getting loved up by my dog.

She stuck her tongue right up my nose! Anyway, I will be back next week with exciting posts about all kinds of stuff, I swear.

You all probably thought I forgot or just quit on my New Year’s resolution/ goal to make 2 non-custom banners a month for my etsy shop. I know it’s April 30th I haven’t posted anything since oh, idk, February, but that’s fine. First of all, I made four banners in January so I’m giving myself a free pass for March, when I was in the middle of my biggest blog & crafting slump of all time, and second, I refuse to punish myself over something so dumb. Anyway, I DID actually make some things this month, I’ve just been too lazy to photograph them properly. Until now! Sort of. I hate trying to get good pictures of stuff for etsy because the light in my apartment is total g a r b a g e.

With two-tone ombre of florentine gold and charoite on diamond glitter fancy letters and finished on the reverse with gold glitter paper, this is the most over-the-top banner I’ve ever made. The banner is hung on antique gold satin ribbon and is 45″ long.

This might seem like cheating since I technically made this for my tutorial, but I also made it to sell (for cheap!) since it doesn’t “go” in any room in my apartment and I’ve already had people asking me what’s up with all the tassels hanging everywhere. UGH I JUST LIKE THEM, OKAY MOM??? Anyway.

It features 8 tissue paper tassels and 3 mylar tassels in five shades of purple and gold. The tassels are approximately 12″ long and are hung on a 67″ length of gold metallic cord, which is finished on the ends with loops to make hanging easier.