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a weekend in December

Usually we break out our family pajamas on Christmas tree decorating night but we were waiting on a delivery. Only Nicky needed a new pair this year (thank goodness, next year he AND both girls will need some) but due to the only-recently-resolved postal strike there’s a big mail backlog and we were worried they wouldn’t arrive in time. The finally showed up last week so I spent Friday afternoon wrapping them all, as well as the new holiday Legos, for some festive fun family Friday night. Taylor accidentally ordered this set of holiday Duplo but it worked well to keep Nicky entertained until bedtime, and then Taylor the girls and I opened the regular sets and got to work. Gwen and I built Santa & Mrs Claus while Taylor and Sym worked on the firehouse, and later when Sym’s two friends came over to watch Riverdale they ended up getting into the Legos instead and finished the whole thing!

Since we didn’t want to all be in matching pajamas while Sym’s friends were over (that would be a little weird) instead we all got up early-ish on Saturday and had a pajama brunch. Taylor made waffles and we had them with maple syrup and fruit salad. After I took Gwen to Robson Square to go ice skating. She loves it and I never have cash to pay for skate rentals so a few weeks ago I bought her a pair of secondhand skates of facebook marketplace. I also have my own skates, which I found in the garbage room a couple winters ago. I also love ice skating but I am truly terrible at it; it’s actually funny to me how much fun I have doing in in spite of my complete lack of skill. I’m hoping to sign Gwen up for lessons in January and I might sign myself up for some as well.

In the afternoon while Nicky was napping Taylor and I left Sym & Gwen at home building more holiday Legos (we have a lot ok! Other than the firehouse we haven’t even started any of the big sets) while we went out and ran errands, picking up some wrapping paper, a few small gifts and hooks to hang our Christmas stockings. Usually I hang them above the window over the tv but I have decorations on that windowsill and I was worried it would be too cluttered, so this year I elected to stick some Command hooks to the wall between the living- and dining room windows. There’s used to be some art there but I took it down when we repainted and it was a big blank space that needed filling.

Sunday was a much more lazy day, or at least was spent closer to home. We tidied up around the house, I took some stuff out to the storage room and cleaned up our messy mudroom. The day before I had an inspiration on a way to make a no-sew felt leaf garland so I spent the afternoon on that. I just used supplies I already had around the house so it’s quite short but I really like how it turned out. I’d like to make another, longer one as well as do a DIY tutorial post, but cutting out 43 felt leaves for just this small garland was ABSOLUTE MURDER on my carpal tunnels and my arms are still killing me so I’m not sure if it’ll happen.

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the end is hopefully near


Me prancing away from anything that DARES to go wrong for the rest of the month.

The end of the year I mean, because I am READY to move on! I was hoping for an easy breezy December but I guess 2018 just couldn’t let us go without a couple more setbacks…

First of all, in early November I FINALLY replaced my very, very, very old phone with a new model. It was great at first but after a couple of weeks the accelerometer & proximity sensor crapped out (how??? why???), which disabled a lot of features and also basic functions, namely the one where when you hold the phone to your ear during a call the screen goes to sleep so you don’t accidentally hang up on people! This was very frustrating and after spending half an afternoon on the support chat I was informed the phone needed to be replaced. Unfortunately I couldn’t exchange it through my cellphone provider at the store because it was 3 days past their return window so this morning I had to ship it back to the manufacturer for repair? Replacement? idk, I just want a phone that works, and for now I’ve had to switch back to my old phone which only has about an hour of battery life left at a time and it tends to die unexpectedly. This morning when I was out with the daycare kids it died at 60% battery and I couldn’t even get it to turn back on until I got home and plugged it in! It’s not great! And ‘m going to be stuck with it for 5-15 business days.

Second, my dishwasher, my very old and decrepit dishwasher that is at least third-hand and pre-dates my relationship with Taylor and also me even living in this apartment, the one we almost replaced a year ago, has finally died. Seems like when we tried getting a new one (about which I will be forever bitter) we had the right idea, because over the past few days it started having a new and very uncool problem in that the start button didn’t work. Like I can select a wash cycle and a delayed start and all the other buttons light up when I press them, but I can’t make it go. Taylor did some research and it could be one of about three different problems, all of which would require replacement parts, and some of which we can’t get because the machine is so old. So I’m pretty loathe to spend money on it, especially when it doesn’t ACTUALLY wash the dishes well. It’s just really frustrating because between my family and the daycare kids we go through a lot of dishes and because of the daycare kids, the dishes need to be sanitized. Without a dishwasher with a sanitization setting I have to sanitize all my dishes in bleach solution, and it’s going to take me months to save up for a new dishwasher so like… these next few months are going to be loooooooooooong. I have two different dishwashers picked out for when I CAN afford one, the first is the cheapest one you can buy that has sanitization (need) and the second is the cheapest one you can buy that has sanitization, hidden controls and a stainless steel tub (need, want, want). SO I’m really being practical here, since last year splurging on the fancy, expensive, highly recommended dishwasher was such a disaster.

Finally, yesterday I was doing some laundry and my washing machine started making a weird noise. Not a loud noise or a thumping noise, a kind of quiet whiny noise, like a small car engine that won’t turn over. I was like NOT ANOTHER PROBLEM but thankfully I had accidentally turned the water temp to warm/warm instead of cold/cold and the hot water was turned off! This was because the other week Nicky threw up all over his bedroom and I stuffed all his bedding, some stuffies and the bedroom rug all in one load. The rug is just a flat woven roadway play mat which I had washed before, but only ever by itself. Having it in with everything else caused the washer to go super unbalanced and it shimmied the whole stack around in my laundry closet. I moved it back (not easy as it is a washer & dryer stack that is very heavy) but I didn’t realize the wiggling and jiggling had cause the hot water hose to loosen just enough to start dripping down the wall. The drips somehow got under the vinyl flooring planks and for a few days we had mystery liquid oozing up between the planks whenever we walked down the hallway. I eventually figured out what was up, shut off the water, tightened the hose, dried everything I could dry and waited out everything I couldn’t. Luckily we have heated floors so once the leak stopped it dried in about a day or two, but GOD. ENOUGH ALREADY.

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five faves

This Sara M Lyons pomeranian pin was literally made for me, and probably you too. Bonus: it’s on sale this weekend!

The comedy genius of vampire baseball.

I think I may have finally found wireless earbuds for yoga that will fit in my ears? I’m gonna try them out but I’m cautiously optimistic.

I didn’t know American Eagle Outfitters, or rather, American BEAGLE Outfitters made clothes for dogs until I got a targeted ad but WOW was that ad on target! I am mightily in need of this dog sweater and matching human sweater.

A possible contender for this year’s Christmas cake.

ALSO this is VERY last minute but I’ve decided to offer a sweet, sweet discount of 25% off everything in my shop for this whole weekend. Check out the sale here.

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this season

The last three weeks…

After Halloween it was the girls’ birthdays, which are just three days apart in early November. For Sym we had her dad’s family over for cake (she requested triple chocolate) and presents the weekend before, and then on her actual birthday I took her out for ramen and a movie, which has become our go-to mother-daughter activity. On Gwen’s actual birthday we had a feast of Chinese food followed by strawberry pie (her request and something I’d never made/she’d never had?) and on the following weekend had a bunch of her little friends over for a unicorn-themed party. We bought a bunch of decorations and supplies in like… February, added a crêpe paper streamer rainbow wall, a mini ball pit (an inflatable pool filled with crush-proof balls from Amazon, our small kiddie pool needed 400 balls so if you do this plan accordingly) and a HUGE mylar unicorn balloon. I made funfetti cupcakes and pretty much just let the kids run wild.

For all the birthday cakes this year I’ve used recipes from The Stay at Home Chef and they’ve all been fantastic

Once the birthday season ended I had a week’s reprieve of doing nothing and now… it’s Christmas. I like to put the tree up bare for a few weeks to let the kids get used to it before adding decoration, with the idea that they won’t go crazy and trash all the ornaments. This has always worked, by the way, until Gwen and now Nicky. Last year Nicky broke so many ornaments (shatterproof DOES NOT equal toddlerproof!) I ended up stocking up on clearance ones after Boxing Day but I can’t remember exactly what he wrecked and what I bought so it’ll be a fun surprise in a couple weeks when we decorate. So anyway I put the tree up last weekend, as well as some lights around a couple of windows and a few bits & pieces on the sideboard.

Due to all the endless emergency vet bills we had this year Taylor and I are in a pretty tight financial situation, so we’ve elected not to exchange gifts (which is killing me bc my love language is buying you stuff and having stuff bought for me) and focus on the kids instead. I’m really hoping for some fun family outings and as redemption for last year’s multiple cookie disasters, successful cookie baking! Sym and I got a head start last weekend with these ginger molasses cookies which I HEARTILY recommend.

Some other things I’m looking to make happen during this last season of the year:
1. I need to make myself some new slippers as mine are a wreck. I’m slowly formulating an idea for some bootie-style slippers with a sheepskin insole, wish me luck on this!
2. I am DESPERATE to finish painting. The hallway, playroom, and kitchen are all still half-done, and the foyer (which was the first room Taylor and I painted in this apartment in like… 2007) really needs a refresh. Owing to my tragic finances this will def not be done this year except for maybe the hallway since I think I have white paint left for that, and mayyyyybe some medium grey part of the foyer (because who doesn’t want endless half-painted rooms?).
3. SPEAKING OF MY FINANCES I’m changing the structure of my client fees in a way that I hope will help sort things out; wish me luck on this too.
4. FINAL FINANCIAL BIT but hey why not check out my etsy shop if you are looking to treat yourself or someone to a little sparkle this holiday season! There are currently rolling strikes with Canada Post but I can provide price quotes for alternate carriers or just like… order early! And often!

This is one of the prettiest things I’ve ever made IN MY LIFE and I’m honestly shocked it’s still available?

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halloween eighteen



a few of our many, MANY jack-o-lanterns

Halloween! This past weekend I joked that I was going to take this week off of work to do Halloween right and HONESTLY next year I think I really should. I don’t finish work until 5:15 and trick-or-treaters start coming at 5:30! Thankfully I had Sym and her two friends manning the candy bowl while I finished the decorations and did all our makeup and Taylor finished the dinner I had started for the kids (sweet pepper & bacon tomato sauce on spooky squid ink pasta), but I would have rather had enough time to do it myself!


This year Sym was a vampire at school and a witch at night; she wore a cute black lace dress her Grandma bought her H&and a little witch hat on a headband that she’s worn before, I’ve worn before and Gwen uses regularly for dress up. I put some dark witchy eye makeup on her and she added black leggings, a trenchcoat and boots to help keep warm and and she was ready to hand out candy with her friends Catwoman and Sabrina the Teenage Witch.



Gwen was a Rainbow Princess Ballerina, a costume inspired by one she saw in a store like last year’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Kitty Cat Princess. I really hope she never stops asking for these crazy mash-up costumes! For this look she had white leggings & a long sleeve tee dyed sky blue with RIT dye, a rainbow tutu and a pale blue cape from Amazon and a crown around her bun. Her shirt had a sun of metallic gold felt & sequins and her cape had a white fleece rain cloud with silver felt raindrops and silver sequins. The crown was gold felt, gold sequins and a piece of rainbow ribbon. I used HeatBond to attached the body of the sun, the cloud and the raindrops but all the sequins I sewed by hand and I have to say it was ABSOLUTE MURDER. It took about three days and by the end my carpal tunnels were SCREAMING. She loved it though so it was absolutely worth it. For trick-or-treating I also gave gave her some rainbow eye makeup, pink doll cheeks and shiny pink lipgloss.


Nicky was a wolf in the costume Gwen wore at his age and was cute as heck although most people thought he was a bear? WHEN DID YOU EVER SEE A GREY BEAR COME ON. I love this costume because not only is it adorable but it’s also WARM so there’s no need to bundle up; underneath it he just had on his pajamas.


I was not going to dress up at all this year but at the last minute I decided to put together a quick headband-based unicorn look using stuff I had around the house. I had no time to sew so I did the whole thing with hot glue using a plain plastic headband, black grosgrain ribbon, some thin flexible plastic, metallic silver felt, black leather, and a few fake flowers. I’m super happy with how it turned out! I created a mane look for my hair with three ponytails down the back of my head that I curled, and then wore a lot of black and silver eye makeup.

Taylor declined to dress up but we love him anyway.

Now that Halloween is over I’m to diving into the girls’ birthdays and also YOU KNOW WHAT! That’s right, it’s almost time for #MERRYLARAMIE2018

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a scary story

Yesterday morning between six and six-thirty Kichou fell off the bed. He thumped onto the floor with a yelp, but I heard him scrambling down the hallway to drink some water and afterwards he got back up on the bed on his own so I figured he was okay. HOWEVER at around seven-fifteen Taylor was taking the dogs out for a walk and we discovered that Kichou… couldn’t. Like he won’t come when you call him anymore (he’s deaf) so you have to pick him up and carry him when you want him to go somewhere. Taylor plucked him off the bed and put him down in the foyer to leash him and he just sat down. He couldn’t stand or walk on his hind legs and when he sat he was sitting all weird and crooked.

We felt around his hind legs and one, his right leg, was very tight and his hip on that side felt knobby and strange. We decided we’d have to take him to the emergency vet, or rather Taylor would because I was working and all the kids were already here. I called at about 9:45 and was able to get an appointment for 10:30. Just after I got off the phone Kichou, who had been laying in his doggy bed under Taylor’s desk, yelped again, and when we went to get him bundled up and into his crate for the bus ride to the vet Taylor realized Kichou had peed on himself; we think he’d tried to getup to go to the bathroom but was too painful.

What followed next was a long and upsetting day for Taylor, myself and presumably Kichou as well (he’s not a fan of the vet). There was a lot of waiting around the animal hospital for tests and results for Taylor and waiting for texts and phonecalls for me. We were super stressing about it because well… vet bills are expensive and the day before payday we LITERALLY had no extra money to spare. Like I still haven’t recovered financially from Georgie’s emergency vet bills in the spring, and Kichou is really old so like.. at what point do you stop? But on the other hand he’s our dog! So yeah. STRESS.

The vet wasn’t sure if it was a soft tissue injury, a dislocated hip or a broken femur, but after x-rays we learn it was a dislocation. Theoretically that wasn’t the worst-case scenario, but I guess there are different kinds of dislocations: the “good” kind where you can just pop the bone back in easily and the “bad” kind where it’s not so simple. Of course Kichou had the bad kind, and initially we were given this possible course of treatment:
1. try popping it back in with the knowledge that it might not “take,” the hip socket itself might be damaged, etc etc
2. if the pop in didn’t work he’d need surgery to repair the joint
3. if the surgery wasn’t possible, the whole leg would need to be amputated.
We were totally buggin’ because there was NO WAY we could afford the surgery, and after talking to the surgeon the vet was told they were unwilling to attempt an amputation because with Kichou’s age and health it would likely be catastrophic for him. That was the word they used. Catastrophic. I mean at his age even attempting to pop the joint in was risky because he’d have to go under general anaesthesia and might not wake up from it.

The decision was made to attempt to pop his leg back into place, with the knowledge that if it didn’t work then we were going to have to say goodbye. I had to call my neighbor to pick up Gwen from school for me because I was so upset and crying so much I couldn’t face the outside world. Like… I didn’t even get to say goodbye to him that morning! And now I might not get a chance! And like no offence to this world but can we STOP with the pet injury and death already I’VE HAD ENOUGH THIS YEAR.

Thankfully a few hours later the vet called us to say the procedure was successful! The leg went back in and seemed to be holding. They had his leg stabilized so he wouldn’t stress the joint too much, and they kept him overnight for observation (and also because we couldn’t afford to pay the bill yet. The vet actually waived some of the fees, have I mentioned that I really LOVE this animal hospital?). They called this morning with the great news that he could come home so Taylor picked him up after his morning meetings. His leg is still a bit painful and we have to make sure he doesn’t re-injure it so no walks for a week and he has to sleep in a crate, but we are so happy to have him back.

Welcome home, old man dog.

(No but seriously the bill was more then we can really handle right now, please donate to our GoFundMe)

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spooky pretzel sticks

I had this idea for a fun activity to do with Gwen the other day when I was in the snack aisle at the grocery store and saw some pretzel sticks. I already had white candy melts and a TON of Halloween sprinkles in my extensive sprinkle collection so it was a breeze for us, but you should be able to find both at Michaels (Homesense is also a good source for seasonal sprinkles).

We found that the type of sprinkles that worked best were the smaller ones, like coloured sugar and nonpareils. The jimmies and flat confetti-style sprinkles were harder to get good coverage with, and the larger shaped sprinkles (we had skulls, spiders and candy eyes) had to be placed individually. I think larger pretzel rods would work better with these other kinds of sprinkles but I haven’t tried it yet.

All in all this is a fun and easy activity for kids, and can easily be adapted for any occasion that they make sprinkles for (ie ALL OF THEM). I’m already planning Christmas and birthday versions (and yes I already have allllll the sprinkles I need for them).

Ingredients:
– pretzel sticks
– white candy melts
– assorted sprinkles

Line a baking sheet and cover your work surface in parchment paper. Pour 1-2 tablespoons of each type of sprinkle in a shallow bowl or small plate.

Melt the candy melts according to the package directions. Dip your pretzel stick ~2/3 of the way in the melted candy and twirl to coat thoroughly. Roll your coated pretzel stick in the sprinkles of your choice and place on the prepared baking sheet.

To add larger shaped sprinkles, use a broken pretzel stick to add to a dab of melted candy to the back of the shape and press each one to the pretzel stick.

When you have coated all your pretzels place the sheet of finished pretzels in the fridge to harden for 15-20 minutes. Keep in an airtight container for up to a week.

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autumn leaves

The foliage around the city is BONKERS right now. The weather has been bright & clear for the past few days so we’ve been able to get out and really enjoy it before everything turns into wet brown yuck.

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Nicky, lately

Usually by dinnertime most days I’m absolutely done. I’ll usually finish eating and then leave Taylor in charge of the kids and go lie down in bed. Recently Nicky will come and join me, he climbs up into the bed, tucks himself into the covers and snuggles up. Sometimes he’ll hide from Taylor by pulling the duvet right over his head, but most days he treats us to his “snoring” while he “sleeps.”

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should you put candy eyes on chocolate brownies?

On Monday afternoon I asked Sym if she wanted to help me make brownies. She agreed but asked “can we make them spoopy?” I was like… no, I can’t think of a way to do that so instead we just sprinkled the top with come choclate jimmies (her fave type of sprinkle). When I was putting the jimmies away though, I found a pack of candy eyes and inspiration struck. THIS was how to make brownies spoopy!

I was a little worried they would melt in the oven though, and sadly this was the case. HOWEVER after I took them out I just put new eyes over the badly melted eyes and in the end our brownies looked spoopy as heck (I recommend doing this because the new eyes will stick to the melted eyes, whereas if you just try to put eyes on cooked brownies with a nice crisp top they won’t stick at all, also DON’T talk to me about putting icing on brownies BROWNIES ARE NOT A CAKE).

Brownie recipe from The Stay at Home Chef.