Category Archives: Darling Child

Button Button

Posted on February 29, 2012 | 1 Comment

When Sym was in the first grade she and I made button necklaces. We took large buttons and strung them on yarn and wore them for a day. Last year she rediscovered her button necklace and started wearing it everyday. All the time. She also started chewing on the (wooden) button and fiddling with the yarn and as you can imagine, it became quite disgusting.

I decided enough was enough and it was time to replace it with a new button necklace, one more suitable for a ten-year-old. I wanted something small, simple and silver, and after searching etsy I found this sweet little one from Andy’s House. It was also one of the more affordable options with the most reasonable shipping costs.

It arrived yesterday (sooner than the 2-3 weeks’ shipping time I was originally told) and it is perfect. Sym loves it, it has that button look she likes and it’s so tiny and cute!

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Posted in Darling Child, Purchases

Bits & Pieces

Posted on February 17, 2012 | 8 Comments

Some pictures from this quiet, rainy afternoon:

I saw this adorable customizable monogram from The Wedding Chicks on Sometimes Sweet this morning and IMMEDIATELY knew I needed one. I want to put it up in my bedroom (is that cheesy? yes, but I don’t care) but the colours were wrong so I tweaked it a little, and then printed it out on some nice paper I tore out of a sketchbook and trimmed to size.

Yesterday I FINALLY set up my new computer. It’s a little different that my old one and it’s taking some getting used to, but so far I love it. The real question is how long can I keep my desk clean? (The answer: probably not long)

This purple-on-purple banner is getting ready for a wedding in Los Angeles next month. My motto these days is basically “Always Be Ombre-ing!”

Teeny-tiny stickers covered in teeny-tiny bunting.

Dougal and Georgie are still bffs. I love when they snuggle.

Sym had the day off school and spent most of it holed up in her room colouring. She was supposed to have her friend Ali over to play but she had an audition (you might have seen Ali in last Friday’s Fringe episode. Hint: she was the only kid).

Sym wanted me to post a picture of her Valentine’s Day manicure to show the colours she chose- normally I’d save this for Monday but I’m too happy about the fact that she stopped biting her nails! We actually had to trim and file them last weekend because they were too long! I’m really proud of her for breaking the habit.

She got this inflatable paper frog in a Kinder Egg, it’s so odd!

These paper palm trees were leftover from Sym’s Luau birthday in 2008, but I recently unearthed them and put them up in the nap room.

Last summer the housepainters stomped all my plants to death, but the remains of my hydrangea somehow survived and it’s putting out little leaves! There’s hope for my garden yet.

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Posted in Arts & Crafts, Darling Child, Family, Happiness, House Beautiful, Life Etc, Nailz, Pets and Husbands, Purchases

Failentine’s Day

Posted on February 15, 2012 | 5 Comments

I’m not really that big on Valentine’s Day. Especially this year- Taylor bought me loads of wonderful presents for Christmas and my birthday, then he just bought the new mattress and I just bought my new computer…. we’re kind of strapped. HOWEVER I did want Sym to have a nice Valentine’s Day, so on the weekend we went out shopping and I bought her some gold sparkly shoes and a twirly blue dress for the dance, and while I was scrambling to finish my etsy orders on Monday I was ALSO scrambling to make white chocolate confetti popcorn for her class party.

I used white, pink and red heart-shaped confetti sprinkles to make mine more Valentine-y, and it turned out SO GOOD, cute and delicious.

But! Her Valentine’s Day sucked! Normally the grade fives and sixes have a dance and the grade sevens have their own dance, but there were too many after school activities going on this week so they just had one dance together. I guess having the older kids there made everyone shy/too busy trying to be cool, because Sym told me no one even danced except for her and her friends, and this group of girls they don’t like who were apparently doing inappropriate dance moves.

And the party? Everyone was supposed to bring food to share, but guess what? NO ONE DID. That’s right, Sym was the only person who brought anything! Plus, only three other kids brought Valentine’s cards to give out. WHAT IN THE WHAT??? Sym gave out these fortune tellers from Design Mom and spent Monday night at her dad’s folding thirty of them for everyone in her class, and one of her friends had the audacity to complain that there was no difference between them. OH REALLY? AND WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THOSE AND NOT BRINGING ANYTHING AT ALL, HMMMM? Anyway I’m really annoyed and disappointed. Sym left the popcorn at school because they’re going to have a do-over and try to have the party today, but I told her to bring it home. NONE OF THESE UNGRATEFUL VALENTINE GRINCHES DESERVE MY CHOCOLATE POPCORN TBH. Plus I want to eat it myself (shhh).

HOWEVER Sym did make awesome cards for Taylor and me, because she is the best kid in the world.

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Posted in Darling Child, Delicious Recipes, Valentine's Day

Birthday All Weekend

Posted on February 6, 2012 | 5 Comments

It was my birthday on Sunday, and we celebrated (sort of) all weekend. Unfortunately even though I’ve made a habit of bringing my camera with me everywhere, I haven’t exactly made a habit of USING it, so there aren’t many pictures.

Friday Night
We were supposed to have dinner and watch a movie, but I felt really sick for some reason so I skipped dinner. We watched the original Hairspray and I got to teach Sym about racism, segregation, and the Civil Rights movement!

Saturday
Sym wanted to make me breakfast in bed, but eating in bed with three dogs is problematical, so I settled for breakfast in the kitchen. Taylor made birthday pancakes, including a unicorn one for me.

After breakfast Sym and I went out shopping for craft and baking supplies.

Instead of a cake, Sym and I made Chocolate Chip Cookie/Oreo/Brownie bars.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Oreo Brownie Bar, with Ice Cream

My piece was topped with a Cake Candelabra!

I enjoyed blowing out the candles.

Sunday
Jenn picked Taylor and I up for brunch at Locus, and then she and I went to the Absolute Spa for $75 pedicures (I had a $150 gift card I got as a goodbye gift from a former client). I got OPI’s Animal-istic from the Muppet Collection, it’s so pretty!.

They also gave us champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries, too bad we can’t go all the time!

Presents
From Symphony, a giant hand-made card & two bottles of Essie polish: Shine of the Times and Master Plan.

From Taylor, Dominion Intrigue. I got him the original game for Christmas and promised to play it with him when I thought it was a board game, but as it turns out it’s a card game. At first I was worried it would be too complicated or boring or nerdy, but it’s actually really fun!

We played using some of the cards from this game on Saturday and I DECIMATED him.

From Jenn, a sweet little Rebecca Minkoff pouch.

She gave it to me at brunch and I STUPIDLY left it at the restaurant, so when we were on our way to the spa we kicked Taylor out of the car to go back and get it and he had to take the train home. I’M SO MEAN.

I also got some giftcards and money, which are always appreciated, as well as an absurd about of “Happy Birthday!” posts on my facebook, so thank you everyone! Turning thirty-five was actually pretty good!

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Posted in Birthdays, Darling Child, Delicious Recipes, Happiness, My Unique Style, Nailz, Pets and Husbands

Busy Bee

Posted on January 23, 2012 | 2 Comments

Sooooooo I’ve been busy recently with all kindsa stuff, here’s a small update on a few things.

Crafts
One of the custom banners I sold during my CAT AID sale was this delightful gem.

Last week the woman who bought it posted it on tumblr and it got almsot 2,000 notes. The picture was reblogged by STFU Conservatives and people FREAKED OUT over it. My etsy was blowin’ up, by which I mean I sold two and lots of people added my shop to their favourites. I even got a hater on tumblr saying my work was overpriced and juvenile and everyone should just make it themselves, it’s so easy! lol, whateverrrrrrrrrr fool.

I’m also still working on my resolution to make non-custom banners and over the weekend I finished this one.

C.R.E.A.M. (Cats Rule Everything Around Me) in gold with the same printed cat paper on the back as I used on the Forever Alone banner everyone loves so much. And speaking of cats…

Claire
Last week I took Claire into the vet for a fructosamine test and guess what… she’s great! Her blood sugar levels are good, her diabetes is in control, and her insulin dose (which is HALF what it was before she went into the hospital) is keeping her that way. So like, TAKE THAT, random internet creep who thought I should just let her die/put her down. WHO’S DIGNIFIED NOW???

Life
Life is just happening all the time! Sym is awesome, the dogs are just so doggish all the time (so is Claire, actually), and Taylor is as handsome and amazing as ever. Even when I’m down they all make me feel so much better. I could say more about how much I love my little family but I would probably go on forever and I have to get back to work soon. But first, some fine pet pictures from my phone.

Enjoy the rest of your Monday!

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Posted in Arts & Crafts, Darling Child, Goals, Happiness, Life Etc, Pets and Husbands

Treat Yo Self 2012

Posted on January 18, 2012 | 14 Comments

Last Saturday Sym and I went out shopping and had a mini TREAT YO SELF DAY, except instead of fragrances, mimosas and fine leather goods, it was clothing basics, french fries and one ridiculous item each.

Sym needed some new jeans (in a shocking twist she chose skinny jeans, something she’s been adamantly opposed to for five years) and t-shirt, but what she was really excited about was this…. jumpsuit? onesie? idk what the scientific name is but she calls it her rapping outfit, and while she was trying it on in the change room she threw on her Tokidoki boots and floral fake Raybans and broke it down for me.

I got a bunch of plain, boring clothes- white tee, black leggings, grey tank, grey henley (remember in the summer when I was going to start wearing colours again? HAHAHAHAHAHA). It was all stuff I NEEDED (my old grey tank top had a hole right in the chest) but none of it was very fun. Then I found these Tom Haverford shoes at Winners.

AMAZING. I can’t wait until this godforsaken snow stops so I can wear them (yes, I’m over the snow already). I also found a bunch of OPI polishes from the Muppet collection there, so if you are in Vancouver and looking for discount glitter they have it. I got Fresh Frog of Bel Air, which is great because this is the one I really wanted; in fact, I had been planning to go buy a bottle at full price that day!

For us no trip to the mall is complete without a visit to New York Fries. Sym just gets plain fries but I always get the veggie works- fries with cheese sauce, sour cream, tomatoes and green onion. So delicious! It’s probably a good thing that I don’t go to the mall too often.

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Posted in Darling Child, Delicious Recipes, My Unique Style, Nailz, Purchases

Year’s End

Posted on December 31, 2011 | 3 Comments

Don’t worry; this isn’t going to be one of those endless year-in-review posts where I recap every single thing I did this year and post all the same pictures over again. idk why people even make those posts, like if people wanted to see everything you did they could just look at your old blog posts. I mean, that’s what they’re for, right? I’m just gonna talk about a few memorable things.

1. I Got Bangs
… by which I mean I cut them myself, just like when I was in middle school.

I still love them, I wear my hair up a lot and it’s nice not to have it all scraped back from my forehead.

2. I Vi sit ed the South

Before this year, I’d never been to any part of the United States that wasn’t directly adjacent to the Pacific Ocean. Washington, Oregon, California: that’s it. So in March Taylor and I flew to Memphis, Tennessee to spend a week stuffing our faces with meat and booze. We also had connecting flights on this trip (normally the bane of my life) so technically I was in Utah and Minnesota as well.

3. I Quit Eating Meat
This summer I read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer and I haven’t eaten meat since.

I’ve also been mostly buying local and/or organic dairy products and eggs. It’s been seven months now, and the only time I REALLY crave meat is when I walk past McDonalds. tbh I don’t even think that counts as meat though.

4. I Moved My Blog

Once I realized that there were ads on my blog that I wasn’t benefitting from when I was paying for a ~premium~ account, I was like I’M OUTTA HERE. Moving the blog was an endless nightmare of GoDaddy said/Dreamhost said and it didn’t get resolved until a FREAKED OUT all over the internet about it. I guess it’s true what they say: the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

5. I Dyed My Hair Blue

My hairstylist was P I S S E D. I don’t really know why I did it, I just thought it would be fun? And it is! I just recoloured it a couple of days ago because it was looking very faded and green.

It was actually quite easy being green.

6. I Cooked Christmas Dinner
It seems silly to recap something I just posted about four days ago, but it was SUPER important to me that it be a success.

I’d never done it before and now that I have I think I might be confident to host other family members at Christmas. Maybe. As long as they don’t want any meat.

Soooo that’s my year. Pretty much the only other thing I did was make a ton of glitter banners, especially in the last couple weeks! Today is the last day of the Cat Aid 25% off sale on my etsy, it finishes tonight at midnight Pacific, so if you’ve been thinking about ordering one NOW IS THE TIME.

One other super important thing that happened this year: Sym turned ten.

Double digits! I can’t believe it! 2001 basically seems like yesterday, what happened to my tiny baby??? She’s so grown up now, maybe it’s time I get a new one…

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Posted in Arts & Crafts, Birthdays, Books Books Books, Christmas, Darling Child, Delicious Recipes, Hair Dos & Don'ts, Historical Events, Pets and Husbands, This Blog, Vacation

Christmas Weekend

Posted on December 27, 2011 | 13 Comments

Our official Christmas Eve Family Portrait. For some sweet outtakes check Taylor’s flickr
Eve

No one wanted to cook Christmas Eve so we got Japanese takeout. Ignore these miserable faces; it was delicious. We did bake though, we made gingerbread cookies and mini chocolate donuts (I used a boxed whoopie pie mix and they turned out great).

There were tree shaped gingerbreads as well but I didn’t get a picture before Santa ate them.

We all opened our traditional Christmas pajamas on Christmas Eve.

Sym and Taylor both got red & green plaid and I got red with white snowflakes. I also got a new bathrobe so I wasn’t expecting to get pajamas. Basically I’m spoiled!

After we ate and decorated cookies and opened our pajamas and took our family portrait we all bundled onto the couch to watch A Christmas Story. We also had the NORAD Santa Tracker on my computer and Sym was getting up every two minutes all evening to check where he was. I tell you, that thing almost screwed us! We didn’t get Sym to bed until around 10:30 and Santa hit Vancouver before eleven! It was nerve-wracking, to say the least.

Day
I told Sym that she wasn’t allowed to wake me up on Christmas morning until AT LEAST seven; two years ago she and Taylor woke me up at 5:30 nd I was not pleased. So guess what time I woke up? FIVE-THIRTY. What the eff. Anyway Sym woke up at like, 3:30, and even though I’d told her she could open her stocking if she woke up early, she didn’t. When I asked her why she said it was because she wanted us all to open our stockings together, as a family. CUE WATERWORKS.

She also paused while opening her own presents to watch Taylor and I opening the gifts she got for us, so she could see our faces. So basically she’s the sweetest child in the world.

Taylor slept the latest, so he’s sleepy here, not stoned. Really.

Sym always gets a ton of presents, from me & Taylor and her dad & stepmom, and all her extended family including about six sets of grandparents. It can get out of control and sometimes I worry that I’m getting into a “present off” with her dad to see who can get her the best stuff. To keep myself in control I set two rules this year: everything from Santa had to fit in her stocking (which it did, except for a bunch of socks), and she would get three present from Taylor and I: something to wear, something to read and something to play with. I got that idea off some blog or the other but I can’t remember which one. Taylor took it a step further and decided we should get each other three gifts as well.

Sym got:
1. a pink sweater with swans from Urban Outfitters (her first clothing item NOT from a children’s’ store/department)
2. Wildwood, by Colin Melloy
3. the Calico Critters Buckley Deer Family and Cozy Cottage

This was an emergency replacement gift because the gift I’d originally ordered for her from Build-a-Bear didn’t arrive in time since apparently they use the most inefficient shipping ever and it takes OVER A MONTH for things to get to Canada from OHIO. idgi.

Taylor got:
1. a Burton Groton jacket (full disclosure: I got it for about 80% off)
2. Reamde, by Neal Stephenson
3. DOMINION, which I thought was a board game but is actually some kind of super nerdy card game which I unfortunately already agreed to play with him

I got:
1. tri-blend ~leisure~ pants from American Apparel
2. a new Kindle!!!
3. hot rollers, although he originally bought the wrong kind so yesterday we went and exchanged them for these ones

We also had all our stocking presents and gifts from our families, but I don’t want to list everything since that’d be pretty tacky. Thank you to everyone though; we all appreciate and love everything! Especially Sym, who still got the crud spoiled out of her with clothes and Playmobils.

The dogs also got presents: for Georgie a stuffed Tiki man and makes weird drumming/chanting noises when squeezed, for Kichou a cool tank top, and for Dougal a theoretically indestructible bone for chewing (we’ll have to wait and see how indestructible it is, he just opened it today since he spent Christmas with Clay).

Taylor’s moms sent them edible rawhide Christmas cards. Georgie especially loves them and has been carrying them everywhere and burying them in beanbag chairs and blankets.

After presents I made a delicious brunch of goat cheese and chive mini frittatas, fried potatoes and chia seed toast, plus mimosas. SO MANY MIMOSAS.

I’m not ashamed to say I got trashed and then laid on the couch watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks all afternoon.

Dinner
This year was the first time in my life that I attempted to make a big Christmas dinner. I planned on it two years ago but I was so tired from my 5:30 wake up call that I slept all day and we had potato chips for dinner. This year I was DETERMINED to do it.

the menu:
- a Field Roast celebration roast (I’m so glad I became a vegetarian before I ever had to cook a turkey!) and gravy (from a packet, but it was POUTINE gravy and therefore delicious)

-roasted carrots & broccoli

-pierogis (Taylor is of Ukrainian descent)
-yorkshire puddings (I’m of British descent)

-mashed potatoes

Sooooooo basically everything was PERFECT. Okay, the carrots could have been a little more cooked but they were still good. The celebration roast was delicious and easy to cook; I mean it’s already cooked so I just basted it with some oil and heated it for 35 minutes. There were barely even any leftovers, Taylor ate so much he needed a side plate just for his veggies!

I’m so happy with how everything went this Christmas; I just really wanted it to be fun and amazing for my little family and almost melt-down free, and I think I pulled it off!

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Posted in Christmas, Darling Child, Delicious Recipes, Family, Happiness, Pets and Husbands

A Wonderful Christmastime

Posted on December 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

I’m so happy to have had the Best Christmas Ever with my little family.

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Posted in Christmas, Darling Child, Family, Happiness, Pets and Husbands

Almost Ready

Posted on December 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

Happy Christmas Eve Afternoon!

I just got back from the very last Christmas shopping trip and now I’m steeling myself with a greyhound (gin & grapefruit juice) before I finish wrapping the last few gifts and cleaning the house, and then mess it all up again baking cookies & donuts with Sym. We’re all wishing everyone out in internet land a happy holiday weekend!