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Now that I’m finished my self portrait I need to get started on my next piece of fine artwork.

Clearly it’s going to be a good one.

She painted this dead and rotten yet still very cute bunny for the Haunted Hallway at her school this Friday. It is accessorized with a moldy carrot and its own missing eyeball. Basically it’s awesome. She drew and painted it and I did the outlines with a big Sharpie for her.

Part of her lunch today- turkey sandwich squares, mini-cucumber sticks, and Lime Salt Hearts mini tortilla chips with Sweet Chili Lime Humous from Bean Boy. I think I’m getting pretty good at this cute lunch thing!

A while ago I bought a package of tortillas to make wraps for lunch or something. I forget. Anyway, tortillas come in packages of TWELVE, which is more than my little family can eat within a reasonable time frame. Instead of wasting the unused ones by letting them turn gross and get thrown away, I decided to make something with them.

Simple homemade tortilla chip instructions I found on ehow.com:
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees
2. Lay several tortillas on top of each other.
3. Cut the tortillas into eight equal wedges (like cutting a pie).
4. Place the wedges in a single layer on a baking sheet.
5. Lightly season the wedges with salt, and your favorite seasoning, such as chili powder (the chili powder or other seasoning is optional).
6. Bake for about 5 minutes, turn, and bake another 5 minutes.
7. Let cool, then store in an airtight container.

Of course, there’s NO WAY I’m going to cut my tortilla chips into WEDGES. Instead I used my mini heart and star cookie cutters and went crazy while watching some Veronica Mars.

This was a lot of fiddly work, especially when I had to turn them all over. If I was to do this again I’d use larger shapes. Okay no I wouldn’t.

I laid them out on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and sprinkled them with seasoning, in this case chili powder.

I baked them for 5 minutes on one side and four on the other, and here are the finished Chili Stars:

… and Cinnamon Sugar Stars:

… and Salted Hearts (the bird is the salt shaker I got for my birthday from Rich and Jenn):

… and Lime Salt Hearts:

… and Pepper Stars (these are darker because I accidentally baked them on the same side twice):

Symphony very thoughtfully tested the Lime Salt and Salted Hearts and the Cinnamon Sugar Stars for me.

Her verdict? Good, not salty enough and needs more sugar. I think I need to find a way to get the seasoning to stick to the tortillas more before I bake them, the pepper especially. But still, these are going to be perfect for her school lunches and snacks!

Today: Cinnamon Raisin Heart Toast for Taylor from me

Last Tuesday: Red Pepper & Black Bean Soup with Mini-Heart Toast Croutons for me from Taylor

I’m done, done, I’m finally done!! The colours are off in this picture because it’s night and I have CFL bulbs in here, but whatever. I’m done!

Well, first of all, I was able to pick my dopey little conehead dog up from the vet on Thursday evening, which is good because I really didn’t want to leave her alone overnight. I had to carry her everywhere and she slept on the couch for hours, but woke up at 12:30am ready to party.

Maybe when (if?) I finish my current self-portrait I could do a Madonna and Child-style one with Georgie. Would that be too blasphemous? Actually I already promised Taylor I would do one of him and Kichou so NEVERMIND. Anyway, she’s doing fantastic. I took the cone off her yesterday and she hasn’t been gnawing her belly incision at all, although she did have terrible diarrhea. I was concerned but we discovered it was just because she’d eaten a bunch of special high-protein diabetes maintenance cat food Claire had dropped down her tower (a whole bowl, in fact. Cats and dogs, they aren’t smart).

Symphony got her ears pierced, with Hello Kitty studs, of course.

I went to the hockey game on Friday night with Jenn. We both forgot to take our cameras to the game but here’s Kichou in his Canucks jersey. I wore one I borrowed from Taylor and since our team won, it’s now a lucky jersey.

That’s Jenn in the picture with Kichou, holding a pink plastic tumbler of pinot blanc. We do things in style at my house. Anyway I drank A LOT of stadium beer and screamed myself silly, then afterwards we wandered around the city looking for:
a) more wine
b) a place to pee (for me) and some bottled water (for Jenn, who had mad hiccups. I think. I don’t really remember)
c) poutine
We were successful in all our endeavors, and eventually even made it back to my house, although we barely had any of the wine before very maturely cutting ourselves off. It’s nice to be a grown up sometimes.

On Saturday I was kind of hungover but still managed to run tons of errands, including buying candy molds for my upcoming crayon recycling project and picking up the package at the post office. It just so happened to have all my Halloween costume stuff in it, so I need to get started on that, as well as Georgie’s. Oh, we also stumbled across some sort of operation with the police and FBI!

Oh wait, we live in Canada, that’s just something being filmed. Probably Fringe, so look for this building in a future episode!

Other than that I think I spent the whole weekend sprawled on the couch in sweatpants, eating mini-Tootsie Rolls and watching two and a half seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I told you, we do things in style here.

Georgie is at the vet today having her ovariohysterectomy and I don’t get to pick her up until TOMORROW*. A whole day with no puppy? Unacceptable! Here are some pictures of her from yesterday, engaging in a few of her favorite activities: hanging out with her bff Dougal, trying to kiss him on the mouth and then chewing on some paper.

*Unless she cries and cries and cries and spazzes out because she misses me too much, which I kind of think she might. In that case I’d pick her up tonight.

On Saturday Sym asked if we could bake cupcakes after my dentist appointment. We didn’t have very much time before her dad picked her up so I elected to do it the easy cheating way: 1/2 box of Funfetti (or Canadian equivalent) cake mix + 2/3 cup of Sprite (I don’t like using diet pop for this, aspartame doesn’t cook well), topped with canned icing and mad sprinkles. This makes 12 small cupcakes.

This is actually a GREAT way to bake with kids- Sym was able to help a lot more than if I had to measure out all kinds of 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla and crack eggs and what not. She mixed up the batter with a whisk and once the cakes were cooled, I iced and she decorated. It was stress- and mess-free fun, although to be honest I think she just wanted us to wear our matching aprons (yes, mine has cleavage).

Jealous? You should be. My smile is totally weird because half my face was still frozen from having a filling replaced (which is worse than getting one in the first place I SWEAR).

On Sunday we went to the restaurant at Prospect Point in Stanley Park for brunch with Richard and Jenn. We were a little bit early (their brunch doesn’t start until 11:30? what?) so we spent some time enjoying the view.

This is 4 km from my house downtown. Clearly Vancouver is the most amazing and beautiful city. It’s just science. And look! Nature:

Those are seals in case you couldn’t tell.

After brunch I reeeeeeally wanted to take Kichou and Georgie to the dog park, but unfortunately Taylor had work to do.

What’s up, my house is a mess. Anyway he was able to get it done and although he didn’t bring his camera please rest assured that a doggy time was had by all. I wish he had though- there was a 5-year-old pom there that looked EXACTLY like a big Georgie! Same colour(s), same topaz eyes and choco nose, same goggle markings around the eyes. It was amazing!

Other stuff: Taylor and I watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban– we were going to do just one per weekend but I kind of wanted to get PoA out of the way since it’s my least favorite.

On Sunday evening I picked up Kirby’s Epic Yarn and actually played it with Sym.
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