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Eating food while pregnant is kind of a drag. NOTHING is appealing to me right now, like I’m not grossed out by food, it just all seems so blahhhhhhhhhh. I hate cooking even more than normal because the idea of picking some food to make and then buying ingredients and preparing and cooking everything…. GET OUT OFF HERE.

All my food problems are totally being exacerbated by my semi-vegetarianism. I quit eating meat about a year ago and when I found out I was pregnant I was kind of worried I’d get like, INSATIABLE MEAT CRAVINGS. That hasn’t happened (mostly), so I’m still trying to not eat meat, bt ughughughugh, cooking a big meal with all vegetables and like, tofu or whatever is WAY more work than just grilling some chicken. Not that I want to do that either; raw meat is too gross for me to deal with.

Since I’ve been pregnant I’ve only had cravings for a couple meat products. One time I REALLY REALLY wanted this pasta dish from one of my favourite restaurants with chorizo in it, and another time I REALLY REALLY wanted some baked salmon, which I made myself. They were both good, but I haven’t particularly wanted either of them since. In fact, there’s only one meat product I’ve been craving regularly.

MCCHICKENS. Omg seriously give me all the McChickens in the world, nothing is as delicious as McChickens and it works out well because I also always want McDonald’s fries. SO GROSS I KNOW but I can’t help myself. There is no vegetarian or homemade or anything substitute for a gross-ass McChicken & fries from McDonald’s.

Kinda want one now, actually.

My 21 week pregnancy pics will be up later today or maybe tomorrow morning, I was way too busy/stressed/grumpy this morning to smile for the camera.

The next time I come up with a brilliant idea to make my own business cards, someone smack me, okay? I mean even if they are in lieu of actually making some non-custom banners like I’m supposed to do each month.

I needed some to send with a glitter banner that’s gonna be raffled off as part of a fund raiser for Nth Wave, but I was feeling too lazy to design them and get them printed professionally, and now I need to ship the banner TODAY and whoops, no cards. Soooo this afternoon I kinda half-assed something together and IDK I think they look alright. Not AMAZING, but I’m not a graphic designer so I just do what I can.

This would have all been fine except that my printer has decided it hates me and printed them out NOT at the size I made them, so all my calculations for cutting them went straight out the window. In order to get them approximately the same size (and shape, let’s be real here, they’re all trapezoids) I ended up having to cut millimeters off each side of each card. NOT FUN.

However, Im pretty pleased with the end result, I mean, they aren’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.

And hey, if you’re in Seattle and you’d like to lol at my attempts at making business cards in person, and even enter to win your very own fuchsia & black ♥FEMINIST♥KILLJOY♥ banner (which is MUCH BETTER than my business cards), then on the 12th you should go to this punk rock karaoke night!

I have super stubby eyelashes. It’s terrible, they are barely visible and the don’t really hold a curl so my only option for even looking like I have any has always been globs of mascara, but I feel weird wearing mascara without a full face of makeup and I think we all know how often I wear that: once a week on Thursdays when Taylor takes my pregnancy pictures. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE REST OF THE WEEK???

Well, thanks to my friend Sara I have an affordable solution: DIY EYELASH EXTENSIONS! Basically you just put on those single flare false eyelashes using a particular technique that makes them look more natural, but it’s better if I let Sara explain it because she did up a great tutorial with pics, tips and cute illustrations.

I tried this out myself on the weekend and it was a moderate success. Here are some terrible quality pictures of my lashes before (on the top) and after (on the bottom), where I have ten individual lash flares on each eye.

Sorry the images aren’t really the same size but you can still see the difference! My lash flares were all the same length so I trimmed the ones I put closest to the inner corners of my eyes, which was pain so I really recommend getting a set that comes with various lengths. I got the single-length ones because that was all the had at the drugstore by my house. They also only had one kind of lash glue and OH MY GOD IT SUCKED. Like I got the lashes on just fine but a couple hours later I was out with Taylor, walking down the street and the lashes started trickling down my face! NOT COOL. So a word to the wise: if you are Canadian DON’T get the Quo lashes & glue from Shopper’s Drug Mart because they are terrible. On Monday I went to a different drugstore and got the Ardell kind, which I have heard good things about, and I hope to find time to try them out this week!

I had a pregnancy check up yesterday and I got an appointment for my next ultrasound. It’s next Tuesday at 7:15am, which is terrible (I have to get up at 5:15 to start drinking water) BUT I’m still SO EXCITED!!! Only one more week until I get to see this little baby on the screen again, doing her or his little baby moves. At my appointment today she or he was moving around so much my doctor had trouble getting the heartbeat for very long, and when she pressed harder with the doppler the baby pressed back. Seriously, whenever I lie down flat the baby is like…

Of course all I really want to see is a happy, healthy little baby with all the proper parts, but I’ll also hopefully find out the sex. When I was pregnant with Sym I knew the entire time I was having a girl (I JUST KNEW) but this time I really have no idea. There could be anything in there!

What do you all think? Is Baby Laramie a girl or a boy? Leave a comment with your guess and your email address and just to make it a little fun, everyone who guesses correctly will get a coupon code for 25% orders from my etsy shop!

Last weekend Sym and I trekked out (in the horrible rain) to Michael’s and picked up some supplies for making flower crowns! I didn’t bother doing a proper tutorial because there are plenty online already (here’s a good one at Tiny Tangerines, she actually did a much better/neater job than we did), but the basic technique is:
1. make a loop of wire the size of your head
2. tape flowers to it
The only supplies & equipment you need are scissors, some kinda wire, floral tape and of course a bunch of fake flowers! We used hydrangeas in pink, green, blue and purple, as well as some teeny filler flowers.

SIMPLE. Even Sym, who gets very easily frustrated and rage-quits when things don’t turn out perfect right away, did almost all the work on her crown herself. I personally don’t like flower crowns with widely spaced flowers so we crammed ours together, but please feel free to arrange your flowers however you’d like.

Recently I’ve been neglecting the farmer’s market in favour of the grocery delivery service, because of it always being rainy and my never having cash. I was out of honey though, so I REALLY needed to go this weekend. I don’t know if you know this, but local honey tastes better than the stuff at the store, so much so that I don’t even care that it costs $15 a kilogram (really though, a kilogram of honey lasts a LONG time).

It also goes perfectly with berries and croissants from the bakery! To drink I had lemonade (OF COURSE) with a splash of pomegranate soda for extra yum. This was my second breakfast since I already had toast with Nutella this morning.

Who needs jam? Just smoosh fresh berries on a croissant slathered in honey! Seriously though I don’t have any jam.

I’m not a fancy dresser. My job and my life are supremely casual and in the summertime I basically live in jean shorts, cutoffs, jorts, whatever you wanna call them. Of course, I’m pregnant now so none of my usual shorts fit, and if you read my huge post about maternity fashion and body shaming you’ll know that I’ve been having real trouble finding any that will fit me that I like. And what do I like? NOT BERMUDA-LENGTH JORTS THAT MAKE MY THIGHS LOOK LIKE TREE TRUNKS. Don’t get me wrong; I know some people like this length in a jean short but I do not, and the thing is, THIS IS THE ONLY LENGTH MATERNITY JORTS COME IN AROUND HERE. Literally. This is the only option, and they are disgusting. Don’t believe me?

WOW I’M SO GLAD THESE GO ALL THE WAY TO MY KNEES. Seriously even the little illustration on the label looks depressed to be wearing these sad disasters.

And ughughugh the panel. I’m not necessarily totally adverse to the maternity panel, but on these particular shorts from H&M the panel is made of a double layer of thick navy blue jersey. You know, so you’ll spend the summer of your pregnancy hotter and sweatier than ever. PERFECT. So. The obvious solution is to remake these in my own image. With a few simple supplies you can remake along (even if you aren’t knocked up):
• scissors
• bleach
• dye in a colour of your choice (I wanted lavender shorts so I got pink & purple dye)
… and of course a pair of shorts or jeans you are ready to thrash on in three simple steps: cut, bleach, dye.

1. CUT
First things first, I cut off that panel! (Skip this part if you like the panel on your shorts or your shorts don’t have a panel or you aren’t pregnant.)

Next, I cut them to a length I don’t find morally reprehensible.

If you are new to making your own cutoffs I would suggest using a pre-existing pair of shorts as a rough guide. I used another pair of gross Bermuda-length H&M maternity jorts which I had already cut off.

If your goal is to simply make a regular pair of true-blue cutoffs, then congratulations! You’re done. Just wash & dry them to get that nice fraying on the bottom and you are ready for summer. However, since I already have that, I decided to go deeper with this pair, or rather, more pastel. The other weekend I was in Urban Outfitters and saw some shorts in pale pink and turquoise and lavender and even a “tie-dyed” pair that just seemed to be blotches of colour but were still beautiful, and these became my inspiration.

2. BLEACH
To make these shorts a pastel, I’d need a lighter canvas to work my magic on. So I threw them in a tub of bleach.

Not straight bleach; that’s a recipe for disintegrating fabric. I used about a 3:1 water to bleach mix and let them soak in it. You want to stir them around occasionally to make sure they get reasonably evenly bleached, and when they look light enough, rinse them in cold water and wash them with a load of old towels. You might have to do this a couple times to get them light enough. Here are mine after two bleaches, with one of the cut off scraps for comparison.

What a difference! As you can obviously see they were still a light blue. Depending on what kind of pastel colour you want you might need to bleach more (if you were going for a pale yellow or orange), but for a lavender this was light enough.

3. DYE
To make sure they didn’t come out too blue, I dyed them in stages. Unfortunately I didn’t take pictures of this because a pot of simmering shorts in a dye bath doesn’t look like anything, and I couldn’t really lay them out between dyes to photograph because I was trying to not stain my entire kitchen. BUT! I can tell you how I did it!

In a large pot I mixed a bath of about 1/2 a box of Petal Pink RIT dye, with 3 1/2 liters of water (just under a gallon). I stirred it thoroughly to melt any of the dye powder and then added the shorts and left them on the stove over medium heat, stirring occasionally, while Taylor and I marathoned New Girl. They actually came out a pretty sweet pinky-purple but weren’t quite right, so after rinsing them out I made a new bath with 1/3 of a box of Purple RIT dye and let them cook a while more. The results (after rinsing, washing with old towels again and drying)?

AMAZING. In theory I wouldn’t mind them being a little lighter but these home fabric dye jobs always fade like crazy anyway. If you like, you can add some fun details like I did with these studs which I had lying around the house. I just shoved them right through the useless change pocket, effectively sealing it shut but OH WELL, it’s useless anyway, right?

A couple tips:
-wet the shorts before putting them into your bleach or dye baths, it helps them to process more evenly.
-if you’ve never dyed clothes before, follow the instructions on the dye you chose!
-don’t wear something super nice or expensive while doing this project.
-embrace imperfection; you can see the colour on my shorts isn’t totally even, but that’s okay and possibly even makes them look cooler.

1. & 2. making flower crowns; 3. Sym’s butterfly wall; 4. a glass of lemonade for me with cocktail umbrella and swirly straw; 5. Honour Roll again

I love baby clothes. Who DOESN’T love baby clothes; everything is so tiny and wee and adorable. I actually started looking for baby clothes before Taylor even agreed to start trying to conceive, although I managed to contain myself and not buy anything (a decision I regret since H&M had these sweet onesies with an adorable squirrel pattern that I missed out on, THANKS A LOT, RATIONAL SIDE OF MY BRAIN).

Of course, once I actually got pregnant ALL BETS WERE OFF, and as previously mentioned I bought Baby Laramie’s first clothes two days after my positive test. Of course I don’t know what kind of a baby* I’m having so I’ve been sticking to gender neutral stuff, which is annoying. Not because I don’t like the things I’ve been buying, but because it’s SO HARD TO FIND ANYTHING! Like omg, why does every single onesie and pajama either have to say I’M A BOY on the front or be covered in pink lacy ruffles? THESE ARE CLOTHES FOR TINY NEWBORNS LIKE OMG CAN’T THEY JUST BE PLAIN?? It just frustrates me that EVERYTHING is SO GENDERED, even in the 0-3 months size. Like, really? I guess we gotta start subscribing to those stereotypical gender norms asap.

ANYWAY. I’m not really mad because all the stuff I’ve been buying is in my favourite clothing colour: GREY. Yes, I’m gonna dress my baby like a tiny version of me, that’s the whole reason people have babies, right? TO CREATE LIFE THAT I CAN DRESS IN MY OWN IMAGE (which explains why baby Sym never wore navy blue, aka my most hated colour in the world).

These were the first things I bought: 3 pajama suits in grey, white with grey froggies, and a grey & grey animal stripe from H&M. The tiny stripy ones are what the baby is going to wear home from the hospital and are the only newborn-size item I’ve bought.

I also got this double-breasted, shawl-collared, elbow-patched sweater from H&M. Taylor calls it the Professor Baby cardigan :3 I KNOW IT IS THE SWEETEST THING EVER.

A few weeks ago I was shopping with Sym and we both wore jean jackets and decided the baby should have one too, so we stopped Baby Gap for one. This is in a 12-18 month size since denim isn’t appropriate for newborns, especially newborns who are new born in November. We also got this sweet little terry cloth hoodie (the ears!) and some knit booties that almost curb my desire for tiny fuzzy baby Uggs. ALMOST.

Funny story: when I got home and showed Taylor what we’d chosen he was like “So I guess you really think you’re having a girl,” but ALL THESE THINGS WERE IN THE BOYS’ SECTION.

… and of course there is the famous “Is this for your dog?” hockey jersey.

I’ve actually had people tell me I’m buying too much and the baby isn’t going to wear all these clothes before she/he grows out of them, to which I say “WHAT?” Like, have you ever met a baby? Between drooling and spitting up and breaches of a diaper’s structural integrity, they don’t stay in the same clothes all day long. You have to completely change them all the time! In fact, three suits, three sweaters, one jacket and one pair of booties? Never mind the fact that these are all in different sizes, this is barely even enough clothes for one day!

* definitely typed “girl” at first instead of baby, lol.

I don’t think my belly looks any bigger this week, I was actually buggin’ about it because I haven’t really felt much movement and I was like “OH GOD SOMETHING IS WRONG CRY CRY” but then last night after Taylor went to work Baby Laramie turned into Party Cat.

I have my next doctor’s appointment on Monday and my second ultrasound should be soon after that; I’m going to try to schedule it for the first week of July when I’m on vacation so I don’t have to scramble to find someone to watch the daycare kids for me. When I had my first one at 12 weeks it was in the middle of the day* on a Friday and everyone I know downtown was working so I had to get Sym’s grandma (her dad’s mom, not mine) to come down from the suburbs to sit here while the kids napped, and because I hadn’t told my daycare clients about my pregnancy yet I think I lied that I had to see a specialist for a sinus problem. LOL WHO KNOWS. I did have some pretty terrible rhinitis in my first trimester though.

ANYWAY. I’m still on a quest to not look like the walking dead in pictures. Last week I added lip colour; this week I went CRAZY HEAVY ON THE BLUSH. I was a goth for so long it’s very hard for me to apply blush with anything other than the lightest hand- in my brain the goal is still to look as ghostly as possible. I also wanted to try my friend Sara’s trick for DIY lash extensions but I didn’t have time and realized I don’t have an eyelash curler, so that will have to wait until next week.

The purple pants story is here. There are tons more pics from today, including some of me looking rull dumb and many of dogs looking adorable on Taylor’s flickr.

*Pro tip: idk about other hospitals, but if you are having an ultrasound at St Paul’s in Vancouver, try to have it scheduled for 1pm. All the technicians go for lunch from 12-1 so if you are the first patient after lunch you won’t have to wait past your appointment time. My ultrasounds during my first pregnancy were mid-morning and mid-afternoon, and they were always running behind so I ended up sitting there forever with a full bladder. NOT FUN.