Category: Uncategorized

My beautiful and amazing internet friend Krista Cousins is in the top 30 finalists for Curvy Kate‘s Star in a Bra USA contest, and she promised if she won she’d hook me up with some bras soooo…. No but really, you should vote for her and here’s why:

“As of May 10th, 2012 I am officially in the top 30 contestants for the Curvy Kate Star in the Bra Contest in the USA. Not only could i be the first USA winner but also the first brand representative to be black or a person of color!
To vote please go here. First you need to add the app but it’s worth it to see me in lingerie or so i’m told 😉
Seriously though, it would mean a lot to me. My whole life I’ve severely struggled with body image and my looks. My family isn’t the most supportive and my whole life tried to change me. I’ve been chastised for enjoying food (saying mm or yum when I eat something delicious) or questioned for taking seconds of a meal.I’ve overheard them call me fat even though i really am not! My self esteem has always been low but I always enjoyed modelling for some weird reason I love the pictures smiling and posing and clothes etc on a whim i entered this contest. It would mean so much to me because this brand emphasizes real women as models, is supported of larger breast sizes. Finally, after taking place in this contest i have felt a surge in self confidence and that it priceless.
Thank you so much <3"

I made this trio of custom banners on the weekend and I’m really excited about how they turned out. The client wanted ombre in as many bright colours as possible and I think what I came up with is pretty perfect. I used nine different combinations:
pink to golden beryl (lime green)
fuchsia to florentine gold
ruby to lapis lazuli (bright blue)
gold to verdalite (deep green)
peridot to tourmaline (bright pink)
emerald to turquoise
blue topaz to charoite (purple)
sapphire to garnet (red)
amethyst to kunzite (pink)

Last night after work Taylor and I grabbed the little dogs and went for a walk along the Seawall from Sunset Beach to English Bay. It was the ONE THING I wanted to do yesterday (well, that and have milkshakes, which I unfortunately didn’t get to have because I never washed my blender after making smoothies- still haven’t tbh) and something I NEEDED to do because I had a very stressful afternoon and needed to relax.

Symphony loved the portrait that Sara drew of me so much that she asked for one of her own (original photograph is here). Sara is taking commissions, starting at just $10. You should totally check out her page and get one of your own!

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.