Category: Uncategorized

I haven’t done my nails in a couple of weeks, not since Taylor’s office holiday party. The day after that was the day of Claire’s medical emergency and I’ve had so many banners to make I haven’t had time, plus all the exacto-knifing involved isn’t exactly polish-friendly.

It hasn’t snowed here at all so I had this idea to do a wintry nail with white & white shimmery polish, plus the silver crackle topcoat. Then I recoloured my hair before I had the chance so any plans for easily-stained pale polishes went out the window.

Hard Candy in The End plus Sally Hansen in Hidden Treasure

I know everyone in the world has already done a Hidden Treasure over black, but I’ve only done it over pastels and tbh, I don’t like it over the black as much. Maybe I’ve just seen it too many time? I did two heavy coats of Hidden Treasure to try to make it more interesting to me but I’m still “meh” about it. I do love this black though; it’s one of the polishes I won last summer and it’s a great glossy black with perfect coverage in just two coats.

Also please take a second to appreciate my excellent gloves (there’s no light inside so I had to go out in the cold to photograph my nails).

I got them in my Christmas stocking and they are the perfect blend of gloves and mittens; warm and cozy (and cashmere!) with the tops on, but easy to flip open AND with flip-open thumbs for when I need finger dexterity. Thanks, Santa!

We didn’t do anything. I mean, we did stuff but we didn’t go out to a club or a party or have people over or anything. Last year Sym was home but this year she was at her dad’s so it was just me, Taylor and the pets. I was actually in a really bad mood, I’m in kind of a bad place, physically pain-wise right now and I was not in the mood to have fun.

So grumpy! I wasn’t going to “get ready” or anything but I figured it might pull me out of my New Year’s funk. I curled my hair and put on makeup and BOOM, mood improved.

The only problem was I used this Moroccan Oil Luminous Hairspray when I was a curling my hair and although it worked well as hairspray, it smelled EXACTLY like a Diaper Genie (if you have Diaper Genie experience then you’ll know why this was an unacceptable situation).

Taylor made us a feast of frozen hors d’oeuvres and I made sparkly pipe cleaner crowns for us to wear, as well as one for the pets. I knew none of them would keep it on so I figured they could share.

Normally Taylor and I watch Anchorman on NYE, but we started our evening so early (I had my first glass of wine at about 5) that we decided to watch both parts of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows first. Apparently I felt like spending my evening bawling my eyes out! We finished those at around 11:50 and took the dogs out for a walk, so we were in the park at midnight. People were screaming and setting off fireworks and we kissed on the street corner, it was nice. When we got home we put in Anchorman but both fell asleep on the couch (although I stayed up long enough to guzzle a couple of bottles of water to counteract the couple bottles of wine I polished off) until 2am, when I managed to get us both to bed.

Happy New Year! I hope you all had as wonderful an evening as us!

I’m not really one for New Year’s resolutions- I think last year I came up with an idea to do mini-resolutions every month that lasted two months before I got bored. This year I have one resolution: to make at least two non-custom banners for my etsy shop each month, so I don’t get caught unprepared for every holiday. I was going to say I should make one a week, so four a month, but that seemed a bit ambitious. Babysteps, right?

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 Visited 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…

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!

When I was a kid my mom used to curl her hair every day. I’ve never curled mine, but after getting some encouragement from my internet friend Christina, who is an amazing stylist, I figured I’d give it a try. I’m hopeless with a curling iron, so she suggested hot rollers. I’ve tried them before but I’ve never been able to figure out how to use those weird wire hook things to keep them in place. Christina’s solution: get the kind with clips. Duh. Taylor actually bought them for me for Christmas (fun fact: all my hair appliances were gifts, idk why).

I felt very silly doing this. I was worried I’d run out of rollers so I made some of the sections too big but in the end it all worked out.

I pretty much love it, and I feel much more like a cartoon character than ever. Namely, this one:

Flawless, like all Sailor Senshi.

And yes, I am wearing the most amazing t-shirt known to man. It was my Christmas gift from Sym, she picked it out and paid for it herself.

I can’t believe I never had a category for my hair until just now, I talk about it ALL the TIME.

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

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!

This way originally gonna be like, three posts AT LEAST but what with the whole cat thing and all the banners I had to make I’m running out of time before Christmas so instead I’m making one big SUPER POST.

A Pirate’s Christmas
Last Thursday was Sym’s school play, which was about pirates and elves and tbh was quite terrible. As she wrote in her journal, “I give myself an A, and the group a C+.” lol. The insane set design meant that a little tent was completely blocking Sym from our seats.

Fortunately she and three other girls came out and did a little dance during her class’s song.

Sym’s New Hair
On Saturday (after the whole emergency vet thing) I took her to the salon to get her hair cut. It was all one length and really heavy, plus her ends were all frayed looking for swimming and also because she chews on them. Our stylist took off a ton of length and added some layers, and then offered to give her some feather extentions.Now, I personally would never get them, but lots of Sym’s classmates have them and I didn’t want to be the buzzkill mom who says “You know they kill the birds to get those feathers,” so I just held my tongue. She loves her new hair and that’s what’s important anyway. YES MY CHILD IS MORE IMPORTANT TO ME THAN THE WELFARE OF BIRDS.

She’s on winter break now and has only been a little bit annoying. She wants to have grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch everyday and after I threatened to make her scrub the toilets she stopped complaining about being bored (although that means I have to scrub them, woe).

A Visit From the Christmas Elf
The elf came pretty late this year, I can’t imagine why.

Sym got a mystery Playmobil which turned out to be a creepy witch.

And I got giant rockets! Normally I prefer mini versions of my favourite things, but this jumbo version was pretty great.

Excuse my nails, I did say they were trashed up!

Cuddle Dog
Dougal’s been really into snuggling things this week. Here he is with Georgie’s disgusting Humpy Bear (for those of you who watch Wilfred, Georgie has the same relationship with Humpy Bear as Wilfred does with Ted/Bear).

… and here he is with Georgie. SO CUTE OMG.

Okay, he was actually chewing on her, but it was still adorable.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it. I’m still trying to catch up on all the pre-holiday stuff I let slide because I was busy with work and the cat. Today I cleaned off my disaster area of a desk, including cleaning the keyboard for the first time in four years, which was basically just an exercise in grossing myself out and spilling rubbing alcohol on my jeans.

It looks great now though! And my craft table…

… oops.

I had a real post planned for today, something about Sym and the dogs and the Christmas Elf, but I’ve spent LITERALLY every spare second finishing up and photographing six (SIX!) glitter banners so I can send them out today.

To see more check out my shop’s fb page, and to order your own had to my etsy! Until December 31st you can still use the code CATAID25 for 25% off your purchase.

I still have a few (six more, actually) to make, but I’m going to take a teeny crafting break until after this weekend. I just have so much Christmas stuff to do still! BUT!! I swear I’ll make a REAL post tomorrow! Maybe.