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I know some people get really offended when people start their Christmas decorating right after Halloween/before American Thanksgiving, but guess what? I’m Canadian, and here in Canada we celebrate Thanksgiving in October, like God and Martin Frobisher intended.

My main excuse for starting my Christmas decorating early is the daycare kids. It seems that every year I have a kid or two who is celebrating their first Christmas, or at least their first Christmas while mobile. I always worry that if I put the tree up with all the decorations in one fell swoop the kids will show up and FREAK OUT: “Look at all these things! I MUST GRAB AND SLOBBER ON THEM!!” So I like to ease them in- I put up the tree and leave it bare for a week, then have it with just lights for a week, and then finally put on the decorations. Plus this gives Claire more time to hung out under the tree, which is pretty much her only joy in life.

Of course, there is more to Christmas decorations than just the tree, and I got started on some other displays this past weekend.

This snowy forest light from Ikea and silver glitter stag from Urban Barn are perfect on top of the piano.

The best thing about my Playmobil nativity scene is how Sym adds to it every year from her vast collection of Playmobils. Last year only a little white kitten joined the mix, but this year she’s added a second angel, a hand organ that plays Christmas songs and the fourth Wise Man, Santa Claus, as well as his reindeer. The nativity set (with Wise Men included!) I have is no longer available, although you can buy a newer, fancier version, and separate Wise Men.

I’ve been meaning to put up some pictures or something on the big blank wall around the tv, but for now it’s the perfect place to put up my latest glitter banner (check out those fancy letters!), as well as the Perler bead snowflakes Sym and I made a few years ago, some vintage chandelier crystals and tiny white ball ornaments from Ikea, all hung from the ceiling on monofilament.

I was trying to make it look like it’s snowing, what do you think? Personally I think I need to get better lightbulbs in that room because all the pictures I take in there look atrocious >:/

The Merry Christmas banner is available for order on my etsy shop.

Another manicure that matches my hair! You might recall how much I love this Quo by Orly polish, Turquoise Moonlight.

… but I wanted to do something a little different so I topped it with the matte topcoat I got from Hard Candy as part of my runner-up prize in that DIY manicure contest in the summer.

tbh I wasn’t super into the idea of matte polish, I remember I had a matte periwinkle blue in like, 1998 that just chipped like mad unless I put a topcoat over it, but as I didn’t have a matte topcoat it kind of defeated the purpose. I decided to give it a try and WOW I could not be more thrilled with the result! The matte topcoat applied nicely and dried really quickly, and it looks so cool over the shimmery duochrome polish! I can’t wait to try it out over some other colours.

Quo by Orly in Turquoise Moonlight + Hard Candy Matte-ly in Love topcoat

I came up with the idea for this post in April, and started writing it in June. Then I saved it as a draft and never looked at it again until this weekend, when Taylor’s and my trip to Ikea ended in me making him drop me off a block and a half early because I knew I wouldn’t be able to make the last two turns without barfing everywhere.

I have always always always been prone to carsickness, ever since I was a little kid. It sucked because my parents always hated stopping the car so I could puke on the side of the road so I heard a lot of “Just sing a song, then you won’t feel sick anymore” and “We have one of those anti-static strips on the car so it’s scientifically impossible for you to be carsick.” Cut to me crouched in the dirt on the side of the Malahat on Vancouver Island, barfing my guts out. Cut to me sprawled across my sister’s lap with my head stuck out the window, puking all the way from LAX to Anaheim. Cut to me spewing on some poor unsuspecting guy’s jacket when I couldn’t get off a bus in Horseshoe Bay in time. Cut to me yakking in the parking lot at a scenic overlook 9,000 feet up Haleakala in Maui. CUT TO ME VOMITING EVERYWHERE.

Now I have my own kid who is also prone to carsickness, and I try to be very sympathetic with her because I know how it feels. Maybe it’s annoying to have to stop the car and pull over on the side of highways everywhere so a carsick child can walk it off and spit bile in the grass, but would it be less annoying to clean vomit out of the upholstery? I don’t think so!

Over the years I’ve been working on developing a system for FOOLPROOF CARSICKNESS TREATMENT AND PREVENTION and after painstaking research on roadtrips and throughout pregnancies (morning sickness is a great carsickness substitute) I’ve come up with my Top Tips for the Car Sick.

1. Gravol Ginger tablets
Regular Gravol/Dramamine/motion sickness pills make you sleepy. Ginger Gravol is made from ginger (duh), which prevents carsickness without drowsiness, which is great if you have to navigate, or take care of a carsick kid, or function as a human being once you reach your destination. These pills are small and easy to swallow, which makes them great for Sym as well (normal Children’s Gravol pills are big and need to be chewed up, and she doesn’t like the flavours). You could also try ginger gum or tea but I think they taste disgusting, and things that taste disgusting make me want to throw up, which pretty much defeats the purpose of anti-nausea products.

2.Jolly Rancher candies
You know that weird gross pre-barf taste you get in your mouth when you’re about to be carsick? You need something that will get rid of it without putting anything in your stomach. Some people like gum for this but when it loses its flavour it gets gross, and having to spit anything out when you already feel like puking is a recipe for puking. Jolly Ranchers, the original hard candies, are PERFECT. The fruit flavours totally overwhelm the sick taste without being overly sweet. Whenever we go for long car trips with Sym I put a big bag of them in my purse and we suck on them the whole way. SORRY, TEETH 🙁 I know all that sugar isn’t good for you, but neither is being constantly bathed in stomach acid.

3. Hickory Sticks
I discovered the anti-nausea properties of these hickory-smoked shoestring potato sticks when I was pregnant with Sym. The starchiness of the potatoes calms your poor acidic tummy, and I don’t know what it is about the hickory flavour, but it WORKS.

4. Water
LOTS of water. In spite of my best efforts, Sym and I do still end up puking sometimes, and the only thing worse than throwing up is throwing up straight bile, or a big dry glob of masticated Hickory Sticks. Drinking lots of water means if you do vomit it’ll come up quickly and easily, plus the added bonus of more pee stops means you’ll have more chances to walk it off. Note: please bring your own reusable water bottles instead of being an environment trashing bottled water drinker. Anyway the last time I bought bottled water (because I forgot my water bottle at home) it tasted like vulcanized rubber. EW.

On Friday Taylor and I went out to run some errands, and I was determined to buy some new, more-winter appropriate clothes (all I wear is tank tops). Unfortunately I couldn’t find a single thing that I liked, so to make up for it I bought some fancy expensive nail polish. Oops.

Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe, it goes perfectly with my hair.

I know some of you guys sometimes do Manicure Monday posts, if you do, leave me a comment or tweet @ me with a link to your post and I’ll add it to my post!

Remember back in February when I put a streak of blue, purple, and pink in my hair? I retouched that streak a couple of times, but after nine months the colours had mostly been washed/highlighted out, except for one little streak of blue that had faded to a light turquoise. Which I loved. Loooooooooved.

For the past few weeks I’d been thinking I should re-dye the blue, or maybe add a few more streaks, or maybe get some new dye and do turquoise instead. Or maybe…

YEP. What you see here is a mix of three different colours.

My hair was already (mostly) blonde, and I didn’t want to have to bleach it (too much work & I still want to grow out my grey roots, idk I’m weird), so I decided to just put blue over it. I figured that blonde + blue would turn out turquoise, which it did. For the bottom layers I used a mix of the green with both blues, and for the top layers I used just the blues.

Basically I love it, but it’s funny- having an unnatural hair colour has caused me to partially regress back into my former goth state. I just wanna wear black clothes and black eyeliner all the time now. I actually tried to find a vintage picture to show you, me circa 2002 with bright blue hair wearing a ludicrous black vinyl outfit, but they have all mysteriously disappeared. PROBABLY FOR THE BEST.

What’s up, internet? I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but I haven’t really been making with the blog posts recently. Like, only two or three posts a week? WHO AM I???

The reason for this is because I have been in a Grade A Funk. Mad and sad and feeling bad, and all I want to do is eat a billion cookies and watch tv. Last year this happened right before Halloween; this year I was so busy at the end of October that it waited for November. I guess the key is to constantly be doing things so that I don’t have time to start feeling miserable.

The perfect thing to brighten my mood right now would be to get going on some serious Christmas crafting, but I have a little problem with that: my craft desk. It looks like this right now.

FUN FACT my computer desk ALSO looks like that. Two desks, piled high with mess. The best part is I always always ALWAYS get on Sym’s case to keep her desk clean so she has somewhere to do her work. I think it’s time I start practicing what I preach, I mean MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS glitter banners aren’t going to hand-cut their own letters.

Speaking off, check out this sip & see featuring a fancy banner by yours truly! tbh I wasn’t entirely sure what a sip & see was when I made the sign, but I guess it’s a chance for parents to introduce their baby to everyone at once instead of people dropping by constantly when you are all sleep-deprived and unshowered with a messy house. Huh. I wish I’d known about these ten years ago!

Some pictures from Sym’s birthday dance party on Friday!

I bought disco lights and hung gold glitter fringe all over the living room. I closed most of the blinds and turned off lights to make it more of a dance party atmosphere since it was the middle of the afternoon.

I put a white plastic table-cloth over the kitchen island, liberally sprinkled it with silver glitter and stars and then covered it with a clear vinyl table-cloth.

I wanted the kids to have lots of water since they were dancing up a storm. I originally planned on putting lemon slices in the water but I wanted Taylor to be able to drink it so I made cucumber water instead, which weirded everyone out. Clearly they’ve never been to a spa! I also bought fruit sodas made with real juice since I figured they’d be marginally healthier than regular pop, and the kids put Pixi Stix in them. OOPS.

I know this looks like the candles say “01” but that’s because Taylor took a picture of the back of the cake!

Sym opened the presents from her friends first, and then the one from Taylor and me: Dance Central 2! It was perfect: the present WAS the party, and everyone got into it. We have two rules for Dance Central at our house: everybody plays, and no one makes fun of you if you suck.

Even Sym’s dad got into it! At first he was like “nope, no way, I’m not playing,” and when his wife arrived she said the same thing. Six songs later they were both drenched in sweat and she was trying to calculate how much it would cost for an Xbox, Kinect and the game.

This cake looked like an ordinary, poorly decorated cake from the outside (I’m really bad at icing cakes so I just like, PAVED it in silver jimmies), but inside it had a secret.

Chocolate donuts baked into the layers! I was worried this wouldn’t turn out- I had planned on baking a practice cake during the week but with Halloween on Monday and the party on Friday time just got away from me. Luckily it turned out DELICIOUS and was well received by all the guests.

Once all the kids were picked up Sym opened the rest of her presents (from family and pets, haha). She got tons of great stuff, books and Playmobils, Hello Kittys and Monster High Dolls, all her favorite stuff. Her paternal grandparents got her an authentic kimono from Japan and I got to spend Saturday afternoon trying to figure out how to tie it properly. Thank god for instructional youtube videos! It’s a bit big on her but I think my efforts turned out all right.

Saturday was her actual birthday, and she requested pancakes for breakfast and for me to play Playmobils with her.

I was able to comply on the first part, but I had some serious back pain and a killer migraine, so I ended up having to go to bed in the afternoon. It sucked and I was disappointed that I couldn’t spend more time with her on her birthday, but at least I threw her a killer party!

… I had purple hair and a brand-new purple baby. Now I have a giant tween who is playing Wii Sports Resort and yelling “I’M NAILING THIS, SUCKAAAAAAAS!”

Her birthday party was yesterday after school and was UH MAY ZING, I’ll do a proper post about it soon but right now the birthday girl demands pancakes.

Yesterday was so much fun! I dressed up all day and Sym wore her costume to school. I spent my break (the daycare kids’ naptime) putting up decorations outside because I figured I wouldn’t have time after work, and I was right! The first trick-or-treaters came at around 5:20 and it built steadily all evening- we ran out of candy by 7:30 and I spoke to a woman up the block who had over five hundred kids come by before 8:30! This is really the neighborhood to be in Vancouver’s West End on Halloween night!

Anyway. Pictures!

Sym as an Evil Doll.

Me as a strawberry with a little Sleeping Beauty (this is the only full length I got of my costume).

The dogs were not exempt from dressing up.

Georgie wore her ghost shirt and was miserable about it. Kichou wire his Aloha shirt and I made him a tiny Detroit Tigers hat so he could be Dognum, P.I.

Taylor was an eggplant and was very gracious about wearing a purple track suit and silly hat. I’m actually wearing the purple pants right now and they are really comfortable so I guess it wasn’t all bad. This was taken when we were outside giving out candy, I didn’t want to have to keep opening the door every time kids came down the stairs and have the dogs freak out and try to escape so I set out a little outdoor area for use to sit in, with lots of decorations and my iPod stereo blasting my ultimate Halloween party playlist.

I had my coat on because it was cold and people kept asking if I was a pumpkin. PUMPKINS ARE ORANGE MY COAT IS YELLOW. To my left is this great decoration I made by stuffing some green twinkle lights in a cracked jar (it was the one from my terrarium, which I killed by forgetting to water it, OOPS) and hiding it in the ferns and ivy.

Because the trick-or-treaters started coming so early I didn’t have time to take pictures of all my decorations last night. Most of them are still up so I went out and got some this morning instead. First is the stairs outside my apartment.

I wrapped this whole hedge in cobwebs and foil spiders.

Some glittery skeletons on the fence.

Most of these decorations were up in the house all week- Sym’s flying pumpkins, my Trick or Treat glitter banner, and the hanging foil decorations. I also put some of those in the trees in the backyard but they are hard to see.

A few years ago it was wet on Halloween night and the whole backyard was churned into a muddy mess. The grass still hasn’t fully recovered so every year I put a fence of bamboo sticks and caution tape around the lawn to keep people off of it.

I made the “Beware” and “Just Leave” signs using the wire frames from some election signs I found vandalized on the side of the road, garbage bags and Sharpie markers. I traced Sym’s and my hands for the bloody handprints on the “Beware” sign, and the “Just Leave” was inspired by the classic Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace

Since all the pumpkins from my carving party had turned to mush already, I quickly carved this toothsome jack-o-lantern and some more little vampires in the afternoon.

Of course, now I have to take it all down so I can start decorating for Sym’s birthday party on Friday, and then next week, for CHRISTMAS!!! Just kidding. Sort of.

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Red Said Red, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mellow Yellow
I was going to put leafy tops on these nails but by the time I was done the dots it was 10pm and I was OVER. IT.

Sorry for the photobooth pic but I have too much important stuff to do and no time for real pictures! Stuff like carving a new pumpkin, putting up decorations outside, and sewing a tiny little Detroit Tigers cap so I can dress my husband’s dog as Magnum, P.I. for Halloween!