Category: Uncategorized

Ready when you are, Halloween!

How Taylor and I spent our Sunday.

For more hot dog action check out Taylor’s flickr.

This past weekend I took Claire to the vet for her monthly $80 fructosamine test (that’s blood sugar for you non-diabetic pet owners) and in a shocking turn of events, her levels are actually within the normal range! In the last six months we’ve quadrupled her insulin dosage and her diabetes is finally under control. The extra bonus to this is I don’t have to take her in again for six months. SCORE!

Friday night was my Second Annual Pumpkin Carving, Hocus Pocus Watching Party.

In the morning Sym and Taylor helped me scoop the goop out of all the pumpkins. I was really dreading this part because I haaaaaaaaaate pumpkin guts but it was quite easy.

Fun fact: the pumpkin guts peeled all the dead/dry skin off Sym’s hands.

I’d been putting up decorations all week. I used my Halloween glitter banners, some store-bought things and some crafts by Sym and myself.

Sym made these craft foam jack-o’-lanterns last year, we added wings and feet to make the bat-o’-lanterns!

This skull chandelier is hanging over the kids’ table. Kids love skulls.

This treat bag made a great impromptu light shade!

I’ve turned into the sort of person who makes gift bags for all my guests.

It’s really Taylor’s fault; when he went to the liquor store for beer he also came back with a mini-bottle of Crystal Head Vodka. OBVIOUSLY I had to go out and get more to share with everybody! I also included a cute mini-pumpkin and a cellophane bag of candy corn and Halloween chocolates.

Sym really wanted me to make the cursed donuts from last year, although I managed to avoid any major baking mishaps. These are just made using brownie mix and black food colouring.

I put Sym in charge of decorating them with white, green, and orange glaze, and white bone & skull, black spider & skull, and green spider sprinkles.

The fruits of everyone’s carving labours:

top row, l-r: a small Totoro + some susuwatari by Sym and her dad; a cemetery by Sym’s stepmom
bottom row l-r: Sailor Moon & a little vampire by me; a toothy grinning face by Taylor, a fangy grinning face by Katrina, and a hammer & sickle by Varia. My friend Bonnie & her son also carved one but they left early.

This was my attempt at one of the Martha Stewart fanged pumpkins that are all over tumblr/pinterest this year. Mine came out looking mentally subnormal. I think it’s the jewelled picks I used for the eyes.

Taylor spent HOURS carving the teeth on his pumpkin, trying to get them thin enough to let light through. Clearly it was worth it though!

I only had half a dozen people over, but last year there were only two, so I basically tripled my turnout. Next year: EIGHTEEN.

Not particularly Halloween-related, but before people arrived I had all three dogs sitting in the beanbag chairs, even Dougal.

AMAZING.

It’s been a while! For some reason I’m not as in to painting my nails in the fall/winter as I am in the spring/summer.

I thought of doing some Halloween nails but I wasn’t feeling dark/bright nails; I wanted something subtle, so this dotted combination of taupe/gold/pink was perfect.

Essie in Case Study, Sally Hansen in Gilty Pleasure, Quo by Orly in First Class and Twinkle Twinkle

I received the absolutely gorgeous Essie polish in my Luxe Box from Loose Button.

My dress hasn’t arrived yet but I made the hat for my Halloween costume and I couldn’t be more thrilled with how it turned out.

I’ve been a bad, lazy blogger 🙁 idk why I was in such a funk last week. OH actually I do know, it’s because someone who I thought I was friendly with said personal blogs mine in particular, were embarrassing. For the record I’m not embarrassed that I have a blog, but I was pretty irritated about the unnecessary bitchiness.

… but instead of focusing on that, let’s talk about something else: Family Fun Friday Nights! Every week I try to come up with something Taylor, Sym and I can all do together, and the last two weeks were peculiarly train-themed.

Two weeks ago we had a board game night and played Ticket To Ride, a game that I think is from Taylor’s childhood?

idk, I’d never played it before but he had been practicing on his iPad. That’s didn’t stop me from KICKING EVERYONE’S ASS THOUGH.

Check out my amazing cross-continental railway (I was red)! It was really fun, although I’m not going to say how intense and stressed out I got about the whole thing.

This past weekend I had planned on a simple night at home, but on Friday morning one of my clients gave me a free pass for the Halloween Ghost Train in Stanley Park, so OBVIOUSLY we had to do that!

Before we even got to the train we had a nice creepy little adventure- I had planned out our walking route to get there so we wouldn’t end up wandering through the woods at night, but unfortunately there was some filming going on at the Malkin Bowl so we had to go all the way around. THROUGH THE WOODS AT NIGHT D: Luckily we made it without getting lost or eaten by Sasquatches or anything.

The theme for this year’s train is Circus of Disaster, and if you can think of anything worse than weird clowns in the dark woods at night then WOW you have a sick mind.

Being chased by zombies from the ring toss.

Not pictured: Bird Boy’s nest of mutilated clown parts. I wish I could have gotten better pictures of everything, but it was dark and we were on a moving train. It was just the right amount of creepiness that it was good for kids but still fun for adults, and if you are in the Vancouver area I HIGHLY recommend checking it out before the 31st!

Sym posed for a picture with me on the grounds that I bought her one of those obnoxious, seizure-inducing light-up swords, the brat.

We also went through the haunted maze (twice), visited the colouring tent and had hot chocolate/cider and churros (although Taylor was only able to smell the food & drinks). It was a great start to getting me in the Halloween mood, which is perfect for this week’s Family Fun Friday: my second annual pumpkin carving, Hocus Pocus watching party (see the results of last year’s here)! Sym and I went to Party Packagers’ Halloween Superstore on Saturday and bought a bunch of decorations and carving tools, and I’ve already started stocking up on pumpkins!

Georgie’s getting into the spirit already in her glow-in-the-dark ghost shirt!

Taylor has been on his special diet for just over two weeks now, so I thought I’d post a little update on how it’s going.

So far there has been no improvement in the rash, which sucks because this is the whole reason why we’re doing this thing. It can take up to eight weeks to see results though, so hopefully something happens!

Planning meals around his restrictions and trying out new dishes got rull old, rull fast. There have been a few days when I just said SORRY HUSBAND and made like, cheese tortellini with cheese sauce sprinkled with cheese for Sym and myself.

Then I feel guilty and end up nagging him to make himself something more than just plain brown rice and raw carrots for dinner. Charming. I did manage to finally find wheat-free steel cut oats, and I also attempted two more soups (roasted butternut squash, and vegetable & rice/noodle) but neither was as good as the potato & leek.

One (semi-expected) side effect of eating totally healthy foods all the time: weight loss! He’s also been going to the gym regularly again, and combined with this diet he’s seeing some fast results. I asked him if that meant that he wanted to keep eating this way forever and he said maybe, but that he’d still like to have “Butterfield treat days.”

Recently I’ve really been getting into things from my youth. The week I was involved in this tumblr exchange:

… and ever since I can’t not listen to John Denver. It reminds me of being a little kid; my parents had a bunch of his records and I just remember listening to them at happy times.

this song accurately portrays my feelings about the love of my life:

Another recent rediscovery is my second-favourite teen drama (after Dawson’s Creek, obviously), the original Beverly Hills, 90210.

When 90210 first started airing, I was 13 years old and just SO not into it, but with the July/August summer season at the start of season 2 I got hooked. It was summer and there was nothing else on, and really those two summer seasons (season three had one as well) were genius moves by the producers or the network or whoever thought it up.

The first six seasons are on Netflix and WOW is this show ever amazing. The fashions! The acting! All the times Brenda says “breast!” The really old teenagers! And did I mention the fashions? It’s the early 90s at it’s best, tbh. The only thing that sucks is the entire seasons aren’t actually available- certain episodes are missing. In the first season it’s just the penultimate episode, “Spring Dance,” where Brenda loses her virginity to Dylan and David wins a dance contest. I think it’s pretty big BS that the episode where Brandon loses his virginity to his troubled ex-girlfriend (“The First Time”) IS available but Brenda’s big sexual awakening isn’t.

The first couple episodes of season two (with Brenda’s pregnancy scare) are also missing, as well as several others, including the classic episode “The Next 50 Years,” where Scott Scanlon shoots his face off.

Deep stuff. Hopefully one day I’ll find the missing episodes (and the later seasons) because you know there is no way I’m not watching all ten glorious seasons of this nonsense.

no nail post today; because of Thanksgiving I had the day off and forgot it was Monday, oops

One of my favourite things to do in the autumn is buy a new raincoat. Wait, I mean one of my LEAST favourite. I have to do it every year because I always buy some stupid useless jacket that is supposed to keep me warm and dry and ends up letting me get soaked because it’s not appropriate for rain.

I believe even my bra was wet in this picture. If I had a dollar for every supposedly waterproof coat that acts like a rainsponge hanging in my closet I’d have… significantly less money that I’ve spent on them >:/ It sucks because on rainy days I can’t just hole up in my apartment, I have dogs that need to be walked, daycare kids that need to be taken to preschool, my own kid who needs to be picked up from school, etc etc. I always end up wearing my beloved TNA duffle coat from Aritzia, which is more waterproof than any of my supposed raincoats.

It’s wool though, so it’s way to hot to wear for most of the early fall/late spring (although I HEARTILY recommend it for winter, I’ve had it for years and I love it so much). This year I decided I had really and truly finally had it with these dumb, useless jackets that are totally ineffective against the weather. I did some research and decided to buy a Torrentshell trenchcoat from Patagonia. I mean, TORRENTSHELL? That sounds like it’ll keep the rain out! I ordered it in “lagoon” (a bright blue), and awaited it eagerly.

Of course, as soon as it arrived it stopped raining. For a whole week! DANG IT. There have been a couple small showers this week though, and so far so good! It fits well, there’s a whole bunch of scientific-sounding reasons why it’s waterproof, and it’s pretty cute. I think I’ve got a winner here!

I already have rainboots & pants that I like, and with the addition of this awesome jacket, I’m almost set! I just need some waterproof gloves- I have to have my hands out of my pockets to walk the dog or push the stroller (or both, at the same time) and going anywhere with kids takes eight billion years, so my hands turn into sad waterlogged icy cold chapped red messes all autumn long. I’m thinking these Patagonia R1 Gloves look like they’ll do the trick. Basically I just love Patagonia right now! If anyone wants to buy them for me I’ll take a medium.

As a bonus they also look like something a serial strangler would wear.