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Happy birthday to my sweet Symphony, the best kid in the world.

November 1st was the most BEAUTIFUL GODDAMN DAY, which I unfortunately couldn’t fully appreciate because I was suffering from the aftereffects of Halloween.


Tippy toes.

This pie turned out weird; all my pies turn out weird.


A cozy afternoon spent on the couch with Ms Fuzzypaws.

I picked out the shirt, she chose the jeans and bejewelled legwarmers.

Yesterday I had a lot of work to do so of course I decided it was the perfect time to rearrange furniture and clean out Gwen’s closet. I moved her dresser out into the room proper; when we were planning her room we decided to put it in the closet because the room is so small and the crib + changing table + chair took up all the available space. I moved the chair out a long time ago since we never actually used it in her room (I had imagined late night feedings would take place in there but that wasn’t the case) and so there was a lot more space. I need to keep some clear so I can put out the folding crib I use for her lil friend’s naps, but I also need somewhere to put it when it’s not in use because it blocks the closet door.

ANYWAY. I’d been loathe to move the dresser out of the closet because I kept having flashbacks to when Sym was around Gwen’s age and she would empty her entire dresser AND wardrobe every. single. day. Just dump all the clothes out and also get changed fifty million times? So everything would be strewn about and half inside out and I never knew what was dirty and what was clean. It was incredibly frustrating and I didn’t want to relive it but I figured it was time to move the dresser. So far it hasn’t been that bad; Gwen’s been pulling clothes out but hasn’t emptied any drawers yet. Her favourite things to grab seem to be socks, hats and mitts, pajamas, sweaters and jeans. Like she’ll take out all five sweaters that are in her drawer right now and leave all the dozens of t-shirts and tank tops alone (THANK GOD). She does enjoy un-pairing her socks though, which isn’t that great.

I still need to do a little ~decorating~ in there to make it look nicer- although idk what the point of doing that will be as Gwen will just dismantle anything I put up. She and her little friend actually tore two of her bookshelves out of the wall a few weeks ago so I need to repair the holes and replace the shelves with something a little more toddler-proof. I took down the tree bookcase I used to have in the living room because all the daycare books were torn to shreds and took at apart but I still have part of it so I might put that in her room and move her old shelves to my office I guess? I’ll figure out something to do with them.

Halloween was such a huge success! I was worried it would rain and that Gwen would hate trick-or-treating, but really it went off without a hitch. I mean, it did rain earlier in the day, including the hour I spent outside putting up decorations (of course), but it stopped before 3 so it was fine for trick-or-treating. As for Gwen, she got right into the Halloween spirit. Normally she’s so shy she won’t even take a toy from her grandmother but she did great, stomping up all the neighbor’s stairs in her boots and her wolf suit and filling her little bag with candy. She was so cute! We took her out pretty early and left Sym in charge of handing out candy, then once we got back I stayed outside and took candy duty.

The only thing that was a little disappointing was I feel like a lot of kids skipped my place? Like I know it’s at the back of the house and kind of hard to find but I had so many decorations up, I would have thought it was pretty obvious. After a while I moved up from my landing onto the path in the backyard, and then I moved further up the path closer to my neighbor who was also giving out candy. I think part of the problem was a lot of my other neighbors put up decorations and then didn’t give out candy (why? WHY.) and some of the neighbors who did give out candy ran out early and so people thought there was no one else. next year I think I’ll set up shop at the front of the house instead, or maybe make some spoOoOoOoky signs directing people to the backyard?

Other than Halloween, here’s what was going on this past week. It was totally a crazy rollercoaster, so many great things happened and also some lame things. Here’s a +/- of the week:

– smashed my hand with a mallet while making Gwen’s Halloween costume
+ her costume turned out great and she loves it
+ I tweeted it wolfpupy on twitter, who proclaimed it “very cool”
+ an honest-to-goodness real famous actress bought a banner from my shop
+ I semi-unexpectedly got a cheque for a pretty alright amount of money that I can spend on whatever I waaaaaaant
– got the orthodontist’s verdict re: Sym’s teeth and it’s NOT GREAT, BOB:

Remember when I said they were trying to decide whether braces or implants would be the better course of action? Turns out the answer is BOTH. Braces AND implants. The extra space in her mouth left by her missing teeth (which are on the bottom, not the top as I previously thought) has caused her teeth to shuffle around on their own and have a lil tooth party, so she needs braces to shift them back to where they should be and open up the gaps properly so that she can get implants once she stops growing. She’s getting the braces in about a month, they’ll take about a year and a half to reposition her teeth, and then she has to wear a retainer until she stops growing and can get the implants when she’s like 18 or 19.

After the appointment where she learned all this fun stuff she was feeling pretty upset so I let her skip the rest of the day of school (it was already almost lunchtime anyway) so she could chill out at home and watch the Pretty Little Liars Halloween Special. I think she is worried about getting braces and also feels guilty about the money. Her dad has actually said that he’ll pay for them himself since I cut him a huge break two years ago by saying he didn’t have to pay child support anymore, but what I want to know is WHY DON’T EITHER OF THE DENTAL PLANS SHE’S COVERED UNDER COVER ORTHODONTICS???? Total BS.

A friend of mine of facebook linked to an article a few days ago about how there isn’t really Halloween music the way there is Christmas music. To that I say whateverrrrrrrrrrr, anyone who can’t find enough spoopy creppy songs to make a Halloween playlist isn’t trying hard enough. Mine is 4 1/2 hours long, the same as my Christmas playlist, and unlike the Christmas one, the Halloween playlist isn’t just 4 1/2 hours of different artists all doing the same songs!

Making a Halloween playlist is easy, you just need to find all the songs you can about dead people, ghosts, creeps and monsters. Here are a few to get you started…

I just added this to my playlist this week. I think that’s the key to making a good one, keep adding to it every time you find a creepy song.

I always forget about this song and it cracks me up every time it comes on. “He’s burned up like a weenie and his name is Fred!” The late 80s were a magical time in hiphop, truly.

This is an oldie but a creepy for sure. There’s also a version by The Meteors that might be even creepier.

A MODERN DAY CLASSIC.

I mean, this song is even CALLED Halloween, how are you gonna argue that there are’t any Halloween songs when this exists?

OF COURSE LIKE COME ONNNNNNNN

And of course who could forget:

What are your favourite Halloween songs?

Overalls Timeline

October 20th: I order an adorable pair of overalls (or “dungarees with pocket,” whatever that means) for Gwen from Zara
October 27th: the overalls arrive, they are so cute I immediately wash them so I can dress Gwen in them the next day
October 28th, 8:30am: I dress Gwen in the overalls
October 28th, 8:31am: Gwen figures out how to unbutton the straps of the overalls
October 28th, 8:32am-8:44am: Gwen repeatedly unbuttons then asks me to rebutton the straps
October 28th, 8:45am: Gwen takes the overalls completely off
October 28th, 8:46am-8:59am: Gwen repeatedly takes the overalls off and asks me to put them back on her
October 28th, 9:00am: the buttonholes are now so stretched out the buttons won’t stay buttoned anymore
October 28th, 10:00am: I give up on the buttons and sew the straps to the front of the bib

Wolf Baby

Yesterday I finished making Gwen’s Halloween costume (the pic above was taken before I added the tail). After making the hood I kind of thought I might just put her in that with some grey sweats rather than making a whole furry outfit but in the end Taylor and Sym convinced me that I should just do it already. I’m glad I did, because Gwen looks adorable and she loves the suit; she wants to wear it constantly (she’s actually wearing it as I type this). I’m still considering making a pair of paw mittens with little claws but I might be sick of working with faux fur. No matter how carefully I slide the scissors along the backing to cut only it I still end up with a face full of loose fur fibres.

I used the pattern my mom helped me make, which was very simple: one piece for the body & two pieces for the sleeves. I made it even simpler by eschewing the zipper up the front and fastening it with snaps instead. Less sewing = less time, although I did smack my hand with a mallet while setting the snaps. Now I have a massive bruise with a weird blood blister in the middle of it. When I did it I was reminded of a scene in the second book in one of my fave dystopic future YA series, where one character plans to use a programable and very precise machine press to smash a tracking bracelet off his wrist (put there by the totalitarian government of course) and his friend warns him that if he miscalculates, the force of the press won’t just crush his hand, it’ll send a shockwave up his arm that will liquefact his bones. My actual first thought after hitting my hand was OH NO I’VE LIQUEFACTED MY BONES. Seriously, it really hurt.

Anyway, here is my favourite wolf-themed song for you to listen to this morning.

Someone needs a bang trim. New hat from the Gap.






It’s really an amazing time for mosses, lichens and fungi rn.


Fallen maple leaves make perfect Georgie camouflage.

This tree was amazing, all mossy with ferns and tiny mushrooms growing up the branches. It was like a tiny magical fairyland ecosystem. I wish I could have gotten a better pic but alas, I’m not fifteen feet tall.


About a month ago I painted my nails with OPI’s St Peterburgundy and lamented that it wasn’t nearly as dark a red as I wanted. On the weekend I picked up Essie’s Wicked and this is it, EXACTLY the dark dark dark red I’d been looking for. I also got a deep navy blue from Quo by Orly called True Blue (on super clearance) that is also a perfect dark dark dark colour for fall, but I painted it on my toes and I’m not posting a pic of those because creeps.





I found these two branches that were completely hollowed out with the bark intact. I dried them in the oven for a couple hours on the lowest temperature and used them in my autumn vignette (below).





She had several total meltdowns on this walk, mostly because I wouldn’t let her just walk out into the street. SORRY I CARE ABOUT YOUR SAFETY, GWEN.

Back to Reality

After my impromptu 3-day weekend spent shopping, wandering around photographing mushrooms, setting up vignettes around the house, and lounging on the couch/bed/bath reading Blue Lily, Lily Blue I have to get back to my real life, and in my real life I need to make and ship about ten mini banners this week PLUS a pair of baby shoes PLUS Gwen’s Halloween costume, which I still haven’t made any progress on past the hood, oops. Time to hunker down and get to work.

All About the Teeth

Back in 2001 when I was pregnant with Symphony I had two wishes for my unborn baby: that she have her dad’s blue eyes and my teeth. Lol what a weird thing to wish for but dental work isn’t cheap and her dad has had a lot of tooth probs and my teeth are pretty great; they are very straight (a dentist once asked me if I’d had braces as a child which is a pretty good compliment I think) with strong enamel.

In the end she got my green eyes and tbh idek who’s teeth she has. She’s had a couple baby teeth that got wiggly but never came out on their own and need to be extracted (one was just last week) and she’s actually missing a couple of her adult teeth, like they just don’t exist. I think it’s her bicuspids that are missing, one on either side on the top? I forget.

At first the dentist hoped that with no adult teeth to break down the root of the baby teeth in those spots, the baby teeth could just stay, but unfortunately that didn’t happen. Now there are two options: wait until she is older and get implants in the empty spaces, or use braces to pull her other teeth forward to fill the gaps (they are small spaces, remember, they just had baby teeth in them). Last week her dad took her to see the orthodontist, but the problem is too weird I guess so they were referred to another orthodontist that she’s gonna be seeing later this week. Hopefully this orthodontist will be able to tell us which option (implants or braces) will work best for Sym’s teeth, so we can start crying about the money lol.

PS My wishes for Gwen: Taylor’s blue eyes, my skin and MY TEETH GODDAMMIT.

A blog reader made me this earwarmer/headband but it is a little small on my giant head/voluminous hair. It is great on Gwen though!



I had this hat in my etsy faves for literally years before buying it last fall, only to find out I hated it. I guess it was just my stupid short hair that was the problem though because this year I love it.

Semi-Unexpected Long Weekend

I ended up not having to work on Friday so it’s a long weekend for me. I would have liked to have slept in but Gwen had other ideas at 6am, so it really seemed like a long long long day (which would make this a long long long long weekend?). Gwen and I accompanied Taylor to Yaletown for his hair appointment and went to the playground to wait for him. We’ve taken Gwen to this playground before and she’s always hated it but after some time spent sitting on the bench with me she actually got up and played. Amazing! We got home so late that Gwen basically skipped her nap (oops) although she did sleep a little in her stroller. In lieu of sleep I took her shopping, which was a little too successful. Sometimes I wonder how much less money I’d spend if I didn’t live three blocks from the shopping district but then I remember the internet exists so probably I’d spend more once you factor in shipping costs (or the act of adding stuff to your cart until you pass the threshold for free shipping).

Ouch My Hubris

In what can only be described as a remarkable feat of hubris, I posited the other day that it might be a dry fall. Of course that meant on Thursday when I had to walk down and up the hill three times*, every time it was in pouring rain. I had the raincoat and pants situation sorted out but no rainboots, so on Friday I finally bit the bullet and got myself a pair of Hunters. YES YES I KNOW THEY ARE TOO EXPENSIVE TOO TRENDY THE HYPE BLAH BLAH BLAH but listen: over the past five years I’ve probably spent three to four hundred dollars on random rainboots that barely lasted a season, so REALLY it makes more sense to just buy the good boots in the first place. I polled my friends to make sure they really are worth it and everyone I spoke to agreed they were. I also went through this with raincoats, spending tons of money on jackets that were not even close to waterproof enough before I eventually splurged on my beloved Patagonia Torrentshell, which is still going strong three years later (such a wise investment!).

I’m Never Gonna Roast a Chicken

On Friday when I was out walking around it was SO COLD I started having a weird and inexplicable hankering for roast chicken. I was like “what a perfect thing to cook at this time of year, when I’ve just been running around buying rainboots and more wool socks and 2-for-$20 henleys! Much cozy, so comfort food, wowe!” Nevermind the fact that I’d never roasted a whole chicken before, like how hard can it really be, right?

Well it wasn’t hard but it was a LITERAL NIGHTMARE. One thing I was worried about was that problem I have where all the work that goes into preparing food, especially meat, grosses me out SO MUCH that I can’t eat it. That did happen but even worse than that, the chicken juices went crazy in the oven and spattered onto the element, causing the whole house to fill with smoke. This caused 4/5 of the smoke detectors to go off. I think it took about a half hour to fully air out every room and get them all to stop blaring. Because of this I had to take the chicken out of the oven like 5 minutes early so I was freaked out I was going to food poison us all. I didn’t, but I DID learn that no one in this house knows how to carve a bird. It was like a comedy of errors trying to get the stupid thing apart!

It was definitely more hassle than it was worth and I think it’s actually cheaper to just buy the cooked whole chickens from the deli, so yeah. NEVER AGAIN.

* Usually I just have to go down and up the hill twice a day but I made a special mid-day trip to the high school to drop off some forms Sym forgot. I hadn’t been in a high school in SO LONG, it was weird. Almost as weird as the fact that my kid is in high school tbh.

Aside: I’ve started using my tumblr more again, if you want to follow me you can find it here or just click the lil icon over there on the right ➼ ➼ ➼

The Evolution of the Boop Beep

A couple weeks ago I was out walking with Gwen in her stroller. We we crossing the street and a woman who crossed ahead of me stopped dead on the sidewalk, preventing me from pushing the stroller up the sloped part of the curb (aside: what are those parts of the sidewalk called? Curb slopes? Gutter ramps? idk but LISTEN PEOPLE you should give curb slope priority to the elderly, people with disabilities, people with baby strollers, and others who lack the ability to just step up onto the curb). I was stuck in the street so I said to her, very clearly, “boop beep.”

BOOP.

BEEP.

Obviously, I spend too much time with children. People who spend time with adults say “excuse me,” they don’t say boop beep. Why do I even say boop beep? I’m guessing I must have started by saying beep beep to kids when they were in my way, like a car. Car noises! Beeps! Kids love those things. At some point beep beep turned into boop beep; I don’t know why. Sometimes it’s a little song instead: BEE-bah-boo-BEEEEEEP. Thank god I didn’t say that to a stranger. That would be too much.

I Finally Understand

When we were packing up to go to the Island for Thanksgiving Taylor hit a snag when he discovered he no longer owns a duffle bag. He used to own one, it was hideous and he never used it so I may have encouraged him to get rid of it during a storage room purging session. Whatever the case, he’s now duffle-less, so he hinted that maybe a new duffle bag would be a cool thing to get him for Christmas. Since then I’ve been paying more attention to any cool duffle bags I’ve seen online (they pop up on my tumblr dashboard a lot because I’ve slowly been replacing every tumblr I used to follow with tumblrs that just post pictures of nature and artisanal foods and whimsical people who apparently use a lot of duffle bags). Last week a saw one I thought was great, so I made a mental note of the site it was from and of course I immediately forgot where it was from. A couple days later I spent too long wracking my brain trying to remember and I thought to myself “WHY DIDN’T YOU PIN THAT DUFFLE BAG YOU FOOL” and in that instant I finally understood the point of Pinterest. Happy ending: That cool duffle bag popped up on my tumblr dash again and I promptly pinned it to my brand new duffle bag pinboard, which is the only thing on my new Pinterest account.

Not a Baby, Not Yet Possessing the Ability to Form Words

Gwen is turning two in a couple weeks. In some ways she seems so much younger than that and in others, much older. She’s so tall, her size and her long hair have always made her seem less babyish than her true age, but now her speech delay makes her seem like she’s still a baby. I sometimes forget that she can understand perfectly what we are saying to her, can follow complicated directions and do so many things for herself now. It’s like a weird kind of cognitive dissonance; I see her speaking only in babbles and simple sounds and my brain thinks she is a baby when really, she’s not. I’m still waiting to hear from the community health office when her appointment with the speech therapist is going to be, which makes me SO GLAD I took her to the doctor and started this process in August instead of waiting until her second birthday.

In order to stop her from climbing on my desk and destroying my computer I have to keep the chair tied to the desk with a bungee cord. Yesterday I couldn’t find the bungee cord and I said “UGH WHERE IS THAT DUMB THING” aloud to myself. Gwen immediately ran over to the little play kitchen and retrieved the cord from the cupboard she’d hidden it in. I didn’t ask her to find it, I didn’t mention it by name, but by my actions she knew exactly what I was looking for and remembered where she’d put it. I bought her these cute new shoes with little fox faces on them and when I asked her to “go get your new shoes” she knew exactly which shoes I was talking about. Not her old shoes, not any of her boots, her new shoes.

She is starting to use more sounds on a regular basis but still no actual words. She rarely gets frustrated by her inability to communicate. If she wants something she’ll reach for it and say “la” (she used to say “ma” for this but now it’s la, idk why), if it’s in another room she’ll take our hands and lead us to it. If she hands us something like food or a book and shakes her head it means she doesn’t want us to give it back, she wants us to eat it or read it (whichever is more appropriate, decided on a case by case basis). If she walks up to me pulling the sides of she shirt/jacket/cardigan forward and saying “buh” I know she wants me to do up the buttons. If she is pulling on the back of her shirt/jacket/sweater I know she wants help getting the hood on, although since not every clothing item in the entire world has a hood this is sometimes not possible, which makes her angrier than not being able to communicate more effectively.

I decided a while back that I wanted to dress Gwen as a wolf for Halloween, so when we went to my mom’s at Thanksgiving I asked her to help me make a pattern for a wolf costume like the bear and rabbit ones she made for us as kids. I’d actually hoped she’d just make the whole thing for me buuuuuuuut no luck, I have to do it myself. After a week and a half of procrastination I finally got around to starting it last night, and in my typical fashion I decided to redo the pattern. Instead of a one piece hooded suit I decided to make the hood a separate piece (so that if I don’t have time to finish the whole suit I can still just put the hood on Gwen with some grey sweats & a quick tail and still have a lil wolf puppy).

You’re probably thinking WOW TANIE HALLOWEEN IS IN A WEEK AND A HALF THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO START SEWING COSTUMES but this hood is super simple and if you have basic skills with a sewing machine you can whip it up in about ten minutes. If you don’t have basic sewing machine skills or maybe you have a weird fear of your sewing machine (cough*me*cough) it’ll take a couple of hours to sew by hand while watching Gilmore Girls (YOU KNOW YOU’RE WATCHING IT, WE’RE ALL WATCHING IT). Faux fur is very forgiving so if your hood turns out a little wonky it’ll still look great. I didn’t bother taking pictures of the sewing process because I had no idea if it was going to turn out or not, but I’ve tried to make the instructions as simple and clear as possible. If you need help please feel free to contact me.

The pattern is for the hood & ears only but I’ve included some quick sketches of different types of tails. The hood is a simple 3-piece pattern (two of the pieces need assembly, see below) with two 2-piece ears. The pattern is sized for Gwen, who is a larger-than-average two year old. For smaller children scale the pattern down in size, for larger children scale up. If your child has a very large head you might need to cut a larger face opening; it fits Gwen perfectly but the face hole is too small her lil friend who is about the same age/size but has a bigger head I guess, or maybe just a bigger face.

Supplies & equipment:

• pattern
• printer & printer paper
• approx. 1/2 meter of faux fur (enough to make the hood and a tail of your own design)
• scissors
• fabric pen
• sewing machine OR needle & thread

Fur colour suggestions:
• wolf: any shade of grey/black/white
• bear/polar bear: brown/white
• tiger: orange & black stripes
• fox: orange & white for the tip of the tail
• cat: literally any colour
• lion: longer brown fur for the hood, shorter tan fur for the ears
• skunk: black for the head sides & ears, white for the head gusset

1. Download and print out the pattern. Cut out the 2 halves of the head gusset and 2 halves of the head side pieces and tape together at the dotted lines. Cut out the ear of your choosing.

2. Trace the pattern pieces onto the back of the faux fur, remembering to check the direction of the nap. You want it to run top-to-bottom on the head sides, front-to-back on the head gusset (top of the head) and bottom-to-top on the ears. If you make a tail the nap should run top-to-tail tip. You need one head gusset, two head sides (1 left and 1 right) and four ears (2 left and 2 right). Cut out all the pieces, including a slit in the top of each head side where the ears will go. When cutting faux fur you want to slide the scissors under the fur and cut just the backing otherwise you will be breathing in faux fur wisps forever.
PLEASE NOTE: the lines on this pattern are SEWING LINES not cutting lines. Please leave a 1cm seam allowance around the traced lines.

3. Pin together 1 left and 1 right ear piece, right (fur) sides together, matching the letters (A:A, B:B). Sew around the top of the ear from A to B, leaving the bottom open. Repeat with the second ear, then turn both ears right side out.

4. Pin one of the ears into the slit in one of the head sides, matching the letters (A:A, B:B). Insert the ear into the head side slit, right sides together, with the cut edge of the slit matching up with the open bottom of the ear. Sew across the slit and the bottom of the ear from A to B; repeat with the second ear and second head side.

5. Right sides facing, pin together the head gusset and sides, matching the letters (C:C x2, D:D x2, E:E, F:F). Sew each side of the head to the gusset from C to D, then sew the front of the sides together from E to F, leaving the face opening (between letters C and E) open.

6. Fold the edges of the face opening back 1cm and hem. Fold the bottom edge of the hood back 1cm and hem (optional; I didn’t bother hemming the bottom of Gwen’s hood and it’s fine). Turn the hood right side out and use a soft brush to gently loosen any fur that is caught in the seams.

Not too matchy but a little matchy.

Socks & Boots

Saturday was the last West End Farmer’s Market of the year but all we got was breakfast from Pig on the Street before heading out to run errands. Taylor needed a new pair of boots as his not-even-that-old Doc Martens were literally disintegrating off his feet. I have to say the quality of Docs is atrocious now. I used to have a pair when I was like 18 or 19 that I got secondhand in great condition that I wore for years before giving away to a friend, still in decent shape.

I was on a search for some boot socks for Gwen. Her rainboots are a little big and tend to slip off too easily when worn with just her regular socks so I needed something thicker. I wanted the classic wool socks look (because I am an ass) and I was able to find exactly what I wanted at Roots. I also got her an A M A Z I N G hat? hood? cowl? that I will debut at a later date.

I took A LOT of pictures of the lagoon.






When I was going through my pictures I was like “why did I take this there’s nothing here-oh!”



Cute but scary and also sad because it’s obvious people have been feeding them.








This tree had ferns growing up almost every branch.



Blue sky to the south…

… grey sky to the north.

The Kuffle Kerfuffle

Sunday was sort-of sunny so I really wanted to go down to the park for what might be one of the last non-rainy days of the year (although it’s been pretty dry all year so who knows). On the way we stopped at Breka for muffins and kuffles. The kuffles were for Gwen and she was a big fan; every time we took her out of the stroller we had to brush massive quantities of kuffle crumbs off all of us.

I had hoped to actually walk in the woods with Gwen but she is a toddler with her own mind and she had different ideas, like pushing the stroller into the trees and running full-tilt in the opposite direction to where we were going. After a while we bribed her with another kuffle to get back in the stroller because otherwise we’d probably still be there.