I got a little tired of my super-tacky pink layout so I threw this colour refresh & header together quickly yesterday afternoon. Green is my favorite colour, so I thought this would be nicer and more soothing (no more flashing rainbow header).
Kicking butt at Dance Central on Friday night. Her friend Ali was here as well and they had so much fun! I also had fun, too much in fact, and my legs and bottom were super sore all weekend.
At her swimming lesson on Sunday. Normally her dad takes her, but he had a fight on Saturday night so it was up to me. He put her in group lessons, but no one else signed up for this class so she gets private lessons for the price of group! Total score! There were two other classes going on at the same time, with four and five kids in them, and a couple of times the parents almost talked to me, then saw me watching Sym in her “private” lesson. Then they’d give me dirty looks and move away! WOW.
I’m not going to apologize for the mess visible in this picture.
Last year I made this simple half-table for my family to eat at- with the child care Mammut in the actual dining area we didn’t have room for a REAL table, so this is what I came up with. It isn’t perfect, but it worked. I’m pretty much over it though, and I want to take it down, put my beloved Aurora ghost chairs into storage until the day I have a REAL dining room, and use the kitchen Island as an eating area in the meantime.
Eating at the kitchen island means getting some stools, and you’d be surprised how difficult it’s been to find some that meet all our requirements: Taylor wants something with a back & a footrest, and I want something that isn’t ugly. After searching the internet I finally found these “Delta” counter stools on the Crate & Barrel website.
Unfortunately, there are no Crate & Barrel stores in my part of Canada, and I’m loathe to pay whatever the INSANE shipping would be for these. So now I’m searching for something similar here, although Taylor suggested celebrating my birthday with a trip to Seattle (where I could buy these in the sore), but I’m not sure that would be fiscally responsible.
Anna and the French Kiss; Dreadnought; The Serpent Garden
a full list of all this year’s books can always be found here
Starting the day right: The Serpent Garden on my kindle, English muffin with strawberry & champagne preserves and a caramel americano.
This week has been really terrible, but you know what? IT’S ALMOST OVER.
I’ve been trying to stay posi, but with everything that’s going on it’s been really difficult. Last night, however, I talked to one of my current clients about everything, and her encouragement and support really cheered me up. I know she reads this, so THANK YOU 🙂 It really means a lot to me to know that not everyone I work with is thinking (and saying) terrible things about me.
This weekend I want to not think about work at all, and just focus on my family. Sym’s dad has a fight on Saturday, so she’ll be home all weekend, and the weather is supposed to continue sucking so I don’t really want to go out and do stuff. Instead I think we’ll do arts & crafts, watch movies and of course, our new Friday Family Fun Night tradition of Dance Central. We played this on NYE and again last friday evening, and it’s basically the best fun ever. If you have any sort of game system that has a dance game available, go buy it right now! Trust me, it is not a decision you will regret 🙂
Last night Symphony made these Harry Potter felt “Flatties” for her friend Stasi. Although I helped a little by cutting them out and spraying them with clear coat to stop the ink from smudging, she designed, drew and coloured them herself. She used the same basic body shape (modified from a gingerbread man cookie cutter) for them and paid careful attention to detail- I had to look up all the character’s eye colours and she took care to make sure everyone’s tie matched their house.
I haven’t been posting because I’ve been dealing with some work stuff that is just like, a total nightmare, I don’t really want to get into it but it’s making me very depressed. Suffice it to say that I just want to scrap this whole daycare thing and focus on going to the gym and painting unicorn pictures more than I ever before in my entire child care career. Also bumming me out:
Some stuff that doesn’t suck:
I have these little floor mats in my foyer that I cut into cloud shapes, but they were getting really old and in some places the cloud curves were curling up from a combination of use and being chewed by certain small dogs. I’d tried to flatten them back out by ironing them but that just made a hideous reek, so I was looking at buying all new mats. LAME. Then the other night I remembered I had a bunch of circles cut from another floor mat for a project I’d planned but never actually finished, and they were the same size as the curves on the cloud mats. I cut out the damaged sections and taped the new pieces in place and voilà!
The new pieces are a lighter grey and I didn’t want to try to line up the grooves so I put them perpendicular to the originals, but I think they look pretty good!
Georgie never sucks, even though this morning she puked up a bunch of chewed floor mat pieces all over my leggings.
Symphony and the giant gummi bear she got from the Christmas Elf’s second visit DEFINITELY don’t suck (This picture is from Saturday).
When we were at Ikea last weekend, Taylor and I picked up some dark purple Fagrik bowls which, with the red Waechtersbach mugs we bought in November, finished my sweet ~rainbow of dishes~
For some reason I thought it’d be a good idea to take this picture at night when it’s all dark in here, and now a bunch of dishes are dirty and I don’t feel like washing them to take a new, daytime picture. Deal with it.
HOORAY. I also have more rainbow steak knives– they were one of many awesome Christmas gifts from Taylor’s sister Jaime and her boyfriend Shawn.
Pro tip: If you want to give people lots of ideas for what to buy you, start a blog in which you just talk about the weird stuff you’re obsessed with.
Remember how on NYE we had this enormous feast of way too much food? Well, there was stuff leftover. Lots of stuff. But not like, old gross cooked food (well there was, but I forgot* to refrigerate it and it all got trashed), just stuff we didn’t even make. I threw some of it together for last night’s back-of-the-fridge&freezer-delight dinner.
frozen popcorn chicken (really more like mini-nuggets? idek, but it seemed like something Sym would eat) + sweet & sour dipping sauce (I know it’s DIPPING sauce but stirring food into sauce is the same as dipping, right? RIGHT.) + a partial red pepper + a jar of pineapple
While the chicken was in the oven, I threw the red pepper & pineapple in a pan with some olive oil, pepper and garlic.
Then I mixed in the chicken & sauce and served it over rice. This actually turned out better than I thought it would- I was worried the sauce would be too sticky and I didn’t have any onion- but tbh the weakest part was the pineapple. Fresh would have been better than jarred, but who has the time to chop up fresh pineapple these days? WHO HAS THE TIME?
*was drunk
Why no, I haven’t finished posting about Christmas yet! I wanted to share a couple of gifts, but not in like, a big braggy list, because the internet finds that gross. I mean, I got a lot of gifts, and they were awesome, but what I appreciate most is the thought that went into the things people gave me. I feel extremely lucky this year, and I’m so grateful for all the gifts my family and I received.
Taylor wanted to get me the Joanna Rutter fox & forest earrings I’d asked for, but they were unfortunately sold, so instead he got me a sweet little fox cub necklace, which, as it turned out, I’d posted on my tumblr way back in September. You can see it in the picture above, next to my star necklace (which was also from Taylor from a few years back). Also pictured is the wool shirt from Club Monaco I got for Taylor, because I’m wearing it. It’s itchy and warm and I love it, and I hope he loves it too.
Although she also got a DSi from us, my favorite gift for Sym was the four Outer Senshi felt dolls I made, to go with the Sailor Moon dolls from last year (she says I still need to make Tuxedo Kamen). Making these ones was a lot easier than last year- I already had the techniques worked out and the patterns and faces (I embroider the features onto a separate face piece and then sew it to the doll’s head) made. I saved all the patterns and I can use them to make other dolls (like the Felt Family I made for Sym’s birthday) in the same scale so they can be played with together.
I’m also very grateful and appreciative of this little fuzzy wumkins, she really is the most delightful dog 🙂
