Shirt and tie

This Christmas, my sister asked us specifically to avoid buying toys for her two sons. They were overflowing with toys (I stayed in their guest bedroom, which resembled much more of a Toys R Us warehouse than a bedroom.)

I stumbled upon this tie tee-shirt on omi creates and decided it was the perfect blend of "crafty" without overcommitting myself to a homemade Christmas present that may not ever get completed...



I bought some basic long sleeve (Ottawa in the winter is coooold!) t-shirts from Old Navy and machine appliquéd a tie directly on the front of two shirts: one for my 2-year old nephew, Max, and one for a my 6-month old nephew, Ryker.  I also decided to make some bow-tie shirts with a little pleat in the bow.

Without the monkey-suit-feel of a tux, Max was able to add a little pizazz to his outfit!

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Christmas Reindeer Pops

Just a quick post to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and to share about these fabulous reindeer pops that my friend Magda made. Aren't they adorable?

The head is made with an Oreo truffle, which is just a simple blend of Oreos and cream cheese.

Hope you all have a wonderful Christmas filled with love and chocolate!

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Fabric ornaments

December is always filled with mixed emotions of exciting holiday celebration and oh-my-goodness-I'm-too-busy!

I love the idea of making Christmas gifts. After I took the snap coin purse class, I had originally thought to make a few as gifts for friends. Unfortunately, the workroom ran out of purse frames... So I went on a hunt for another easy Christmas project.

Vanessa Christenson posted a great tutorial on her blog for fabric ornaments and I was sold. I picked four different print fabrics and decided to mix it up with some Kona solids.


The project is super easy. I got really good at sewing curves on the machine, and eventually got used to the hot glue gun and stopped burning myself...

Some lucky friends and family will be getting a fabric ornament for Christmas depending on how many I manage to make! I just dropped off my first batch at the workroom for the awesome pretty ladies that work there! In exchange, I stuffed my face with baked brie at this month's Stitch and Bitch. I think it was fair tradeoff!

There are less than two weeks left until Christmas and I've still got a couple projects to finish! Hope you're all having a great December, whether you're rushing to get some crafty projects done or braving the shopping malls!

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Cake pops and eclairs

I hope everyone enjoyed the May long weekend, sunshine-rain-thunder-lightning and all!

Before the start of the weekend, my coworker, Jelena, baked the most delicious goodies for the office as it was her last day with the department. She spent her Thursday night baking up a storm, and I canNOT believe how amazing the hazelnut eclairs were. That's right: HAZELNUT eclairs. If I manage to get her mom's recipe, I'll share. Maybe.

Saturday was spent in Hamilton with the usual group of friends plus 4 babies and 3 dogs.

A couple changes this year: instead of an entire cottage weekend, an afternoon bbq. Instead of the usual gloomy, damp weather, gorgeous sunshine with just the right amount of cloud cover.

Things that stayed the same: great company, and a spectacular Frisbeer Tournament.

Our version of frisbeer involves a frisbee, some beer cups on sticks, and a drink in hand. Our friend, Katie, designs amazing cake pops. She crafted some beer cups on sticks just for the event. Super cute and super delicious.

Thank you long weekend! May you come again soon!

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done well: now in a book!

Dustin totally won the "best Christmas present" award this year.

The judging system consists of up to 10 points for taste, 5 points for presentation, and 5 points for originality. Yes, this is the judging system used by Iron Chef.

My Christmas present to Dustin was a new wallet.

3 points for taste (100% leather plain black-brown non-designer wallet), 4 points for presentation (I wrapped it in a cute green and blue paper with a matching blue bow; bonus marks for double sided tape), 1 point for originality (I bought him a wallet 8 years ago; that wallet was falling apart, so I bought him another one).

Total: 8 points.

Dustin's present to me: MY BLOG IN A BOOK!

Let's break it down.

Taste: 9 points. He chose a hard cover 7"x7" cute, small size; it was printed on high quality paper by Blurb, and he kept the jacket cover simple.

Presentation: 1 point. It didn't arrive in the mail until after Christmas. Packaging was FedEX. 1 point for the easy-open-rip-tab.

Originality: 5 points. I was so surprised and soooo excited about this gift. I've mentioned in passing about backing up my blog in case something happened to blogger.com and perhaps to make it into a book. Super extra bonus marks for doing all the layout designs and personalized dedication on the jacket sleeve.

Total: 15 points. Destroyed me.

I love writing this blog. I wish I had more time to make my posts creative, but flipping through the book brought back so many great memories of adventurous and creative things that have happened in this short time.

Here are some pictures of how great the book turned out:

1. In Honour of my Grandma / My Grandma Initiative: the post that started it all. I had to wipe my tears when writing this post because I could no longer see what I was typing. I miss my grandma.

2. Tomato and Thyme Risotto: I got to write so many great things about my balcony garden and all the fruit and veggies that I made into delicious dishes!

3. Boy, am I ever beet! I went through quite the ordeal trying to find recipes for all those beets that came in our CSA box.

4. My Birdie Sling Factory: the Amy Butler Birdie Sling will always be one of my favourite things to sew.

5. Beautiful BC: my amazing trip to Garibaldi Park and the crazy hike up to the Black Tusk!

6. That's my girl: the back cover of the book was the original picture I used for my blog. My beautiful doggie (with a real knack for making you feel guilty leaving her alone at home).

Thanks so much to all of you for reading my blog! It's so motivating to hear from you through comments and emails. Here's to many more great memories and many more great blog books!

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Bah Hamburger

Happy New Year!!! I hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday season. My Christmas was filled with the usual too-much-delicious-food.

Most of our meals were the usual yummy Christmas foods: turkey, stuffing, roast beef, lobster... We were also spoiled with my parents' amazing home cooking. But this Christmas, the hamburger -- yes: hamburger -- made not one, but two appearances.

In Ottawa, we had lunch with my sister at The Works, a gourmet burger joint with a touch of workshop pizazz. Milkshakes are served in pyrex measuring cups; the salt and pepper shaker are incandescent lightbulbs. And the burgers are huge. Dustin ordered the Hamburger Mary (real mayo, fried egg, ripe red tomato, cheddar cheese & crisp bacon strips) and I ordered the Big Ben Plus (montreal smoked meat, sauerkraut, & swiss...a la Kravitz with mustard) but with a portobello mushroom instead of a beef patty. I ate maybe half of my burger.

In Toronto, we went for a nice dinner at Mildred's Temple Kitchen. From the name, you'd think it was a cozy little rustic restaurant, but it was quite the chic little lofty restaurant. I ordered a seared tuna with grilled eggplant on polenta. Dustin: the hamburger. Usually I would try a nibble or two of burger. This burger was so delicious I took 3 bites.





For dessert we ordered profiteroles. If you wanted to order a "mini dessert burger", the profiterole would be it. The puff pastry "bun" was light and crisp, the ice cream "patty" was sodarn tasty. It's been a good burger holiday. I don't think we'll be making a habit of it, but I just found out that Mildred's Temple Kitchen is participating in Winterlicious. And the burger is on the menu...

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Ornaments with sentiments

When I was 7 years old, my family moved to England for a year and half. I have amazing memories of my time there: a little foggy (both in clarity and weather), but great. (Funny fact: the town we lived in was called Crapstone. No joke. Here is where we lived.)

Every December, I remember our one Christmas spent there. We sat around the dining room table and cut out felt stockings and bells. We stuffed them with cotton balls and stitched them shut using a blanket stitch. The top of the stockings were further detailed with cotton, and the bells got a pretty little bow. Dustin has a similar story with popcorn garland.

The reason I remember this particular Christmas craft session in England is because we still have the ornaments. When I moved to Toronto, I inherited all the old Christmas ornaments, including the (very old) Christmas tree (with built-in tinsel!)

Every year when we put up the tree (and listen to 98 degrees Christmas album) we have a laugh at all the old Christmas ornaments, contemplate replacing them with nicer, newer ornaments and then decide that there are just too many memories to be replaced.

Here are some of my other favourites:

1. Ziggy (does anyone remember Ziggy?!)

2. Sequin Snowman/Clown (I think this looks more like a clown, but a Christmas clown just doesn't make sense, so it must actually be a snowman, non? but snowmen don't wear clothes or a party hat... thoughts?)

3. Indian Canoe Boy (who just chopped down his own tree and is bringing it home to decorate with homemade stockings and bells.)

We also went to my in-laws to decorate their Christmas tree. Quite a bit more sophisticated, with several really beautiful ornaments such as this hand-painted ornament from Budapest:

But every tree has its less beautiful ornaments that share an equal spot on the tree due to years of sentimental value. These are my two favourites:

1. Elf-headed Pine Cone

2. ...??... I dont even know how to describe this one. But I love putting him/her on the tree every year.

I dedicate this post to all the less-beautiful ornaments out there that still hang with pride next to the newer, dazzling ornaments. May they teach the New Ornaments a thing or two about fostering Christmas memories so that one day, when the new become old, they, too, will hang with pride and remind us of all the great memories during this wonderful time of year!

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The Party Dress Book

Over the past three years, we've attended 19 weddings. (Probably over 25 if you count the year before that, but my memory doesn't go that far.) What can I say? I love weddings, and if I can make it, I'm there!

The difficult part about attending so many weddings is figuring out my attire. It's an opportunity to get beautiful and buy a fancy new dress, but since it's completely illogical to buy a new dress for every occasion, I am faced with a complex riddle to figure out the minimum number of dresses I will allow myself to buy so that (almost) no one will see me wear a dress twice.

A woman's life is tough. Dustin just changes out his tie or his dress shirt. The permutations are almost endless.

For this year's office-Christmas-Gala, I promised myself that I would not buy another dress. Surely, I would figure something out with my wardrobe of dresses, right? No. But a promise is a promise. So instead of buying a new dress, I made one!!!

I didn't know I had it in me! (Which is why I had told very few people about this project in the likely event that I had to abandon ship...)

The secret to my success? Mary Adams' new book: The Party Dress Book, how to sew the best dress in the room. The book is incredible. It not only had full size patterns, detailed instructions on fitting, and tips and techniques, but the majority of the book was page after page of inspiration in colours, details, shapes, and fabric. There are sewing instructions for three types of dresses, but most of the dresses in the book are based on the same silhouette.

As I was pressed for time (and lack the skill to sew with silk) I opted to sew a cotton dress using a piecing technique with French seams.

One of the first images in this book is Mary's "Bo Peep" dress. The vertical piecing in the skirt was just so cute!

I chose some beautiful charcoal cotton fabric from the workroom and decided to "fancy up" the dress with some plum organza.

And without further ado, I unveil to you my plum party dress!

(And since none of Dustin's friends from U of T attended the Christmas Gala, I can wear this dress to our last wedding of the 2010 season on New Year's Eve! Hooray!)

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Autumn Leaves

From Out and About

Why do boys need to play "school-yard football" during thanksgiving? My friends in Ottawa call it the Turkey Bowl. Dustin's friends in Guelph call it the Fall Classic. I don't get it.

But it gave me the opportunity to go for a nice hike in Guelph with Mackenzie.

The day was gorgeous. Crisp autumn air, vibrant shades of red and orange leaves, and just enough sun to warrant my Michael Kors aviator sunglasses. Dustin lost his football game. But the day was gorgeous.

From Out and About

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Mad Pumpkin Carving Skills

From holiday

My deepest apologies for disappearing from the blogging world: I assure you, I've been mentally blogging my latest adventures. I just need the time to put it all down on paper -- er... blogger's server.

What better time than the virtual-one-extra-hour gifted to us by Mr. Daylight Savings?

Since it is Halloween, I will begin by sharing about our little pumpkin carving extravaganza. For the past few weeks, my housemate Angela has been dropping hints about getting pumpkins to carve for Halloween. I found it a little odd how excited she was about pumpkin carving... No, she is not 10.

Last weekend, she finally got her hands on 4 pumpkins and convinced us to get carvin'. You know those email forwards of crazy pumpkin carvings or those tv shows (perhaps only on food network) of professionals turning pumpkins into amazing works of art? My housemate can do that! She is secretly a professional pumpkin carver! She has mad pumpkin carving skills!

I'm almost embarrassed to show you what Dustin, Dan, and I came up with, but let's begin with Angela's work of art: Mike Wazowski.

From holiday

I have zero pumpkin carving skills and decided to make a pumpkin Pi.

From holiday

Dustin carved the Alfred Hitchcock silhouette.

From holiday

And Dan... he carved... this. (10 points for whoever knows what it is.)

From holiday

All in all, our pumpkins were a success. Too bad they were slightly mouldy by the time we displayed them at the front door tonight. Week-old pumpkins smell funny.

I'm crossing my fingers that I don't have to scrape them off the sidewalk because crazy kids thought it would be funny to bounce them like basketballs. I'm hoping Mike will keep the kids away: he's got his eye on them...

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