finger thumb

snow!

Look who was in the valley yesterday morning. One of the few perks of being up as early as I sometimes am, is seeing wildlife walking around like they own the place. So lovely. And its always exciting to see animals. Its one of those things that makes me feel like a kid, as though you are looking into a magical world and seeing something rare and special.  And it wasn't just the one. There were three deer in fact, but I could not get a shot with all three of them in the frame. Its incredible how well camouflaged they are, even in the pure white snow. I had to wait until they were done grazing and were on the move to get these pictures, because before this they seemed to know how to find just the right shadowy brush to stand in front of to almost be invisible. 

Anyhow, this was after a night of heavy snow. Finally. We had a not-very-white Christmas, though it was cold and snow-ish. Not tons of snow, but a light dusting, and cold enough to freeze the pond for skating. But you could still see the grass, so even though it was cold it felt like a green Christmas. But that greenness now seems like a distant memory. We've had two good snowfalls, and the world is transformed.      I love how much snow changes things. How the mundane suddenly seems fantastic. 

Once the Baby was down for his nap, and safely within earshot of Hubs, the Little Dude and I decided to go out in search of the deer. Or at least evidence of the deer. (He was hoping to see some poop, but I'd settle for tracks)

It was hard to get to where the deer had been, right in the middle of the bulrushes in the valley, as we decided to stay on the paths (some of us have much shorter legs). 

But we went over the bridge and around the back of the creek to see what we could find. 

And there were the tracks we were looking for! No poop though. Better luck next time. 

It wouldn't have mattered to me if we found no trace of the magical deer at all though, as everything out there was so crazy beautiful. 

The silhouettes, the outlines, the shadows, the light - it was all so lovely. 

And of course, its all even more wonderful when you have someone to share your wonder with. (And to help you shake snow off branches for impromptu snowfalls, of course.)

But Dude! It was COLD out there. I was ready to head in long before the Little Dude was though. He has snow-pants, and I do not. His cheeks were so rosy that I finally bribed him in the direction of the house again with the promise of cocoa and Christmas cookies and chocolate. He'd have stayed out longer to 'explore' if he had his way. But with the added incentive of a piece of his chocolate letter dancing in his head, we shuffled off for home again. I assure him there will be many more rosy-cheeked walks through the woods to come.

personalized memory game tutorial

I've wanted to share a tutorial with you here at the blog a number of times. I like making things and I like helping other people make things, so it seems like a great idea. But by the time I get around to blogging (after 9:30 in the evening usually) I'm so tired that I just want to ramble and tell a story instead of taking the time to put together a cohesive set of instructions. Also, making things comes very naturally to me, and often, as I sit down to write out a how-to, it all seems so obvious to me that I think it hardly even needs explaining. Or there are already good tutorials out there for a similar thing etc, etc. And I find lots of reasons NOT to do it. 

Anyhow, today I finally have what I think is a good project, some free day time hours, and a set of good pictures. And so I bring you a tutorial for a simple, personalized memory game. 

But first, more exposition. I got the idea to make this because a) memory was one of my favourite childhood games and b) as I was working on a colour based patchwork pattern last month, I realized just how subjective and faulty colour memory is. Have you ever gone to the fabric store, or paint store or clothing store looking for something in just the right shade of blue to match something else? You say to yourself "simple enough, I just need something in that bright sort of shade of cobalt blue." And you find just the right thing only to bring it home and find that it is not the right colour at all. It's much more purple than blue, and you are just amazed at how wrong you got it. Anyhow, I thought wouldn't it be interesting to make a memory game that was mostly just solid coulours? Wouldn't that be fun? And challenging?

But also, I realized that for most people, not obsessed with minimalism and exact colour recognition, it'd be kind of boring. So I decided to add another of my favouite twists, personalization with family photographs.  Since I decided to do this project over the Christmas holidays, I had the help of one of my lovely nieces in getting it done. She is the hand model for most of these shots. 

Ok, getting started, here's what you're going to need:

cutting mat

xacto knife

ruler

clear measuring square (they sell these in quilting shops)

glue stick

bone folder

a sheet of acid free matt board, white on one side, colour of your choice in the other

a corner rounding punch (I used the Marvy Luchida brand Corners Craft Punch, available at Michael's craft store)

a 2 1/8 square die cutter/craft punch (I used the Recollections brand one, also from Michael's)

and here's the fun part, you are going to need a whole lot of paint chips. Look for ones that are big enough to fit two of your square shapes into (we found the Martha Stewart paint chips worked really nicely, and plus she has gorgeous colours). So go to your local hardware store and pick out a bunch of nice colours. And best of all, they're free! (though do use your judgement when picking them out, and don't go over board and take too many/piss the hardware store people off. If its a mom and pop shop it'd be nice to ask first)

Also, you will need photos for the personalized family ones. We printed them out onto matte photo paper from our computer. I think matte would work best, but you could try glossy too, or have them printed at a store; let me know how that works out. What we did for fun, was we didn't use two of the exact same pictures, as you normally would with a memory game, but just chose two different pictures of the same person. This makes it a bit more fun and challenging. 

So first of all, use your square craft punch and punch out two squares from each paint chip. (We found that the craft punch did a nice job... until it quit working.) The gigantic craft punches are a bit problematic, and Hubs tells me its because the plastic housing they put the metal punch part in is not strong enough to hold it precisely in place. So we punched out about 40 or 50 squares and then it totally crapped out on us. (Luckily we had enough to work with and had kept the bill and were able to return the craft punch the next day. Which is good because those things are not cheap)

Then, using your healable cutting matt and your x-acto knife, cut your acid free matt board into squares that are 1/8 of an inch larger than your coloured squares. In this case my matt board square were 2 and 1/4. Its best to first cut it into strips, and then cut the strips into squares. You'll want a good ruler for this, and be sure to measure carefully.  Also at this point it'd be good to think about how many memory tiles you'd like to end up with. Its nicest if they can end up making a square when you lay them all out, so try 25 or 36 or 49 or 64 or something like that. Then, using your corner rounding punch, cut the corners off of your coloured paint chip squares, so they look like the green square in the picture below. 

Now comes the fun part.  Glue your paint chip squares onto your matt board squares. Apply a thin even coat of glue stick. Make sure there aren't any big lumps. 

Centre the paint chip square onto the white side of the matt board.

Using the rounded edge of the bone folder, smooth the paint chip square down, especially on the edges. (Though if you don't have a bone folder, you can just use your fingers, or even the bottom of a smooth glass) When you've got them stuck together, I like to place them under a heavy book to dry for a bit, just to keep them nice and flat. You can put a whole bunch under a book at a time. 

Look! How nice is that? 

Now make a whole bunch. Have fun with the colours. 

Next, make the personalized photo squares. Take your family pictures. Remember that you need two pictures of each family member, but that you don't have to make the pictures of each person the same. Unless you are making this game for a very young child, in which case it'd be a good idea to use identical images. 

Also note, that at this point in the process, my square die punch had stopped working, so I had to cut these by hand. You could cut all of the squares (picture and paint chip) by hand, if you like, or can't get a punch. Decide how you're going to crop your image. In this case I used one of the windows left by the square punch in the paint chip to decide where I was going to cut it. 

Using your clear measuring grid tool, and your x-acto knife, line it up and cut out the image. 

Here's your cut out image.

Using your corner rounding punch, cut off the corners. 

  Et voila! 

Now do a bunch of pairs. 

And again, you're ready to glue your photo squares onto matt board squares using the same method as you did for the paint chip squares.  And now the best part; mix up your squares and lay them out face down in a grid on the table, and you're ready to play memory. 

Bring on the fun. 

For myself, I made myself a super difficult, monochromatic version, made up entirely of grey squares. Its actually a really hard game, but I think is good exercise for my eyes and my brain. But really, the possibilities are endless with this idea. Think how nice it would look done with fancy patterned paper, like origami paper. It'd also be really cool if you used photocopies of vintage photos of images from old National Geographic Magazines. So go, make, have fun, and I'd love to see what you come up with, so if you blog this or post pictures in flickr feel free to post the link in the comments for all to see. 

Merry Christmas to me!

I did a little last minute, pre-Christmas thrift shopping that I have to show you, because I got a couple of really nice things. The V.V. was having a 50% off day for card members (yes, I have a Value Village Super Saver club card. Don't judge) but I told myself that I was only going to buy things that were awesome, not just fun, or cool. Things that I'd actually use, or were really special. Also, I was not even allowing myself to go into the book section. And I did three major edits of my cart, including leaving a few items behind at the cash, so I managed to reign myself in. I have to keep telling myself, we're going to have to move again someday, and put all this stuff into boxes and carry it downstairs and up stairs and put it all into a truck and then unpack it all, and it had better be worth it, right?

So, here are a few things that are worth it.

Adorable little girls vintage dress. Tags still on. Awesome. 

Probably from the 70's, so not that old, but still, it will look nice on my wall with all the other vintage little girls dresses. You know, when I get around to putting them up on the wall of my studio some day. 

A couple of men's shirts for cutting up and sewing with. The Baby needs a couple more droolers. Also, you should have seen how many shirts I had in my cart, but I narrowed it down to just these two because they are really iconic plaids, the epitome of men's plaid shirt-y-ness. In fact, I tried to talk Hubs into wearing them, but the black one was the wrong size and he was having none of the red one. "maybe as a costume" he says to me. Meh.

This is another little vintage kids item, though not as old as the dress probably. I just love the simple stripes, and the slimness of the cut. I have a similar little t-shirt that a friend got for me at a thrift shop when I was expecting the Little Dude. He wore it all the time, and the Baby wears it now, (he's wearing it in this post) and its one of my favourite clothing items for him. I just really like the fit on these slightly older things. They have to be from the 70's though, because kids clothes from the 80's (especially toddler and baby clothes) are really horrid and boxy in their fit, which I don't like the look of at all. I haven't tried this on L.D. yet, but when I do I'll be sure to take a picture and post it. 

But the best score of the day is what I'm calling my Christmas present to myself. Feast your eyes on this.  LOOK at that; a good sized quilt for our bed, at last! I've got such big plans for a quilt that, one day, I will make myself for our bed. But you know how it is, I've got several sketches, lots of swatches, and no foreseeable chunk of time in the near future when I will actually get around to making it. It'll probably be something I finally get around to for our twentieth anniversary or some such thing. But in the mean time, we really, really needed a proper quilt for our bed (we used to have a sweet little twin quilt laid sideways across the bed that did not fit it at all, but we were making do with just the same) and so, the universe sent me a quilt for Christmas.

I have to tell you, I almost left it behind on the rack because at first glance, all folded up, I wasn't that impressed. The colours were not unusual or inspiring and it did not look particularly vintage. But upon reflection, I decided to unfold it and look at the full item, and the simplicity of the traditional pattern, done up in simple solids it makes such a great visual impact that I decided it was coming home with me. 

What really got me of course is that it is hand stitched. A hand-quilted quilt (do you have any idea how time consuming that is?) and its on the rack at the V.V. for $12.99! Which made me sad for the person who made it, but then again, happy for me, because it was half price day, so I got a hand made quilt for $6.49. Ridiculous!

Although, I have to say that its not the most well made quilt I've ever seen. The binding is really weird and wonky, with no batting in it and seems to have been added as an afterthought, just kind of haphazardly whip-stitched in place. Very strange. But on the other hand, this means that since its not someone's masterpiece, I can just use it, and not be too precious about it; not worrying if the baby spits up all over it or if it gets worn a bit. Also, it withstood washing and drying very well (my Mom kindly took it home and washed it in her large capacity washer and dryer, so it did not get a wrung about as it would in my tiny little apartment sized washing machine. Thanks Mom!) Though I really should not be too critical of this quilt. The patchwork is an eight pointed star pattern made of diamonds, which is something I have yet to attempt. Working with diamonds is much harder than squares or triangles, as the sides of the diamonds, since cut on the bias, tend to stretch making piecing very difficult. Also, it was set on the diagonal in a Union Square set pattern, with an unpieced block alternating which is what gives it such a great negative/positive flow.

And look what else the unknown maker of this quilt did. There is no signature or date, but there is this one tiny little bit of embroidery. Which is find is very interesting in an otherwise very plain quilt. I imagine that this was her signature, which is really a very lovely idea. Perhaps there are other butterfly embellished quilts floating around out there, being rescued from thrift stores by other handwork loving sentimentalists.

And no matter what I put on top of the bed, look who takes every opportunity he can to crawl under it. Its so funny, whenever I put him down on the ground in the bedroom, he heads straight under the bed. And it is filthy under there; herds of dust rhinos gathering between the boxes of summer clothes and winter blankets. He always comes out looking like a baby swiffer. But he is always so pleased to be under there playing peek-a-boo that I don't have the heart to haul him out too soon. Plus, he pretty much does the dusting for me, so I can't complain. 

Christmas Eve morning

That is a really confusing blog title, but you know what I mean. 

We decided to do our presents with the boys a day early, so as not to get overloaded on Christmas day itself.   We put out Klompen (wooden shoes) instead of stockings this year. It was funny, these are not decorative Klompen, but the wooden shoes that we use on a day to day basis, so they are not Christmas-y at all, but kind of beat up (and not very clean), but we used them anyways. 

It was Baby's first Christmas, which was really fun. He was not as aware of what was going on as the Little Dude was (who was very excited) but he has fun ripping paper, and eating paper and generally crawling around and getting into stuff. 

He was really stoked about this little metal container of m&m's that was in L.D's wooden shoe. It made a terrific rattle. (incidently, L.D. has just discovered m&m's and was calling them m.m.m's. Very funny. That 'and' totally sounds like another 'm' if you've never heard of them before and can't read.)

This is L.D. showing Hubs where he 'wrote' his name on the gift for Daddy. That long blue squiggle says "Daaaaaaaaady". I presume there's lots of 'A's because of the length of the word.

And here's the Baby, yukkin' it up with some of his new toys (a set of 'safe' phthalate-free, PVD-free, BPA-free rubber duckies. From Boon, if you're wondering). It was a fun morning, and a lovely day with our little family, and now we are all ready to spend tomorrow, Christmas day proper with the rest of my extended family (parents and siblings and such). 

Hope you all have a lovely day, full of food and family and fun and don't forget to relax a bit too! Merry Christmas!

love is gross. in a good way.

As my neices and nephew used to say when they were little "Do you wanna see something gross?"
Yep, that's gross alright. Do you know what this is? If you said "A giant slimy hair plug from out of the bathtub drainage hole.", you'd only be partly right. Because really, what this is, is Love. Yes, Love. Pure and simple. Christmas love in fact. In the form of an early Christmas present wish fulfillment.

A couple of weeks ago, as I was cleaning up after the boys went to bed, and Hubs was girding his loins and getting ready to hit the open-extra-late-because-of-the-holidays mall, he stuck his head into the bathroom and said "What do you want for Christmas." And in a moment of frustration, I said, "You know what I want, I want you to clean this @&#!ing hairball out of the drain, because it is slimy and disgusting and it makes the tub drain really slowly, and if I have to get in there with a crochet hook and pull it out I'm going to throw up!" And then I thought no more of it. 

But guess what he did for me tonight? I walked into the bathroom to find him with a squrimy little baby on his lap and a pair of tweezers in his hands pulling the gigantic hairball out of the drain. My own little Christmas miracle! That's love people. True love.

I like architecture

I want to live in the houses that my son builds. He's really into blocks lately. Which I love. Building with blocks was one of my favourite childhood games. And I still really like it. And the Little Dude is in this stage lately where he really wants someone to play with him. He used to be such a good solo player, but lately he really, really wants someone else along for the ride.
And I have to admit, I have a hard time getting excited about playing 'tractor dealership' or 'Thomas and the Troublesome Trucks' for the umpteenth time. But I can almost always muster up enthusiasm for building with block. Lots of possibilities, and lots of challenges.  See, there I am, 1977, and almost the same age as the Little Dude is now, proudly posing behind one of what my mom calls my "famous castles". What's funny is that currently, sitting in my living room is the exact same Fisher Price Little People Village in the background. A little worse for wear, but still getting played with regularly. (ps: Mom, we're my bangs intentionally slightly asymetrical? Or did you just let the babysitter cut them that time? Either way, is it odd that I kind of want to go get my hair cut like this again? I think I look like a very chic three-year-old, with my sun bleached blond hair, and the dark roots, and the lopsided fringe. I might just take this photo to the hairdresser next time I go) 
And for all that it is getting harder and harder to find time in our busy days to just sit and play, I need to remember how important it is to say "screw the laundry, who cares about the grotty bathroom and the lack of homebaked goods, lets just sit here and play!" Because before long, this lovely time will have passed, and I will be invited into his world less and less. And the look of concentration on his face as he balances a piece just so, and the demeanor of quiet pleasure that he exudes when it turns out just the way he wanted it to, and even the way that he clenches his little fists and growls "I feel a little bit frustrated!" when it all comes falling down are moments that I won't have forever. I've got to remember that nothing, not even the Christmas baking is as important as that.  Yeah, I really want to live in this kid's world. Even if the houses seem a little better suited to warmer climates. I could live with the stove on a second floor balcony. Wouldn't that make baking an adventure?

stampin'

We decided to do a last minute, hour before dinner time, totally messy Christmas craft as a family today. It had all the makings a disater (it was 5:00 when we started. I had no dinner plans. It involved paint. The baby was kind of fussy) but we just dove in anyways. Sometimes you've just got to seize the moment, you know what I mean. And I wanted to wrap some presents tonight, and I wanted to make home made wrapping paper with the Little Dude and Hubs happened to be around, so we just carpe-d the diem and hit it.  Hubs assembled materials while I rustled up paint shirts and paints. (My husband is so crazy visual, that he can make a pile of raw potatoes and cutting tools look like a magazine spread)

Then he got right down to carving stamps while I looked for paper and stuff.

It turned out we had everything we needed on hand (that's what happens when you are art supply pack rats), including long rolls of brown paper. It was quite funny though, the Little Dude loves to stamp usually, but today, all he wanted to do was paint with a paint brush. I think it was because his regular stamp collection consists of mainly cars, trucks and tractors. But Hubs was carving out stars and holly and snow flakes - not a tractor in sight. So L.D. was all like, "meh, I think I'll paint some diggers."

We decided to show the way, and after he saw me do a little stamping, he decided he'd try it out.

Inking up...

...and stamping down. Boom, boom, he did it twice and that was it, and he went back to painting. Like I said, no tractors.

The slightly cranky baby meanwhile, transformed into a cheerfully burbling baby as soon as he was freed from the captivity of his play pen and allowed to roam around free-range. He's a full fledged up on his knees crawler nowadays. 

But I must say, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the stamping. 

Also, it helped that Hubs carved me such a nice stamp. He tried out a couple of other things before he got to this snowflake (holly, star, snowman) but this one was for sure the most successful.  Its such a simple idea: Cut up a potato, make a stamp, put some paint on a yoghurt tub lid, get a big roll o' paper and boom, boom, boom. So satisfying to see a nice pattern take shape. 

What was also really nice was the parallel crafting that the Little Dude and I and Hubs had going on. Often when one crafts with kids the temptation is to hover and direct, but I'm told that its a much happier experience for them in the long run if you just let them do their own thing. And of course, the best way to encourage any behavior is to model it. Him seeing his parents enjoying being creative together is better than us trying to get him to go along with any project. And he had plenty of fun with unfettered access to the big scissors, and all that paper and paint. (though I did have to cut him off after 10 paintbrushes. That kid loves a fresh paint brush, and requests one every time he gets a new colour of paint, or even just more of a colour he's already got going. He'd use every brush in the house at every sitting if he had his way)

One of the things I really like about hand printing is the mistakes and variability of it. I love how the density of the paint changes from stamp to stamp, and the rhythm of the motifs when you don't lay it out too perfectly. The splotches and blotches give it character. 

I also love watching Hubs and Kees 'co-paint' as The Little Dude splotches and swooshes with his brush, and Hubs goes along adding wheels to things, and arms and legs to others, and turning it all into a story about a Christmas parade as he goes. L.D. just ate it all up!

And when it was all over, we'd had an hour of messy fun, had two strips of wrapping paper and two beautiful Little Dude murals to show for it, and we ate freezer pizza and raw veggies and dip for dinner. Totally worth it. 

Also, can you believe how high that baby can reach!

advent

I finally got around to making an advent calendar. I've had such big plans for so long to make a super deluxe advent calendar. I have fond memories of one that an aunt of mine had when I was a little girl. It was all embroidered with little animals and stuff, and over each number, there was a little brass ring, where you'd tie a little tiny present, and then with each passing day, you'd get to open another present. So exciting! We'd also sometimes get the little German/Swiss cardboard ones with the little doors that you'd open each day to reveal a little chocolate candy. Also, very fun. 

So of course, I've always wanted to make one for my kids to enjoy. But as I've read other blogs, I realize that there are a number of pitfalls to having/making advent calendars. For instance, its really hard to find 25 little presents that don't suck, and don't cost a lot, EVERY YEAR. One blog I read said that its fun for her (as a parent) for the first two years, and then, especially if you add another kid, and presumably another calendar, it gets really frustrating (for the parent) to find new, exciting, cheap presents for the calendar. That are not junk. Especially if you have political issues/health issues/ecological issues with dollar store stuff made in China. You could easily end up spending between $75 and $100 per child on a toy themed advent calendar.

An of course, the argument against a candy filled calendar is, well, its filled with candy. aka, sugar, which there is enough of during the holidays without adding an extra dose first thing in the morning. So I decided to challenge myself to making a non-toy, non-candy advent calendar. And I also decided not to cruise around the internet looking for ideas first either. And here's what I came up with.

Advent stones! I went outside and found 25 nice little rocks, and then bought a set of stencils and just used a little black acrylic paint to put the numbers 1 through 25 on them. 

I know they don't look very Christmas-y, but we're kind of minimalists in terms of our Christmas decor, so it works for us. You could always use red or green paint if you wanted it to be a bit more festive. 

I also wanted them to work visually in terms of conveing the passage of time. In other words, I wanted the Little Dude to be able to see the days that had passed and the days that were to come. 

So every morning, we go and get a stone out of the bowl and set it up on the edge of the bookshelf. Then we can count the stones left in the bowl to show us how many days it is till Christmas. 

Though I have to admit, he's not that into it. I'm sure that even though I've decided against little toys and candy, so that he has a Christmas experience that is not entirely centered around getting stuff and eating sugar, so as to help him be a more mindful person, he would be totally down with getting a little present every day. As it is, we often forget to check to number rocks until the end of the day. If there was some kind of toy incentive I know he'd wake up in the morning saying "lets check the advent calendar!" Ah well, hopefully he'll appreciate it someday. 

Oh, and the observant among you will notice that there is no '7' in our advent calendar. I ran out of rocks, but that will soon be rectified. 

If you are interested in making yourself an advent calendar (for next year I guess), you can find lots of nice ideas on the internet. For example, Whipup has some nice ones here and here. And there are some cute ones here at Skip To My Lou. And there are some really beautiful ones here at Creature Comforts. Now you have plenty of time to save spools or matchboxes or jars, or whatever you are going to make your next-year's advent calendar with. 

Or you could just keep your eye out for some nice stones. 

movies & makers...

...was really fun!  Here's my booth:
This show is held in an old movie theater (still a working theatre, just more of an arthouse theatre than a regular big old 25 screen multiplex). And its in such a great neighborhood - The Beaches area of Toronto. I had to park down a side street, and as I walked up to the theatre I had total neighborhood/house envy. I miss cities. 

There were a lot of great vendors, and the shoppers were a really good crowd. Very pleasant/happy shoppers, which is nice. I'm used to selling stuff to people in a mall during the holiday season, and there can be some pretty unhappy shoppers, so this was such a nice change from that vibe.  See, look at those happy vendors! This was one of my favourite booths. Jen Bulthuis runs Fidoodle, which sells fun and creative toys for kids. I bought a set of her magnet/puzzle blocks in this pattern:
They come in city, country and suburb patterns, but I thought suburb was really most appropriate to us. Plus also, I love the little camper that goes behind the station wagon. And I know the Little Dude will too. She also makes these sweet dolls. They are flip dolls, so they can turn inside out. You can buy them here on etsy.

These puppets by banjo puppets were a total hit. So fun and funny. He also does amazing custom work, where you can have a puppet made that looks like you. Sort of puppet portraiture. Like this Grandma and Grandpa set that blew my mind. Aren't they the sweetest little puppet couple EVER? I wish you could see the picture of the real people next to the puppets. They were amazing. You can buy banjo puppets on etsy to. (What can' you buy on etsy?) And I know I've blogged about things by SLO before, but it bears repeating, because her stuff is really lovely. She's doing a lot of recycled wool sweater mitts these days, which are really nice, but her little wool critters really blew me away. I totally am kicking myself for not having bought one. The whales were so nice. (hard to see, but there's a blue one in the basket up there)

As with the last craft show I did, I was very ably assisted by the lovely Farihah, who is again modeling one of my scarf bibs in this picture. She took most of the photos in this post too. Actually, I should clarify; she took all the good photos in this post. I took the poorly lit blurry one. ahem. As I said, it was a fun show and I had a good time, but dude, I was tired by the end of the day. The littles are not sleeping so well these days, and by about 4:00 in the afternoon I hit the wall so hard. Farihah's presence there totally saved my bacon.

And speaking of bacon, here's what we had for lunch. SUSHI! so good. Did you know you can get a deep fried california roll? I know this is probably not news, but I'd never had one before, and Wow. Also, the kamikaze roll was a-may-zing. Just thinking about it makes me want some right now. 

last minute reminder

Sorry for my absence here yesterday guys, I'm doing last minute prep for a craft show again.

So today its just a reminder, if you are in Toronto on Saturday the 17th, come out and see me at the Movies & Makers Holiday Show at the Fox Theater (2236 Queen Street East) from 11 am to 5:30 pm. Its going to be a fun day, and the other vendors stuff looks amazing. You can see some of it on the Movies & Makers blog. 

Maybe I'll see you there!