my fiddlehead mitts. not bad for a first attempt at color work. i lurve them. they make me insanely happy every time i put them on. i haven’t blocked them yet because i can’t stop wearing them. they are lined them with a sassy purple. kits available from tanis fibre arts.

brilliant

available here.

hee

pressies

i bought the wee one this book full of silly rhymes:







and this shirt for the boy:

oh dear

they're cheaper than my other pair...

next up

i finished reading her fearful symmetry this afternoon. i liked it but...maybe not loved it. i liked the general premise but knew what was going to happen. maybe it was intentional. her foreshadowing in the time traveler's wife was pretty heavy handed so maybe it is more of the same in this book. disaster ahead, avert your eyes if you can. i couldn't. i wanted to know if was right. there was a twist that i wasn't expecting. i think i like books with happy-ish endings.

i did like the descriptions of highgate cemetery enough to google it. if i ever get back to london, i'll visit.

next up is the amazing adventures of kavalier & clay. jeff, from work, is also reading it so we're having a mini book club.

fun pictures

Blanca Gomez

this is cool

books

i'm reading this:

i am in love

container gardening

i'm not sure about my green thumb. i wanted to try growing some of our own food this year but my gardening record is not exactly stellar. plus we have two black walnuts on the edge of our property. wanna know what grows under a black walnut? not a whole lot.

the solution? containers. i hauled out all of planters and hit the garden centre this morning with betherooni and amy. i came home with cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, red peppers, snow peas, basil, parsley, rosemary, coriander, and a few flowers for the planters out front. i'm excited to see how we do.

i made this!

i get most of my inspiration online and my latest adventure is no different. artisan bread in 5 minutes a day? sign me up! i ordered the book weeks ago and we finally found a weekend to give it a whirl.

5 minutes is a bit of a stretch but i do agree they've taken the fussing out of making bread. mix your ingredients (with a spoon, for only a couple minutes), let it rise. shape it on a peel, let it rest, heat up your stone and with a quick sharp snap of the wrist, you're 30 minutes away from mouth watering goodness.

my first loaf is rather small. it was tricky to grab a large glob of dough. next time i'll be more aggressive. but oh it was tasty. and there's loads of dough left in the fridge, just waiting for its turn on the stone.

we slathered our slices with butter and ginger jam. yum.

so sensitive

i'm finding as i get older that i am more and more sensitive to various dermal irritants. when i was pregnant, i had the most horrible rash dotted over my body -- legs, arms, breasts, butt, stomach. my gp prescribed steroids and a skin-thinning cream(!). i was going crazy. i got no help determining the cause so i started a vague elimination plan and luckily hit on the cause almost immediately: dryer sheets.

lately it seems that i cannot wear eye makeup. i tend to buy eye makeup from the same manufacturer (l'oreal, because i'm worth it) and have been using it for years, but for some reason, i'm reacting. time to research hypo-allergenic products. i hope i can find some that are reasonably priced, wear well, and easy to find. i hope this doesn't mean i'm done wearing makeup for good. 

maybe i just need to embrace the au natural. 

btw, we are on day 3 of potty bootcamp and (fingers crossed) it seems to be working. i'll post more after the day is done.

such a charmer

last week, the boy and i headed to toronto for our big date. we had tickets to see Kings of Leon at the ACC, a room booked at the Gladstone hotel, and a day off to play in the big city.

i was so excited to see the kings. our seats were meh; 100 level but so very far away from the stage. the show was awesome. the band sounded really good. even mix of old and new tunes. i'm new to the band like the majority of the screaming fans in the ACC but i've been digging through their back catalog thanks to youtube and downloading older tracks from iTunes. (question: why are "old" fans so proprietary? why are they so down on new fans to the band? does it really matter? yes, going from the warehouse with a capacity of 2000 to a hockey arena sucks but how can you resent the band's success? get over yourself.)

i was so excited to be staying at the gladstone again. it is such a funky little place and so much better than some generic hotel. the food is still really good. my little man will be 3 in july and this is the first time i've spent the night away from him. Nona stayed with him and he did great.

We spent our day wandering up Queen West. We hit up coffee shops, we ate, we looked at all the things we would spend our money on if we lived in the city. i picked up some superwash merino at romni, the boy got a t-shirt at american apparel (that store gives me the heebie-jeebies), we got a streamlined coat rack at umbra. it was fun. we checked out the gehry addition at the AGO but declined to spend $18 each to walk into the exhibits. we had less than 2 hours and decided we needed more time to soak it all in.

it was all kinds of amazing to walk around without dividing our attention between our surroundings and a 2 year old. it was nice to look around at a leisurely pace; there was no rushing. it's been about 3 years since we've done that.

for the firefly fans

click this and prepare to be amazed.

this is amazing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2FX9rviEhw

sheep art. i'm not kidding.

butterflies

this song, my latest musical obsession, gives me butterflies. for reals.

dr. horrible & other stuff

skipping over the fact i have not blogged in months, let's get right down to it. i was on amazon looking for a birthday present for the boy and noticed dr. horrbile's singalong blog was available on DVD for  $10. of course i bought it. we watch it last night and giggled all the way through. then i checked the special features. there's a musical commentary. i'm not kidding. it's hilarious. the entire casts sings the commentary. there's a song about the writer's strike last year, why nate is better than neil, another about why asians are never cast in the lead, and a song by groupie #3. of course the lines are witty and laugh out loud funny. groupie #3 gets her solo because she gave joss $10. nathan fillion takes over her solo with a "suck it. i gave him $15." one of the last lines is something like "we've reached the end, you've listen to all our words, and that makes you a great big fucking nerd." yup, for joss, absolutely. loves it.

i've cast on another clapotis. i have small problem, i know. i tried to knit something else but it was just not working. instead, a fire engine red clapotis using collinette jitterbug (sock yarn). if i get organized, i might even take pictures and put it on ravelry. it makes me happy. and is there such a thing as too many clapotis?

i turned 34 this past week.  the boy bought me a great present. a couple years ago, i picked up the "keep calm and carry on" poster. some genius spoofed it and there are limited edition prints available on threadless that read "now panic and freak out" hee hee. my mom gave me david rocco's cookbook. yum.

we're off to a delish dinner at bhima's tonight and are going snowboarding on monday to celebrate the boy's birthday.

my baby boy is 2.5 today. he started in the preschool room at day care. he's a non-stop dynamo. he knows his numbers from 1-9 and is working on letters. he's fully into the "i want to do it!" stage. he usually says please and thank you. he has discovered thomas the tank engine and dinky cars.

we are in the preliminary stages of a basement renovation. i cannot wait to have the extra room. it'll be a place to chuck all of the kidlet's toys and hopefully a place where we can entertain as well. we're putting a bathroom in down there with a shower. the eventual plan is to replace the bathroom upstairs (original 1947 features!) but first we need the basement bathroom.

and i made one resolution for 2009: i want to be a milf.