What are you doing New Years Eve?

If you're anything like me heading to bed soonish with a good thick application of vapo rub on your chest and a fresh box of tissues. It's not all about the hacking though, We enjoyed a butter chicken feast spicy enough to clear my sinus for a little while and watched Rango on Netflix together before banishing the girls to bed to cough and sneeze themselves to sleep. In case you're wondering yes, we are all a little sick. Any strong healing thoughts are welcome, appreciated and currently high on my wish list for the new calendar year.

To end the year on a good note I give you my girls this last month:

One of my favourite wishes for the coming year can be found here It's better said than I could ever say myself and speaks to me in all the right ways. To you and all of yours I wish you safe and happy celebrations tonight. I'll see you in 2012.

Handmade Holidays

The only snow we've seen:

This holiday season I have managed to do a little hand made here and there. Our window decor for example. Also on that list hand painted lights on the tree (varying shades of turquoise and peridot green ranging from deep and rich to pale and delicate) sculpey wire and thread peacock ornaments (look for these in the shop sooner or later I had a lot of fun with them) and the barest minimum of baking.

How were your holidays?

Hand Made Holiday

So, I have this friend on facebook; I went to art school with her and her husband way back when. Today she posted on her status about how her holiday shopping this year is mostly made up of handmade treasures making this year's trip to the mall less stressful and as a result more enjoyable. In the comments she went on to say that if everyone in the small town where she now lives in made the choice to give one gift that was locally hand made the change that would cause would be astronomical.

Think of it, one gift hand crafted by an artist or artisan who lives in your own back yard; a kind of 100 mile challenge of the holiday variety. In large city centers this is so easy to put into practice, even in smaller communities getting a lovingly handcrafted gift can be as simple as keeping an eye open for craft fairs and gift galleries that specialize in local artists. A quick visit to Etsy can locate local artists and their wares within specific search parameters, so if you're looking for an iPhone case that isn't the same as every other hipster's; a t-shirt for your in house baby paleontologist, an earth friendly coffee mug for the caffeine deprived loved one or a special bauble to adorn the throat of your significant other, you can find one in your country, state, province, city or town.

If everyone made the choice to purchase one gift from a local artist/artisan think of the change that could create!

For the artists in our communities making a living from designing and creating.

For the people who receive the gifts that had a little extra thought put into them.

For those doing the gifting dealing with a less stressful shopping experience...

the list could go on and on because like the long long list of handmade gifts that can be gifted the ripple effect from buying one single handmade gift locally would just spread out and out.


This is a movement I can really get behind because it's one small purchase, it's a baby step towards bigger change; not a call for a belly flop into the deep end. Would making the choice to make one of your gifts handmade be something that you could add to your holiday gift giving traditions? I'm not suggesting you drop the most wanted toy (in our house that would be an easy bake oven) from your kids list in favour of a hand made toy but I am suggesting that instead of buying an impersonal gift basket of pre-packaged teas and cookies you think about visiting a holiday craft fair and picking up some hand-made soaps or artisan toffees.

I couldn't write a post like this without (as I've been known to explain to the Peanut) putting actions to my words. Our gifts to grandparents, cousins and even a few gifts to the Peanut and the Bean have been (or are currently being) lovingly handcrafted. I'd love for this to become a wave of small change for the rest of the season and next year and the year after that too. Spread the word, it's going to be a thing.

This year is a little different

Not least because the Bean's trying to pull down the tree at every opportunity. It may be because it's been less than a month since my Gran passed (on the 24th anniversary of my Dad's passing no less) and I'm just not feeling organized or like I have any grip on the holidays this year.

Don't get me wrong, we've had the tree trimmed and the lights out for a few weeks now. But the gifting, the baking, the planning to get out and do fun holiday themed things just seems beyond my reach. I need a kick in the butt.

Anyone else feel the same? how do you get the holiday fuse lit?

One Thing On Top Of Another

When last I posted I had a fluish daughter. Since then we have sent the Peanut back to school for two whole days only to have her shivering and miserable at the end of the second day with a renewed fever, more puking and another week of elevated temperatures.

On top of the Peanut being ill, the Bean got her first cold and spent two weeks coughing and honking like an angry little goose.

On top of that, the husband caught his own flu (luckily not the stomach emptying kind). On top of that I contracted another bout of mastitis.

The Peanut and Great Grandma hanging
out on the garden swing two years ago

And just when I thought things were at their worst, after taking the Peanut in to the Doctor for the second time in two weeks the phone rang and it was my Mom. She'd called to tell me that my Grandma had passed away in her sleep. So... We're a still a little sick around here, no more fevers, but coughing galore and we're sad too. And amidst the sadness life travels on. We learn from the girls and life as we move along with it.

This isn't the first time we've introduced the concept of death with the Peanut. My cousin gave up his fight to a brain tumor a few years ago, and there have been a handful of family and friend's pets who have passed on over the years so the explanations have been built on over time. So what did I get out of our conversation? A tear filled conversation about how many apple trees are in the Summerlands (definitely more than 20) and a reminder that when we lose someone important in our lives that we are not mourning the death of our loved ones so much as we are mourning the loss of the chance to see, hear and talk to our loved ones again.

So, while we brush away the odd tear here and there; if you have lost dear loved ones how has explaining that loss to your kids (if you have them) changed how you look at that loss?

An evening Out

So I'm still sans computer and because I've got me a sorry sad case of Mommy Brain keeping track of passwords is not my strong suit at the moment which means that I have a big rig-a-ma-roll to go through in order to sign in and upload a post here which is my long winded run on sentence way of letting you know that I'm still breathing and why it's been almost a month since my last post.

So anyway, Sunday night was my very first night out( that wasn't school related) since the Bean made her momentous debut last January. I went out for Dinner with one of my best friends and then out to An Evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer. It was awesome. Sitting in the packed theater it felt as though all of us in the audience had been invited into home, the effect heightened by the random false starts and stumbles made during songs, it was as if we were a group of friends all there to celebrate with song some dance stories and laughter. As a couple they are charming and the affection that is between them is damned near romance personified, the kind that allows for wisecracks, silliness, liberal use of the F-bomb and love poems.

Before last night's outing I had not been very well acquainted with Amanda's music but the moment she opened her mouth before the festivities began and then to sing the duet Makin' Whoopee with her husband I knew that I'd found my new girl crush. If you need to know why just take moment to watch this youtube video of one of the songs performed while I escaped for an evening (warning: the song below does make use of questionable language, if you don't approve of the f-word I'd love you to go and find Amanda's version of Radiohead's Creep"



And once my evening was over I was sent back to mommy land where the Peanut had been busy puking all over the place in my absence and the Bean who had been sleeping soundly since 7 had woken promptly at 11 to have to fight for attention from Daddy who was awash in sick Peanut (and the laundry that comes with a sick peanut) so she began to scream/cry herself back to sleep until I managed to get home at 1am.

It is Tuesday and the Peanut is still home with a delicate stomach and the Bean is out of sorts because the time change and I've managed to steal a few minutes to write about my amazing night and all that followed behind it... I'm hoping to steal more time here and there to post again soon but until then how have you been? I've missed keeping in touch you know.

And that's why I've been gone

So one day a few weeks back I went to sit at the computer to do something, it may have been to read a blog, check on facebook, read an article, look up a recipe or even to post here. I'm not even sure any more what it was I was sitting down to do, all I know is that I sat down, clicked on the space bar to wake it up, found it was fully charged but not on and tried to turn it with no response. None. My Macbook was done, finished, kaput. Logic board fried and ready to serve with some mushy peas and chips.


I'm still without access to my own computer as we try to locate finances for a replacement, at this moment I'm using the husband's which is not as me-friendly as I'd like what with the keys not quite where I think they should be and all the extra PC buttons and functions. So I've been laying low on the blog front with the hopes that we'd have a replacement sooner rather than later. So far it's been the latter with hopes still aimed at the former. (we like to think glass half full)

So while I've got a few seconds here's a little round up of what's been going on here:

The Peanut has had her first school pictures
The Bean started swimming lessons (which means Mama holds her in the pool while we sing songs and she tries to drink the pool water)
The Husband took the plunge and went in to get hisself all snipped up (for which I thank him for taking care of it and for putting up with the resulting uncomfortableness and pain involved in healing|)
I've been getting into a bit of a groove with school, swimming lessons, laundry, taking care of the family thing which finds me less on the computer than in the past which kind of ties into the death of the macbook thing.
We've had our first bout of colds and a second bout of Mastitis

We've had no major happenings, no earth shattering news and we're pretty much OK with that.I'll post again when I get another chance. Fingers crossed on that whole new computer thing