Why?...WHY?

Can someone PLEASE explain to me why I often do this, PLEASE! This weekend I went to Edmonton for a friend's birthday and to get some fabric and sewing supplies. I was looking at the wall of sewing tools at the fabric store, saw a tailor's awl and thought to myself, "Hey I don't have a tailor's awl and I really need it!" Bought it, came home and, lo and behold, I already had a tailor's awl in my sewing tool box. Yee-haw! Ugh!

And guess what?! What I really needed was a new pencil sharpener and AA batteries for my computer mouse which of course I completely forgot.

In the meantime please excuse the really blurry photo above and the extreme boringness of my blog. I'm still in the middle of sewing a madness a sewing madness.

Sew need a break

The last couple of days I've been taking a break from this

and this.

To do this

and this

looking at this

and making some of these.
Egg tarts, 蛋撻 (dan tat) . YUM!

Don't you hate when this happens. The little Lego heads gets stuck in the little helmets, and you know what works really well to get that head out. Just drop them on a hard surface...FYI.

I am Iron Man

Lately everyday is Halloween at my house thanks to my parents. You should have seen their faces when they opened up these Christmas presents. I'm beginning to think that my boys were born wanting to be superheros.

Cracks me up every time they parade around the house with this huge Iron Man mask compared to their tiny bodies. They look like bobble heads.

Holidays were officially over on Monday with Darcy going back to teach. So back to routine and back to lots of sewing. If I don't update my blog for a while it's because of the big pile of fabric on my sewing table below.

I can't believe I'm posting a photo of my craft/work room on the www. It's such a mess. I thought about tidying it up and making it look magazine like before I took this photo but I thought the Where's Waldo like feeling of it was so much better. *cough..cough*

Happy New Year

A new year, a new beginning.
Wishing everyone a happy new year full of laughter, joy, hope, and dreams.

("2011"- watercolor)

On the seventh day of Christmas my true love gave to me...

..too many emails to reply. Which is very flattering because it means people are reading this crazy blog of mine. Go figure. I'm honestly not trying to be a jerk. I will get to you soon?!!

Check out the crazy amount of snow we've been getting here.

We actually had a snow day because the school buses weren't running except teachers still had to go to school. Thankfully Darcy made it out of the driveway.

This is what I've been up to lately. Working hard in the kitchen.

Melting chocolate,

baking, tasting. O.k., the tasting part wasn't really that hard.

I'm a huge biscotti fan. And I find this almond biscotti recipe from Joy of Baking to be one of the best. I already ate all the ones I didn't package. Did you know that Biscotti is the plural of Biscotto? Ha! Now you do.

This the season...

...to make snowflakes...

snip snip snip snip snip.. snip snip.. snip.. snip.

It snowed so much today. Thought I would bring a little bit of the snow indoors too.

Nov...Dec

It's December?! When did this happen. Every year when December comes by I feel like I'm that guy in those movies where he's sitting in that office cubicle and the boss comes by and throws down a stack full of urgent to do files. The boss being December and the urgent to do files such as sending out cards, gift shopping, gift making, etc, etc, and on top of that projects for others. I don't know why I don't learn my lesson and do many of those things pre-December.

Procrastination...I don't like you very much.

At least I managed to work on this this weekend,

a nativity scene for Lucius' preschool.

and got a chance to take some photos of the boys having some outdoor winter fun on the snowmobile and sled.

O.k... back to finishing up the nativity scene...bad blog bad.

Frozen

You know it's winter when...

it's -28°c,

There's snow on the ground,

The lake is frozen,

dry, itchy, eczema hands,

a tornado went through your entrance way.

Thankfully it's warming up by the end of the week. Warming up in Albertan winter lingo means around -15°c. Still cold, but not cold enough that your lungs feels bitter when you breathe the air.

So am I typing this on a new computer? No. Is my old computer dead? No. Surprisingly something magical happened. My computer stopped shutting down on me. Not sure if it was a virus, if it fixed itself. I don't know. It's quite a mystery.

Blank screens

My computer is kaput. On it's last leg. I'm crossing my fingers that it's not going to shut down on me as I write this. Been trying to save everything on it before I do lose everything. So it's time to search for a new computer. A sign to take a break from the internet. Read lots of good books and enjoy real human company. Answer your emails when I get back and enjoy this in the meantime.

Kitten cuteness ²

So we gave in and got some new kittens last week. Seriously, look how cute they are. We just couldn't resist. After Einstein disappeared before summer, the boys been wanting another cat for a while.

Meet Tif and Tondu. Named them after these guys. (Darcy's a huge Franco-Belgian comic fan.) So now it's 5 male and 1 female(me) in the family. How did that happen?

They are almost identical except that Tif has one white patch above his mouth and Tondu has two. Phew!

Gosh, they are so cute! Make me want to squish them.

Oh wait, there's Lucius doing that for me. Everyone wants to squish them. Those poor cats.

And this is what the boys been doing a lot outside lately with our gorgeous fall weather. They look pretty squishable too.

Bringing you some fall colors

It's definitely fall outside. All the leaves are turning colors, the brisk morning temperature, and colds. I sure got hit hard with a cold last week. The kind where your lungs feel like they are going to fall out with all the coughing. Feeling better now and I've been experimenting with more baby hats. Here's a peek of one.

If anyone has been following Mr. Potter, you must have realized by now that he's not growing any hair. SAD. I know. I'm not sure why. I think I got a defective earth buddy. Oh well, still fun dressing him up and posing him with food. Hahaha.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and is enjoying the beautiful outdoors. If not, enjoy these fall photos while listening to them.

Preschool

Today was Lucius' first day of preschool. I was nervous, a little sad, and all the above. It's only half a day, but the idea of not having him around all the time and me taking care of him is strange, very strange.

Here he is waving back at me because I'm frantically waving bye as I'm trying to take this photo. I'm like "don't forget me. You can stay home you know." And he's like "mom geesh, get a grip. You'll see me at 11:45."

There he goes off with Darcy to be dropped off at preschool. Super excited and not looking back at all. Bye my first born.

Bye, I love you

Bye bye...until 11:45.

Our June, but blogging about it in August, summer camping trip part deux

...Part two... (For part one go here.)

We camped at various BC's provincial campsites along the way. They were clean, the park ranger were always super friendly, and most of them had walking trails with gorgeous scenery.

A huge pine cone I've found along one of the trails. We don't get them this size in Alberta.

Kettle River Museum. This was one of the highlights of our trip, it wasn't even planned and we had no clue about this place beforehand. We were driving through this little town called Midway and saw this cute little red building with the huge word MUSEUM on it. So we decided to stop, check it out, and stretch our legs. We walked in the main building and it was filled with vintage items everywhere! I think I did a little happy dance. Glad the lady at the front didn't see. Paid the $2 adult admission, kids free. Can this get any better?! It did, the boys were able to climb on various things like the old fire truck, old caboose, and touch many many things in the railway station. Very interactive. If you ever drive through Midway, go check out this museum.

vintage dress form. EEEEK!

I spent such a long time looking at every single box and can.

The boys loved this old caboose

Inside the caboose.

Whenever I complain about laundry, I'll just look at this photo. Bahaha!

A vintage poster for the Canadian Pacific Railway

I'm not quite sure what that is, calculator?. The boys sure loved being able to touch every single button.

Kokanee Creek Provincial Park.

Hiking on the Canyon trail at Kokanee Provincial Park.

A very gorgeous and very fast river along the trail.

Going deeper into the woods.

breathtaking

The Longest Free Ferry Ride in the world, a 40-minute scenic crossing of Kootenay Lake.

After the ferry ride, you drive a little bit to reach Crawford bay. Here you find several Artisans. I wish I had the chance to check out all of them, but because it was late and we needed to set up camp at the next provincial park, I only managed to step foot into Barefoot Handweaving. The bright colors instantly draw you in. I wanted to buy every single item in there, but controlled myself and bought this beautiful shoulder bag which I'll show in a later post. If you can't go to their shop to purchase their beautiful products, you can order them on their website.

Canadian Museum of Rail Travel, Cranbrook. This is an amazing, extremely huge train museum where you can take tours on three of their vintage restored trains. A must for train enthusiasts. Just don't bring two toddler boys.....ugh....if only we knew the trains were completely restored and you can't touch anything....ugh....especially after the very interactive museum in Midway where they were allowed to climb the caboose....ugh!! Thankfully we only paid to go on one of the three trains (Trans Canada Limitied, built in 1929) and came out with nothing broken, only a few white hairs.

Here they were showing the restoration process of the wooden panels. Year and years of work.

The details...beautiful details!

Can you imagine riding such a luxurious train back in 1929?

Absolutely gorgeous.

I can't wait to plan for next summer's trip.