Saturday Slices

Bobo, a creation of Scallywogs, which is based in Edmonton, AB. Aren't these guys precious! There's lots of different ones, and they all come with a birth certificate.



Java Jumpstart Homemade Soap made by Jovia Soap, right close to home, in Sicamous, BC. You've got to check out all her different soap products, they sound like they'd smell delicious... and they're beautiful too!


Rootbeer Brownies, found on Baker Bites:



Chocolate Bowls. A beautiful way to serve dessert to guests. Stephanie's Kitchen tells you how to make this marvelous creation, as well as has tonnes of mouth-watering recipes:


Cutest little jacket. Handmade in Calgary: Weena Things

The Cupcake Burger, how neat is that? The lettuce is coconut, the mustard and ketchup are icing.

2 days into DrupalCon

I don't have much time for a post right now, but here are a few photos of the trip so far:

The DC Metro station near our hotel


Trevor playing on the Development Seed foosball table with some other DrupalCon attendees


Dries presenting the State of Drupal Keynote

Playtime

Paisley's been having fun, here's a couple pictures of yesterday:

Safe arrival in Washington

We made it. At times I didn't think we would, but we made it.

Our DrupalCon journey started off this morning at 2:45am when I got out of bed and got my last few things together for the trip. Jeff was at my place a half hour later to pick me, and subsequently Trevor, up for the drive to Calgary. It was raining pretty heavily in Lethbridge, and as Jeff correctly predicted, that meant snow in Calgary.

The weather deteriorated quickly as we neared Calgary. Heavy snow reduced visibility to the point where we suspected our flight would be significantly delayed. On Barlow Trail, nearing the airport, we saw a taxi cab that had moments earlier rolled in the median; the wheels were still spinning as the cab laid on its roof. Jeff did a great job of enduring the elements to get us safely to the airport.

Our flight in Calgary boarded on time; however, we were delayed on the tarmac waiting for the de-icing truck to make it's way to us. Apparently the de-icing crew was having an unexpectedly busy morning. We ultimately ended up leaving Calgary over an hour late.

We all managed to get a little bit of sleep on the flight, and arrived in Chicago at 1:05pm local time -- just in time to see our connecting flight to Washington take off. Luckily we were re-booked on another flight only an hour later.

We touched down at Washington-Reagan at about 5:00pm local time. After standing around like lost tourists for a while, we eventually figured out what transit passes to buy, and what train to board. We proceeded towards our hotel on the Metro rail, and ultimately got off the train too soon. A transit employee warned us that it would be a very cold walk outside; we assured her it would be no problem, since we are from Canada. We counted on about a four block walk from the station to our hotel, but learned that DC street math isn't like other cities.
Not only to the blocks seem unusually long here, but it seems that numbered streets alternate with streets named for U.S. states. This means that if you are going from 14th street to 17th street, count on it being at least 6 long blocks. We also found that there is a metro stop immediately below our hotel. We've already found this very handy.

We checked in to our hotel and quickly headed out for the Capitals game. We and 19 other DrupalCon attendees took in the game where the Caps disappointed the home crowd, allowing two short-handed goals and losing 5-2. Tomorrow Trevor and I will see about getting tickets for Thursday night's game.

After the game we decided on going for a walk to see the White House and stop at 7-Eleven. I snapped a few photos of the White House and the other buildings along the same block there and then stocked on Cherry Coke. How I miss Cherry Coke. We need a petition to bring this stuff back in Canada.

Wednesday morning we will check-in for DrupalCon and begin with the great sessions that await us. Watch for more tomorrow!

New Carrier

I recently invested in a new carrier for Paisley. I found the cuddly wrap to be harder to use as she's gotten older. Although I love it when she was younger, I find although still comfortable still, because the material is stretchy, now that she's bigger, it slowly loosens as I wear her. SO here is my new Mei Tai. I love it!. Paisley thinks it's a blast to be in it too. These are jsut some quick pictures the day I got it. It's a BabyHawk.

Best Seller

So far, I've had four sales in my online shop. Three have those sales have been the following card:



I just mailed one of these out to another customer.

Hoping to get a lot sewn this coming week, and hopefully update my shop early next week. :)

New: A preview of my online shop, on the right hand side of the blog.

Project of the Month

Ok, I really want to get back into my project of the month. So here is a sneak peek of March's project:



I'm actually hoping to get it done this week. :)

Saturday Slices

Thanks for the name suggestion Dara. I love it! :) There will be something in the mail to you within a couple weeks. I know exactly what I'm sending you!

Now, onto business!!

Nerdy Flashcards, made by electicboogaloo (This store has a whole nerdy baby series, I love it!):


Print your own fabric with Spoonflower. That's right. You design it, they will print it! SO many possibilities:


Diet Coke & Nutella Cupcakes. They look delicious! Click the picture for the recipe.


Just a short slice feature this week, as I'm doing it in one day. In the future, as I come across them, I'll set them aside.

Enjoy!!

New Feature

I'm always finding new and interesting things on the internet during nap times, and in the evening. So I've decided to start a new feature. Saturdays will now be my Week Review, and I'll share different links, photos, really anything I find interesting. You might find it boring, but just maybe something might interest you as well. But I think it will be fun. We'll try it for a few weeks anyway and see how it goes.

But since I just decided this.... I need some time to gather my bookmarkings for the week. So I will have this week's up later today. :) Look forward to sharing. Now I just need a clever name for this feature. Any suggestions? If I use it, I'll send you a little something!!

Mmmm cake

I made another cake for my class this week.

This time it was a butter pecan cake, with chopped walnuts in it (didn't have pecans), with a Mocha (chocolate and coffee) swiss meringue buttercream icing. I"m looking forward to sampling it today!! In class tonight we had to decorate using clowns. I think they detract from the cake though :(.




The icing is SOO good. I tasted the remnants after icing the cake. And at class tonight... everyone could smell the tastiness, and many were tempted to stick a finger in.

Today I'm hosting friday coffee play group. So they'll be the lucky people to get tastes of it. We've kinda outgrown the coffee shop, so we're starting to do it at people's homes.

Jersey

Josh bought Paisley a Lethbridge Hurricanes jersey at the first game he took her to. Well, she was wearing it today, so I snapped a few pictures of her. She also has a team Canada jersey. Her jersey collection, if it continues to grow at this rate, will rival Josh's in a few years. Actually, I hope she never catches up, I think I counted about 30 jerseys in Josh's closet.




You'll notice in the second picture... her hair is now over her ears. :) It's growing... soon we can start putting clips in.... and eventually... PIGTAILS!

Paisley did the cutest thing today. She was standing by my feet, and she looked across the room at her jumparoo, then back up at me. Then got down on her knees, crawled over there, stood up holding onto the side of it, and started jumping. I think it was a hint that she wanted in it. It was cute. At least she shows what she wants now.

Would you believe I"ve already taken 140 pictures with my new camera? That's crazy.

Sipping

I have gotten back into the habit of giving Paisley her sippy cup during the day. She wasn't getting the hang of it, and I was tried of wasting so much formula/juice, that I just quit giving it to her a few weeks ago. Well I started again, after at playgroup on Friday, she stole one from a playmate and started drinking from it. She's inseparable from it. She crawls with it, walks with it.... So I'm happy she's figured out how to use it now. I've still got the more bottle-like nipple on it, but it came with a sippy cup nipple as well, so I'll switch that out one of these days.







Today during Paisley's 3 hour nap (yes... 3 hours!), I cut out the fabric for 5 more dresses, a couple crayon rolls, many sets of coasters and an apron. So now I have lots of sewing ahead of me.

Live Long and Prosper

Finally listing new items

I'm finally getting around to listing new items in my Etsy store.

Here's some of the items I made this week.... :

Reversible Pinafore #1:




Reversible Fabric Coasters:


Reversible Pinafore #2




Couldn't get all the images loaded on here.... the internet was being a pain. So if you want to see more of them, you can head to my shop, and throughout the course of the day, I should get them all in there.

Cake disaster

Currently I am taking the Wilton Cake Decorating classes. Which is great, because I have never successfully iced a cake. Either it's all crummy, or the layers slide apart. It's always a disaster. So in preparation for this week's class I needed to bake a cake (hey I'm a pro at that, never failed at the baking part), and then base ice it.

Here is cake #1, first cake baked, using my new bake-even strips:

Unuseable.... it still was domed, and then it cracked. Realized when I washed up the pan, and took the bake even strips off, that whoops... .was supposed to saturate them in water. At least I didn't start a fire with them (which a former student did, by not saturating them).

Onto cake #2:

Whoops, forgot to put wax paper on the bottom of the pan.

Cake #3:
The cake baked fine, had a small hump, but not bad. I managed to get it to the board, and into the freezer without it breaking. I then base iced it during Paisley's morning nap, and it was perfect! I mean absolutely perfectly iced. Then I went to mix all the other colours I would need for the class... and realized, it was supposed to be base iced in light blue, not in white. So I scrambled to mix up some light blue icing, and Paisley woke up before I managed to get it on the cake. So after getting her up, I put her in her exersaucer so I could finish icing (she's not a big fan of being IN the exersaucer, would rather play on the outside of it, but she actually was content in there for about 10 minutes). I got the cake iced, then was in the smoothing process when she started to have a meltdown. So the light blue icing wasn't perfectly smoothed, but it was good enough. Here is the result after I brought it to class, and decorated it there. Not great, but I think it's a good starting point for the class.


This week we're making figures... so I have to either bake a cake, or bring in cupcakes. I think I'll do a cake again, but this time I'll remember all the steps, and it should be good the first time around. I couldn't believe how many things went wrong last time. A baby can sure frazzle your thought process.

The Sutters and my first hockey-related injury in 3+ years.

The Sutter brothers were inducted to the Hurricanes Hall of Fame this evening prior to the start of the game against Medicine Hat. I shot some video on my phone ... it's not great quality, but here's a look at the ceremony (more, including speeches, at www.qik.com/canescast)



I also took a puck in the ribs during the game. We sat in Mark's neighbour's seats tonight: first row just inside the visitors' blue line. A puck was deflected over the glass and into our row, glancing off of Morgan before hitting me. A hockey puck is a hockey puck to me, so Mark claimed it to send back to England for his nephew. I'm hoping tomorrow to see a nice bruise where the puck hit. I really need to get back into playing again :-)

On Valentine's Day, I watched Meredith so that Gabby and her husband could go out for dinner and a movie (They did the same for us during the afternoon). While the kids were still up and happy, I snapped a few pictures.




Unfortunately it wasn't long after that, Meredith realized her mom/milk wasn't there. She doesn't take a bottle (although I tried), so she was cranky for an hour or so, then I managed to get her to sleep. I was thankful that Paisley is easy to put to bed. I ended up just plopping her in her crib fully clothed, and leaving the room with Meredith. She never even peeped and slept until after Meredith's parents came to get her. She's a happy kid... first time I'd actually seen her cry ( and we see a lot of them).

The promised videos

She's really good at turning left.

Sorry

Well, I couldn't get the video working last night, I'm out of practice. So I need one more day. For now here is a picture of Paisley contently laying in her dad's lap, and playing with dad:

Look at me:





One of her new favorite activities.... this and walking with her toy (which I'll put as tomorrow's post).

Going to get back to my 6 am daily posts.... I've been building up my picture/video supply, so I can start doing that.

Happy 8 months babe!

Today was Paisley's 8 month birthday! Can you believe that?

Some things I've noticed over the last little while, she has gotten a few brown flecks in her eyes...( you REALLY have to look for them though, but she just may end up with Hazel eyes... only time will tell ) and the bubble that was on her eye, is completely gone now. Other than that, she's her normal busy self. Gets around crawling and walking along furniture.... can climb stairs, and walks with her walking toy. She sleeps quite well at night... generally 10 - 7 (goes to bed at 7, but gets up between 10 and 11 for a feed, then sleeps til 7).

I took some video of her walking with her walking toy (that she got from Aunty Melissa... via giftcard). I will post that tomorrow.

Have a good night. I'm thankful it's a long weekend. I get another day of Josh at home. Hoping the bedroom floor gets completed! I'm working on sewing this week, want to get some things in my online store... my goal is 12 items... 2 done so far.

So.... I GOT A CAMERA! IT's actually very similar to my old one. I now have a Canon Powershot A590, before I had the Canon Powershot A80. So now, there will be more updates again! :)

Here's a quick Paisley fix, I took a few shots this morning while she was playing (climbing on me).





Which reminds me.... HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY! I need to get a picture in the v-day dress I made her, she wore it yesterday for play group!

Update

Well, sorry we haven't been on top of it with the blog. Without having my little camera, I have to wait for Josh to hook up his, and well, that's a long time in between sometimes. So I'm out of pictures at the moment.

Well this last week has been a busy and productive one. We were out in Fairmont with Josh's parents for the first half of last week, and then just got plumb busy when we got back.

Paisley has been regularly sleeping 9-11 hours straight at night (aside from the last 2 nights, in which she has been up far too frequently - but blame that on her teeth trying to come through). But it's been nice! If only I would go to bed earlier myself, I'd be very well rested! Paisley's a crawling machine, can get anywhere, lickity split. Gotta always keep my eyes on her. She also pulls herself up on everything with very little effort, and walks along furniture. Needless to say... the living room is officially Paisley-proofed. Had to move the guitars out of it, and need to remember to unplug all charging cords. But the most shocking and suprising thing that occurred this last week..... Paisley walked from one end of the room to the other using her walking toy. I was shocked. Thankfully it's been a couple days, and she hasn't repeated. I'm not for squandering development.... but she's already so far ahead of the game.. I wouldn't mind if she delayed the walking business.... at least for a couple months.

I've been busy sewing this week. I've got my quilt top for the sew-a-long done... need to move on to step 2. I also finished 3 aprons, and a valentine's day dress for Paisley (still need to do the button holes... hopefully I can figure that out). I still have several projects I want to get done.... before I take on more.

Josh started the flooring in our room a couple weekends ago, but having to work around Paisley's nap schedule, he didn't get very far, but this evening he spent about an hour, and doubled his total progress. So the room is half done. I'm looking forward to it being done, as the rest of the house is kinda chaotic with stuff. Everything from the bedroom is in the upstairs hallway, the guest room and the living room. Very narrow paths to maneuver around the house. So I'm really looking forward to claiming my house back once it's complete. Hopefully this weekend!!! I do want to paint the inside of the closet first though, before we put the clothes back in there. When we painted the bedroom, a few years ago, we didn't do the closet, as it was so full of clothes, and with having tenants, we had no place to put them. I have no idea when I'll find time to do that, but I do intend to do that this week.

Enough of my scattered thoughts. I'm off to bed, as with this tooth trying to pop through she hasn't been sleeping well, so I'm guessing I'll be up at least once more tonight.

Sitting in the snow bank.

january-27, originally uploaded by Joshua Schroeder.

Reading

january-4, originally uploaded by Joshua Schroeder.

I find this picture very funny, Grandma Yeomans was trying to read to Paisley and she kept sticking out her tongue and going "Ptttthhht". Too funny.

Playing.

january-22, originally uploaded by Joshua Schroeder.

Christmas at the Yeomans

january-24, originally uploaded by Joshua Schroeder.

Everyone wanted to play with Paisley's toys!

Christmas at the Yeomans

january-25, originally uploaded by Joshua Schroeder.

Sew Along

I've been wanting to try quilting... I think I'd enjoy it. Well, this month is Fat Quarter month at Sew Mama, Sew. And one of the feature products is a doll size quilt. They are doing a sew-along, and I think I will join them. So I invite you all to join in the sew-along as well! I'm starting a couple days behind, but hopefully will get caught up and can finish with everyone else.

Snowangels

january-28, originally uploaded by Joshua Schroeder.

Here's one of the photos of Christmas in Revelstoke