Dear Diary...

Hooray!

2006-11-29T08:27:00.000-07:00

Some random chica made mention of my shop on her blog! Hooray for the Prairie Bird word getting out! You can see the post here.

My very first show!!

2006-11-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I emailed the proprietresses of an online store Medium Reality, and within hours I had a response from one of the ladies, Rachel, who was really excited about the things that I make. We sent a few emails back and forth, and I am now going to be in her "Designer Showcase" in San Francisco in December (or rather, my things will be - I'll be slaving over a hot espresso machine), and my items will soon be available for purchase in her online shop! Hooray!! Additionally, she's interested in discussing the possibility of starting a new product line with my items! If you can't tell, I'm a wee bit giddy.

At long last...

2006-09-17T20:52:00.000-06:00

I finally (FINALLY) have my little shop up and running online. It only took me about 3 months... slacker. The address is:
http://www.prairiebird.etsy.com - BUY MY STUFF!! Ha. That wasn't subtle at all. Oh well, I've never been very subtle.

2006-08-07T16:38:00.000-06:00

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle!!

2006-07-21T16:42:00.000-06:00

Ah, yes, return of the dork. Heh. Today I made use of an old hand towel to create some funky new face cloths. Oh, how I love turning that which is old and uncared for into something pretty and new.

Just call me Reverend.

2006-07-14T09:08:00.000-06:00

As some of you may have heard already, our friends Steph and Malek are getting married!! Yesterday, they asked if I would be willing to be their officiant - there are several churches that perform legally binding online ordination - and I said yes! What excitement. Lucky for me, I was able to find a church that both offered the ordination for layfolk and fit in with my religious sensibilities - that is, it advocates the practice of ALL religions. So, I am now a Reverend of the Universal Life Church. Hooray!

New Fish!!

2006-07-14T08:59:00.000-06:00

Say hello to our new friends: Bill, Jack and Allen.

Zombie Walk AND a Car Show!!

2006-07-14T08:36:00.000-06:00

This year marked the first annual Edmonton Zombie Walk! It was possibly the neatest thing I've seen in this town yet. Just over 100 people came out, in FULL zombie dress and paraded about town. It was awesome. I had to work until 9:30PM so I couldn't get dressed as a zombie and join in the fun, but I did get to participate... Part of the walk came right down the street where I work, and my store is three walls of windows, so as the zombies passed, they swarmed and did their zombie braaaaaaaaains thing, slamming themselves up against the windows. It was pretty neat. I felt like I had walked onto the set of Shawn of the Dead (if you haven't seen this movie, you really should. Yes, mom, you too. It's a great movie.) After the walk, the bar across the street had a rockabilly show featuring the Nightstalkers (we saw them in Jasper before with Mitch's band - they're great, the lead singer is also the drummer, which boggles the mind) and the Switchblade Valentines, who were alright.
The next day there was a car show with rockabilly bands (Mitch's band played this one). It was apparently a great time, but I had to work. Boo. Cory did get some great pictures, although none of Mitch's band playing because he videotaped that.

Oops.

2006-07-14T08:19:00.000-06:00

I can't believe it's been over a month since I posted anything on here. Oops. One of the most exciting events of the last month was my Pop coming up to visit. We went fishing, and we saw Bison at Elk Island National Park, and generally had a fantastic time. It would seem that Cory is the one with all the photos of that little adventure on his computer, so I'll put those up later. For now, you can look at the ones my Dad took:

Dad, don't be thinking that this means you've escaped having your mug plastered on this thing for all to see. It merely bought some time. heh.

ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

2006-06-11T22:02:00.000-06:00

We went to the zoo yesterday! Hooray zoo!! Overall, it was an awesometime, but there were a few disappointments. For one, they didn't have any Zebus. Not a one. Also, the elephants were in a wee little enclosure while the llamas took over the whole zoo. Finally, there was only one sad little female meerkat who had been separated from the rest (where the rest were I never found out) because they were attacking her. She only had three legs, poor dear.

New Bike!!

2006-06-11T21:23:00.000-06:00

Hooray! At long last, I have a new bike, and a super stylish one at that! I can't seem to pin an exact date (or even a decade, really) on when she was made, but it is an Eaton's Glider, which were made by Raleigh in England up until the late 60s at least. She's a lovely little one-speed that rides like a dream. I've named her Maude, partly for her beautiful simplicity and partly because I bought her from an elderly Dutch lady.

Swoon

2006-06-11T21:20:00.000-06:00

A certain husband deserves a huge amount of praise. He noticed I was having a bad day at work, and went straight out to buy me this beautiful peony, which he handed to me as I was slaving over a hot espresso bar. Isn't he the greatest?

Fun with Photoshop!

2006-06-11T21:12:00.000-06:00

Fun with the camera!

2006-06-11T20:57:00.000-06:00

Oh rainy days, how good they are at makingus find fun inside. When we were in Jasper, Mitch taught us the finer points of the macro function on our digital camera, and we've been fiddling ever since. Thanks, Mitch! Here are a few, er, jems, yah, jems. heh.

her nose
his nose heh.

The hoof that broke the meateater's back?

2006-06-11T20:56:00.000-06:00

Cory and I have been toying with the idea of whether or not we've become pseudo-vegetarians (and I say pseudo because we have no intention of giving up fish or eggs). We haven't touched beef since we moved out here, which is a bit funny, when you think of it. We move out to cow country and stop eating them. heh. At any rate, we were in the grocery store the other day, pondering whether or not we were going to buy any meat, when I saw this. I won't go so far as to say that the decision is permanent, but I will say that for now, this was the hoof that made me vegetarian. (There were also packaged tails, but Cory didn't get a picture of them.)

Jasper cont'd

2006-06-11T19:52:00.000-06:00

So, I've come to the conclusion that there was simply too much excitement in the last Jasper trip to meesh into this here blog, so here are some of the highlights not already covered in the last entry:

We saw bears. Lots of the them. It was rad. Not even just lots of the same kind - we saw black ones and brown ones, big ones and little ones. It was, truly, awesome. Now if only we can see a moose... while it's sleeping or doing some other non-destructive to my vehicle activity.

The drummer from the Cryptomaniacs played the bagpipes out at Patricia Lake. Hearing the music of the bagpipes while surrounded on all sides by mountain and water was fantastic.

... and then, to make the day even more fun, we found quicksand! That's right, folks, real honest-to-goodness quicksand.

We even got to go on a little adventure through British Columbia! We saw Wells Grey, some freaky trees and Mt. Robson, among other things.

I'm told that this is tree scarring, from people ripping pieces of the bark off - does anyone else know about it? It almost looks as though they've combined a birch and a cedar!

... and then we came home. phew.

wowza

2006-06-04T23:33:00.000-06:00

Cory and the pooch and I made a trek out to the mountains again (hooray!) last week, and made a little vacation out of it. We left on Friday after work, and stayed out there until Wednesday morning - I had to work that afternoon (boo). It was all kinds of fantastic, and it's taken me this long to write about it because I can't quite decide how to include so much adventure into a wee little blog!

It was raining and pouring (and likely, there was an old man snoring) the entire way there. The fact that the rain clouds obscured most of the scenery was made up for by the weather clearing up long enough for us to get a couple of minutes of elk worship in.

Saturday was the day of Mitch's show (a rock-a-billy shindig!). Before the show, Cory and I decided that if we weren't going to conquer a mountain, we could at least tame a foothill. (It's the little wee thing with all the trees on it.)

Here, you can see that I tamed that foothill like no one's business. Ha. Take that, foothill. On the way up, we also discovered the coolest tree we have yet to encounter. It was like it was built just for me!

The best part of the foothill adventure, though, was the view from the top. (I know, not a very exciting or surprising conclusion - we can't all be Sherlock all the time, just look at the picture and 'ooh' like you're supposed to.)

After the great climb, it was almost time for the shindig. Cory was hired on as photo-master extraordinaire, and I as raffle girl. It was an awesome show - all of the bands played a fantastic set, and everyone was having a blast. And, I'm told that only one hooligan had to be ejected from the premises! Mitch and his band all painted their faces like skeletons, which look awesome under black light, and is sadly lost in the flash photography.

Seen here is the hooligan, before being sent on his merry way.

This is Mitch's band, currently known as The Mistakes, but I'm told that's a working title. Starting from the top, that's Mitch, Billie and Brad.

This is one of the best pictures of the night. The band rocking out in the background are the Cryptomaniacs.

... well kids, I think that's it for tonight. It brings us up to Saturday night - next time we'll cover the rest of the adventure!

Rundel Park

2006-05-21T21:04:00.000-06:00

We decided to go exploring in Rundel Park today. On the way there we passed this crazy lawn (of which there are many in this wacky town) and decided that a picture was necessary.

We're not sure what this crazy thing is, but there were many of them in the park, and people kept whipping lacross balls at them. Our guess is that they're key to the new golf-lacross hybrid game. Thomas, I blame you for this wacky new sport.

Uma's favourite part of the day was when she got to go swimming in the Saskatchewan River and climb on beaver (or muskrat?) dams...

... Her least favourite part was when we made her take a bath before coming into the house.

And then we finished off the afternoon with Cory making an impression on the neighbourhood with our snazzy new manual push-mower. Everyone came over to have a try at using it!

Ain't that Fresh!

2006-05-21T13:48:00.000-06:00

I got a little bored and decided to give myself some bangs. I think the last time I had these I was about eight!

That crazy pooch

2006-05-21T13:44:00.000-06:00

Oh, our crazy pooch. Some pictures from our walks in the field on base.

More fun in Jasper

2006-05-21T13:19:00.000-06:00

Cory and I went to Jasper again a couple of weeks ago! Wowee do I ever love that place. This time all the animals were out. We saw tons of packs of big horned sheep and elk - they were everywhere! I don't think I'm ever going to get tired of seeing so many wild animals roaming about. It's just too fantastic!

We also discovered that when you pull the chocolate off of a chocolate-covered strawberrry it waxes the strawberry. hehehe.

Cory took some nice pictures of the three of us:

Yahoo!!!

2006-05-21T13:16:00.000-06:00

Our neighbours just bought a trampoline! WAHOOO!!!!! Trampampoline!!

Cleaning out the Basement

2006-05-21T13:10:00.000-06:00

It's that time. You know the one. That time everyone tries to avoid. The one where you venture down into the pit that has been used to hide all that crap you didn't know what to do with. Yeah, that's right, we're cleaning up the basement. Woo-hoo. In the process of working our way through the giant pile of military stuff that Cory's acquired over the past two years, I discovered my inner fashion designer. Try as I might, though, I wasn't able to convince Cory that this was going to be the newest and hippest trend, Military Chic:

As Paris Hilton would say, That's Hot.

Value Village Gems!

2006-05-21T13:07:00.000-06:00

Cory and I went to Value Village a few weeks ago and found these rockin' chairs:

Hooray for Value Village!

House Decor

2006-05-21T12:45:00.000-06:00

Now that we're finally settled here, it's time to begin making this house a home. Woo hoo! First mission: make these awful white walls a little less awfully white... When we first got here, Cory and I went to this awesome little restaurant, Cafe Mosaics. They display local art on their walls (changed monthly) and on that first visit their walls were covered in faux wood panelling and hand-drawn mounted deer heads. For obvious reasons, we thought it was super-rad. It took me a while, but I eventually figured out that the faux wood was actually shelf liner, and I found some at Canadian Tire.

Once discovered, this new found toy had to be put to use. My first target was the dining room, where I also decided to try out decorating with dead trees. This too became a favourite.

The other exciting thing about the shelf liner as decorting tool is that it takes paint really well. This means that I can paint the shelf liner, put it on the walls like wallpaper, and the peel it off when we leave. Hooray for shelf liner!!

I've used it throughout the house for small decoration as well as large:

These rabbits are on our linen closet and make me laugh almost daily. It's okay if I'm the only one who finds them this amusing.

And of course, the beautiful Hippy sign given to us a few years back by our dear friend Erin.

I also used this same technique to make our fridge green (and it doesn't hurt the fridge, Mum, I swear!) but I haven't taken a picture yet.

Oh, computer language...

2006-05-21T12:19:00.000-06:00

Many moons ago when we were living in Kingston and Cory was working nights at Home Depot, I decided to take up HTML editing. In true mle style, however, as soon as I got the hang of it I stopped. Heh. Now here I am with this blog-duder and I'm forced to re-learn. Bear with me if this thing looks like something out of mad scientist's lab every now and agian.

Let's start fromt the beginning...

2006-05-20T12:57:00.000-06:00

I think that it's safe to say that we were a bit reluctant about this move. Certainly, we procrastinated about it as much as was possible, leading up to the last night in our house in Borden when we had to do a mad dash to complete all the final touches before the packers showed up at 7am the next day. Cory, dearheart that he is, stayed up all night finishing while I slept.

After a rather long day with the packers, we finally crashed in the ever-so-stylish Angus Inn.

We survived the packing and moving, and more impressively, our stay in the Angus Inn, and finally arrived in Edmonton. Our hotel there was actually fairly nice, and offered a lovely view of the downtown core.

After several days, our stuff and our pets arrived in Edmonton and we were able to move into our new home, where we discoved huge rabbits and frosty trees, (not actually IN the house, you understand, around the property of the house).

I had the good luck of being transfered to a Starbucks where I actually really like the people who work there, and shortly after our arrival, we were invited out to see one of the girls, Sheena, sing. Sadly, my pictures of her singing did not turn out, but my shot of the Clumsy Lovers (who we discovered that night) did.

I think that about sums up our move here... next time on "Dear Diary," more of the same!

2006-05-20T12:52:00.000-06:00

Little projects like these are always started with great optimism - and often get abandoned after a week, a month, whathaveyou... I'll skip the optimism bit on this one, and only guarantee this post. Ha. The idea, however, is to keep all of our far away friends and relatives up to date on the great western adventure. So, maybe I'll actually follow through on this one and post on a semi-regular basis.