Jennerosity

This is my favourite XKCD comic. As soon as I saw it I literally laughed out loud. It just strikes a particular funny bone in me, probably because I do very similar things in my own head.

The reference to the Kill Bill soundtrack reminded me just how much I love those movies. It’s what made me a Tarantino fan. It’s one of the first films that made me want to watch the commentary & behind the scenes info. It really broadened my appreciation of the art of making a movie. It really is so much more than just the stars in front of the camera!

Even though I rarely purchase music (musical selection is more Benevolance’s forte) I decided that I really should have this soundtrack in my collection. Especially as the albums on iTunes are only $9.99 each. I want ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ on my iPod too but something tells me that we already own a copy of that song somewhere in our classical music collection.¹

So now that I own the albums and have the comic saved on my iPod, in case of emergency, I guess that’s another star gone.

1. On a total side note, there’s nothing like having a baby around to make you realize how few song lyrics you actually have memorized. [↩]

I’ve been in a really DIY crafty kind of mood lately and having a lot of fun making things or thinking of different projects to work on in the future. I’ve also been in a very thrifty kind of mood too. We picked up a couple more of our favourite wooden cutting boards recently and they come with these wooden tags held on by some leather cord. The leather cord I plan on using to try out making one of these bracelets.

But the wooden tags I’m a little stumped about. Since they are actual wood I’m loathe to throw them in the garbage and they aren’t accepted in our recycling either. I can sense crafty/upcycling potential here, but I’m not sure exactly what to do with them. I could just paint them up and make them pretty, but I’d rather create something useful than just another decorative item.

Anyone have any ideas for useful ways to re-purpose these?

This month was very, very busy!

Loving:

• Essie nail polish in some bright colours

Yay for managing to add some photos this month!

Loving:

• Revlon Just Bitten Lipstains. I bought two: Passion & Lust and have already misplaced one of them¹

• Pinterest

Leaving:

• 
  Boxes full of old teaching materials, a lot of which I never even used myself, but inherited from another teacher. These are the last 2 boxes (I think . . . I hope!) on their way out of the house.

Wishing:

Not a lot of tangible things on the wishlist for June. Mostly just wishing for time for sleep & creative fun.

You’ll have to excuse the sporadic nature of the blogging lately. It seems that pregnancy can also bring on and/or worsen carpal tunnel syndrome so most days it’s all I can do lately to keep up with the demands of computer use at work and I don’t really feel like hitting the keyboard again when I get home.

1. probably a purse casualty [↩]

I’ve been fascinated lately by lists of favourites or possessions. Absolutely love Gwen Bell‘s inventory (keep wishing I could take photos with a nice clean white backdrop like that). So I thought I might start my own list of the things that are keeping me. I’ll try to keep it up on a monthly basis.

Loving:

• MAC Fluidline. Even more so since I started tightlining my eyes. I’ve got Dipdown (dark brown) and Blitz & Glitz (dark green). Use them weekly.
• Belly Belt. When all that holds up your pants is hope and elastic, you’d better have a good elastic!
• My iPod Touch. Been reading a bunch of romance ebooks from the library with it as part of my R&R Reading Challenge.

Leaving:

• Old magazines. Kept them for possible art journal fodder, but haven’t used them yet, so they got recycled.
• Non-maternity clothing. Didn’t get rid of it all, but I did move it all out of rotation and into a suitcase in the bottom of our closet.

Wishing:

• Tarte Amazonian Clay Baked Blush in Dollface (probably). Don’t use a lot of different blush colours, but I’ve felt like one that’s a little more pink. Since I’ve finally hit pan on the current one I use (which I cringe to admit is 5 years old) I figure I can handle the splurge.
• An exercise ball to sit on at work. My work chair wasn’t really comfortable before I got pregnant and things aren’t improving.
• Art journal supplies. Specifically, stuff to carve more of my own stamps and more acrylic paint colours. Going to Michaels this weekend.

A while back I had a guest post from Benevolance about sumo, since we were hosting our first sumo party in order to watch the test meet. I am pleased to say that it went so well that it’s going to be an ongoing tradition! When we first hatched the idea for the sumo party, we’d joked that it might just be the two of us sitting on our couch until 2am. But it turned out that we had a small group show up for sumo, sake, food¹, and fun. We had a great time watching, chatting, eating, and drinking and then most people ended up camping out somewhere on our floor or furniture.

The next tournament is happening in July and Benevolance is thinking that it might be fun to have a kick-off party and a wrap-up party as well. We’re also looking for ways of capturing the feed so we can watch it at more reasonable hours during the rest of the 2-week tournament. A couple nights is manageable but staying up late like that for 2 solid weeks left us both feeling pretty exhausted!

I’m going to try to be more on top of things and have better food available throughout the evening for snacking on. I also thought it would be fun to do some more sumo-related posts. Either with Benevolance as a contributor again, or doing some little trivia tidbits myself. We’ll see how it works out. A few ideas off the top of my head for post topics . . .

• A little info about the mawashi
• Sumo training background
• Info about a particular wrestler
• Explaining a sumo ritual in more details
• ???

Got ideas or sumo topics you want to know more about? Let us know in the comments!

1. mental note . . . prepare better snack in advance to avoid the late night run to the store resulting in the candy binge [↩]

Those who have been following me on twitter or facebook will know that I’ve been trying out steel cut oats for breakfast this past week. I decided to try steel cut oats mainly because everyone says they are more healthy than regular oats. Plus, they started carrying them at Costco. So when I finally ran out of my giant bag of quick oats, I picked up the steel cut oats instead.  Here’s how my experiment has been going so far . . .

I got a bunch of different suggestions and ideas for how to make them from both facebook and twitter contacts and I just wanted to say thanks for all the advice and ideas!

My biggest barrier to making this work so far is me. I’ve realized that I’m so lazy! And I like things the same way all the time for breakfast. Just the fact that I tried a bunch of different ways was a step up for me.  Not only does this involve more time cooking, it also uses more dishes and will involve more time cleaning them too. Here’s what I’ve realized so far . . .

• I need to spend more time on breakfast to make this work. It just isn’t as quick and simple as using quick oats. But I’ve got 2 big bags, to get through and dammit I’m not going to waste them!
• The microwave will work in a real pinch, but isn’t as much of a time saver because I have to constantly watch so it doesn’t boil over.¹ Plus, the only dish it spares is the pot.
• I’m bad at prepping the night before! Which is why creating a bigger batch less frequently kind of appeals to me. If I can make a certain evening oatmeal night, then I might be ok.²
• They taste pretty much the same. I know people have mentioned that they have a nice nutty flavour, but since I add ground flax to them,³ I think that masks any flavour of the oats themselves.

One thing I think I’ll be trying with the next crockpot batch will be either increasing the water, or spraying with non-stick cooking spray. I didn’t have time to wash the crockpot this morning but there looked to be a pretty solid layer of oatmeal baked onto the sides.

1. Even when I put a small amount in a huge container it still boiled over and then I had to spend more time on breakfast because I had to clean up the giant mess in the microwave [↩]
2. Big maybe, due the aforementioned lazy-factor. [↩]
3. and sometimes chocolate flavoured whey protein powder – yum! [↩]

I’ve been struggling lately with why I blog . . . haven’t come up with anything yet . . . but I’ll try to keep you posted.

And, since I can’t think of any sort of focused topic for the site, I figured I’d share the random things that are burning brightest in my mind lately.

First, it’s like I’ve just discovered YouTube. Had an account and subscriptions to a few channels for a while, but lately I’ve finally figured out how the ‘Watch it Later’ playlist works. And it’s fucking brilliant! Part of my problem getting in to YouTube is that I often got linked to videos while I was at work. Which is not the appropriate place to watch YouTube videos. But then when I was at home with idle time on my hands, it would be too onerous to go back and figure out what I’d missed or get caught up. So now I just add a bunch of stuff to ‘Watch it Later’ and then I can check it out at my leisure. It’s helped to fill those chunks of time while waiting for my carpool in the morning and for that random hour that I seem to wake up for each night.

Related to this recent discovery is that I’m feeling an upswing in cosmetic creativity again. I went out and splurged on some new products and am spending a lot more time on my makeup again. Most of my recent purchases are face products, which is odd since I usually go for some new colourful eyeshadow or something like that. Sadly, though I’ve been tempted to play with some blue mascara, most of my local drugstore makeup sources do not carry it. Not sure if I’ll still have the money, time, or inclination when I finally get into the neighbourhood of Sephora again. If you’re wondering where I get my inspiration from . . . the major ones have been MakeupGeek and Makeup By Tiffany D.

Completely unrelated to these topics, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of creating my own sort of Book of Shadows after seeing an example of one on Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom.¹ I don’t really want a traditional book of shadows though, more like simply using the concept as a way to explore the seasons through art journaling. Sadly, I haven’t had time to play with my art journal in months and it’s unlikely that I’ll get time soon, so this will probably just be added to my long and dusty list of ‘wouldn’t it be cool’ projects.

And finally there’s been a fairly strong household obsession with sumo lately. There’s a sumo non-tournament² going on in Japan that we’ve been streaming during the evenings. Sadly, the big headline matches don’t start until after midnight in our time zone and I can’t seem to get my sleep pattern to mesh up with that particular schedule.

1. Complete and total side note . . . hers is one of the few Pagan/Wiccan blogs I’ve seen that doesn’t have some sort of sparkly/animated thing going on somewhere – I like the simplicity of it! [↩]
2. it’s a non-tournament because there was this big sumo scandal and the official tournament got cancelled, so instead they are doing this thing that looks almost exactly like a tournament, but is not [↩]

First off . . . full disclaimer – the credit for the entire project goes to my husband.  From the initial idea, to the sourcing of materials, the design, the work, the full installation, and even taking & uploading the photos, it was all completely Benevolance’s doing.  It turned out totally awesome and we both love it!

We both really like drinking glasses.  So it stands to reason we own a lot.  And they take up a lot of room in our cupboards.  So, to reclaim our kitchen space and have something that looks cool, Benevolance had the idea of putting up a hanging glass rack.  Since no such product really exists, he decided to design and create his own.  Here’s the photos of the completed project hanging in our kitchen:

Yesterday marked the vernal equinox.  I’d been trying to think of different ways to mark the occasion and celebrate but have been in kind of a motivational funk lately.  I did end up getting a little crafty though and tackled a project that I’d wanted to do for a long time.  I took one of our old burnt out light bulbs, and turned it into a tiny terrarium.  Unfortunately afterwards I read some cautions about using real moss like I did.  It tends not to dry out properly and then starts to grow mold.  We’ll see what happens with mine though.  I don’t really want to do the project if it involves purchasing moss.  I’ve got a few more light bulbs that I can use to create more terrariums and harvested a good selection of moss for it as well, so I might make a few more before the spring is over.¹

Related articles

• Itty Bitty Terrariums (myfavoritecolor.wordpress.com)

1. Also, apologies if you have been seeing spam links in my blog lately.  Apparently my blog got hacked.  Again.  I’ve gotten them out but the ordeal has me feeling rather frustrated and lessened my motivation to blog.  I may be looking in to other options, including deleting the entire thing. [↩]