blanket fort!

If you've ever read XKCD, you'll notice that the comic sometimes delves into adults acting like kids, just for the fun of it:

I read this strip a few years ago on my husband's birthday, January 10th. He was napping, and when he awoke I was building a blanket fort in our living room. His FAR superior engineering skills (and his grand ambition!) took over, and we created a fort that took up most of our living room and stayed up for about a month.

At the time, we were engaged and living in Nova Scotia, but John had to return to Kansas due to immigration and money issues. He was leaving at the beginning of February for at least 6 months, so we spent our last bittersweet month together in that fort, playing Tetris and watching Naruto and sleeping.

John is a Permanent Resident now, thank goodness, so we never have to be separated like that again. Now, despite how sad we were at the time, remembering the blanket fort that took over our living room is a fond memory that we've been meaning to recreate. Last week, John had the brilliant idea to turn my birthday party into a giant blanket fort party. We're collecting sheets galore to make an incredible giant project that will probably stay up for months.

If you want to try this out for yourself, this article, written by a father with extensive fort experience, has some pretty great tips. If you'd prefer to fill up a portion of your house with a ball pit, check this piece out. :)

Pictures of the completed fort and birthday party to come next week!

recovering sandwich addict.

I love sandwiches. Always have, probably always will. My love of bread was one of the things keeping me from starting the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. It had a carby hold on me - especially after I met my husband, who went to baking school and makes a mean loaf of ciabatta. Why would I abandon a wonderful foodstuff that had never done anything but fill my belly and put a smile on my face?

Eventually, I got sick and tired enough that I decided to try to use the food I ate to help control my Crohn's disease, even if it meant giving up most dairy, and sugar, and starches... and bread.

Almost a year later, I'm feeling better than ever. I think the SCD is helping me a lot, and I feel wonderfully proactive every single day (the other treatment I use is a medication I get by IV every 8 weeks... pretty passive in comparison, wouldn't you say?).

However, I still miss sandwiches. Sometimes, things are just meant to be wedged between two slices of bread. Sadly, grain-free breads have disappointed me so far, what with expensive ingredients and lackluster results.

Here are a few of the ways I can console myself:

- Burgers with lettuce "buns" (usually boston lettuce, since it's strong). It's still pretty messy, though. I've also tried weaving bacon strips into "buns", but it ended in disaster. Lately, I just make a burger salad - my burger (sometimes topped with cheese, or with bacon on the side), my veggies, and my condiments all arranged prettily on the plate. Then I can vary my toppings from bite to bite! Yum.

(I haven't taken any photos of my salad, and all the hamburger salad images on these here internets are grotesque, so here! Have a hamburger dress instead. I think I've found next year's Hallowe'en costume!)

- A salad version of a BLT. I start off with bacon, lettuce, and tomato with a mayo-based dressing. Sometimes I add grilled chicken, or avocado, or cheddar cheese, or all three! Delightful. You can do this with pretty much any sandwich - get your favorite Subway sub as a salad (hold the dressing), serve your favorite chicken salad in lettuce cups, and so on.

- This recipe for grilled chicken burgers with peaches and honey mustard sauce (which I have yet to try) from My Big Fat Grain Free Life. Look at that deliciousness! Who needs a bun?!

- Or... I COULD give this extremely appealing grain-free bread recipe a try - no coconut flour, so it won't be dry, and it only calls for a bit of almond butter and almond flour. I find that baked goods with nut butters tend to come out better than nut flours, for some reason (dryness, maybe?), so the two combined should be tasty.

 AAAAAAA who am I kidding I'm so excited! This looks just like the real thing! I'm making this as soon as my clementine cake runs out!

Mom's Thanksgiving idea.

This year, we went to Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother's house. We were staying at my parents' house, though, so we had a lot of food to transport! This would have been easy, except we also needed to fit four adults into one small Echo.

Thank goodness for my mom. She grabbed a laundry basket and started piling in apple cider, mineral water, salad, stuffing (two kinds - SCD for me, normal for everyone else), pumpkin brownies, steamed asparagus, an entire carrot cake... and it all fit! We just stuck it in the trunk and off we went.

Obviously, other people have done this, as evidenced by these photos (neither of which are mine). I would never have thought of it, though - leave it to a Mom.

Desk, part 2.

It's official: I am in love with my desk. Sitting and working at it makes me feel productive and accomplished, even when I'm sitting here eating yogurt and watching YouTube videos. The power of a desk!

Another non-productive use of desk time was spent looking at Miss Vu's desk on flickr. She redecorates her desk fairly often, being one of those "creative types". My desk is smaller than hers, which leaves less room for experimentation, but I plan on having some fun. In case you're into that sort of lovely craziness too, here are my favorites from her collection.

Pretty adorable, right? Hopefully my desk will look this nice soon...

On blogging.

I am a terrible blogger.

Over the years, I have started countless blogs... a livejournal (still updated once every couple of months), a dating blog (don't ask - it's long deleted), a food blog (that one lasted a little while, actually), a photography blog (flash in the pan), a Wordpress blog (had maybe one post on it), and now this one.

I also have a neglected librarything account, a goodreads account I check up on from time to time, a Facebook accounts that I use mainly to send messages to friends and occasionally share photos, and a Twitter that I got on a whim to use a food diary but hasn't been updated since the day I made it. There are more that I can't even remember, I'm sure, on xanga, perhaps, and an old poetry website.

The only online thing I've done consistently online is write songs for 50/90 and FAWM, two annual songwriting challenges that have taught me loads about music, made me friends all over the world, and helped me meet the man who will be my husband (!!!) in less than a month.

I mean, in a way blogging is very narcissistic (thought not as much as Twitter, I think), but it's also a really helpful way to chronicle your life, like a virtual diary (even if sometimes it's through the lens of what you ate, what you wore, where you went and who you went with). In my teens, I'd record all the happenings of my travels, even if it was just to visit my cousins one province over.

I love reading other peoples' blogs. Food, music, style, photography, home design, and even day-to-day stuff are all fascinating to me. Reading about peoples' thought and feelings appeals to me a great deal. So many bloggers that I read would make awesome friends, I'm sure, were I to meet them. I don't comment very often, but I do try to visit most of my favorites every day.

Seeing Elaine like (and wear!) my flower-necklace-as-belt suggestion and watching Kendi wear 30 outfits made of 30 items for 30 days makes me want to try my hand at this fashion blogging stuff, too. Watching Meg and her community create beautiful, insightful words about marriage and life makes me want to inspire and uplift others, too.

So, part of me really wants to try it. But do I have the cojones to just go for it? Should I just dive right in and commit to it, or just keep playing around with things until I decide one way or the other?

On fashion and consumption

When my future mother-in-law gave me “Funny Face” as a gift, I was thrilled. I was even more thrilled when I saw what the film was about – Audrey Hepburn, an intelligent and intellectual young woman, is swept up in the tempting world of fashion. I was excited to learn something about how the two worlds could be reconciled: the purer virtues of knowledge versus the fun frivolity of fashion.

What I got instead was a film that glossed over the issue by creating a fashion-y love interest and a sleazy philosopher-villain. Sigh.

I spend a lot of time wondering about my interest in fashion, and how it fits into my world. My dad’s biggest hobby is thrift shopping, to the point that I have called him the Imelda Marcos of pants. He has owned literally hundreds of pairs of the things. I’ve inherited this love of thrift shopping. As a result, my wardrobe has a turnover not unlike a character on a TV show (though I do actually rewear clothing). It seems justifiable because the individual items are so cheap, but, over time, it all adds up: I’ve got a closet that’s nearly full and a wallet that’s close to empty.

Not only is this a bad thing from a financial perspective, but it’s also an intellectual dilemma. At school, I study international development; we talk about how countries all over the world change through time, and what that means. After years of study, I feel that I’m qualified to say that the current trends towards consumerism and materialism are unsustainable. If every country in the world becomes like developed countries are now, the planet won’t have the resources to support us all.

If we lived modestly, this wouldn’t be a problem. But we don’t. We live in a world of disposable items and quick obsolescence. Don’t like your current iPod? Don’t worry, there’ll be a new model next year. Your blender broke? It’s cheaper to buy a new one than to replace the single flimsy plastic piece that broke. Very few things are built to last, and we’re encouraged by the advertising industry to throw things away and start afresh. A prime example of this is, of course, the world of fashion.

But I love fashion. The excitement of a new dress or the thrill of the hunt on a sales rack or in a thrift store is a pretty great feeling. Even though I rarely buy things at full price, I am definitely contributing to the problem. So how do I slow down and tell myself that I don’t need a new cardigan to match that skirt? Do I give up caring about fashion altogether? It sounds a bit silly, yes, but for me it is a valid concern. What do I do? What about you?

Elaine, the budget-conscious fashionista helming Clothed Much, one of my favorite fashion blogs.

In this day and age...

I turned 23 a little under a month ago. I've had to take an extra year in my undergrad due to illness and lack of funds in my third/fourth years of school. I feel so insecure when I realise that I should be starting on my Masters', not still working on my undergrad, and I'm not even doing honours. Heck, some people even get their first degree done in three years!

As I sat on the bus headed to class this afternoon, Lily Allen's "22" popped up on my iPod. I was a fan of her first album, but I was a little late to the party on checking her second album "It's Not Me, It's You" out, and so I added it to my iPod rotation in hopes that I'd get gradually introduced.

When she was 22 the future looked bright
But she's nearly 30 now and she's out every night
I see that look in her face, she's got that look in her eye
She's thinking how did I get here and wondering why

It's sad but it's true how society says her life is already over
There's nothing to do and there's nothing to say
'Til the man of her dreams comes along
Picks her up and puts her over his shoulder
It seems so unlikely in this day and age

She's got an alright job but it's not a career
Whenever she thinks about it, it brings her to tears
'Cause all she wants is a boyfriend, she gets one night stands
She's thinking how did I get here, I'm doing all that I can

Anyway, I wasn't sure what I was listening to when the song started, but when I heard the lyrics I found myself hooked. Lily Allen's lyrics sound like some of the songs I've written in the past, with some lines in particular standing out, and they got me thinking...

We are a youth-obsessed culture, and that really goes without saying. But I get the feeling that that doesn't just start at age 30. We're always being one-upped by those who are younger than ourselves. Maybe I've read too much into my copy of "Ender's Game", watching episodes of Naruto, reading about 12-year-old prodigies going to university, and seeing young kids using cell phones, but it's a worrying trend.

We're asking kids to grow up faster, and telling grown-ups they're inadequate because they haven't gotten a degree/married/chosen a career/had a baby/paid off their student loan/retired/bought a car/bought a house, etc. at as young of an age as they should have.

At the same time, we're promoting lifelong childishness or adolescence - bachelors having one-night stands and playing video games, for example. It seems like acting like a modern-day Peter Pan is de rigeur.

I need to think about this more.

Sweet nothings...

With exams and deadlines looming, I'm looking forward to the summer and to my wedding. We're having a fun afternoon affair - part picnic, part potluck, part barbecue, followed by games and dancing for anybody who wants to dance. Over the past week or so, though, I keep coming back to one special part of the party in mind: the dessert table.

The fella and I have discussed the cake a few times. A local baker was very enthusiastic, but too expensive. Since the world's best bakers are my mom and my fella, I figured we'd be better off taking care of things ourselves. However, there are about a million options for wedding desserts! Decisions, decisions...

Option 1:
We first considered doing cupcakes: cute and an easy way of including different flavours (a must, since the fella adores chocolate, but my maid of honour is allergic).

However, we had to abandon the idea because of how labour-intensive these beauties are. It takes a lot of careful frosting application to make these babies look good, and I think we'll have enough going on without a messy "pimp my cupcake" bar. They are really cute, though...


Option 2:
Two cakes! One chocolate, of course... (I am really attached to tree-themed cakes, and part of me wants tree-trunk cake stands)
and one... rainbow? I love rainbow cakes - the fella and I baked one for my younger brother's birthday last year, and it was beautiful.
This is the tye-dye style we used for his, but we could also try different-coloured layers...
Sweet, right? I'd probably err on the side of pastel, though my inner child is digging the vibrant colours...

Option 3:
Speaking of my inner child, how about a rice krispie cake?
So adorable, eh? It would be easy to make, really cheap, and easy to customise with, for example, layers featuring M&Ms or peanut butter.

Option 4:
Another wedding dessert option is pie. It's currently on the trendy side, and for good reason: who doesn't love pie? You can pick and choose from a ton of flavour options and permutations - fruit pies, cream pies, meringue pies... Plus, the Tec Pataja photoshoot this image is taken from remains my favorite source of wedding inspiration (I still want horses wandering through my wedding).
Option 5:
The thing is, none of these desserts thrill and delight me as much as the prospect of my favorite summertime dessert: strawberry shortcake. My mother always made it with biscuits, and I would want just that: fresh whipped cream, piles of sweet, juicy strawberries, and buttery biscuits soaking in all the flavour.
Add a scoop of vanilla ice cream if you're feeling indulgent. Oh man, not ANOTHER option!

Option 72: Homemade ice cream sandwiches

Option 73: Gelato

Option 74: Candy bar

Option 879: The biggest dessert bar that anyone has even seen.
Thank goodness we still have months to decide...