What I have to show after a four day weekend...

Not a lot, unfortunately. I did a lot of playing on the computer. Some standing in line to buy shoes (hey! There was an exciting outlet sale!). We ate Indian food with a friend, went bowling (I won) and played video games until my brain started oozing out of my ear. I also baked some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies and did so by improvising my own recipe after screwing up the recipes I looked at online. They still taste good.

Oh, and I finished my next mix cd for my mix cd group. Shhh... It's a secret though because my partner hasn't gotten it yet. Unfortunately I can't find links to a couple of the songs... What do you think??
Sometimes It's Sunday
November 2010 Mix

1. Road Regrets- Dan Mangan
2. We'll Make Time (Even When There Ain't No Time)- Hawksley Workman
3. Go On- Basia Bulat
4. I've Been Asleep for a Long, Long Time- Hey Rosetta!
5. Da Da Da- Holly McNarland
6. Careful What You Wish For- Raine Maida
7. Face of the Earth- Joel Plaskett Emergency
8. Far Away- Martha Wainwright
9. Palmistry- Great Lake Swimmers
10. Our Hell- Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton
11. Heavens to Purgatory- The Most Serene Republic
12. In the Road- Weeping Tile
13. Madeleine (I Want to be Brave)- Sarah Slean
14. Personal- Stars
15. Where and When- Hayden
16. Weighty Ghost- Wintersleep

Taking the Plunge...

Well, I was successful once before but that was when I was living in Korea and had a lot more free time on my hands. What better way to get into the habit of blogging more than to BLOG EVERYDAY! Yep, I signed up for NaBloPoMo! (National Blog Posting Month) That means I am going to do my very, very best to post daily for the entire month of November. Booyah! Take that inactivity! So wish me luck and leave me lots of comments so I know people are trickling back in. ^^ Happy Blogging everyone! Oh, and Happy Halloween!

Party Preparation

Through some sort of miracle I had Halloween weekend off. Since it's possible I haven't complained to everyone in the world, my work schedule sucks a lot. Need proof? I work until 11pm on Christmas and then I get New Year's Eve off but work at 7 am on New Year's Day. Yeah.

Anyway, I don't want to open that can of rage right now. Asia doesn't really celebrate Halloween (other than in a watered down, bastardized form) so I was pretty excited this year and decided to go all out. Steph and Alisse hosted a party at their place and I helped with a lot of the preparations. I carved a pumpkin, helped decorate, decorated a gingerbread house, helped make a million orange and purple (they looked black) jello shots and I made a spooky Halloween themed appetizer for the party. Here's a slide show of all the hard work.

Busy

I need to update some more. Life has been getting in the way. Matt is busy using up the desk space in our room on a new art project. I've been working, reading and catching up with friends. It's been tiring but mostly positive stuff. Expect some more posts soon. I finally finished one of my half finished books! I'm getting discouraged though with my reading progress...

New Necklace

Here's the necklace I bought. Isn't it pretty? It's an old locket revamped by Blue Tree Studios. I also picked up a pamphlet about Stitch & Bitch. Maybe I should learn how to knit? I am sure everyone was desperately wanting a scarf for Christmas, right?

24 Hour Film Contest

After working a 12 hour shift I was greeted by these silly boys. Sev decided to enter the 24 Hour Film Contest this year and recruited Matt to help him. They entered a few years ago but had been unable to finish their film in time. They decided to use a stop animation tableau style since it cut down on budget expenses, made reshooting scenes easier and they didn't have to worry about giving recognition to actors or getting permission to shoot at various locations.

The theme was "romantic western" so they had some sort of space cowboys thing going on. They also had to include some chocolate coins as props and have the words "reel" and "fabulous" somewhere in the dialogue. I'm not sure when they find out if they won anything but it's an accomplishment that they actually managed to make the whole thing (and not stay up all night doing so). I haven't seen the film yet but I'm looking forward to it!

Sustainable Shopping

I came across the Uniform Project recently and thought it was a pretty interesting idea. I'm not really that fashionable but I try to look nice. I definitely admire people who have a strong sense of style and are willing to take risks (and not look like a total idiot in the process). In the Uniform Project the creator is wearing the same dress (she has 7 identical dresses) everyday but styling it completely differently using accessories and other clothing pieces. If you click on the monthly viewing of the blog you can see how successful she is. It's astonishing how different she looks each day!

This reminded me of the Little Brown dress (that I once featured on my Little Brown Blog) although that woman actually wore only one dress for the entire year (and did add a few things to it but just for warmth purposes). Both these women are doing/did similar projects with different purposes. The former is trying to raise money for children in India and the latter is trying to raise environmental/anti-materialism awareness. I think both are worthy causes.

It makes me think of a post made by my lovely friend Simone, at her fabulous blog Skinny Dip, on how she is striving to makeunder her life and wardrobe. I have to admit that I am a serial shopper- I especially love things on sale and often buy them without thinking about if they are worth any money at all or if I really like or need them. This bad habit has meant that my drawers and closet are bursting. Living in Korea was a nice exercise in sustainable shopping since I literally couldn't wear 95% of the garments they sold there (I talk about their "free size" over here). This really cut down on what I bought and it made me learn to be creative and to choose wisely when I was purchasing a new piece.

Needless to say, once I returned to Canada my bad habits have reared their ugly heads and I find myself shopping just because I can. I am doing a bit better I suppose because I do think twice before buying something and I am much better at purging my closet. I should probably purge again soon but maybe I will do that once the cold weather sets in and I can gauge what I am wearing a little better. Does anyone else have trouble letting go of clothes? Is your closet minimalistic or out of control? What's your biggest shopping weakness?

Is it a hamburger or a cupcake? IT'S BOTH!

I've been working a lot and was really looking forward to my days off. I had a pretty jam packed Sunday, actually. I spent the morning hanging out with Severin and we had a pretty wicked brunch (I had eggs Benedict with bacon, tomato and avocado in it!!). Then I went to see Choon Hyang: True Love at the Fringe. It was adorable and made me really miss Korea.

So how could I keep the awesome rolling? By making cupcakes that look like hamburgers, of course! I can't take credit for this idea (I found it randomly on the internet) but I did make these myself. Not from scratch since I don't have a million days off. But you get the idea. I am so proud of these and think I will bring some to work with me tomorrow so the kids I work with can try them. They already know I'm a geek so why not hammer that point home? Haha.

So now I have a dilemma. What to do with all the cupcake parts that didn't get made into hamburgers? This would be a good time for my friends to visit and eat cupcake type things. Please save me from myself!

I Still Plan on Using These...

While unpacking I found a lot of interesting things. There was a lot of crazy stuff from my university days that brought back some fun memories. Here's an old birthday present from my awesome friend Dylan. Ten victories!! In case you can't read what the coupons say- "This ticket hereby grants the holder 1 victory. The holder has the right to run up and down the halls whilst yelling, "I win, I win". Note: This voucher does not guarantee the right to a celebratory dance." I love my friends. I still have all ten waiting to be redeemed (there is no expiration date) so watch out people!

You Score, They Score!

Here is the kissing game that Matt and I planned and built for the wedding. What do you think? They are both big hockey fans and had a slight hockey theme in their wedding (the tables were labeled with different team names) and Cindy really didn't want people clinking glasses to get them to kiss. I got the idea when I saw that some people had done a putting thing because they liked golf. In the end, it worked okay but not enough people participated in my opinion. The kids at the wedding loved it though and spent the whole evening playing with it. Their parents were probably pretty happy that they were out of the way. I gave away the toy sticks and pucks to them at the end of the night. (In case it isn't clear, someone has to score a goal and then the couple has to kiss.)