Happy Anniversary to my favourite couple!

Of course, I couldn't let the FIRST anniversary pass by (yesterday, the 29th) without a shout-out to my favourite couple!

The PRINCE and PRINCESS of course!

I thought about the magical event more that once yesterday and had many flashbacks to the joyous day when I witnessed the event of a lifetime, a bride-to-be myself. How exciting it was!!!

Maybe I'm biased, but I think Kate and Wills had a lovely first year and I wish them all the best as I mercilessly stalk them from here on out.

Image courtesy of Daily Mail UK

A call for donations... Art from the Attic is back!

This is my shameless plug for a great fundraiser, organized by none other than Mama Tweedle!

Spring is here, meaning it's time to clean out your closet, attic, basement and garage . . . and donate your unloved art to charity.

Last year's Art From the Attic was such a success it will be held again on Saturday, September 1st from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Invermere Community Centre.

Last year the hall was FILLED with art. It was like a giant art garage sale crammed with $5 and $10 items, ranging right up to original paintings that sold for $500. The organizers - including my own mother Mama Tweedle - are collecting and pricing art already for the big sale. I'm sure my hubby and I will be pressed into service, too.

If you have something and are in the area, donate any time before the end of the summer- drop it off at the Invermere Thrift Store or Pynelogs Art Gallery. For free pickup anywhere in the valley or Calgary, call 250-342-1621 or email elinor1@telus.net.

All the money goes to two great causes - our local arts council and our local hospital.

For more information, visit Art From the Attic on Facebook.

Artwork sneak peek

Tom's parents own a custom picture framing shop and we are in the midst of getting them to do a few pieces for us that I have been meaning to get framed or do something with for a long time. I helped the MIL (mother-in-law!) finish the first ones this week.

If you are in the Columbia Valley, stop in and see them at Lost Caribou Frameworks on 13th Avenue just as you are heading out of town on Westside Road. You could also visit their facebook page for more info. 

I can't wait to show you what they are doing with our wedding photos! For now, here's a little sneak peek of a project I have been cooking up for a while now. 

I thought the fun colours and the mother-father-child theme might go just perfectly in a
nursery or a kids room one day :) What do you think?

Wedding Wednesday- the cake topper

I didn't have any ideas for our cake topper. I thought about vintage, about a custom cutesy one, about having no topper, about birds (seems to be big right now), and about our initials, but NOTHING was jumping out at me until I came across this shop on Etsy. 

I immediately messaged the woman and she agreed to make up a snowflake one for us. It was perfect! Silver, snowflake, simple, elegant and kinda funky and fun. 

Believe it or not, I didn't have ANY pictures of the cake topper at the actual wedding. There were lots of pictures of the dessert table and the wedding cake, but in them, you can't see the topper! :(((

The house husband at work

Tom is in between work right now, so he is working on a substantial "Honey-Do" list. I must say, he is pretty productive! Today he did laundry, cleaned the BBQ, took out the recycling and cleaned the front windows on the house!

I also came home to salmon marinating for the BBQ and the result was a delicious dinner that I just had to share!

Tom's BBQ Candied Salmon 


1/4 cup of oil
1/4 cup of beer
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup soy sauce
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon worshestchire 
1 teaspoon liquid smoke
2 pieces of minced garlic
Salt and pepper 
1 teaspoon djion mustard 


Combine ingredients in an air tight container. Marinate salmon for 2-6 hours skin side up. 
BBQ at aprox 350 degrees covered for 10 minutes flipping once and basting regularly with left over marinade until flaky. 


PS- I am still admiring my new dishes. I'm not putting them in the cupboard for at least a week :)

Fiestaware!

As a wedding gift from someone very special we were given a whole set of china of our choice. I knew immediately that I wanted Fiestaware. I have drooled over this stuff for a long time, imagining that I had it in my own kitchen. Good ol' Macy's was having one heck of a sale on Fiestaware this weekend, so Tom and I headed south to pick it out this weekend. 

Here's a sneak peek! (I can't bear to post more pictures than this as the lighting in my kitchen was so bad that it didn't do it any justice in a photo.... more to come!)

A funny tidbit from our shopping marathon:

Our last stop before arriving home was for groceries and I asked Tom in the store, "what are we going to eat this week so we can get the ingredients we need??"

His reply: "I don't know! Let's just grab some shit and get outta here!"

Hahahahaha!

Love this

I have now watched this four times and smiled from ear to ear each time and teared up at the end each time. This is the beauty of the internet. We get to see and hear about special things like this.

I love this for so many reasons. It captures so beautifully the mind of child. It shows the importance of letting children have time to create and imagine. It is a true representation of the kind of things 8 year olds do. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

My faves:

1. The security code with the "check mark"

2. The 500 plays for a fun pass

3. The ticket dispensing

What are yours?

The hummingbirds are back!

We finished this fun springy little art project in grade 2/3 this week! I read my class the book "Little Green" by Keith Baker and we loved the artwork in it so much that we decided to do some ourselves. The book is about a boy watching a hummingbird out his window and he thinks about all the movements a hummingbird makes and how quickly it moves. It is filled with beautiful illustrations done with painted paper. 

We painted 4 techniques and colour combos on 4 pieces of paper and let them dry. After that I gave the kids tracers to cut out for their templates for the body, head and wings. 

We discussed ways to assemble your hummingbird to make it look realistic. I liked that everyone chose different positions. 

After we assembled them and glued the pieces down, we added beaks, feet and eyes with sharpie. We have had lots of compliments on them already! The display board outside my classroom looks great!

Wedding Wednesday- the bridesmaid ensemble

When I first started thinking about bridesmaid dresses, I knew I would like a variety of shades of blue. Because I had SEVEN bridesmaids, I didn't want all one colour as I thought it would be too much. Originally I thought I had picked the dress from Dessy, a Lela Rose dress that looked so pretty in pictures. However, when I ordered and received the fabric swatch, the colour just wasn't what I thought it would be and I was back to square one. 

Early in the planning, one of my bridesmaids and I just happened to be in the city shopping together and we decided to try on some dresses. After seeing her try on about 8 dresses, I just could not make up my mind as to which dress would suit all 7 girls. I had an idea in mind that I wanted 3 different shades of blue, but all the same style of dress. However, it just didn’t seem right for me to make the girls buy a dress of my choice. I decided to let it out of my control (something that wasn’t easy!) and let them choose their own dresses. I told them they should be knee length and any shade and style of blue as long as it was suitable for winter. They all consulted me before buying their dresses and showed me as soon as they had them, but the first time I saw them all together was the wedding day and I was SO excited that all the colours went together perfectly. The darkest was navy blue and the others ranged from sapphire to turquoise to peacock blue. 

My friend Holly went shopping first and tried on about 5 dresses and texted me with pictures throughout her shopping. She chose a strapless royal blue dress from BCBG that looked great on her. 

Holly also tried on a dress at Laura that I knew would be perfect for Melinda, so the following weekend I went to Calgary and she and I shopped for that dress and Melinda bought it. 

My friend Krista bought hers next. I visited her in Vancouver on spring break and she showed me the one she had picked out at a local bridal store. It was an Alfred Sung dress and the colour looked so pretty with her bright blue eyes. She ordered the jewelled belt from ETSY to give it a little bling. 

My friend Lisa got hers next while browsing the mall one unassuming day. She was worried about it being too short, but it looked fine. I thought it was nice that they were all a little different lengths. 

Cara and MOH found hers in a little boutique in Horseshoe Bay. She wasn't even going to go into the store, but her aunt kept pestering her to try the shop. She thought it looked like an old lady shop, but low and behold, there was the dress! 

Janine found her dress at a high end second hand store in Calgary. It was very classy and the dark navy blue looked so beautiful with her light blonde hair. It was a great score!

Lastly, Kristin and MOH #2 ordered hers from the Dessy website. It took quite some time to come in and then she had to have it altered as it was ordered in the wrong size. But in the end, it was perfect!

Although all the dresses were different, I tied the girls' look together with a few accessories. I picked out the shoes- silver open-toed Steve Madden pumps with a silver jewel on the toe. I gave them all grey coloured Uggs as a bridesmaid gift which both kept them warm and created a more wintery look for the photos. I also gave them silver pashminas to help keep them warm and they added a little continuity to the look too. 

Here's a candid shot of some of the girls watching me get into my dress. You can see the shoes! 

I was so happy with the look we got from doing the mismatched dresses. What a good looking bunch!

Oatmeal Whoopie Pies

I made these Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies on the weekend, recipe courtesy of The Pioneer Woman. You can find it here. They were the perfect mix of crispy, chewy and icingy. We enjoyed them with a london fog and a dose of the Vancouver Canucks.

Soapstone Carving in Grade 2/3

We were lucky enough to have soapstone carver and artist Robert Cahill come to our school and teach kids in grades 2-7 how to carve a figure out of soapstone. The kids in my class needed a little bit of help, but they were just so darn excited, they did most of it themselves. I was lucky enough to get to make one of my own too!

The first step was to scratch your drawing onto the piece of stone. You had to try make it as large as possible so that you didn't have as much to carve off. 

Then you had to begin filing the edges down around your drawing. 

When the first filing step was done, it looked like this. 

Then you had to sand it with sandpaper. 

When it was really smooth, you massaged petroleum jelly into the figure to bring out the colour. Mine turned out an orangish brown colour, but there were jade greens and stone blues too. 

One of my students did an inukshuk. 

This guy wanted his to be a shark's tooth!

One of my most prized possessions

Yes, it sits in my living room. 

I told you I was obsessed. 

Wedding Wednesday- the favours

It didn't take us too long to decide that we were going to give out some kind of christmas tree ornament as our wedding favour. I knew I would make them myself with the help of some wedding elves, so I needed to think of something that wasn't going to be too time consuming, but something that you would want to hang on your tree. Originally I was thinking about some kind of felt ornament with our names embroidered on it. However, good old Martha Stewart came to the rescue when I saw this picture in the December issue of her magazine just a month into my planning.

The next question was where on earth I would get enough buttons for this "little" favour project of mine. I ended up finding them on, you guessed it: ETSY! Julie from this Etsy shop came to the rescue and created a custom order of 6000 blue buttons for me! I figured out that each wreath would need about 60-70 buttons and we would need about 80-90 wreaths in total- one for each family or couple coming to the wedding. And can you believe that Julie dyed, packaged and sent all those buttons for me for just $120??? Etsy. It's the best!

Once I had the buttons, I collected the other materials we needed: craft wire and ribbon, and we were ready to assemble them. I wanted a way to attach our names to the wreaths too, though, so I ordered a custom rubber stamp (from this Etsy shop) and stamped it onto navy cardstock with silver ink to attach to the wreaths. I figured that people could either leave the tag on or take it off depending on what they wanted it to look like on their tree.

It took 5 of us about 3 hours to make 100 wreaths. We had quite the assembly line going!

At the reception, we scattered the favours on the tables and they ended up dressing the tables up a little too. We had our MC tell the guests to take them home when they left! It will be nice to see them on the tress of friends and relatives next christmas!

A delicious appie

Unfourtunately, I can't take credit for this delicious creation. A friend of Tom's mom brought this over for us to nibble on before Easter dinner and it was just so darn good I couldn't help but take a pic and share the recipe.

I'm going to call it Mediterranean Baked Brie...


Take one large round of brie cheese and place it in the middle of an oven safe plate or dish. In this order, top with arugula, fresh basil, chopped tomatoes, toasted pine nuts and capers.

Bake at 350 about 10-15 mins just until Brie is soft and toppings have warmed.

Serve with your favourite crackers.

We all decided you could easily just share this with your honey over a bottle of wine as a late summer supper.

Enjoy!

All things Eastery

We had an Easter weekend full of food, family and spending some time outdoors. Tom's mom made hot cross buns for easter and dropped them off.

Me: What are hot cross buns, anyway?

Tom: I don't know, I think they are one of those things like Christmas pudding that you think is going to be really good but actually tastes like shit.

Me: Bahahahahahaha, hahahahhahaha, hahahahhaha

Ten minutes later.....

Me: Bahahahaha, hahahahaha, hahahahhahaa

For the record, hot cross buns don't taste like shit. They're good. Especially when they are fresh and made by your mother-in-law :)

I made these cute little nests for my class on Thursday. 

They were gone before I could take many pics! The kids all walked out the door with chocolate on their faces. Hopefully I don't have any angry parents calling me this week.

The Easter Bunny brought us these rakes for Easter. We spent Sunday afternoon raking our lawn....

I made these for Easter dinner dessert. They were a HIT! 

One of the best things about the weekend- I watched one of my all time favourite movies: Easter Parade with Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. LOVE old musicals. I'm still working on convincing Tom they are good.