Fashionable Life

Diane Von Furstenberg's top 10 rules to live by. 1. Trust yourself. "The secret to feeling attractive, and to being attractive, is the confidence that comes from knowing who you are and what you believe in." 2. Accept the passage of time. "The older you get, the more you should learn to love life and appreciate the beauty that comes with age." 3. Document your days. "Carry a camera and create an inspiring visual diary of your life." 4. Your suitcase symbolizes your life. "The best way to know a woman is to open her luggage. If she knows how to pack well, it means she understands, and cherishes, how to live a simplified life." 5. Fashionable friends. "Choose fashions that make you happy. I hope the clothes I design will become my clients' best friends. That way, when they open their closets, they will always encounter someone special." 6. Dress your personality. "Always choose styles that also accentuate your personality. Don't use fashion to try and project a different persona. Authenticity is key." 7. Use your feminine power. "My mother taught me that being a woman is a privilege because the world revolves around us! It is a precious gift, and its power should be used in a subtle and respectful way." 8. Your handbag is your guide. "Before leaving home, check your agenda and organize your bag according to what you have to do that day. keeping everything in order makes life easier." 9. Indulge yourself. "If you are like me, and don't want to resort to Botox, book regular massages. I'm sure it helps to keep everything firm and in its place." 10. Lead a balance life. "The best regimen is to keep moving! Never stop working, travelling and seeking adventure. Drink plenty of water, limit alcohol and sugar and get to your yoga class!" (From Elle Canada June 2010)

My New Moto

Outerspace is out of space

I snuggled in with Ethan tonight at bedtime and began our nightly ritual of the bedtime story. The ritual began for us when Ethan was 2. I was pregnant with Rueben at the time and so we knew we would be needing to move Ethan out of the crib. We had taken one side of the rails off so he was using it as a sort of daybed. Thanks to the kindness of family, Ethan received brand new bunk beds for Christmas and it was finally convenient for me to lay down with Ethan and read to him at bedtime.

I really cherish the bedtime story. It gives us a chance to not only read a book (or books) together but to reflect on our day, talk about our adventures, and for me, to become more enlightened in the philosophies of the four year old boy. Tonight was no exception.

We pulled two books from his younger days off the shelf; 'Neighbourhood Numbers' and 'Mama and Me', both of which are baby Einstein books and have great rhythm and pictures. We got up to 8 which tells us that there are eight lighted windows in eight houses and eight stars in the sky. Well this led to a very interesting conversation about the universe and 'out of space' as Ethan calls it. He declared "I know a lot about Earth". He knew about oceans and mountains, rivers and trees and roads. He knew the sun was in the sky and the moon was in the sky and the stars to which I agreed and said yes, they are all in outer space. "No, they're not mom. At nighttime, the sun goes behind the walls of the earth. In the daytime, the sun blasts through the walls of the earth". So I now have a picture of what the concept of 'outer space' is to a four year old. It seems very obvious to him that the blue sky that we see overhead and which meets the earth at the horizon is like a wall. And the sun goes behind it at night when it's dark, and then bursts through it during the day when it's light. It makes sense.

We then move on to 'Mama and Me' which is a great little book about animal babes and moms. Each page begins "I am a baby (duck for example)" with a series of familial facts about how it interacts with it's mom. "I'm a good swimmer already, but my mommy leads the way. She knows the best places to swim". Each page also has real life photography of each animal. It's a great little book to get a conversation going. Ethan wanted to know what the tigers ate. Um, well, they eat smaller animals. "like ducks?" ah, sure. "What do ducks eat?" um, bugs and plants that they find... "what do bears eat?" berries and fish "Fish, eww, yuck!" you love fish!!! "eww, no I don't" you know all that sushi you love to eat... that's fish. "oh". Then he announced that his favorite animal is a giraffe because of their long necks, and mine is an elephant because of their trunks, and Rueben's is a jaggerbafersaul (um... a what?), oh mom, it's like a kind of dinosaur. What do dinosaurs eat?" hmm, how to proceed... well, some dinosaurs ate plants and some ate smaller dinosaurs, but that was a loooong time ago. They don't live on the earth anymore. "did they move into out-of-space?" I love how his brain works. And I look forward to many more enlightening conversations with him.

Happy Anniversary

It's amazing how quickly one year goes by. I realised a few days ago that the one year anniversary of our Vancouver house purchase had snuck past the radar unsuspectingly. Amidst the start of the school year for Ethan, dance classes, recent and impending visits from Andrew, and getting Halloween costumes finished, I didn't even pause to say 'happy first year back to Vancouversary'.

And what a year it's been. I became an aunt! Rueben met his auntie Andrea for the first time. We hosted our first Christmas dinner and christened 'the great dinning hall' (picture Andrew leaning back, hands up in front, eyes slightly closed, gesturing...). Ethan and Rueben experienced Hotel Lake and Sheridan Lake camping trips for the first time. For about two months after, ever lake we past was 'look, it's Hotel Lake'! We became landlords twice over (with better luck back in fsj...). Ethan started preschool and hip hop dance classes while I stepped back into my tap shoes (hello bedazzled 'all that jazz' number).

On the downside, my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer and had a colonoscopy followed by chemo treatments. He has fared extremely well due to his amazing physical fitness (climbing Kilimanjaro is no easy feat, let alone when you're in your 50's). He has just recently been told by his Doc that he has only two rounds of chemo left before he's done with it. Excellent fantastic news.

I can't believe how much has changed in just one year, but I'm glad we made the decision to move back to the lower mainland. I do, however (and I can't believe I'm about to say this...) but I do miss Fort Saint John. It took me a long time to break out of my shell and make some good friends. I feel like this first year back to Vancouver was kind of like my first year in FSJ. Settling into the neighbourhood has been easy. Settling into friendships has been harder. I need to make a more concerted effort to make connections with people (beyond the baristas at Starbucks of course...) This will be my challenge for Vancouver: year 2.

OY

We all have those days, every once in a while, where nothing goes the way we planned. I was woken up this morning a little too early after a late night to my almost 4 year old saying in a whinny 7am morning voice "mommy, I'm huuuuungry". So, bleary eyed, we stumble downstairs and I start making oatmeal and a humongous cup of coffee. Nothing like feeling a sense of accomplishment after a long day, so over breakfast, I decided to create a little to-do list for the day. (And yes I do mean little as compared to the wall sized list I had going 2 weeks ago of which I accomplished all the tasks. Maybe size does matter).

My list was as follows:

laundry (it goes on every list I make cause it's never fully finished, but I check mark it anyway)
mop floor (this one is futile with drooly Rueben in the house)
tidy kitchen
make curtains for Rueben's bedroom
file the stack of papers cluttering up the kitchen counter
hang shelves in bathroom
clean out fridge
mow the lawn
put out garbage, recycling, lawn clippings for collection

OK, so it might seem over ambitious, but if it's all timed right and orchestrated correctly, it could be done. Start the laundry in the morning, tidy the kitchen after breakfast, file the papers when I put Rueben down for his nap. Mow the lawn while Ethan is watching Blue's Clues then get him to help me put up the shelves. Clean out the fridge just before getting reading to cook dinner, and then put out the garbage and mop the floor after the boys are in bed. It's a massive balancing act, and I think I could actually pull it off... except this is me we're talking about.

There is just too much laundry to do it all in one day and I didn't account for the pile of clothes that were on top of the dryer as well as the ones inside it. So folding everything takes some time. On to the kitchen where I had to empty out the dishwasher before I could load it up again. The pile of papers has been relocated to the landing on the stairs where I'm sure they'll sit for a few weeks before I bother to bring them all the way upstairs. I actually did drag the lawn mower to the front of the house to mow the wheat field we have growing out there, but to my dismay, the mower is out of gas. So on to hanging shelves... if only Andrew would put my tools back where they belong, maybe I could get something accomplished. Yes, I'm blaming Andrew, only because he doesn't read my blog so he'll never find out! The way this day has been going, I'm probably going to order in tonight, or make yam tempura, which is just gonna mucky up my tidy kitchen. And by the time the boys are in bed, it will be time for me to drink a beer and watch So You Think You Can Dance? Who wants to mop the floor after a day of misfires anyway? Don't want to get myself all motivated to do stuff at 9:30pm when I should be winding down for bed. So the two things on my list that get check marks are putting out the garbage and laundry - which didn't get past the first load I put in this morning, I guarantee. I'll be sure to tuck this list into the recycling bin so I can start fresh for tomorrow. Top of my list will be... have fun with the boys.

At least that is something worth doing.

Add Essence

My mother tapped the recipe. "We're out of oatcakes," she said. "I served the last of them to Bertha. One more thing to do." She sat there for a time, looking tired, feeling the corner of the page made from blue striped wallpaper and staring at the recipe as if wishing would make the oatcakes appear. My mother's recipe was easy, really. It called for:

a quarter pound of butter
a quarter pound of sugar
three tablespoons of golden treacle
one teaspoon of almond extract
and half a pound of oats

I call it my mother's recipe, though she may have copied it from somewhere; she was always copying down a recipe. But this one was not cut from a magazine, or copied from the newspaper, as she did, by rubbing wax paper over newsprint to collect the words and then rubbing the was paper on a page of the scrapbook, transferring all those little black newsprint letters. This recipe was in her handwriting: "melt butter, sugar, and treacle, and add essence. Take off the fire, add oats. Mix well, pour into a greased baking dish, and bake in an oven with a moderate fire for half an hour. Let cool. Cut into squares."

"Add essence." By this she meant "add almond extract," but when she made oatcakes she did add essence, her own essence. When I made oatcakes, they didn't taste anything like my mother's, though I followed my mother's recipe to the letter. They tasted good enough, but they tasted of my essence, not my mother's. There are no two cooks that can make the same dish; you'll find that essence in one and not the other. Or the essence in each is just different. I don't know. But you'll know the essence of a good cook when you find it in a dish. You'll just know. It was there in my mother's cooking.

from The Cure for Death By Lightning by Gail Anderson-Dargatz


This is exactly how I feel about my mom. There's just something about her cooking that can't be duplicated. I have several of her 'tried and true' recipes, the ones that she now just does from memory. But no matter how hard I try, I just can't make them the same way she does. She definitely puts her own essence into her cooking.

Thought of the day