Amberism

My Mom is Cooler Than Yours. Na Na Nana Na.

The best thing about my Mom is she the most supportive person you'll ever meet. If you have an idea, and she thinks its a pretty decent idea, she's your biggest fan.

As anyone who knows me in real life is aware, I have been coveting this kitchen. I really wanted to get this for the kids for Christmas but $400? A bit steep. I had started to put money into savings and had begun petitioning family to contribute to my cause. I know you can get plastic kitchens for considerably less, but the thought of being forced to look at a plastic kitchen day-in and day-out was too much. The exersaucer and swing is torture enough and there is enough plastic in the world.

My Mom took one look at that kitchen and said "We can make this". The next day she had drawn up the plans, and figured out how to cut out the necessary pieces from a piece of plywood.

Then she was in the local thrift store and saw this TV stand for $20.

She did a few mental calculations and figured that she could create a wood kitchen for considerably less and it even buys into my idea of recrafting. I LOVE recrafting. It gives me great pleasure.

So with a little ingenuity, some swearing, and many trips to the hardware store to get the drill working properly she came up with this!

Is this not seriously awesome? Like, the most awesome? Like something you'd have played with as a kid?

And it cost less than $50 after we bought the knobs, the used bowl for the sink, and the dishes.

And it looks cool in my kitchen, even matching my kitchen table, which is very important to me when I have to look at it day-in and day-out.

And it was all figured out and lovingly put to together by my Mom, who is the most cool. I don't think anyone is going to argue that one with me.

And the oven door opens and there's an oven rack. Super cool!

And we used every piece of the original TV stand, except this one itty block, although now we're calling it the "bread board"!

And all the knobs turn. And there are spice racks. And we're going to hang a hook for an apron and oven mitts. And we're going to make felted cupcakes, cakes, eggs, and whatever other food we can think of.

I'm giddy!

The only thing left to do is mat-tac the inside (maybe) and buy a dot-it light for the oven. And we have to fix a small little mistake in drilling in the stove knobs but hey! It's awesome!

Where I try to kill you with the cute

I need to do something seriously creative...

I'm trying to get myself to Calgary. All summer long I was under the impression we were going to Calgary, as a family, for a week of family fun followed by a weekend of sex, booze and drugs (~ahem~ without our children). Heaven.

ok, maybe not the drugs. I'm not entirely sure about the sex either, but the booze? I'm all over the booze.

It seems that I was the only person who thought this. Now there is all this talk about lack of money, work deadlines, blah, blah, blah.

I'm still going. I don't care if I'm walking to Calgary, I'm going. Steve has done every.single.thing he wanted to do this summer. Although he might disagree with that statement but for the sake of this blog post, consider it truth. And there's another blog post in there, too.

Me? I have had a child attached to my boob while tagging along behind Steve doing every.single.thing he wanted to do or just staying at home while he did his own thing. Admittedly a lot of it was fun, and I didn't really care that I was at home, but for the purpose of this blog post just go with it. The bottom line is that I was desperately looking forward to the Labour Day Long Weekend.

But I'd rather not walk. And because I am a parent and this role comes with some responsiblities (so they say) driving isn't looking good either. 16 hours in a car might be considered child abuse. How absorbant is a diaper?

So tongiht I've been trying to get there by plane.

For a moment, a brief yet glorious moment, I had a seat sale out of Victoria for a steal. In the next moment, before I could even think, it was gone. What the hell? Everyone in Victoria is online booking plane tickets to Calgary? Go to sleep, you're crushing my soul.

And I really need to finish something creative. Again, an entirely separate blog post.

Vacation!

I guess I didn't tell you I was going on vacation.

I went on vacation.

I love vacations, even in the rain.

We went to Tofino for the week with some friends and it was fabulous! Unfortunately it was rainy, but hey, its Tofino. Our friends headed out a day early, which was too bad because the day they left ended up being the best evening although it started out pretty dicey. We went to Long Beach in the pouring rain, and even though I love Long Beach and don't mind the rain, I draw the line at carrying around a baby while being drenched. We stuck it out, and drove out to Ucluelet, which turned out to be a great decision. We walked the Wild Pacific Trail for a bit, saw a two beautiful eagles in their nest, and watched the hummingbirds dance. All on the backdrop of the ocean. Then we spent our evening on the beach near our resort campground.

It was really nice to get away with the kids, and I think it was nice for Steve to really spend some quality time with them. 'spose you'd have to ask him. It was certainly nice for me that he spent some quality time with them at any rate.

My little girl suddenly got HUGE, and is all smiles, all the time. She's turning out to be a little social butterfly which is both fabulous and frustrating. We are still schedule-less, and we're still struggling to get her to sleep at a reasonable hour. At least now she'll sleep a 5-6 hour stretch from 10 pm on. Most nights. Baby steps.

And Callum is a terror. A cute terror, mind. He had many, many temper tantrums on vacation because all he wanted to do was play in the playground at the campground. We didn't travel to Tofino to play on a slide. Sorry kid. He went so far as to crawl UNDER the truck to get to the slide because we put up barracades in our site to prevent him from going to the park by himself.

Sleep! Wow!

Claire slept 8 hours last night! Normally at this point I would have uploaded an excessive number of cliparts consisting of balloons and other celebratory items.

Why don't I?

Because Callum didn't.

God has a wicked sense of humour.

One Local Summer::Week 9

This probably looks like a total cop-out on the one local summer front but it isn't! I swear! Mostly because right now all my meals look like this, with a rotating side of fresh vegetables, berries, or fruit. But the key point of this meal is the bread, although from this picture what you're looking at is really the bread bag. Yet it's the bread that is the star of my lunch. It is the ONLY local bread I can get my hands on, and I happened to be driving by the bakery (True Grains Bakery) on route to Victoria on Friday and Friday is the only day the bakery makes this 100% local bread, dubbed "20 Mile Bread". The duram wheat is grown in Saanich, and the flour milled at the bakery. It's fabulous. And was completely consumed at lunch.

We also devoured Brie cheese from Qualicum Cheeseworks, topped with apricot jam that I made with local honey, local(ish) pectin, and local apricots. yay!

And an apple. Because apples are cool.

I picked up two bags of flour to make my own bread at home, which I'm looking forward to once things settle down in my corner of the world. And I've been trying to grab tomatos when they're reasonably priced to can. We're also planning to freeze corn from Silver Meadows Farm, and when we dropped by there today were impressed with the selection of fruits and veggies they had to offer.

I love summer eating.