"Uhhh, I may have bought a home brewing kit"

I went home to Alberta last weekend and while I was gone, my sweet husband sent me a text saying "uhhh, I may have bought a home brewing kit yesterday". Far be it from me to squelch my scientist-husband's at-home science experiments. He has been fascinated by the prospect of brewing beer for a while now, so we are giving it a go, and plan to share the results, if they are drinkable. Who could deny this happy scientist face?

He got the home brew going with a couple of friends while I was still out of town, and then this weekend we tackled the job of moving it into the carboy. It was the very first thing we did on Saturday morning, so I was still waking up when we ran into problems getting the siphon going properly. It was a little early for troubleshooting, so it was somewhere around this point when I declared "THIS IS BORING", and walked out. I didn't mean to be so dramatic. It just came out. I came back in about 30 seconds later and we eventually figured it out.

I was grossed out by the sludge around the edges. It was even grosser when we got to the bottom of the bucket and found the layer of yeast. Just be glad I did not photograph it. I'll leave you with a closeup of the sludgy edge. Come visit and you can try our sludgily delicious concoction! We won't be drinking it all ourselves, that's for sure.

If you want details on the hows and whys and whats, ask Joel, not me. I'm just along for the ride. It's pretty cool though to see how this is done. If only I liked beer as much as I like candy corns.

Link love from Poppytalk

I just found out I've been getting some link-love from a great design blog that I follow called Poppytalk. The blogger(s) behind Poppytalk are actually Vancouverites, I think, so I picked up following it again now that we live out here.

Their link to my blog is from a post on Poppytalk that is talking about making adorable Christmas scenes in your bell jars or cloches. It links back to my step-by-step instructions for making bell jars out of old clocks.

Click HERE to go the Poppytalk post, and click HERE to go to my old post from January 2010 on how to make them.

It was so cute that it inspired me to redecorate mine for Christmas this year. But for now I just took an updated photo of one of the bell jars as it appears in our home now.

Tandem

Our friends Nathan and Natasha came for a visit two weekends ago and although we failed miserably at finding a brunch spot that would accept us without an hour-long wait, we had a touristy win when we decided - at Nathan's urgings - to head up to Stanley Park for a tandem bike ride.

Let's start with brunch though. We seriously need some tips for a good fallback brunch place in Vancouver. We've tried to go to places like Jethro's, which is cool and tiny with delicious food and refuses to take reservations (seems to be a Vancouver trend), only to be turned off by the 1-hour wait time. I can handle 45 minutes. But an hour? TOO MUCH! We ended up realizing it was lunchtime and going for burgers for brunch. As much as I like a good burger and milkshake as the first food of the day, I don't think I want to do that again.

Here is a photo of my brunch posse standing on the street. Nathan turned this into an awkward photo. No big surprise there.

Anyways, fueled by burgers, we rented tandem bikes for a pretty reasonable price and rode around the seawall that circles Stanley Park. It was pretty awesome riding on the back because it was totally inconsequential if I let go of the handlebars, so I could take photos the whole time.

Here are Tash and Joel looking crazy.

 
Tash snapping photos as Nathan steers.

A tandem NO HANDS photo. This really happened.

And a picture of Joel and I on the beach. I cropped his eyes out by accident. This happens sometimes when the tall folk and the short folk take a self portrait. I  like his beardy face though.

Nook Makeover

We moved into a small place. Small space living is hyped as being all hip and urban, but at the same time it is just so darn SMALL. So we've had to be smart about how we are using our space. One of the ways we decided to do this was to use the little nook in the wall as a workspace and a home for some of our books and stereo.

Here is a photo of the nook shortly after move-in. SO BAD.

We sketched up some really simple plans, and talked about how to make it, and what materials to use. We landed on the idea of salvaged wood. That stumped us for a while since it can be less straightforward than it sounds to acquire useable salvaged wood. And then it hit me. My dad has a pile of old fence boards in the backyard. All old. All the same size. All free. All the time.

The next hitch was that I just can't pop over to my parents' house any time I want to get supplies for a new project. Lucky for me Joel was headed back to Edmonton the next week, so he drove back a stack of boards. First thing we did was clear out the nook to get it back to a clean slate.

Then, we sanded and stained the boards, since they were a dusty red colour that just wasn't going to work in our space. I did this on our balcony. We chose a black stain and polyurethane combined for a glossy and durable finish. It took a few coats.

This is me staining the trim that we planned to use in place of brackets. Partly because our wall-stud situation around here is sketchy. They are strangely spaced and very difficult to find. So we hoped this would be less noticeable if we had to do some weird rigging to get it to work.

We ended up having to saw all the boards and trim by hand, since we no longer live near anyone we can borrow power tools from (miss you, Dad and Scott!), and even if we could borrow them they are pretty loud to use on the balcony. I spent an entire afternoon sawing and sanding, and ended up with a weird limp arm thing going on that night. It felt almost detached from my body. Here is a picture of Joel sawing trim late into the night.

And then, once everything was really dry, it was time to put up the trim brackets.

And then to model our new tiny desk with a super weird expression.

Obviously, it wasn't anywhere near done until I decorated the heck out of it and Joel got his tech-savvy hands on the stereo. Every time I take a photo of something in our house to blog it, it makes me see new things I want to change, but here it is for now, with its super-functionality.

 And a close up shot of the desk area, with the perpetual calendar that I made last week. I chalked a grid onto some black paper and framed it, then used a white eyeliner pencil to write in the days and month onto the glass. That way, at the end of each month you can just wipe the white pencil off the glass and update it to the next month.

And here is a shot of my computer set up on the computer stand, with this blog post up on my screen. Whoa.

So, that's about it. A tiny nook makeover that's made our lives a little more organized.

Can't. Stop. Painting. Stuff.

When left to my own devices - as I have been often these past two months - it turns out that I just can't keep myself from making stuff, altering stuff, and of course PAINTING stuff. The latest craze is grey.

Another thing about me is that while I like to send things I don't like or need anymore to the thrift store, before I let them out the door, I always scan my brain to see if there is any possible way I can update or alter the an item to make it likeable again. If I wreck it in my attempt to fix it up, then it's not a big deal because it was just being sent to the thrift store anyways.

The latest item to get the treatment was a giant plastic oatmealy coloured plant pot. It was dirty and unsightly, but oh so very practical. It had really good drainage and an overflow holding area, which is extra nice when you don't want water spilling down on to the neighbours balconies below. But it was bringing the whole balcony down in terms of style. Maybe that sounds lame. But it totally was.

I looked at it sitting in the donate pile for a few days before snatching it out and deciding to try out a fun chevron pattern on it in grey spray paint. All I did was tape off the pattern using painters tape while I watched Friday Night Lights (thanks to Kerry), and then spray it.



The result? Well, I think I like it. And I can't wait to plant it and get a shot of it with the other pots. Easy, fun, and when I'm done with the pattern I can either paint it again or donate it.

Cooking and eating. And drinking.

The moment we got our stuff to Vancouver, Joel's inner chef decided to explode. He has always been into making and eating great food, but as soon as we said hello to our new gas cook top, he was off and running. It may have also had a little something to do with the fact that I was happy to unpack boxes while he roasted us organic chickens for dinner. A fair trade, I'd say.

Anyways, we have been checking out our neighbourhood and city for good coffee and food. When Tash was visiting we took her to a place called "Meat and Bread" that has delicious sandwiches. Every order is served on parchment on a wooden cutting board. So cool. And the decor there is as perfect as the sandwiches, which makes me pretty happy. Vintage punching bag? Check!



Our hunt for new and fun Vancouver food led us out to the night market in Richmond, for Joel's first experience with bubble tea and some street meat. And street tofu. It was fun, although we didn't hit on anything that blew our taste buds away it was pretty interesting. The place was packed with food booths and people, and there were thousands of tech gadgets and iphone covers for sale. Overwhelming. But fun.


As for the good coffee, it just so happens we live two blocks from the best coffee we have found in Vancouver, at a place called Kafka's (see us with Tash and Pencil at Kafka's in the photo below). So far most of the other coffee has been a little disappointing (except for Elysian). We thought the coffee here would be amazing, but even at a lot of the places with good reviews it's been THUMBS DOWN. It makes me feel a little smug for Edmonton though, because that city has some darn good coffee. I'm just going to go out and say it...it's better than Vancouver's. Feel free to try to prove me wrong. Maybe I'll get a good latte out of the deal.


Back to the first point I made about our fancy new stove...we have made a whole load of delicious stuff since we got here and it's been fun. I've been snapping photos of some of it so that we can remember a bit of the great stuff and make it again. So here's a few of the things we've been enjoying.

Fresh pesto made with giant bags of basil from the Trout Lake Market


Zebra tomato chutney (in process photo, as it turns out finished chutney does not photograph so well)


Pineapple salsa modeled after some delicious stuff we found in the store here, and made with tomatoes I picked up at the tomato festival that was put on by the farmer's market.



Further to experiment on our stove, I bought Joel the set of Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" for his birthday, and we have cooked a few fun things out of that using our dutch oven, which was a wedding gift that we have been using and loving. I made my first whole roasted chicken in it, and amazing (ahem, this is me, complimenting my own cooking) seared pork roast, and a birthday dinner for Joel with his family (tuna tuna tuna!). Next up is Beef Bourgingnon, of course.

We also went to seattle last weekend and ate our way through that city like you would not believe. Turkish delight, Top Pot donuts, Balsamic Strawberry and Earl Grey ice cream from Molly Moon's, coffee from Cafe Felice, and the most gigantic plate of mexican food that I have ever seen. And we were only there for two days. Ha. Here is a photo of Joel and Tash doing something at the ice cream store. Maybe one of them can tell us what they were doing.




And one final food development...Joel's parents came for a visit and gifted us with a bbq (!!!), so we have been enjoying some great bbq fare since then as well. Like this bbq salmon with dill cream sauce. Oh my goodness.

Me & He

Okay people, it's time for a new blog. Basically, I just migrated my old blog over to my new gmail account, since I was squatting on an old, never used gmail account that I was sort of borrowing so that I could have a blog. I am getting tired of managing dozens of passwords; therefore, I am trying to simplify my electronic life. So, now I've got a shiny gmail address of my own and a blog to go with it. I figured with the recent wedding and the inter-provincial move, it would be a good chance to make a new blog - with perhaps a little emphasis on our life together - to share with the people back home.

So, welcome to the new blog. It's still my blog, just with formal acknowledgement of the starring role that JK (a.k.a. "He") plays in my everyday blog-able activities. And in my heart, obviously.

That's us, in our new place.

What makes a classic?

I am reading East of Eden, by John Steinbeck, and it's depressing as heck. It's making me think, though: what makes a classic a classic? And is that enough to make it worth reading? When I'm done reading this tragic story, will I be able to say "I'm glad I've read it"?

After some googling around, the verdict I distilled out of the internet's always-plentiful and often useless sea of opinions was that timelessness and universality are two major criteria for a classic. With having NEVER been out of print, it seems that East of Eden has proven itself timeless. And its heavy drawing on biblical themes may seem to be evidence that it has a universal tale of morality to tell. I'm only half way through so I'm far from drawing any useful conclusions on that front. I'm not sure it's worth blogging about a book half way through the reading process, except that I'm finding it so dark that I just want to throw this out there and get a few opinions.

I mentioned my thoughts to Kerry, who asked me why I just don't quit reading it if I don't like it. I don't know how serious she was about not finishing it (she strikes me as a book-finisher), but all I could say was that I was reading it because it is a classic and I feel like that means I should read it. And if I don't like it at the end then at least I will be able to explain why, having read from cover to cover.

But trying to explain why I will probably finish reading it even though it's an awful, awful story reminded me of a question that my first year university English professor posed to our class. She asked us: why do we read?. It was a truly awkward moment. All of us first years unwilling to speak, afraid to answer incorrectly, and dreading being called on in front of a class full of strangers. She eventually answered the question with her own answer, which was that we read to know that we are not alone. We read to know that we are not alone.

Frankly, I would rather feel alone than know any of the characters that have been introduced to me in East of Eden. In my further googling (c'mon, this is a blog for fun, I can google for sources, right?), the thing I found that seems to fit this situation the best is Italo Calvino's thoughts on what makes a classic. Apparently he wrote an essay called "Why read the classics?" in the 1980s that says "a classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say". And then he personalizes it, saying that "YOUR classic author is the one you cannot feel indifferent to, who helps you define yourself in relation to him, even in dispute with him."

Well Mr. Steinbeck, I think we are officially in dispute.

August was august

Did you know that "august" is a word outside of being a month? I like that about it. Especially since August does in fact tend to be august. Basically it means: inspiring admiration, majestic. Among other things.

Anyways, back to the grand recap of our crazy summer. I’m once again behind on this but you know we’ve been busy doin' stuff. So, AUGUST. Or what I can remember of it...

We rode into August on a wedding high, but first took a mini-break to go to folk fest.  We just bought a day pass and had a pretty awesome time hanging out with some favourite people: Scott, Geneva, Francis, Kaeli, and my dad. Those kids are the cutest. But those kids outside are even cuter. Every time I hang out with F&G I think my head might explode from all the love and cuteness. The next day I got in touch with the lovely Kerry, who was also in town for folk fest. She was in her usual mid-summer state of pure exhaustion, so I forced her to come take a nap on our new inflatable guest bed that we were testing out for Vancouver. Then I dropped her off at folk fest and she tried to sneak attack me with an extremely final goodbye as she got out of the car. I believe it was something like "I'm never going to see you again". Nerd.

After the ‘fest, we continued the wedding trend all the way down to Southern Alberta for Bri and Patrick’s first instalment of their wedding, which was basically a full wedding sans rings, which were later exchanged at another ceremony in Ontario. It was a beautiful weekend and fun to get down south and see a real life “rattlesnake protection area”. The farm was a beautiful place for a wedding and the party was full of familiar friendly faces. Joel and I had the privilege of driving down and camping with Lisa, which was a TREAT. I always forget that she totally loves rap music and club music. It’s hilarious. But I never forget that she is fun to hang out with. 

A highlight of the weekend was when Lisa looked at me and said “you and I are going to dance to the next song together, no matter what it is”. And can you guess what it was? It was totally the Macarena. UGH. Also, DID YOU KNOW THAT MICROSOFT WORD AUTOCORRECTS “MACARENA” TO BE CAPITALIZED? Ha! Awesome.

Returning to Edmonton meant that we had to start facing our reality. You know, the reality where we had to pack up and move our lives to Vancouver? Let me just say that it was a luxury to have extra time to do this, but that consolidating two households plus downsizing them to fit into a one bedroom apartment is a big job. Joel had a three bedroom house that was basically full of stuff that he owned, and I had a one bedroom plus den’s worth of stuff. So that was a heck of a lot of consolidating. Thank you to the kind and generous Lewis, who lived with us all summer and was gracious enough to overlook the chaos. 

After a summer of slow goodbyes, we capped it off with an official goodbye party, at the always-stylish and always welcoming home of Dawn and Rick. They saved our butts from major house embarrassment if we had tried to have people over to our place. It was a beautiful summer night and a great way to say goodbye to Edmonton and our friends here.

Then, the last thing we did in August was leave our home of 27ish years each, and drive a van full of our stuff to a new life in Vancouver. I can’t say enough good things about life in Vancouver so far, but I’ll save those for later, because really, right now, I am just feeling a little sad about leaving Edmonton.

July: unexpectedly crazy

In the weeks leading up to our wedding I kept telling people that we'd have lots more time in July to hang out. I'm here to tell you now that I accidentally lied. This was UNTRUE. We have hardly had any time. Once again, it's been crazy, but still mostly fun. Here is July, in a nutshell.

1) Mexico

We flew to Mexico right after dumping all of my belongings into Joel’s house, leaving a disastrous mess of boxes behind for poor Lewis to live amongst.  It was a week full of sun, delicious Mexican food (GUACAMOLE! Piles and piles of it eaten on the beach), hangouts with family and my friend/cousin Melissa and her man-friend, topped off by the wedding of my cousin Lindsay! It was a good time, although poor Joel had to hole up in our hotel room studying for his defense, which leads me to the next major item…

2) Dr. Husband!

We flew back to the airport in Calgary on Sunday night and drove the rest of the way home in a  rainstorm. Monday and Tuesday were full of thesis defense prep, and on Wednesday, he/we spent dawn-til-dusk defending and partying. Well, I didn’t do much defending, but I consulted on tie choice (see above), drank coffee (pictured above), waited around, and watched the presentation (which was excellent)…and then I went out to party afterwards. So proud.

3) Vancouver House Hunting

Now that we had the gigantic PhD defence out of the way, we drove out to Vancouver to look for our new home. We left on Monday morning, arriving late that night, and budgeted…ONE DAY to find the perfect home to rent. Ummmm, whose dumb idea was that? Turns out it was OURS! We pretty much did it though, and I patted us both on the back for the entire drive home for being so organized, prepared, and lucky in our house hunt. We found a great place, and although things looked a bit dicey for awhile, it’s ours now for the next year and that’s all that matters for now. The pics above show the tilework at the entrance to our building, and the rows upon rows of lavender growing out front. I think it was meant to be.

 4) Rosebud

We drove back from Vancouver right after we signed our new lease and felt confident that we would have no problem driving the whole way to Calgary. But then we realized we left Vancouver at close to 4:00 p.m.  Another brilliant idea. So we slept in Golden after a white-knuckle drive through the dark for several hours and woke up early the next day to rush to Rosebud, AB. We saw “Jake and the kid” with my parents, sister and aunt and uncle. Rosebud was just as sweet at my mom has always said.

4.5) Calgary Folk Festing  

We went from Rosebud directly to Calgary Folk Fest, which froze us out via miserable rain, and then eventually cleared up enough for us to enjoy. We met up with Kerry and Leanne at various points, and stayed with Melly.Tasting a maple bacon donut (pictured above, bottom right) at "Jelly" is an part of the weekend that should not be overlooked. Fun if you like donuts, which I do. As a donut-appreciator, I am always surprised how many people don't like them. I think at least 60% of people who say they don't like donuts are just telling themselves that so that they aren't tempted to eat them all the time for every meal. Donuts are delicious. 

5) Birthday and Garage Sale

 

When we got back from Calgary it was my birthday the next day, so Joel made a delicious dinner of pork tacos with homemade tortillas for me and my family. So fun. Then we got down to business and prepped for our upcoming garage sale. We cleared space in Scott and Heidi’s garage and loaded all of our crap over there to make sweet moolah. It was SO WEIRD the things that people bought. So if you are ever having a garage sale and wondering whether to include an item...DO IT. Someone will probably buy the thing you least expect them to. Also, it was fun to hang out at their house all weekend and we made a decent profit, which we used to buy ourselves a new couch! But more on that later, as it is sitting flat-packed in our basement right now.

6) Dave and Jamie's Wedding

And then, after all that, Dave and Jamie got married! Those are two fine people and they put on a great wedding. It could not have been more perfect for them. Beautiful day, thoughtful ceremony, and ridiculously awesome entrance into the wedding being carried by their friends on custom-made wooden platforms. Oh, those two. 

All in all, a good month.

June in a nutshell

After a month-and-a-half hiatus from my regular life, I decided to pop up and populate my neglected blog with a new post, since I can’t see life returning to anything closely approximating regular for quite some time. At the rate we have been going, I am thinking I might start to unwind sometime in January 2012.

That’s fine with me though. Life is good and fun and exciting and we are still young enough to keep up. I’ll start at the beginning of the chaos and do a little whirlwind update. I originally planned to do it in one giant post, but I think I’ll just start with June for now.

1) Wrapping up the job I’ve worked at for the past three years

In a truly inspired moment, Joel suggested I wrap up work before our wedding instead of after, thus leaving us a bit of time as newlyweds wrapping up our life in our beloved Edmonton --- not kidding about it being beloved, by the way, so keep your comments to yourselves any Edmonton-haters --- before we have to pack up and start a new love affair with Vancouver (that's a lot of endings before we get to the new beginnings). As well, after years and years of work, Joel was almost ready to say goodbye to student life and hello to life as Dr. Kelly (PhD, not MD). But that’s a story for my July-in-a-nutshell post. Basically, we wanted to be able to take maximum advantage of this interim period, because I’m guessing it won’t be often in the coming years when we are both able to be off from work/school at the same time. Anyways, wrapping up was a positive thing. I think they were sad to see me go, which is a nice feeling when leaving a job, and the timing turned out to be perfect, since we had a bunch of chaos (both expected and unexpected) in our general lives, so it has been nice to have the extra time to deal with it properly instead of rolling it all up into a giant ball of overwhelmed-ness and disorganization that we would have to deal with once we got to Vancouver.

The pic above is the Louise McKinney walking bridge looking over to downtown. I'm pretty sure one of those towers is Scotia Place, as it is one of the downtown buildings that you can see from almost anywhere in the city. 

2) Getting married (!!!)

 Best thing I’ve done. Seriously. I never suspected it would be such an absolute blast to attend my own wedding. We had an amazing time. Our families and friends amazed us with their support and helpfulness. All of our wedding vendors were champs. We were in love. What more can you ask for? After the excitement of the actual wedding was over, my emotions were running so high that my eyes welled up with happy tears at least once a day for twelve consecutive days afterwards. Hilarious. Following that it was about once every two or three days. It was all just so overwhelming and excellent. I recommend it.

The picture above is the reminder Joel set in his iPhone for our wedding day. Ha.

  

3) Honeymooning

We figured we’d have a lot of time this summer. We were mistaken. This makes me increasingly glad that we decided to getaway for the week following our wedding. We had a super relaxing week full of sleeping in, swimming, bbqing, hiking, canoeing, biking, and coffee. I would not trade that week for anything.

4) Packing up and moving out of my old place

I decided to leave my little apartment basically untouched while we went away after our wedding. It was good not to worry about moving before the wedding, but the major downside to that was that we had to come home and pack and move me in a three and a half day span of time. Whose idea was that? Ummmm. What a whirlwind. I tapped into the most dedicated version of myself and spent a few 16 hour days packing before Joel and Lewis championed my move up to my new home downtown. Thanks guys.  Then I returned to clean up and say goodbye. This is a final goodbye shot in the bathroom mirror where Natasha had drawn a sweet heart for us to return home to after honeymooning.


That brings us to the end of June. I'll tackle both the wedding and July later on. And by then it will likely be time to catch you up on August.

House Tour: Part V

I spent part of Saturday tidying up my house because it has become a pit of wedding preparation. I decided I would focus on my bedroom so that I could post the pics AND run away from the clutter that is all around. Not that I don't LOVE the clutter. I do. It's so fun to have 20 projects on the go all at once. Just...busy and messy.

Anyways, here's my room.

And my giant green dresser/credenza from Goodwill. And on the right a giant "a" scored by Natasha's sister and passed along to me. Oh, and a little ceramic bust of a composer on the bed side table.

My styrofoam and fabric upholstered head board, little library drawers, and my Anthro knock-off bed spread from Target.

 This is the view from the bed, into the laundry area that leads to the bathroom. And the chair that me and my mom recovered.

And my jewelery catch-all and little moss terrarium.

And on the other side of the door, my letterpress drawer from my sis, a chalkboard I made out of a thrifted frame, and more jewelery stuff.

And...the finale...MY SUPER ORGANIZED CLOSET. And it OFTEN looks almost this clean. I am pretty stoked about it.