One year

In June, we visited Oregon in celebration of our first anniversary. We saw a lot of pretty things that I could post about, but for now I just wanted to post up our "one year" photo that we took on Cannon Beach. It's been a great year.

Convocation Trip

Well if I'm going to have a blog I should darn well post on it from time to time. We had a few visits to Edmonton last month. The first one was for my talented husband's convocation. For his PhD in Chemistry. So proud. We had a quick but nice trip with just enough time for some family visits and some good Edmonton coffee. Congrats Joel!

Oh hi. Let’s play catch up. Here is a string of facts to fill you in on the latest:

• Our new ‘hood: Mount Pleasant.
• Joel’s new commute: One substantial bike ride with a many-kilometre hill at the end of it, or one 40 minute bus ride
• Bb’s new favourite place to hang out: Our apartment. It’s the best. Oh, and Seattle (Hi Natasha!)
• What’s close to our house: Almost everything! Libraries, excellent coffee, cute shops, transit, thrift stores, groceries.
• What’s far from our house: Friends and family. We miss you all.
• Job hunting: Sucks a lot.
• Finding a good job at the end of a long job hunt: Does not suck. Yay.
• Things we love here: The green green green and flowers in February! All the new restaurants to try! The ocean!
• Prettiest views: The mountains on a clear day.
• Visitors we have had: SO MANY! Kaeli! Melissa! The Kelly Family! Kerry! Kim! Natasha! Pencil! And many more!
• Current obsession: Corn tortillas. Both of us. We can't get enough. Tacos for dinner EVERY NIGHT. Unless we are eating sushi that day. 
• Weirdest thing I have seen since moving here: A lady in a satin blouse and stilettos trying to chase a guy in a suit who had just stolen a box of wine from the lobby of a building downtown. Eventually another guy in a suit came sprinting out and saved the day. 
• Something we should have done by now but we haven't: Gone to Whistler (come visit and we can go together!)
• Something awesome that we HAVE done: Wilco concert at the Orpheum!

Here is some greenery to make you Albertans envious. We miss you.

Icy, Icy

Winter has come to Vancouver, albeit a moderate version of winter compared to the great Albertan usual, but winter nevertheless. There is snow, and temperatures in the below-zero range, and everyone is talking about the weather.

It's pretty snowy in Seattle too, and apparently they have called in the National Guard to help them out. A situation which has led to a comic by The Oatmeal, that was true and funny: "Every time it snows in a big city, everyone is having the exact same conversation".

And, an icy fountain from my walk home from the grocery store tonight:

That is all. Good night.

A Winter Walk

What's up, internet? I got an iPhone!

I have been spending a lof of time alone lately, due to my current status of job-hunting-in-a-new-city. I really don't mind finding ways to spend my time, and have done a lot of fun and productive things this fall on top of looking for a job. BUT. Every once in a while I just get a little lonely when everyone is at work and I am on my own. I try to get out and do a little something every time I feel that way, so this week I took my new iPhone out for a little walk down on the sea wall in Vancouver. I chatted with my sister for a bit during the walk and made the pathetic but amusing observation that two of the friends (I am using the term loosely here) that I spend the most time with these days are 1) DJ Roomba, and 2) iPhone. They are fun toys to have around for extra amusement.

SO. Anyways. You may have heard of this excellent thing called Instagram, an app for your phone that makes all of your pictures look adorable. So I decided to take photos of my walk and live tweet them for my own entertainment. Apologies to Jen for the repeat as I am pretty sure she is the only one who probably followed the live tweeting of my walk. I know Kerry followed it later though, because I told her she had to go back and respond to all of my tweets.

And for my mom and anyone else who might not be on twitter or know a whole lot about it. Live tweeting is kind of stupid, but the general gist of it is that you tweet about something as you are doing it. If you don't know what tweeting is, then call me and we can chat. Basically, I was that person who was taking a beautiful walk on a beautiful day who was also engrossed in their phone like a moron instead of looking up at the pretty sky. But it was entertaining for me, and that was the major goal. So, SUCCESS.

 Some seagulls near Creekside Community Centre by False Creek

A view of the hill on Granville Island near Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
 

 Two street signs right along the water. How adorable are those street names? Only in Vancouver. Or any other coastal city I suppose.

 Part of being an Edmontonian transplanted in Vancouver is feeling smug about Alberta winters. For some reason people here are constantly salting the sidewalks and roads and boardwalks even though there is no ice and hardly any snow. So weird. WHY ALL THE SALT?

 The Granville Market. So cute. Come visit and we can go there and look at all the pretty food.

 The hill by Emily Carr from the other side. I walked past all the very hip students there and felt old. 

 Some pretty white berries in the bushes.

A little fountain/canal I found in amongst the condos along the waterfront. A view of downtown across the water.

And that was my walk in Vancouver on a gorgeous January day. Brought to you by Instagram. You'll be seeing more of these photos from now on.

"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.