The last day of March

To celebrate the last day of March, I post oodles of pictures for your enjoyment.

The first of the orchids that Lenny's mom gave me for my recital last week. They're still doing really well and are super pretty. I love 'em.Next is the cheesecake I made for Lenny's birthday. It was supposed to be an Oreo cheesecake but when I went to make it I forgot that I only had graham cracker crust instead of Oreo. Ah well, the cherry cheesecake was Delicious (and huge... probably going to take some back home for Zach to eat ;) )
The next pic is of the 36 cupcakes I made for my last Human Resources Planning class (and last class presentation EVER!). We did a presentation on a company called Greenwood whose colours were purple. Anyhoo the cupcakes turned out super well and I ended up with an 85 on the presentation. This means even if I score a 50 on the exam I end up with a 75 in the course. I'm not planning on that but the security is nice :)
After the presentation I headed down to the Grad Club where Lenny's lab mate Vanessa was celebrating the successful defense of her MSc thesis earlier that day. Here's a pic of her and her/Lenny's supervisor Savita. As a side note, the thing Vanessa is drinking from is the GC's "Goblet of Knowledge", reserved for special occasions such as this.
My cardigan is coming along really well. Here's a picture of the nearly complete back of it. I've made it a few inches longer than the pattern called for because a lot of the pictures I've seen of people that have made it on Ravelry really looked like they could've used a few more inches on the bottom. We'll see if I run out of yarn because of this decision, but I'm optimistic.
A pic of my first armhole in progress!
The last two pics are of our new couch which has yet to be introduced to the blog. Here's a "before I cleaned the living room pic" of the couch:
And here's an "after" including two new throw pillows courtesy of a sale bin at Sears and some money leftover on a gift card my mom sent a few months ago. Two pillows for $15 out of pocket = not bad!

Well that's it. I've got one more essay that's due tomorrow and then I'm basically free until exams. Huzzah! First we travel to Toronto for Lenny's birthday celebrations though. Yippee! My FAVOURITE (actually! Family, food, doggies, what's not to LOVE!?!!) :)

Beware the bears of March

Yesterday was a rough day for me. My bear, aka frustration, runneth over. I was so frustrated with preparing for my upcoming recital, writing papers on stupid topics, having a messy house, and just general not feeling well. I'm quite sure I've got some other food allergy/sensitivity that I haven't quite figured out yet and that's making me not want to eat at all. This is not helping with angst. Ugh. I have managed to find some source of a multivitamin that doesn't irrate my stomache/throat: a chewable one! One of the doctors I've been seeing suggested this, and I have to say I'm not sure why I never tried this before. No more icky fillers for me to react to. Go big pharma!

In other bear news, this is what happens to your knitting project when you're angry:


You rip out hours worth of work! I was getting really frustrated adjusting for starting with an extra 10 stitches on my sweater so I just ripped the whole darn thing out and have started over again. It's for the best but man it was bittersweet ripping apart the sweater with reckless abandon.

So one of the positives from the past few days was a successful trip to the mall today. I managed to snag some really good deals on things I was looking for including these thank you cards for my accompanying forces for the Monday recital for only $1:
It's small, but victorious nonetheless. I also cleaned out the front hall closet this afternoon ridding it of old shoes that I don't wear anymore and installed a hook for our umbrellas. I also did a small amount of reorganizing upstairs and emailed people who I thought might want some of my leftover things that I don't use anymore. The last of the things is a two slice toaster that works. If you'd like it, let me know! I know a bunch of you are moving around in the next little bit.

Tonight I have a Selection & Recruitment class followed by some more work on my HR Planning paper (due Friday). It's coming along well after some extensive work today and I'm feeling optimistic that I will be able to put forth a valient effort for Friday.

Well I'm off to have some delicious leftovers of a pork broccolli carrot stir fry that Lenny made last night. SO thankful to have someone else taking care of some cooking during this busy busy season. Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming!

Weekend

This weekend has been pretty lazy. Yesterday I worked at the store for the university's March Break Open House day. I chatted with a lot of new potential students and their families and actually sold clothes as well!

Last night we went out for pizza at P.za.pie, our favourite pizza restaurant in London. It was the busiest we've ever seen it which was kind of nice in that I've always thought it should be busier than it usually is. The service was still pretty fast and we managed to score some delicious Lindt chocolate gelato for dessert.

Afterwards we headed off to Chapters to look at the latest books. I ended up picking up some of these really cute crossword puzzle books for less than $3 each. It'll give me something to do that's not knitting during downtime as well as something semi-productive.


Speaking of knitting, I thought it was about time that I post an update of my current knitting project: my first sweater.
This particular stitch is called the old shale stitch, but I keep wanting to call it the old whale stitch. ha! I guess it's because it sort of looks like waves. I'm really enjoying working with this silk blend and still have 10/11 balls of it left to go before I have something resembling a sweater. My goal is to finish it before we leave for Italy in May, but that may be a tad ambitious. Time will tell.

March fails

I had the best intentions of today being a productive day. Honest. I worked for an hour on an Industrial Relations assignment, finished that, went onto working on an HR Planning paper for an hour and then decided to take a break. At this point it went down hill. I decided to watch some Cake Boss and work on my knitting. Long story short, I decided that counting the number of stitches in a row would be a good idea because I hadn't done it in a few rows and low and behold I somehow added 10 (?!?!!) stitches! I think it's possible that I've actually just been +10 stitches the whole time and just didn't notice because I normally just count in groups of 10. After triple checking the count using some stitch holders, I decided it was time to rip out all of my work and start again but not without taking a picture first. I haven't actually ripped it out yet because it just breaks my heart, but ah well... probably after this post.
It doesn't look like I'm that far, but the knitting is really fine. Hrmph.

Needing another pick-me-up, I decided that it'd be a good idea to bake some chocolate chip cookies so we have something to snack on this week. While not the healthiest of snacks, I do like that they're preservative free at the very least so away I went. I got about 1/2 way through and realized we only had one egg instead of the necessary two. Against my better judgement, I decided to take a trip to Costco. Now we usually go to Costco sometime during the week and not a weekend afternoon. Today I was reminded why. Although there are way more sample ladies on the weekends, there are also about 10x as many shoppers strutting along and it's really hard to get in and out quickly (P.S. I also looked for mozzarella cheese to do a pasta dish tonight but the cheapest amount they sold it in was $12!!). What would normally take me 10 minutes ended up taking 45. Ugh. Stolen parking spaces even though I was signaling, being rammed with carts by people not looking. Ugh. Not a great experience.


Anyhoo so I arrive home and start unloading the groceries only to find Lenny is having a nap having just come back from a 26-km run in slushy slushy slush. So after unloading all the groceries myself, I get to the recipe and stupidly only add 2/3 cup of flour instead of 2 2/3 cup of flour. FYI, this is what your cookies will look like if you try that yourself sometime:
Well I'm off for round three of attempting to get into a better headspace to continue on this paper and spend some time practicing. Let's hope everything comes up peachy this time!

The Little Red Mitten

While in St. Thomas I went to a specialty yarn store called The Little Red Mitten. I didn't exactly find the staff the most helpful but I did end up spending about three times what my budget was for the trip. The purchases should last me a few months though, so maybe it's not so bad...

My main purchase was this Manos silk blend yarn. It's a light green colour and is really soft and just all around quite wonderful. It's even from Uraguay and the proceeds help support impoverished women there.I'm hoping to make the following cardigan with this yarn:


I really like the detailing at the bottom and I think it will be a good spring-weather sweater. At this point I need to start thinking about clothing that won't be too warm that I can wear during the spring and summer so hopefully this cardigan will do the trick. I'm not really sure about how tricky the button holes and things will be, but here's for hoping.

I'm still working on the dog sweater for Dakota but should have that finished in the next couple of days if all goes well.

Aside from picking up some more needles, I also picked up this pattern. This will be the next project after the cardigan I think:So there you go! An update on the knitting projects. I suppose I should post an in-progress picture of the doggie jacket but maybe I'll leave that til later... So many pictures lately!

A Christmas Wreath for >$10

Here is my how-to blog for making a beautiful Christmas wreath for under $10! I should start by saying that this is adapted from a project my mom, my sisters, and I used to do every Christmas. Yay Mom!



Supplies:

• cedar branches (mine taken from a nearby tree)
• some pine cones glued to wire (from Michael's for 45 cents for a group of three)
• a black garbage bag
• a wreath form (from Michael's for $7)

Step 1: Cut the garbage bag into one-inch wide strips.


Step 2: Tie one end of the strip to the wire form and then wrap the strip around the form leaving about 1/4 inch of overlap between wraps.

What it should look like at the end of the wrapping stage:

Step 3: Cut the cedar branches so that the bottom has at least 2" of stem and no branches coming out.

Step 4: Insert the branch end in between two layers of the garbage bag wrap. Put it in until you reach a branch.

Step 5: Continue in the direction of the stems, placing three strips of the cedar in each opening.
What it should look like in the end:

Step 6: Insert the pine cones in a similar fashion to the cedar stems.


Step 7: Add a bow at the bottom and tah-dah, you have a beautiful wreath! This bow was one by creating a whole bunch of loops while holding the midle and then tying an extra piece around the middle.


Marry Christmas and happy winter everybody!