Button Up!

Emily and I are the proud owners of a button maker. The price is outrageous, but she plans on making money with it. I plan on making a button out of every single thing I can find. 

Here I've used an old dictionary and a 'vintage' Peanuts book.

 This is my little me that Emily drew. I see so many possibilities.

Soup and Stuff

I'm still keeping up to my lessons in Body Restoration. It's week 3 and I'm so happy to be caught up. It's hard but I'm enjoying the process. The lessons get you thinking about how hard we are on ourselves to look like everyone else. 

 I'm not dieting, but I'm trying to get control of my diet. I'm going to the dr. next week to see about my options, some allergy testing, and maybe medication.

In the mean time, I journal everything I've been eating and how I feel afterwards. Monday was a bad day and all I can think is that maybe I had too much dairy the day before. 

Thank goodness for things like gluten free cream of chicken with quinoa pasta soup. I'm thanking Shaun and Cobbs for the mini sour dough loaf, but my tummy didn't thank anyone for it afterwards.

 Home made clam chowder. Thank you very much. Kerry said he was never eating it from a can ever again. Cream biscuits. Yes, too much dairy. 

 Butternut squash soup, this time with a little ginger and thyme. Was a huge hit. Sour dough croutons.

 The list. I can't even pronounce what FODMAP stands for but it seems to be helping. I can eat an Arby's sandwich and fries, I can eat almost anything orange, but I can't eat a bowl of lettuce. Life is cruel. 

With all my days off, (I traded with someone so I worked a few close together but I don't work again for about 2 weeks), we have been doing the menial stuff. Washed all the cupboards, top and bottom, but didn't do the insides. Took 5 boxes of things to Salvation Army. Feels good to get that stuff out of here.

We also cleaned out 2 large boxes of the kids' school work that we'd been saving. We thought they'd want it later in life. Then I remembered I didn't want the stuff my mom had saved so whey would my kids want this stuff. We asked them and sure enough, they didn't care. We sorted it, kept a few things, and got rid of the rest. But this little gem...Emily's handy work, we had to keep it. 

 I made these for tonight. M-R's birthday was last week and she's coming over tonight. I felt like making Creamsicle cupcakes from scratch for her. I had a bite yesterday afternoon and almost instantly had stomach cramps and goosebumps. I so want one tonight. 

Body Restoration, a BBQ, and lack of coffee humour.

I am very fortunate to be taking the Brave Girls course called Body Restoration.  I need it right now. My body needs it right now. It's not a comfortable place to be.
With all the dietary issues I've been having over the last 6 months, I am at odds with my body and food. I think I should be able to eat fruits and veggies, my body doesn't think so, it rebels, it causes me grief. This goes against everything I've ever known about trying to lose weight and maintain a healthier lifestyle. I want salad so badly. I want grapefruit juice, I've never been much of a juice drinker but all of sudden, it's what I want, but the side effects aren't worth it.
I've given up coffee {gasp}, my one and only cup a day. Which means I've given up my sugar in it too. This may be the reason I am not as sweet as I was 8 days ago. I am drinking tea, black tea, with caffeine in it. Only benefit I can see right now to giving up coffee might be the money we are saving on Tassimo cups,  and maybe the fact I might be less acidic. But that could be due to the medication I'm taking too.
I'm not doing the course to lose weight, if that happens, great, I'm doing it to get my body on track, feeling better about eating, and to feel more comfortable with myself. And if I make some beautiful artwork while I'm at it, then it's win-win! The above is the first assignment, and if it's a little 'Silence of the Lambs', that's on purpose. It wouldn't be me if it wasn't a little tongue-in-cheek.


A new addition....as of Christmas, thanks to mom and dad.

Our old bbq was free, and we had 2 of them so we gave one to mom and dad. They were small, but they worked and were free, did I mention that? This sucker is huge! Has no sides, so no burns on the wrists! It has a burner, for frying onions according to Kerry. It has a handy cupboard below it for hiding the tank and oh, I don't know, maybe your bike headlight so that when you really need it, you look high and low and everywhere else only to decide it's lost forever. Then when you are lighting the bbq so your wonderful wife can try to prove you wrong that the bbq really isn't hotter than the old one and everything burns, you discover that you put your light in the cupboard. And then you worry that you have Alzheimer's because your wife just finished reading Still Alice and told you you have Alzheimer's.
Anyways, The BBQ is heaven sent. Matches the house too. Needs a cover, which is nearly impossible to find in the winter. And if you are wondering about dietary issues and the BBQ, I can eat meat. And meat I will eat! I can't wait to smoke a brisket on this baby!
And yes, my flowers are dead. It's still life.

The hardest part about blogging is coming up with titles.

I've put my 50mm f/1.4 back on my camera. I did it just before Christmas knowing 2 things...

1. the 24-70mm is darn heavy to be packing around during the holidays, I need my arms for presents and food. 

2. f/1.4 is totally awesome for low light situations, f/2.8 is not. (Jimmy Fallon said I need to use awesome less, therefore it's stuck in my head and I want to use it all the time.)

I have kept the lens on out of sheer laziness now, and as I document my everyday with it, I remember how much I love it. 

We received some interesting items this Christmas...Shaun's page-a-day calendar is counting us down to the end of the world. A small change from the zombie-fact-a-day calendar of 2011.  It's a great way to start the day.

 I gave one of these thought-a-day journals to myself, Heather and Marg for our Project Life journaling. I find it so hard to write a thought a day. I also found I have to have the perfect pen to write, and I have the worst handwriting in the world, so it's a work in progress. I want to not write "I have a stomach ache" every night so ....

 We are not dieting, I'm sure I've mentioned my non-resolutions and the feelings of let down that go with resolutions when they aren't followed. Anyways, it's not a resolution, it's a life style change. I need to eat healthier so we are following a bit of Clean Eating, getting out the processed foods, etc. And eating with common sense. We bought this creamy chicken soup with quinoa pasta and it is so good, I decided to put it in a cute little sour dough loaf from Cobs. This was a bad choice. I soon discovered that if I want to not write "I have a stomach ache" in my journal, I should not eat so much sour dough. 

 Speaking of interesting gifts...Mrs. Purkis got this wonderfully interesting and very amusing Flavorwave Turbo Oven. It's endorsed by Mr. T! How could it not be useful? I pity the fool that looks into the light.

No models were injured during this photoshoot. Some lost their eyesight for 2 hours, and some had mild 3 degree burns on one side of their faces. 

A visitor, some wreaths, a New Year, and a whole lot a links.

I could go on and on about how I haven't been blogging, and how I really want to change that, but I really have no excuse, and can't make any promises that I will be regularly blogging. 

I worked a lot before New Years and am so glad to have lots of days off. There's so much that doesn't get done when you work, even if it is part-time, it was almost every day. 

This year, we had a special guest. My brother. He surprised everyone the week before Christmas and stayed till Christmas day. 

Mom had been itching to make wreaths, from Shelley's tutorial. She made my brother make one too. 

 They are so easy and so beautiful, they make great gifts. Jussy made one for our aunt.

 I think mom is selling her wreath.

 I made this one for Jenn for Christmas. 

 It's shots like this that have me wanting to paint my kitchen and maybe whole house lighter colours. Poor Kerry. I picked up paint chips yesterday and will hold off on the paint purchase for hopefully a few days. 

I'd love to paint the cupboards, but I'm so afraid to. Although I think sometimes it can't be any worse than it is. After going to the Jinky workshop and seeing the bright, airy-ness of white walls got me thinking about our colourful but dark rooms. Painting the house for better indoor photos is something to laugh about, but I'm dead serious about it. 

I'm going to really try this week to eat 'cleaner'. I've been having more problems, since having the stomach flu after New Years. Today, I did not have coffee. I had tea. I also had brown rice. I bought a giant bag of prunes from Costco, they are the plumpest ones I've ever had. This eating clean is going to kill me. 

In other news...I did not pick one little word, I never do, but it does intrigue me. I can't commit to one word for 366 days. But I am going to do Project Life again. I know I'm not done 2011, and I'm okay with that. I think the social aspect is one of the things I loved about doing it. (if you are reading this Marg and Heather, please let's make concrete dates and never be allowed to change them)

I also am not doing any of the photos a day, project 366, type of things. I wanted to but being sick, I didn't get to start when I would have liked to. I'll just be happy with my Project Life. 

And....I thought I would never get an e-reader. I love books too much. But after purchasing some photography books, pdfs, and such I realized how much I do not enjoying sitting at the computer reading and how much ink and paper I waste. So I bought a Kobo Vox and promptly found out that newly released electronic gadgets need time to work the kinks out. I hated every single minute I owned that thing. Sure it's lovely being in colour, but I could't easily do anything on it. I did not get an ipad, as it's expensive, although someone might be eligible to get one in the spring, I just don't need the internet access, and all the bells and whistles, I just want to read, besides, as well as having a giant mac downstairs, we have a macbook so if I want to go on-line, I'd use that. So I went back and traded the Vox in for a Kobo Touch, way easier! Love it. I have only had it a few days and have read at least 4 books. I'm hoping it will cut down on my magazine addiction too, although I can't seem to get the magazine on to the Kobo. I also plan to get an iphone when my blackberry contract is up. 

Tomorrow is my Friday, and I have big plans for the rest of the week.