Sunday Thoughts: Simplicity...

 Someday I will be this woman...

Yasmina Rossi

...sitting on this swing.

T minus ZERO

It's SPRING!

Yesterday I went outside to see if the neighbour's dog was defecating once again in my driveway and four hours later I was still pulling dead wood out of the forest to build a "fence" around the lower bit of my yard that runs along the road. The different family members came out to take turns telling me how nuts I was and that if I thought that a four foot high wall of sticks was going to keep the four year old in check, I would need to add barbed wire. Little did D know that in fact I do intend to add a deterrent... how long do blackberries take to grow?

future garden party

 I am beyond excited to see the forest emerging from the snow, bit by bit. I really want to create useable space (for garden parties of course!) throughout the yard and while it has the potential to be beautiful and woodlandy, it is currently the unfortunate creation of too many past tenants who neglected to do anything but let the branches fall where they may. I found four year's worth of X Christmas trees, six bags of moss and yard waste buried under last year's maple leaves and the remnants of at least a few bear visits. "The Bear," which all of my neighbours have now told me about, apparently nicks the garbage in the area and holes up under the massive fir tree in the back corner of the property to indulge in old yogurt and stale bread... won't get into the nastier bits, this is a nice and happy Spring post... :) Going to have to do something about that though.

The high point of my day was finding the snowdrops peeking out from beneath the snow and leaves. Spring is truly here!

I have a few other Spring Fever thoughts. One is that I am intent on updating my wardrobe with the nicer weather. This whole concept of finding any part at all of my pre-child body is just going to have to give way to the fact that I have a crappy closet.

I just happen to have found a few happy pieces in the new Lilikoi Spring collection which fits my bill of local, eco, and GORGEOUS! I also might be a bit biased because the model she has used this time is just friggen' stunning. I may even have to do a red hair rinse and start wearing makeup again...

Another Spring thought, is that wedding season is once again upon us... so I have done some tweaking to the other blog. It used to be a NON-blog... essentially a place where I put stuff so that I had someplace to send people who were looking for info on the Celebration Quilts that I do. A recent setback in the social department left me with some time on my hands and the need to occupy my brain, so I have been diligently slogging away to rehabilitate my NON-blog into an actual blog. I can use it as a place to deposit those strange but intense needs to peruse and research that industry. Try as I might, I simply cannot get it out of my system. If you would like to give me some ideas or feedback, please do. I feel very OLD when I post wedding info because I have no idea how to include words like "adorbs" and "gorge" in my vocabulary. Nor am I able to commit to rhyming Shoesday with Tuesday. But I think I will be able to hold my own ;)

In the bridal department, there have been some very interesting ideas unfolding. Purely by accident, I was put into touch with the right people at the right time, and some VERY EXCITING things are in the works. Funny how life works like that. Sometimes you have to take something out of the equation to allow room for the new. Now, if only I could take care of that dog. Do you think capturing him and shaving him bald would teach the them a lesson? I hesitate to punish the dog for his owner's rudeness. Perhaps I will wait till the warmer weather for that...

Sunday Thoughts: The Call Of the Chickadee...

I recently took my two boys on a virtual tour of my childhood via Google Streetview. I was Facebook chatting away with a girl whom I have never met but who inspires me on a regular basis with her posts on everything from hazelnut butter-cream icing, to Kiss Me in the Park parties, to her latest published piece on fun wedding ideas. Anyhow, she seems worlds apart from my life, and yet not. She had noticed that my FB profile was updated to show where I grew up, and it turns out she grew up in the same neighbourhood. Well, she corrected, a smaller community quite close to that neighbourhood... and from there we had one of those "...really? Me too!" conversations where we realized that we had actually lived down the street from each other as teens (OK, I was a teen, she was probably a toddler). She said her house had been demolished in the development frenzy that has plagued the area over the last decade, and I had to laugh because the house that was built in its stead is one that my father (who now rents out the home I lived in) refers to as the bane of the neighbourhood because it has a tower with what looks like plaster bum reliefs around the top. It definitely stands out. Well, of course I had to then show my sons the house I was laughing about... which led to a cross-BC Streetview Tour of my life.

the "Bum House"

Crescent Parish

What is funny about having children, is that you find the same things coming out of your face as you heard when you were young. Except now instead of being without context, they make absolutely perfect sense and come with weighted meaning that you know is falling on deaf ears. I tried in vain to draw a visual picture of what "life was like" growing up in a beach town with tidal pools for playgrounds and knowing every single neighbour right up to the bakery six blocks away. I was immediately taken back to the world where my mother had already been informed of my daily excursions before I was even off my bike and walking through the door for dinner... and if I was in the bakery, she was most likely on the phone with "Carol" letting her know that she should remind me to pick up the bread as well as the fritter that I was after. They enjoyed the stories, but relating to them was a different thing entirely.

Crescent Beach had the best sunsets

Something happened though when we got to the view of the home I was a child in. It looks the same, nearly, although some moron went and stuccoed over the cedar siding that had covered the entire house and in my day the paved area in front was actually two massive cedars that were homes to bats and squirrels. At the end of the seventies, when my father built it (and I do mean that he built it, not that he had it built,) it was absolutely the best of the best, with beams running throughout that were pretty much entire trees... the brickwork was painstakingly done around the stove and oven... and I remember how proud he was of the marble countertops and the RED sink and dishwasher that my mother had asked for. Nothing makes me more proud than when I talk about that house and the attention to detail that he put into it. (Disclaimer: my children are, of course, exempt from this particular sentence.) I know he was not an easy man to live with, I inherited his bizarre need for perfection in the strangest places, but lack of interest in areas that most people find important. The first thing that that house means to me though, is that it was his way of expressing his love for his family. That house was everything he thought a father, the provider, was meant to be, and he tried as hard as he could to make it perfect. It ended up shaping much of who I am today, and I can trace back so many of my interests and values directly to things I learned both while it was being built, and also how we lived in it.

My (slightly altered) childhood home.

The second, and more important thing that that house meant to me, as beautiful as it was, was that it was truly a home. There was a feeling of lightness and security that came with being a child there. We had the beach out front and the most amazing forested hill in the back that was home to bald eagles, ringneck pheasants who nested right outside the back window, and a family of raccoons that would come down the hill whenever we had a barbeque. The house was literally built into the grade so when you looked out the back windows, you were nose to beak with the pheasants and stellar jays, and there was a dead tree at the top that I liked to think was the tower to some sort of fairy castle.

My sister and I shared a large room at the front of the house that had a bubble skylight big enough to sit in and feel like we were at the top of the world looking down on the teeny people on the road. When I was lucky enough to earn my own bedroom at the back of the house, I inherited a small triangle shaped window that let in the glow of the Christmas lights during winter months and when it snowed (which it used to do back then) the glow would be reflected throughout the room. What I loved most about my childhood was found in that bedroom. Spring and summer mornings would greet me with dappled sun filtering through the huge leaves of the many maples that would reach out from the hill and the most beautiful sound in the world (other than perhaps the laughter of children), the orchestra of the songbirds would be the first thing I heard every morning. To this day, the sound of the chickadees singing brings me a feeling of peace and serenity that I don't find anywhere else. It makes me ponder what kind of life I am giving to my own children and most importantly, how they see things vs how I, as an adult see them.

It could be argued that I had a certain degree of turmoil in my childhood. My mother was discovering her strength as a woman and didn't like the role of homemaker. My father, a traditionalist wanted her at home baking cookies and tending her brood. They didn't fight often, but looking back it is easy to see the tension that was found in daily life there. I was raised "properly". I took ballet, happily wore black patent shoes, and knew which fork was used for which dish, was best in my french classes and had very good grades as a child. I was polite and I knew right from wrong... and none of that seems to matter now. Of course I am a better person for it, I know that. My point is though, that the things we are teaching our children, the things that we deem important as adults, should of course be taught. Just don't expect those things to be the most important things in their lives and their thoughts. My boys suddenly tuned in when I started to talk about the leaves, and the birds, and making forts in the ravine. The tidal pools were far more interesting to them when it was the anemones we spoke about, not the importance of protecting natural spaces and how they just aren't the same anymore because of all the pollution yadda yadda...

The protection of natural spaces is so important to me because I spent my childhood immersed in them instead of watching TV. Detail is important to me because I was able to experience the end result of hard work and love of process. Etiquette is important to me because I experienced what it was like to attend the symphony in my black patent shoes and I got a feel for what it is like to be involved in a cultural event where rude is simply not involved, and polite was part of the whole. Of course my father would go into his spiel of "I don't want to see any blah blah blah" every single time. But once I had seen what was meant by it, he didn't have to repeat himself. Not often at least.

I was very lucky to have the childhood I had. I have been very lucky to live the life I have led. And the most important thing I think that I can now teach my boys in an age of such craziness is to just keep it all in perspective. Sometimes life is tough, but there is always something to be thankful for. I think it all boils down to stopping to smell the lilacs, dipping your toes into the tidal pools when you come across them... and of course, Zen-ing out to the chickadees.

This post is part of my involvement in a Blog-O-Sphere Think Tank... we all visit the same topic and post on it on the 20th of each month. Please visit the other participants blogs and spread the blog love in comments!

Andes Cruz: www.andescruz.wordpress.com
Beth Cyr: http://bcyrjewelry.blogspot.com/
Brad Severtson http://hammeringoutaliving.blogspot.com/
Kirsten Skiles http://www.kaskiles.com/
Kathleen Krucoff:   http://mysticalmythicalmetalwork.wordpress.com/
Wendy Kelly: http://www.wendykianakelly.com/
Natsuko Hanks: http://jewelrybynatsuko.blogspot.com/
Susan Moloney:  http://susarto.blogspot.com/
Pal Gooz: http://pmgart.blogspot.com/
Stephanie Clark: http://thethinkingsofacoldweathergirl.blogspot.com/
Shaun Young: http://shaunyoung.ca/

Such Pretty Things in Matramoniville

OK, so now I am on a roll... I am trying to send out some PR for these Celebration Quilts for wedding season and having done the last post, I seem to just be happy getting sidetracked into hours spent going from one exquisite photo to the next. How unbelievably stunning is this? I am so doing this this summer, even if it seems extravagant for a barbecue. Seriously, anyone who knows me at all would not be surprised :)

The image above comes from Dog n'Bird, which is completely worth all the button pushing it will take to get over there and peruse through the pages of stunning ideas... whether you are in the market or not. SO many nifty ideas and pretty things to look at.

I found them through weddingawkers.com which is just a compilation of fabulous wedding details and links to their surrogates. Worth checking out also because, let's face it, weddings are just fun to look at. Hey, is it spring? Must be. They also had a pic of the most amazingly divine cupcake in existence from Sugarbloom in Perth (via love and lavender, also a pretty brilliant site).


I am all about anything with random script, if I could get a pattern for it I would sew everything with script on it. This is my plan for my upcoming Marie Antoinette party, but shhhh, do not tell anyone! Speaking of which, which we were not! Anyone know where one can purchase online good quality chocolate quail eggs? Just curious.

... Up Where the Air is Clear

So today I casually brought up the idea of planning a treehouse for next year at my parents new property. I have always wanted to build a tree folly and I believe every child should grow up with one but until now we simply did not have a place to put one. While my boys would most likely be happy with a ladder and a platform (and a coat of turquoise paint as my six year old is intent on adding as much colour to the world as possible...) I have always come at a project with the "go big or go home" mentality.


A few years ago I became obsessed with the Duchess of Northumberland's tree castle at the Alnwick Gardens. The project was a collaboration with the Prince of Whales to create what was to become the largest public gardens in Europe and the creativity and talent that went into them is nothing less than astounding. I followed their progress until the website changed over to basic tourist information. Many of the photos were unfortunately removed, but if you are ever able to put this on the itinerary for an excursion, I believe it would be more than worthwhile!




Not so long ago, the spherical treehouses from Free Spirit Spheres that originated on Saltspring Island (a place I once lived) made the rounds on sites such as Inhabitat and other design oriented blogs.

These are funky... still not my style though.

But these! Now this is something I could spend a great deal of time in... hell, this is something I could throw a great deal of martini socials in! I'm sold. They are prefabricated in Germany and I may have to sell a kidney just to cover the shipping, but there are some things in life that you just have to sacrifice for...

Baumraum has created dwellings that sit amongst the treetops in countries all over Europe and as far as the U.S. and Brazil. Just a trip through the galleries on their site has me dreaming of what fantastic things can be done thinking outside, and in this case, waaaaaay above, the box.

What do you suppose the chances of hoisting a retrofitted Airstream into a tree are? Fabulous, me thinks.

Now You See It...

I have run into an issue with my studio and my EPIC party has been put on hold. I am fine with this because I have a million and one things to be getting done and thinking about pink pastries should not be topping the list. It will be a couple more weeks.


In the meantime, whilst diligently doing my eco research, I have run across this GORGEOUS artwork by Nicole Dextras. I ran across her visuals in a completely unrelated search on sustainable fabric dying and lo and behold, she turns out to be a graduate from our local art college, Kootenay School of the Arts! I come from Vancouver BC originally and am accustomed to high standards in most creative fields, (the west coast is pretty much saturated with stunning scenery and high profile artists flock like so many pigeons...) but can honestly say that the work that comes out of that school is really a cut above. Anyway, her open-to-the-public studio is on Granville Island which automatically gives her credence and as you can see in these photos, she is worth taking a look at so I plan to visit the next time I am in Van!


Nicole's work is ephemeral art, which means that it is by nature (no pun intended) made to be impermanent. The work is created, photographed and left to do it's thing. I am so taken by how such a simple idea can create such a lovely image, but then, simple is usually the most beautiful.

In her Iceworks collection, the folds of fabric and garments frozen in place or in blocks of ice create a stunning texture and "movement" and play of light.

That said, the detail in her Summer Weedrobe's layering of leaves, bark, flowers and twigs create a depth that leaves (oh, another one!) you with a glorious fairytale feeling.

So lovely!

You can see more and I believe purchase prints from her website here. I hope you like!