Blog Action Day 2009 is coming

Will you be blogging about climate change on October 15th? http://www.blogactionday.org/

Best bus ride ever!

Dean, Janet, Sophie and I had the pleasure of riding on this vintage 1948 trolley bus today. It was in service to ferry people to and from the Dunbar Harvest Festival and we had perfect timing and caught a free ride! The driver was wearing a vintage uniform (complete with jacket and hat) and there were old ads inside the bus. I particularly liked the one for the Pirdle, a stylish form of underwear from the 60s. There was also a futuristic ad showing skytrain, sea bus and buses transporting their users into some unspecified future time period, perhaps 1987?

Our trusty bus gamely took us up the steep hill and we alighted with a spring in our step. Thank you, driver!

Found the image here in AaverageJoe's photostream on Flickr.

I've got a thing for...

... cute shoes! I can't help it! I try to keep myself in check, but have been coveting adorable kids' shoes for a long time. Can't believe I've never heard of Puddle Jumpers Shoes before. Just came across them on a blog called Arnelle that is full of delicious design ideas. Check out these polka dots!



Do you think it's justifiable to buy a pair in every colour?

Happy 75th Birthday Tomie dePaola!

Meeting Tomie dePaola

Back in August, I visited the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts. Just as we arrived, we noticed a line-up in the lobby. It turned out that Tomie dePaola, author and illustrator of oodles of children's books, was just wrapping up a book signing. Thrilled by the serendipity of arriving just at the right moment, we hurried into the gift shop and got a copy of Strega Nona for Tomie to sign. Strega Nona is a story of a good witch who leaves goofy Big Anthony in charge of her magic spaghetti pot, resulting in spaghetti threatening the small Italian town. Sophie loves how the spaghetti escapes through the door of Strega Nona's house.

Anyway, after this long preamble, I wanted to say, "Happy 75th Birthday, Tomie dePaola!"

Yummy dishes

I'm not quite sure why I'm drawn to these porcelain take-out dishes by Lorena Barrezueta of Brooklyn. I usually avoid disposable containers but these are handmade porcelain replicas of disposable containers, so now they become cool to me. I'm drawn to the pie plate that reminds me of all the delicious apple pies my dad has made over the years. I also like the circular take-out dish that is an exact replica of the aluminum ones the Chinese restaurant across the street uses.



You can also find samples and seconds of her wares on Etsy.

Patchwork mosaic

I've been quilting since 1994, back in the olden days when we didn't have digital cameras. Fortunately, we got ourselves a newfangled camera in 2003 and haven't looked back. Here's a sampling of my more recent quilts. I used the mosaic maker at BigHugeLabs.com to create this image. I'll try to add more quilts to my flickr set at some point.

32. Bake a loaf of bread the old-fashioned way.*

With some tutelage from a friend and the master recipe for boule from "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day", I baked two loaves of bread today. They were things of beauty and I'm very proud. Can't wait to try again!


Loaf #2 (the one I flipped upside down while attempting to slide it into the baking dish. Fortunately, it turned out just fine!)


Loaf #1. I was so excited to bake my first ever loaf of bread that I forgot to dust the top with flour and slash the top with a pretty pattern. It still turned out good enough that Sophie was saying, "I want more of your bread! I want more of your bread!"

*I think I have fulfilled the spirit of this goal in that a yeast-risen loaf of bread was made in my kitchen. Granted, the recipe didn't call for kneading, but who knows, maybe I'll get crazy and try that kind of bread next!